This All Happened(98)

            12 Max: When they were building the office tower, I didnt think it would ruin the view. At first, the scaffolding around the infrastructure blocked only a little bit of the Narrows. It wasnt offensive. I thought I could live with that. Seemed a narrow building. Then I found out that was only the elevator shaft. So we grew trees in the backyard and now there’s nothing.

            13 I watch Craig Regular walking out of a restaurant carrying an Obusforme for his back. Tinker Bumbo at his side.

            Craig holds the door. He is holding the door open for Lydia.

            I follow them. I havent allowed myself to think that they really are an item.

            They enter the Mighty White laundromat.

            I stroke Tinker, who wags, blind, but his nose knows me. I think of the dog that saved Ernest Chafe. Chafe, lost in a storm, tied his sled dog to his wrist. The dog sniffed his way back to camp.

            Craig is pushing detergent along the lid of a public washing machine, coaxing it down the crack in the lid. Wiping his hand over the lid to get all the blue detergent down. His money’s worth.

            Now, he’s trying on a new shirt. I can tell that Lydia has bought the shirt. She tells him to try it on. Does she want to see if it will fit?

            They get in Lydia’s car. I follow in mine. They drive into the Battery. To Craig’s house beyond the yellow rail.

            I sit in the car and watch them through Craig’s kitchen window. It is a beautiful window that looks back over St John’s. His view is the reverse of my view.

            There are two frozen salmon steaks hauled out to thaw. Their pink skin crystallizing to a hot white. Craig turns on a light and closes the curtains.

            14 There is a warm wind blowing, a soft buttery moon. Max baked a brie with glazed crushed walnuts, a date on top. There is fresh-baked sourdough bread. We dip chunks into the melted brie and drink wine.

            I ask Daphne what they did today.

            Daphne: Max cooked a pheasant.

            A pheasant?

            Max: Daphne told me you can find pheasant in Sobeys and I imagined them hiding in behind the boxes of Cheerios, wild pheasant nesting in the rafters.

            Pheasant is a good dish, Daphne says.

            Max: I stuffed it with plums and quince and sewed it up. He pronounces sewed like lewd.

            Daphne: Then we sat down and ate it.

            I walk home from Max’s, a wind bouncing off the southside hills. It’s on nights like this that things happen. It was a sinister wind. And the moon with fast wisps of cloud over it. Max raised a glass to Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon. On this very night.

            15 Maisie launches her novel at the Ship Inn. She has a beautiful line where a character fires up her zipper. That’s what I like about Maisie: she chooses the right word. There’s more going on in the story, but it’s that word I remember.

            Maisie’s nervous at the Ship. She has no need to be nervous. The work is good.

            16 I walk past Lydia’s house. I look in through the front window. I see Craig passing two pills to Lydia’s cupped hand. Then a glass of water. Tinker Bumbo stretched out on the couch. Craig holds the water in his right hand and Lydia takes the pills into her left hand. So there is a moment when their arms are crossed, in reception.

            I remember Lydia asking, But what do you love about me? When I paused she said, Youre obsessed with my body. Yes, I said.

            Youre obsessed with being in love, she said.

            I am obsessed with being in love. I admit to this.