12 Three houses have burned to the ground on Cook Street. I watch a tractor yank down the charred chimneys with the shovel on his crane. As I sketch this in my journal Boyd Coady peers and says, Is that like a book youre putting in everything that happens to you? I say that is exactly right. And show him some drawings. Boyd’s son rides over on his banana bike.
All I can see of the southside hills are the silver pipelines that snake up to the tank farm. And now comes the ridge against the sky. The contour pulsating in and out of greyness.
13 Max Wareham is wearing a denim cowboy hat on his back deck. There is a lilac tree. Daphne Yarn clutches a bunch of flowering sage. She keeps admonishing me with it.
We’ve agreed on the canoe trip: down the Exploits, mid-July. Lydia will do it. And Max and Daphne are in. Craig is up for it and Alex would like to do it, and Maisie, staring at Oliver, who is oblivious to the conversation, says she’ll go if Oliver’s not along and she doesnt have Una. Max: Who here invests in the stock market?
About half the hands go up.
Alex and Craig Regular dance to country music. Oliver bids goodnight and pockets his half bottle of Grouse Scotch. We all know he’s going to meet his pregnant paralegal student. I hear Maisie’s voice rise and say she disdains a limp penis because it immediately becomes a urine thing instead of a sperm thing.
Max: It has not been admitted yet on our media that power rests not in Parliament, but in big business and multinationals.
Craig takes Lydia aside and I look at her face. In that moment of nervous knowing, of climbing into bed with Craig, I see her face and it is the same face, the face I know, and that comforts me.
She says, Max, can I have a refill?
Max: Lydia is some bossy.
Lydia turns to confront Max.You want to get into it, Max? Max: No.
Silence.
Maisie: You may as well get into it.
14 Failure is a comfortable place, it locates you within a familiar frame. Success thrusts you into new territory. It’s more work to succeed. The best-laid plans are vulnerable to sabotage from the self. Self likes to lay out old maps, because it is easier to live within old maps.
Sunny. The windowsills full of cilantro and bell peppers. The basil just up in flats. The dogberries are sheltering us, an arbour. Lydia is over for lunch. She says, Tell me about yourself.
She says it in a challenging tone. As if she knows it’s difficult for me to funnel actions into principles. She is judging me again, even as she tries to open up and be honest. Her question is in fact a statement. And so I dont answer.
15 I run for twenty-six minutes, my shank aching. I run around Quidi Vidi while Lydia and the sculling crew row up the lake. I watch them practise the turn. Then I run over to Lydia’s — she’ll have arrived before me. How quiet it is at theback of her house. I hear her on the phone. Last night a distance between us before I left: I was peeling apples while Lydia rolled out pastry for rhubarb pies. She was at the counter, standing on her toes to press out the dough. She was jealous of the book borrowed from Alex. She thinks I want to be with Alex, which I dont care to argue. Yes, we all fantasize about being with others, the what-ifs.
Lydia is sitting with palms up and outstretched, Tinker Bumbo at her feet, the phone crooked to her shoulder. She is flapping a man-made shoe in the air. She is talking to Craig Regular.
16 Boyd Coady is standing inside his pickup truck’s open door, adjusting the knot in his tie. As if he’s releasing energy, a clenched muscle.
I’m giving Max a hand with a job. I love seeing weight displaced. A lintel over a door. The lines of energy being diverted over the weak spots, such as windows. The crush of weight detoured. Dams on gravity. The turn of bricks into a bridge over a window. A bridge is a prayer.