Canada.
She rips into the envelope, already feeling the tears welling up in her eyes. Even before she knows what it could be. Before she knows if it’s good news or bad news, or something she doesn’t even want to read. She kept wondering if this would happen and, if it did, how she would react. Without even bothering to sit down or make her way into the apartment, she tears into the envelope as if she has just won the lottery.
She has been trying not to think of Steven. Trying instead to hate him. She gets angry at herself for it, but she instead only wound up hating Scott. She still doesn’t even know why. She unfolds the letter and is surprised at how little he wrote. She feels herself cry out—just a little gasping sound—when she sees he’s written the letter by hand. It makes her smile, even before she reads it.
D,
I’ve only just now realized that I ran away from you.
I spent years being angry at Scotty for always running away. Then I went and did exactly the same thing.
It’s not the same without you.
There is no snow. Rain is falling outside the coffee house. The jazz is playing, and it makes me miss you.
I wish you were here to see and hear all of it.
I would love for you to consider forgiving me.
Can you?
You have already lived two lives.
Would you be able to live a third?
I hope you will.
You know where I will be sitting.
I love you,
S
Dania raises her hand to her mouth and chokes a bit. She’s both inhaling and laughing at the same time. Tears roll down her cheeks, but she’s not sad anymore. She holds the letter to her face and smells it, just to see if it smells like him. It doesn’t; it just smells like paper.
But it’s enough. It’s enough to know that he held this paper and wrote on it and then sealed it in the envelope that he addressed to her. Even though it doesn’t have the smell of his cologne or his hair that she can easily recognize, it’s somehow enough. She feels as if he just wrote it a moment ago and handed it right to her. The tears roll out of her eyes and onto the paper, causing the ink to splotch. She looks inside the envelope, and there’s more: a sticker of a Canadian flag, and something else.
A photograph.
She sits down on the tiny loveseat in her apartment and all of her emotions come gushing out. She holds the letter in both hands and cries, her tears hitting the paper, her bare legs, and the floor below her.
But she can’t stop smiling.
The photograph is recent and was obviously printed out on a computer and then cut to size. In the photo, Steven is sitting on the floor of a large, empty room. There’s a city skyline behind him and a tiny smile on his face. He almost looks as if he’s unsure of himself. On his head he’s wearing an unusual hat. Dania squints and looks closer and can see it’s not a hat at all, but some kind of headband or costume. When she realizes what she’s looking at, she laughs hard and loud.
Horns. He’s wearing a tiny set of horns.
The bull wins, she thinks, and laughs even louder. She’s crying and laughing at the same time, and feels she probably should get a drink of water. But she doesn’t get up from the loveseat. Instead, she reads the letter again, and then a third time.
You know where I will be sitting.
His handwriting isn’t so bad, she thinks. It’s actually quite pretty. She wonders if he wrote several versions before he finally chose this one, the one that looks the nicest.
Of course he did.
Dania looks at the photo again and feels her lungs filling with air. She holds her breath for a minute and then folds the letter and the photo together and puts them back into the envelope.
Not yet, she thinks. Not here. It’s a test. Don’t fail it.
She looks around her tiny apartment at all that’s left. There isn’t much. She wonders if she should leave and—if she does—if there is anything here she’ll miss. Scott would always just jump up and go wherever he wanted. He would pick up and leave and go wherever he felt his life was supposed to take him.
Scotty would have liked that. She hears Steven’s voice in her head.
But there is no Scott.
Before she even realizes that she’s standing, Dania pulls her suitcase out and begins to throw clothes in it. It’s an old suitcase, being shoved full of even older clothes. But that doesn’t matter. She doesn’t have much, but she’ll take what she can. She’ll fly away as soon as she can.
Fly away to him.
Dania smiles as she looks around at the tiny room. She feels she should start her new life with nothing. For once, she doesn’t feel like she’s running away from anything. The rest of her life is waiting, and she’s ready to live it. She’s ready to make it happen, so she should start with nothing. Just like that.
They will both start their new life together. She knows it can work. All of this will be behind them both, and she’ll learn to live her new life with him, in the cold. In that freezing, awful cold country she’s never even seen. Just like all the terrible winters in London. But she’s ready to have those winters, as long as she can have her new life with him in it.
It can work, she thinks. Can’t it?
She stops for a second and sits down again. There’s no reason to rush this. She can take her time and pack and let everyone know where she’s going. She can take a day to collect her things and cancel her rent and quit her jobs. She needs to calm down and just let it all sink in. Prepare everything and calmly get ready for the trip. There is much to do. She has time.
She takes out the sticker of the Canadian flag and takes a long look at it. Her tears are gone now, but her face is still wet. She wipes it with the backs of her hands and looks at the silly sticker he decided to include in the letter. Then, without thinking about it, she puts it on her old suitcase and smiles.
No one writes letters anymore, she thinks again.
Outside, it’s sunny and bright. She wants to call him, but knows that’s not what he really wants. It’s the middle of the night where he is. Will he even be awake? She decides instead not to call. She will wait and speak to him later.
