The Cove is slanted green into the sea. There are cows, a weathered fence to duck under. We scan the field for a bull. It’s the most easterly farm in North America. We descend towards the ocean, you can hear a cluster of gannets in the cliffshore. We check the dung of cows. Under trees we find chanterelles, small but we pick them. We look for psilocybes. Max finds a lone one.
Another month, he says.
I say, I’ve never done mushrooms.
This begins something for Max and Lydia. They swap psychedelic experiences. It happened in the fall with Lydia and at NewYear’s for Max. The full moon ascends and blurs behind a jacket of cloud. It smudges the moon into Saturn. The ocean is surging white against the blue, upraised slate. Max was with Maisie Pye then, and that’s why Oliver has never liked him. This, under the influence of the mushroom. Lydia was with Earl.
Max has forearms from manual labour, from laying pipe in the Northwest Territories, from living a summer in a canvas tent while building a hunting lodge. Each time I’m with him he has a previous life to reveal. He can always illustrate a point with a personal story. It’s as if, left to think long enough, Max could summon an entire personal universe.
2 We’re at the Ship and Craig Regular buys me a beer. I hate how he pretends to like me. He says his house in the Battery has had plumbing for only twenty years. In the seventies there was a honey bucket.
Alex says she photographed a sentinel fishery crew throwing a thousand grapefruits into the sea. To mirror cod egg dispersion. They got back a hundred. She didnt think they’d get any back.
And then we see Oliver in the corner. He’s watching Maisie laugh at the bar.
I go over to say hello. Oliver says, Dont you hate it, Gabe. When the one you love has a laugh with someone else, a laugh you never hear from something youve said?
On the way home Lydia says, I like Oliver. Even if he is an asshole when drunk.
It’s true that Lydia prefers the company of men. That Maisie has always aggravated her a little. Because I get along with her so well.
3 I pick up Lydia in Jethro and drive west to Brigus.We stop to investigate a bog for bakeapples. I have a bottle of red wine, a clear bag of green arugula.
We walk through Daphne’s garden. Mini tree farms. Ginko. Across the water I can see Kent’s cottage. Bartlett’s house is hidden in hawthorn bushes. What I should do is come out here and write.
Daphne says this age will be lost because our records are so fragile they are prone to any catastrophe. She says our handling of the past – concentrating it in libraries and museums – makes our records vulnerable to disintegration. We may be the first generation to accumulate a vast knowledge of the past, but this knowledge will be lost for the first and only time, along with the evidence.
4 We walk the length of Water Street with Tinker Bumbo. To the War Memorial, where the kids smile, facing the water. They like Tinker. They line up to pet him. At Fred’s we check out the folk concert lineup.
Lydia says, I’m gonna take you home now.
We look at the fabrics in that Nepalese clothier. And back to the car. I do not protest. We hold hands. I try to recall where the Napoli pizzeria used to be. I’m surprised at how old photographs show the same structure, merely a difference in detail.
At my driveway we kiss, the headlights on the red gate.
Lydia: Can I visit if I’m feeling tired – tomorrow morning? Yes.
I won’t be able to talk to you, just sleep. You won’t be offended?
We kiss in three stints during this conversation. Three pauses in the goodbye. I’m gonna miss you, I say.