“Fourteen carat gold, antique. The diamond is cut in the old Mazarin style. See how clean and unaffected the geometry is? A surprisingly modern look when you consider it’s a nineteenth century cut.”
He handed the ring across the counter, and Stephan took it nervously between his thumb and forefinger. He held it up to his eyes, the facets glinting under the shop’s fluorescent lights. It suited her personality, he thought. Straightforward and unpretentious, yet undeniably gorgeous. She’d love it.
“Could you put it aside for me?”
“The deposit is 25 percent.”
Stephan hesitated – thinking wistfully of the beautiful new wide-angle lens he’d have to put off buying – then reached for his wallet.
As if sensing some disturbance in the force, Natacha called him a few hours later, sounding tired but happy. The conference had been going well. She’d already learned a ton, met dozens of great people.
“I got you something, like we talked about,” she said. “I personally think it’s silly, but I’m pretty sure you’re going to be pleased.”
“I got you something too,” he said. “But I’m not sure if you’ll like it or not. Hopefully you will.”
“What? What is it?” She was like a little kid when it came to surprises.
“You’ll have to wait and find out.”
She was all giggles. “See you Saturday!”
* * * * *
It had always been Pete’s practice to arrive early when they went out for drinks, as if he needed to perform advance reconnaissance, sweep The Olde Trout for IEDs. He was usually well into his second pint by the time Stephan sauntered in, more or less on time. But now their roles were reversed, and Stephan had been seated for a good twenty minutes when Pete finally arrived at their longtime haunt. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his breath seemed shallow, as if he wasn’t long for this world.
“Everything okay?” Stephan asked.
“Oh yeah, sure. Everything is superb, my childless friend.” He tumbled into the booth, foregoing their once-customary secret handshake.
Stephan stuck to their old routine anyway. “So?” he asked.
“So yourself.”
It was good to be back at the Trout, notwithstanding Pete’s crankiness, and had given Stephan a feeling of coziness and nostalgia the moment he’d stepped inside. He’d called Pete at the beginning the week to set something up, but his friend had at first been reluctant. Pete and Sally had announced their pregnancy just a few weeks after Stephan and Natacha’s informal housewarming dinner the previous spring, and their little girl, Emily, had been born just three months ago. She was beautiful to behold, which was odd because in Stephan’s opinion she also looked a lot like her father, and Pete wasn’t exactly what you’d call a cutie-pie.
Stephan had been forced to bring out the big guns in order to get his friend to come out. He’d mentioned how lonely he was with Natacha away, and Pete’s resolve had cracked just a little. Then he’d let slip that he’d recently had cause to purchase a certain engagement ring. That had sealed the deal, with the caveat that Stephan would need to bring the ring to their meeting to prove he wasn’t making the whole thing up. Pete hadn’t been able to meet until Friday. Natacha would be back from Chicago the following afternoon. Stephan couldn’t wait to see her – based on how lonely he’d grown over the last couple of days, it felt as if she’d been gone much longer than a week.
“Let’s see this ring, then,” Pete grumbled.
With a shy shrug, Stephan took the velvet box from his pocket and slid it across the table. Pete picked it up, snapped it open and looked inside. He narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips, which made him look a little like a pensive monkey. Then he nodded.
“Very classy, dude. She’s going to absolutely love it.”
“So you’re satisfied?” Stephan asked. “Willing to give this whole engagement idea your blessing?”
“I just wanted to be sure you weren’t making the whole thing up.”
“I’m glad you hold my word in such high esteem.”
“Trust, but verify.” Pete snapped the lid of the box shut and slid it back across the table. “I’m so happy for you, Steph – she’s such a cool person. You done good, son.”
“Careful, now. She still has to say yes.”
“She will, don’t worry. She’s crazy about you. I suppose you do have your subtle charms.”
“Thank you for that.”
“So how does it feel?”
“It feels great, but normal. In a way, it doesn’t seem like a big deal.”
“That’s good,” Pete said, nodding again. “It means you’re ready.”
“Huh – I hadn’t thought of it that way. Maybe you’re right.”
“Wedding plans?”
The question was strangely daunting. Of course there would be a wedding: with guests and gifts and a ceremony, the whole nine yards. Her parents were quite religious. They would want a church wedding, no doubt, aisles lined with relatives and friends. His own parents would just be happy that he was finally making a move. They wouldn’t bat an eye at a nudist or SCUBA ceremony, provided there was a certified marriage certificate to show for it.
“One step at a time, Peter,” he said, evenly. “I should probably get Nat’s input, for starters.”
“Am I invited?”
“Yes, of course you’re invited, idiot.”
Pete grinned. “I can’t wait,” he said. “It’s going to be a fucking blast.”
They clinked glasses, drank. Stephan noticed with pleasure that Pete had almost finished his beer. Despite his initial reluctance to come out, he did not seem to regret having done so.
Dinner arrived, heaping plates of artery-clogging pub food. Marge, their waiter of yore, was nowhere to be seen, and Stephan wondered what had become of her – she might have moved on, or it could simply have been her night off. At least tonight’s waiter, Betty, had a good surly way about her, hurling their plates down on the table as if they were a couple of curling rocks.
