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Me: Oh.
Me: I didn’t know you were getting a massage.
Me: I thought you were at the Dufferin Mall trying to improve our phone plans.
Me: Sure was off with that one!
Me: Well, I hope the massage is doing the trick, anyway!
Me: Awesome. You really do deserve to have a “tender yet forceful experience that lifts you out of your body and punishes you in all the right places.”
Me: What’s the masseuses name again? Yana? Didn’t she used to be a hot Russian long jumper before some sort of sex scandal?
Me: Pierre?
Me: He’s your masseuse?
Me: I thought he was your power skating coach.
Me: Both, eh? That’s a little weird.
Me: I see.
Me: He’s a renaissance man.
Me: I do too know what that means.
Me: It means he’s a douche.
Me: You know he lied about being in the NHL, eh?
Me: That’s something sacred, you don’t lie about stuff like that!
Me: Oh, he was in the German league then.
Me: Not. The. Same. Thing.
Me: Like playing in Peewee.
Me: I would dominate that stupid league.
Me: Whatever.
Me: Whatever.
Me: You did what?
Me: Look, my Fantasy Baseball Stats file is private.
Me: I have no idea why you found a bunch of racy photographs of Kristen Stewart in there.
Me: Not a clue.
Me: Maybe Jones put them there.
Me: Really? That’s the stupidest thing you ever heard?
Me: Look, I’m not stupid just because I failed math a bunch of times.
Me: Or French.
Me: Or any other subject!
Me: I’m Alt-Smart.
Me: No, it’s different than being “special.”
Me: You’re being a bully.
Me: You are not a safe space!
Me: Look, look, why are we fighting? It’s Christmas!
Me: Sure.
Me: Of course I’ve been doing my Christmas shopping!
Me: I’m no rookie.
Me: Practically done.
Me: You and Pierre wanted tickets to that Pentatonix concert, right?
Me: Or was it the travelling version of The Price is Right?
Me: Maybe I’ll get you two both!
Me: Yes.
Me: Wow, that would be great!
Me: I had no idea they made Kristen Stewart sex dolls!
Me: What do you mean, “That’s not what my Internet history says?”
Me: Well, I don’t know.
Me: Must have been some mistake.
Me: Maybe the baby sitter was looking up Kristen Stewart sex dolls? How would I know!?
Me: Also, maybe my account was hacked by a Russian?
Me: Well, I’m a pretty important writer.
Me: The Russians know that if they attribute something to me it will have great influence on the public.
Me: They’re smart, the Russians.
Me: You ever see them play hockey? So very clever!
Me: I did not think that Aleppo was a type of dog food two months ago!
Me: I’m pretty keyed in to world events. Always have been.
Me: I have always stood with Syria.
Me: Sure I did.
Me: I gave away that old bathroom scale to a Syrian refugee family.
Me: Well, yes.
Me: The organizer never did come to pick it up, but that’s on her!
Me: She’s the one who doesn’t care about Syrians, not me!
Me: I care about their weight, about how they adapt to the North American diet!
Me: Don’t want them to get diabetes!
Me: Sorry?
Me: Why did I text and interrupt your massage?
Me: I don’t remember.
Me: Oh, now I remember!
Me: If the last three women on the planet were you, Kristen Stewart and Jennifer Lawrence, I would choose you.
Me: Yes, I am very sweet.
Me: I love you, too, see you soon! xoxo
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Across from this, splayed on a bench lay a dusty, shirtless man baking in the sun, all of his life’s possessions scattered about him like discarded Kleenex. It felt like he was trying to defy his circumstance, the weather and all the people who had been trying in small ways to help him.
As I was locking my bicycle a tall, beautiful Russian woman, just as thin and cruel as a switchblade, walked toward me. She was a tennis superstar, a billionaire’s trophy, somebody who would never fall in love, and the language she used with her companion was precise and directional. There was not a sentimental bone in her body, and concealed beneath her sunglasses she was still able to make it clear that she wanted me out of her way. Disdainful, she was a supermodel who would not break stride, and I hurried in my task, trying to make myself smaller and less obtrusive as the city beyond opened up before her terrible beauty. And then, just a few moments later, a middle-aged man talking to himself, his hands a fury of unknowable intent, walked past me too, “ I don’t care, I’ll take the day off work, end up downtown and probably get a blow-job,” he said to nobody living in the visible present.
At the Real Thailand restaurant, beneath faded pictures of some Thai King, sat a scattering of elderly, single women sitting alone at various tables. With swollen ankles and sunken faces, they stared straight ahead. Their hearts and minds elsewhere, they existed within humid, little bubbles of sadness.
In front of a corner store a beggar noticed my Montreal Expos t-shirt and we fell into a conversation about the city and baseball team, discovering that we lived there at the same time. Free associating, as if on some sort of game show, we shouted out the names of all our favourite players:
Andre Dawson!
El Presidente!
Casey Candaele!
Pasquel Perez!
Hubie Brooks!
And then we reminisced about the unhurried evenings we had each spent at the Big O watching games. Sitting in the cheap seats smoking cigarettes and drinking our knapsack beer, the future we were both living on this hot afternoon so distant and unimaginable.
