by Ian Williams
The ombudsman leaned forward. It’s important that you know we’re turning this matter over to our legal department. You’re twenty.
Riot thought of Adele. 19. 21. 25.
I won’t take up too much of your time. I do need a few signatures from you. The estate of Edgar Gross has made a donation in your name to charity.
Swell, Army said and flashed a shiny fifties smile. He placed his hands on the arms of his chair to sit up.
To be clear, Brownstone’s lawyer does not represent you or any other party connected with this incident. I advise you to retain a lawyer of your own should litigation follow.
They were trying to shut down a public relations nightmare. No father would send their daughter to a school plastered over the news for scandal.
And, the lawyer reached into a manila envelope and produced Army’s old phone, he left you this.
He couldn’t even leave him a new phone. Just return his old one.
The ombudsman cleared his throat.
What about the house?
That’s the other thing.
Already Army planned to sell it, sell everything in it, cash out, buy three preconstruction condos, invest the rest. Oh, he’d have to do a market analysis like he used to. He’d rent an office downtown and—
He left the house for Felicia Shaw.
But relieved when he got out of that office. Relieved. Riot. Relieved.
In his car, Army turned on his old phone. It turned out Edgar had bought a lot of music. He must have had someone help him. There were playlists for Army, for Edgar, and for Felicia.
The lawyer said, You were probably expecting more.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to the Calgary Distinguished Writers Program at the University of Calgary for a year, an office, a community, a view, all of which played a part in the completion of this novel. Thanks to the Al Purdy A-Frame. Thanks to the Banff Centre for a Leighton Residency that emboldened me to discard 25,000 words and rewrite better ones. I am also grateful for my colleagues and students at the University of British Columbia.
Phanuel Antwi, Jane Munro, Larissa Lai, Robyn Read and David Chariandy asked to read drafts of Reproduction and I wouldn’t let them. Thanks for trying. Nothing stopping you now.
Thanks to Eddie Parker for naming Edgar and for saving a character’s life. Thanks to Florian Gassner for German, to Harry Ludwigsen for German, Germans and German families. Thanks to Caitlynn Cummings and Shazia Hafiz Ramji for minding the details. Thanks to the other writers who were writing books alongside me: Myronn Hardy, Larissa Lai, Nick Sousanis, Lauren Carter, Jane Munro, Jane Hilberry—or music, Reiko Yamada.
Thanks to folks for intellectual and creative company or for conversations that set new standards of honesty: Christian Olbey, Basil Chiasson, Blaine Newton, Leslie Greentree, Shyam Selvadurai, Evelyn Lau, Benjamin Voisin, Nancy Kang, Phanuel Antwi again, Phanuel Antwi again.
Thanks to Judy Wark for a year. Thanks to Courtney Gustafson and Patrick Cuff for a November, to Ted Slingerland for afternoons of tennis after mornings of editing, to Richard Bedell for countless shifts, to Jean Claude for Saturdays, to Ragne Pajo for weekly recurring hours, to Zack Hobler for a dawn we wandered Toronto, to my family for ever since.
Thanks to my fearless, persistent, straight-talking agent, Denise Bukowski. Thanks to Random House Canada, particularly Sarah Jackson and my editor, Anne Collins—perceptive, precise, always right from her vantage somewhere in the futureland of every novel’s potential. After six years of somewhat secretive writing, I thank you for instantly understanding.
And to everyone who asked, When are you going to get a haircut? the answer is, When I finish Reproduction.
CREDITS AND PERMISSIONS
Frances Cornford, “To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train,” in Poems. Hampstead: Priory Press, 1910. https://books.google.ca/books?id=29E8AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=A+Literary+History+of+Cambridge&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjMiry7xYHeAhWmneAKHdkGCFgQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=fat&f=false
Emily Dickinson, “Pain Has an Element of Blank,” in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Boston: Little Brown, 1924. https://www.bartleby.com/br/113.html
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint from the following:
IF I HAD $1000000
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TRAILER LOAD A GIRLS
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REHAB
Words and Music by Amy Winehouse
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IAN WILLIAMS is the author of Personals, shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award; Not Anyone’s Anything, winner of the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first collection of short fiction in Canada; and You Know Who You Are, a finalist for the ReLit Prize for poetry. He was named as one of ten Canadian writers to watch by CBC. He completed his Ph.D. in English at the University of Toronto and is currently a professor of poetry in the Creative Writing program at the University of British Columbia.