"You've seen something," she said gently, with a half-smile.

"It's nothing," I told her, blinking, running my hand shakily through my hair. "I mean, it's just that I understood or felt something that I guess was there all along, this powerful sense of being alone." I shrugged. Uncertain. "That's all."

Back out on Yonge Street under the pale, subtly brightening sky of early March, I walked past the windows of Bregman's Deli, where my aunt Mary used to take me with Kate for bagels and cream cheese when my mother had to work on a Sat.u.r.day. It was early on in Mum's psychotherapy practice, and she couldn't afford to ask anyone to shelve their neuroses till Monday. I remembered carving faces in the cream cheese with my straw. I couldn't eat the bagel until the face was complete, perfected to my satisfaction, and then I would dreamily efface it with my tongue. Kate would make faces in her bagel too, and then stab it with a toothpick. I cannot recall what Aunt Mary was doing, or thinking, on her side of the table, although I realize now that it was around the time she was being abandoned in slow motion by Uncle Svend.

Later, in university, I would sometimes drag myself into Bregman's with a hangover and a man I'd just slept with, and we'd sit in giddy silence, clouded by the secretive sense of our having had s.e.x, sipping coffee and picking at scrambled eggs. And later that same day, I remember calling one of those men from a pay phone, still dreamy like a kid, wanting to know when I'd see him again, and he told me, sheepish, that he couldn't go out-he "had a date"-and I stood there at the pay phone, as sharply and abruptly wounded as if I'd been hit with shrapnel.

So much makes you alone. The men who love you, but don't. The shopkeepers who pretend to be friendly, but aren't. The fathers who negate your desire to believe in them. The doctors who keep secrets they don't care about, while you stay in the dark. The ideologues who make you feel like c.r.a.p for being human, like the worst sin you could commit in the world is not knowing where you are going, no matter how openhearted your path.

"We will have to choose between two ways of being crazy," the priest Jean Vanier once wrote, "the foolishness of the Gospel, or the nonsense of the values of our world."

35.

Monday morning. No quote from Avery today, just a relayed message. "Sherman wants to talk to you." A pencil tapped against his head.

Of course Sherman did. I went down the hall, and hovered at the threshold of his office, braced for my scolding.

"Sherman?" I ventured, when I caught his attention. "Avery said that you'd been looking for me."

He was seated at his polished mahagony desk, staring down at a copy of the Moral Volcano, his anger evident in the clenching of his jaw.

"People," he said, without looking up, "are making fun of me for my latest column, Frances. They say it reads as if it were translated from Turkish by Google."

"Oh," I said vaguely, and shrugged.

"I trusted you with my writing, Frances," he continued. "That's why I gave you the last sign-off before it went to print." He locked eyes with me. "I don't mean to pry," he added, his tone turning acid, "but you aren't having a nervous breakdown of some sort, are you? An episode in your life that is making you want to lash out?"

"Oh, look," I answered, as I felt heat flush my cheeks, "it's funny that you should mention not wanting to pry, because I have been feeling the same way. Like, I've been dying to ask you if you have ever been to France, and if that's where you met Gail, or whether you formed your bizarre ideas about Gallic politics after watching La Cage aux Folles."

He leaned back in his leather desk chair and steepled his fingers, regarding me as if a chill had just gone up his spine.

"What do you mean?" he wanted to know, careful.

I stuck out my lower lip and shrugged. "I went to France when I was nineteen, and I had a good time; the crepes in Brittany were unbelievably delicious."

Somewhat undone by the stupidity of what I'd just said, I soldiered on. "And you know, I found the French could be insufferable, particularly in their disdain for your ability to speak French properly, and also if you dared accuse a waiter of ripping you off in a restaurant, G.o.d forbid." I rolled my eyes. "But what confuses me, in what you've been writing, is that I can't say that I ever got the impression that the French wanted to take over the United States by brainwashing liberals." I looked at him. He had no response. So I continued, "And so ... I've been worrying ... I don't know if I'm editing you for sense in that sense, because I'm not sure you're actually capable of making sense. In what you say about the French."

"What is it that goes over your head, precisely?" he inquired.

"I guess what it is, Sherman, is that I can't edit you for sense when the argument you make, sense-wise, is that half of the American population is in the thrall of a bunch of guys in Paris. Or when you argue that poor people in Canada don't deserve to die in hospital beds if they can't afford them. And that abortion is a femin.a.z.i tryanny. You pose a challenge for me that transcends figuring out where the commas should go, because-"

"Ah," he interrupted, reaching for his phone as if to dismiss me, "the truth comes out, doesn't it. You cannot betray your cause."

"My cause?" I echoed, and now my ears were ringing like someone had just clanged a pair of cymbals two feet away. "I worry about you saying things like that, Sherman, because it's so paranoid. The truth is, I've never really thought about whether I was a liberal, or a what, until you started throwing cartoon versions of human experience at me." I stopped hovering on the threshold of his office and marched in, energized by my need to get this off my chest.

"You know, I can't even figure out what you mean by 'liberal.' You're actually using the word as if you're referring to 'the j.a.ps' in World War II. It's like ... enemy rhetoric. Oh, lo, here cometh the foul tribe of Canaan. Who do you mean, Sherman? Your fellow Canadians, all shopping together at Costco and watching Hockey Night in Canada? I'd say they're about as dangerous as hobbits at a gardening show. Is that the apocalypse you see coming, Sherman, your fellow Canadians puttering through garden shows and terminating pregnancies and getting cancer and needing beds? Have you visited the Congo lately?"

"Poor little liberal girl," he murmured, avoiding eye contact as I prowled his office.