When she sees him.
It’s so hot outside today, but she knows it’ll be very cold where she’s going. She’ll pack her warmest clothes. She’ll travel light and pack warmly and that way she won’t be so shocked when she first gets there. Then she’ll be ready when she goes to find him.
Second Cup. Isn’t that what he called it? Just like Starbucks. Didn’t he say it was near Yonge Street? It’s where he always goes. She will find it and, waiting in the back of the room, she will find him. He will be sitting alone, drinking some silly coffee drink. She will see him sitting there next to his fireplace, looking outside at the cold. He will not be looking, but he’ll know she’s there. He’ll smell her perfume. He always loves the way she smells. He’ll know she’s there when she leans close to him and he smells her hair.
She will touch his shoulder and whisper in his ear, “Hello, my little bull.”
Acknowledgments
To Jonathan Atherton, Brendhan Lovegrove, and Shazia Mirza.
Also to Ralph and Rhonda; Rob and Renita, Doug and Vickie; Michael, David, and Chloe; Pearl Green and Lil Gruneir; David Grunier.
To Eric Alper; Ian Atlas; Ilene Benator; Julita Borko; Andrew Bradley; Kathy Buckworth; Andy Burns; Rick and Angie Campanelli; Jodi Cohen; Candace Covington; Michael Dahlie; Kate Drummond; Matt Dusk; Terry Fallis; Joanne Feldman; Jeremy Freed; Aoife Gold; Meli Grant; Denis Grignon; Tina Gruver; Dustin Hertel; Denise Hofmann; Humble and Fred; Charles Kaminski; Andrea Lakin; Katherine Lam; John Lewis; Irem and Markus Lutz; Victoria Makhnin; Shaun Marvell; Kristin Matthews; Andrew McMichael; Jessica Megly; Terry Mercury; Richard Mills; Ben Miner; Marc and Tanya Morgenstern; Larry Nichols; Tom Nowell; Paul Ogata; Aron Papernick; Greg Pappas; Shaun Proulx; Nathan Quinn; Tracy Rideout; Dan Riley; Luis Ramirez; Meghan Robertson; Nicholas Rosaci; Rob and Debbie Rosen; Davin Ros
enblatt; Heazry Salim; B. Mark Seabrooks; Matt and Gabi Syberg-Olsen; Ralph Tetta; Joe Thistel; Jeremy Thompson; Rob and Gillian Tudhope; Christopher Turner; Cal Verduchi; Barbara Wheeland; Celine Williams; Mike Wixson; Peter Zakarow; Peter Senftleben, Vida Engstrand, and everyone at Kensington Books; everyone at SiriusXM, especially Allison Dore.
And—most of all—to Laura and Marlowe.
A Conversation with Ward Anderson
Your first novel (I’ll Be Here All Week) dealt with stand-up comedy. This book is quite a departure from that subject matter. What inspired such a move?
I had been developing the idea of a twin dealing with the death of his brother for quite some time, with nothing more than that basic premise in the back of my mind. Then, in 2011, I got to visit Singapore as part of an international comedy tour. The places I visited there and the people I met inspired the events that eventually became All That’s Left. I was there in December, so all of the references to the Christmas celebration and decorations are as I remember them from my visit. The hotel bellman really wore that Santa Claus costume every day in that intense heat and humidity. I knew I had to write about that.
Steven suffers from misophonia. Where did that come from?
I have it! It’s an intolerance to certain sounds. For me, it’s background noise that really sets me off. The sounds of people eating, especially. But it can also be little things people normally ignore or don’t hear, like whistling or humming. Even the sounds of hands typing on a keyboard or music bleeding through a person’s headphones. The opening chapter—with Steven on the plane listening to the man behind him eating chips—is straight out of my life. My parents gave me a pair of noise-cancelling headphones a few years ago as a gift. I never travel without them now. Like Steven, I spent years just thinking I was a fussy snot. But I’ve lightened up over the years and learned to deal with it better than I used to.
Steven isn’t a very likable guy when we first meet him. People have said the same thing about Spence, the main character from I’ll Be Here All Week. What is it with you and unlikable protagonists?
Well, neither Steven nor Spence are terrible people. At their worst, they are each a bit selfish and perhaps narcissistic. But I’ve always liked the idea of a character who is essentially good trying to find his way out of a bad shell. Steven knows he’s a snob and wishes he weren’t that way. It takes a free spirit like Dania to open his eyes a bit and help him find the good man who longs to break out. Spence—in the previous novel—is the same way. In both books we have a decent guy who has lost his way, and it takes the love of a good woman to help set him straight. I’ve always liked the idea of redemption.
There’s a good bit of that in All That’s Left.
Yeah, Steven finds redemption. So does Robin, a woman we think the worst of throughout the story, until we find out who she really is near the end. Steven has been an unreliable narrator in many ways, painting her as a worse partner than she actually was. In the end, she gets redeemed a bit. Even Scotty (or, rather, his ashes) gets a shot at forgiveness.