Pete was now a responsible adult in most respects, but his appetite was as unfettered as ever, not that this seemed to be an issue. He ate like a firefighter, never exercised, and yet never put on weight. Someday geneticists would patent his genes, make millions.
“So enough about me, how’s fatherhood treating you?” Stephan asked.
“Oh god, I was hoping you wouldn’t go there,” Pete said. “I don’t want to put you off your decision to move your life in that direction.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“It’s a grind. I don’t mean to be a righteous ass, but you don’t understand how much free time you have, Steph. God, how I hate you for it. Now that I’m a dad, every waking moment of my life is taken up with either work or the baby.”
“But it’s worth it, right?”
“Completely worth it. I can’t even describe to you how intense my feelings are for the little poop machine. It’s frightening. I’d do anything for her. Sorry for the cliche, but it makes you feel truly alive.”
“Sounds like a drug.”
“A little bit,” Pete said. “It definitely makes you feel strung out a lot of the time.”
“But it’s a fair price to pay?”
“Most definitely.”
Twenty minutes later, Betty was clearing away their plates, nearly dumping the leftovers into their laps in the process.
“You should’ve tried the chop steak, dude,” Pete said. “One of the best specimens of chop steak I’ve had in a long time. The ground beef was spectacularly greasy.”
“Next time, for sure. I promise.” Stephan took a last sip of his beer and put the empty glass on the table. “Next time.”
He wanted another drink. It had been ages since he’d been out like this with Pete, and who knew when they’d be able to get out again? It made him want to savor every moment as if it were a fine whiskey. It wasn’t that he felt regret about their old lives coming to an end. They were moving forward in the most pos
itive way imaginable. There were new games to be played, new prizes won. It was a cause for celebration.
“Another drink?” he asked.
Pete glanced at his watch.
“One more wouldn’t hurt, I guess,” he said, after a brief hesitation.
“Excellent.”
When their drinks arrived, they clinked their glasses together and sipped in unison.
“Congratulations again, Steph,” Pete said. “I was beginning to despair for you for a year or so there, but you’re finally getting it done.”
Chapter 14
Out on the sidewalk at the end of the evening, they lingered over their goodbyes.
“We’ll have to do this again some time, with Sally and Natacha in tow,” Pete said.
“We will.”
A cab was coming up the road, and Pete went to flag it down. “You want a lift up to Bloor?” he called over his shoulder.
“Think I’ll walk a bit,” Stephan replied. He wasn’t quite ready for silent streets and dark lawns.
“Suit yourself, amigo. I’ll see you when I see you, then. Congratulations again on taking the plunge.”
Pete stepped into the taxi and yanked the door shut after him. It closed with a heavy thunk, like the sound from one of their old hand slaps, and the cab pulled away from the curb.
Stephan watched its red tail-lights recede into the darkness, then turned and set off on his own way, heading west. The night was warm, almost muggy, although the clammy breeze that welled up now and again carried a faint reminder that slush had lingered in the gutters barely a month before. Despite the late hour, the sky at his back was still luminous with faint grey light, the last afterglow of the setting sun.
The street wasn’t thronging yet, as it would be in a month or two, but it was hardly abandoned. There was a small line-up at the gelato shop, and a matching one at the falafel stand across the street.
A memory of the neighbourhood came to him with sudden clarity: when he’d been out walking here one night a few weeks after first moving to the city, two young women, in their early twenties (if that), had stopped him to ask for directions. They were on their way to the Golden Egg, a nearby café that was popular at the time. As he was walking away, having explained to them how to get there, he’d heard one of them say to the other, “see, I told you he’d know.” He’d nearly burst into song, hearing that. Somehow, he had already acquired the aura of a bona fide local.
There was a cab up ahead, and he was about to flag it down, but at the last moment changed his mind, decided a second time against heading home. He was still awake and fully alert, notwithstanding that last drink after dinner, and if he went home now he’d spend all night tossing and turning. Instead, he would walk a little longer, really tire himself out, so that when he got back to the apartment he could fall into bed and, with a little luck, go straight to sleep. Upon waking the next morning, he’d be refreshed and ready for Natacha’s return later in the day. He could feel the box that held the ring deep in his pocket, a small unyielding lump against his thigh.
He put his head down and let his feet guide him. Walking without thought or plan, he was a wind-up toy soldier on the march, making his way through the network of side streets and little parks south of College. Garrison Creek, an ancient waterway long since entombed beneath the roads, was down below him somewhere, trickling invisibly in its concrete sewer bed. When he traversed an unlit park and saw shrouded figures smoking on a bench in the darkness, he did not tighten his breath or quicken his pace. When he passed through the hubbub of a house party that had spilled out onto the sidewalk – university students, by the looks of them – he dodged around the clusters of bodies without breaking stride.
He stopped, stood still. Somehow, he realized, his feet had led him to the Balfour. He had been half-aware that he had made his way down to Queen, had in fact passed the building that housed his studio a few minutes before, but he’d been so lost in thought that he hadn’t even noticed he’d come this far down. He looked up at the front window of the Balfour’s main bar. Through the frosted glass, he could make out the bodies of customers within lurching this way and that, like shadow puppets. Their forms were elongated and distorted in the glass, giving them a vaguely sinister aspect.
