I say, Every day that happens.
Tell me something you love about me.
I love it when you wear your red kimono and sit on your kitchen counter to read a recipe book with your goggly glasses on.
At the lights a fire truck screams past us and we follow it to my place.
Daphne had confessed to eating things in grocery stores. She will not buy an orange before she pokes her finger through one to taste it. Lydia says she does the same with peaches.
Lydia had asked Max for a light. And for a second I am jealous. But also, in as brief a moment, I am assured she is committed. I realize jealousy knows no bound. That I could think of a moment when Lydia and Max were sexual.
What I love of Lydia is that her head is full of new, unfinished thought. No complete ideas, always renovating opinion. She has conviction, yet she can be converted, if she believes your evidence.
Daphne tells us a story of a horse she had as a child that got into the grain grain that hadnt been watered.
Daphne: I had to pull that mare off the ground. And walk it around Brigus. The field arcing up and the sky bending down, tugging this horse around to save it.
I’m going to use this detail in the novel.
Talking about the past, Max says. It’s like sewing a fabric and pushing the needle through two thicknesses, through both sides of the cloth. His father, Noel Wareham, is going blind. When Max visits, his dad asks him to thread all the needles.
27 Snow is melting under mounds like sudden child pee. Bold shadows thrown onto things, firm and sure of themselves.
The southside hills wear a mist that makes them look gigantic. Patches of snow in the dips. Fog and the sea beyond. I like watching weather work in the distance.
28 I lay a tray of frozen chicken in the fridge to thaw. I am a fervent believer in letting nature do work for you. And conserving energy. I’ve left a casserole dish to soak in the sink overnight, so it’s easy to clean now. I am a patient man.
The harbour a cold deep marble blue, blue of blood in the veins, starved of oxygen, water so cold and dense the oxygen is squeezed out, the blue of hydrogen.
I walk to the library. I choose microfiche film of newspapers from March, 1914. Knowing what the news will be. That the preliminary reports are optimistic. There are hints to the disaster. A novelist uses foreshadow. Whereas a newspaper’s reports are never infused with such prophecy. The sealers are missing. Now the sealers are dead. On a day like today.
29 Oliver Squires invites me to play snooker. I’m so surprised that I agree. He’ll meet me there at nine.
It’s hard to talk around a snooker table. It’s five dollars an hour, so we spend about two dollars of time just talking. Oliver holding his pint carefully, the blue tip of his pool cue leaning on his shoulder. He says, I called Maisie but she’s out. Hadnt heard from her. I see her walking to her car and she calls out, she’s friendly, but I’m low-key. And she pounces on this. She’s had a hard day, not a second to call me. About Una.
Oliver says, I know youre Maisie’s friend, but I appreciate your listening.
Maisie, when she found Oliver low-key, started to yell. Why dont you go fuck yourself. That’s what she yelled. I dont want to have to deal with that kind of attitude.
Me: I’m thinking how lucky I am. This morning I was served a peeled banana and coffee in bed. A nice lingering kiss. And Lydia called me to say I never did tell you, but it’s great that you paid off your student loan.
Oliver: I never did get that kind of appreciation.
She’s upset at you.