Although Steven finds happiness with Dania, there’s always the death of his brother hanging over his head.
And Steven never really gets over it. Not until the very end. He talks to Scotty’s ashes as if his brother is still there. He continues doing this when he’s back in Toronto, even. It takes Robin throwing out those remains for Steven to finally move on. He accepts a lot of truth throughout the story, but I think it takes Robin stepping in and accidentally throwing out Scotty’s ashes for Steven to finally accept that his brother is gone.
This book deals with a controversial topic: Dania is a transsexual woman.
When I was in Singapore City, I found it so fascinating to hear about men from other parts of the world traveling to Singapore and falling in love with women they met at Orchard Towers, which is a real place. Sometimes the men wind up moving to Singapore. Sometimes they marry and take the women back home with them to wherever they’re from. And, yes, there are transgendered dancers and bartenders at some of the clubs there. To me, it was a love story that no one was telling.
Steven falls in love with Dania before he finds out about her past.
Steven falls in love with Dania for who she truly is. It’s not a fetish. He meets and falls in love with a beautiful, talented woman who makes him feel alive. It was important for me to show that the two of them fall in love with each other for who they both truly are, not because of Dania’s past. They don’t even have sex. Their relationship is purely romantic and from the heart. It is, after all, a love story.
But Steven doesn’t deal very well with finding out about Dania’s past at first.
Steven doesn’t like the fact that he’s been lied to and that she kept secrets about Scotty from him. But he doesn’t question the fact that he fell in love with a woman. He’s smarter than that.
You describe the weather in Singapore as being intensely hot. Why set the story during the winter then?
It’s brutally hot and humid, pretty much all the time. Especially for a Canadian guy visiting in the middle of December. I liked the idea of having the story set at Christmastime, because so many people can’t imagine that holiday in a place that is so hot on the other side of the world. And I liked going instantly back to Toronto, where Steven suddenly finds comfort again in the bitter cold. Most Canadians (and Americans) can’t wait to get away from the cold winter weather, but Steven longs for it . . . except when he’s with Dania.
It all comes back to falling in love?
Of course! Doesn’t that bring out the free spirit in all of us? Because of Dania, Steven finds joy in the very things he would normally despise, from the crowded bars to eating with his bare hands. She opens his eyes to things that aren’t normally like him at all. He doesn’t hate it; he loves it because he’s with her. At the same time, Dania finds that she loves the stuffy gentleman who is nothing like what she’s used to being with. At the end, she’s excited to fly into a snow-covered country just to be with him. We’ve all discovered new ideas and experiences because of a person we loved. Falling in love makes people take chances they normally would never take. Sometimes it all works out.
Where are Dania and Steven now?
They’re probably living in Toronto. Dania is singing. They’re happy. It’s a love story.
Don’t miss Ward Anderson’s debut novel,
I’ll Be Here All Week,
available now!
Turn the page for an excerpt....
1
Spence turns the volume up on his laptop because the girl in the bathroom is being so loud. She’s talking about comedians she thinks are funny, but he’s watching clips of himself on YouTube and wondering when she’s finally going to take the hint and leave. On the screen he’s watching a set he did once on The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn. At the time it seemed like a really big deal. Now it just depresses him. He still can’t help but watch it from time to time, even though it never makes him feel very good.
“Do you like Dane Cook?” Brandy or Mandy or whatever her name is says while fixing her hair in the mirror. He chuckles at the thought of her putting in so much effort just to make the walk of shame out of his hotel room in a few minutes. All the primping in the world isn’t going to erase the “just sexed” look she has.
“Sure,” he says back, even though he didn’t even hear the question.
“What about Daniel Tosh? You like Daniel Tosh?”
“Yeah.” He nods. He pauses the clip and realizes for the first time that he still owns the shirt he wore on the TV show. It was eight years ago. It might be time to change things up a bit. He wonders if there’s an outlet mall or something nearby that he can stop at when he heads out of town. His wardrobe has consisted of the same five shirts and pairs of jeans for so long, he doesn’t remember the last time he tried something new.
“I think Dane Cook is hilarious.” She emerges from the bathroom, still wearing nothing but her panties. In this light, he can see how poorly d
one the tattoo of the kitten just below her navel really is. Last night he thought it was Pac-Man.
“Don’t you think he’s funny?” she asks. “Dane Cook?”
“Sure.” He goes back to watching the video of himself.
She sits down on the corner of the bed just behind where he is sitting at the tiny hotel desk. She’s pushing thirty and talks like she’s fifteen. Everything she says sounds like a question, even when it isn’t one. She twirls her hair around her index finger while she talks and bobs her foot up and down to whatever song is in her head. He looks down at her toes and thinks it’s kind of cute that her feet sort of look like hands.
“That you?” she says and points at the laptop screen.
“Yeah.”
“From TV?”
“Yeah.”
“What show was it? The Tonight Show?”
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