He was walked out now, finally. The muscles in his arms and legs were on fire, throbbing under a film of sweat. It was a good feeling, in a way, satisfying, as if he’d just given his all in a track meet. He would go inside, just for a minute, have a drink in the café, something cold and non-alcoholic, then catch a taxi back uptown. The heavy oak door swung open and a man and woman came out, the woman laughing softly at something the man had just said, their faces veiled in darkness. He caught the door as it swung shut behind them and stepped inside.
It was quieter than he’d expected. A single group standing near the front window had been responsible for the shadow puppets he’d seen outside. Deeper within the room the crowd was thinner, many of the tables unoccupied. Here and there couples and small groups bent close in murmured conversation. The room’s small stage was in darkness, bare except for a single, unlit microphone stand.
Maybe the night’s crowd had yet to arrive. Perhaps in recent months people had begun coming out later than before. Or maybe the scene had moved on to some new place du jour. Most likely it was just an off night.
He lingered in the doorway between the front hall and the main bar, surveying the room. It made no sense, but something about the place seemed off to him. It was as if in the course of his recent absence the Balfour had been destroyed and then lovingly replicated, brick by brick, beam by beam, by a race of perverse aliens. But while the new version looked and felt much like the old one, it wasn’t the real thing. Stephan had always been content on the sidelines of the scene. Even so, it was to that old, other Balfour that he belonged.
There was a rustle of fabric at his back, accompanied by the click of heels on hardwood.
“Well look who’s here,” a voice said, softly.
His mouth formed the contours of a bitter smile. He wasn’t even surprised.
“I knew your shape in the doorway as soon as I looked over,” she said. “Haven’t seen you around much lately.”
He turned to face her – saw eyes, hair, mouth, flesh, all just as he remembered. If she, too, was a copy, then she was a perfect one, every eyelash exactly to spec.
“Been a while,” he said. “I had no idea you were still coming to this place.”
Ignoring this comment, she leaned in, wordlessly, and encircled his waist with her white arms, pulling him in close. She smiled up at him, the corners of her mouth twisting in ornate curlicues.
“I thought you went away,” he said.
“I did for a little while, but I’m back now.”
He chuckled to himself, not moving. He wanted to say something brutal, something unforgivable.
“Unless you’re here with someone,” she said, hesitating. For an instant, she seemed almost vulnerable, and probably that was what stopped him.
“No,” he admitted. The opening for cruelty passed in silence. Now they were just having a conversation again, as they’d done however many times in the past. “I was out walking. I just came in for a drink.”
She brightened. “Well, then, let me stand you one, for old time’s sake. I’ve got friends here, but they can spare me.”
He followed her up the main staircase to the second floor and on through a warren of small rooms – lounges, gallery spaces, hallways hung with kitschy oil paintings of sad clowns, aristocratic hunting parties.
The renovations to the building had progressed rapidly since he’d last been here, and a number of new spaces had now been opened to the public. Stephan soon lost his bearings, but Jenny seemed to know exactly where she was going. That was the thing about Jenny Wynne, he thought to himself: she always did.
They made their way in silence, as if engaged in matters of such gravity that small talk was inappropriate. He realized that he was tired from his
evening out with Pete and from his long walk. He should have been on his way home by now.
They arrived at a cramped, attic-like lounge with just a few tables and a small bar, where they ordered a couple of drinks – a glass of red wine for her, some kind of artisanal pilsner for him. There was a tiny table near the back of the room. It was so small that he felt as if he were sandwiching himself into an old-fashioned child’s school desk, the kind with a folding top, a divot for pencils, and a circular hole on one side for a cup of juice.
“So, have you missed me?” she asked, with sudden intensity, her eyes boring into him.
“Of course. Everyone’s missed you,” he said, riffing. Irritation had always made him articulate. “The flags were at half mast while you were gone, everyone in black mourning clothes the whole time.”
“You always had a way of putting things, Steph. Maybe you should have been the writer, not me. Maybe we’ve had our roles mixed up all along.”
He felt embarrassment, confusion, outrage. Despite everything, he was also enormously flattered.
“I don’t... think so,” he said.
“Oh, but I do.” She let out a low chuckle and looked at him again. “You’ve got little crow’s feet now around the corners of your eyes. You never had them before. They look nice. Distinguished.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re going to be one of those people who get better looking as they age, I can see that now. You’ll look like Samuel Beckett in an old book jacket photo. All tweedy masculinity in black and white.”
He raised his glass of beer and took a sip. The beer was cold and bitter in his mouth. He placed the glass back down on its green felted coaster and stared at it. It was beaded on the outside with droplets of water that made it slippery to the touch.
He felt a powerful sense of déjà vu, sitting there across from her. They had been here before, so many times that he couldn’t even bear to think about it. Except that this time was different. All of the other times were just rehearsals for the real event, he now saw, test prints made to experiment with different exposure levels.
The Silver Age Page 18