"What makes you say that?" I persisted. "I agree with certain things, and not others, but they don't break down along clear lines. Oh!" I had a thrill of revelation as I studied his face. "That makes me undecided, or a 'moderate'-right? Too complicated, too wishy-washy in my thinking. So, in your mind, I am a liberal, aren't I?"

"Please leave," he urged, a.s.suming an expression of utter contempt and reaching once again for his phone.

"Oh, no," I said, "I'm not finished." Indeed, I was so intent I felt like Columbo in a wrinkled raincoat, unraveling the incriminating truth. Of course, Sherman wasn't remotely listening at this point; he'd just shut down. It was like arguing with an iguana. Unable to reach him with words, I threw my bagel at him. A crescent of toasted pumpernickel glanced off his shoulder, leaving a smear of cream cheese on his fine wool jacket and landing with a soft thud on his desk. Spluttering in surprise, he hung up the phone.

"I'm sorry, Sherman. I wasn't finished. You weren't listening. Hear me out, if you don't mind, or I'll throw another snack." I sat down on a chair by the window and leaned toward him. "Here's what drives me crazy. You and your magazine, you stake out the moral high ground, that's your whole raison d'etre, isn't it? With your disapproval of abortion and gay marriage and what you call liberalism? But you're childish. You have no empathy, you just toss around stereotypes. You publish Ann Coulter, for G.o.d's sake, who sneers that all the 'pretty women' are Republicans. She shows about as much talent for argument as a child throwing a water balloon out the window. Have you not noticed? Or is it all just a game, where you get to show off to each other about who's sauciest and boldest in their snickering? You remind me of the artistocrats before the French Revolution, trading bon mots at soirees while the mobs gathered."

He gave a theatrical sigh. I got up and started heading for the door. But I paused at its threshold and turned back.

"Just ask yourself this one question. Where is your moral high ground? Really, that is what I want to know more than anything else. Is the G.o.d who told you to oppose abortion and liberals the same G.o.d who bids you to act like a grade-school brat? Can you point it out to me in your sacred texts sometime, where it says 'Lo, you must stomp on French bread and pull hospital beds out from underneath the backsides of the poor?' Where are you getting your convictions from, Sherman? From G.o.d? I notice that the Pope opposed the war in Iraq, and so did the Archbishop of Canterbury. Or are you Buddhist?"

"Get out!" he shouted at me, swooping down to clutch my bagel and throw it back at me. I ducked and it shot into the common lounge and smacked against the UN poster.

"Okay," I said, throwing my arms up, "fine."

I was filled with adrenaline and gumption, but it wasn't fine. All I had managed to do was engage in a food fight.

36.

"Hey, you," said Kate, popping her head into my office the next day.

"Good Lord," I said, looking up in startlement from my newspaper, "what are you doing here?" My nerves were a bit frayed.

"Court was canceled," she explained with a smile, striding into the room and unwinding her long green scarf. "Gotta minute?"

"Of course I have a minute," I said, gesturing in exasperation at all of the books and galleys and ma.n.u.scripts piled pell-mell on my desk. "All I have to do is figure out what's a Must Read for spring. Any suggestions? What do women in the middle of divorces want to read?"

"The Riot Act," Kate said.

Avery returned from a visit to the bathroom down the hall. "Oh," he exclaimed. "h.e.l.lo, Kate." He scratched his neck reflexively and then stuck out his hand as if to shake hers, but almost instantly retrieved it and jammed it into his pants pocket.

"Mr. Dellaire," Kate said, her voice faintly teasing, for she sensed that she made him nervous. "I haven't seen you since that fundraiser for literacy at the Women's Bookstore. How are you, sir?"

"Oh. Tolerably well," Avery replied, nodding his head too much, and smiling with self-conscious pleasure. This was interesting. I'd never seen Avery thrown off by the presence of a girl.

"Don't let me interrupt you," Kate said, gazing at us both.

"No, not at all," Avery rushed to a.s.sure her, taking his seat and then standing up again. Kate dragged Goran's chair over to my desk, sat down and fished something out of her coat pocket. It was a packet of Smarties. "Guess who I'm having dinner with tonight?" she inquired mischievously, waving the box at me. I knew what was in it, in addition to the chocolate Svend was fond of.

"Oh no, Kate. No," I protested. "You can't do this. It's nuts."

I was incredulous, for I'd a.s.sumed she'd get over the impulse. I took a swipe at the box in her hand but she yanked it away and leapt out of her seat. "Come on, Kate," I persisted. "You're a Quaker, for G.o.d's sake. Isn't it against your beliefs to drug men?"

Avery was now talking on the phone, and watching us in bemus.e.m.e.nt. I lunged again for the Smarties box and this time, I s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of her hand. Without further thought, I stood up and ran, and Kate began to chase me, around and around the office until both of us were giggling hysterically. She cornered me, and I thrust the box at Avery. "There's trouble in there," I yelped through my laughter. "Hide it for me, or she'll feed them to her dad."

Thoroughly fl.u.s.tered, Avery grabbed up the box as Kate ran straight for him. He held it high to his chest and she tried to wrestle it free. Just as she seemed to be reclaiming her prize with a tenacious grip, he broke away and rushed into the corner of our office. He found himself at the opposite end from the door, thus foiling any chance of flushing the box down the toilet in the hall. Kate charged toward him, her scarf sliding off her shoulder and spooling to the floor, the pair of us still laughing our heads off. Avery, caught up in his mission and panicked by her approach, suddenly upended the box into his mouth.

"Oh. Whoa, time out!" Kate announced, halted in her tracks in sheer surprise. "Avery, what are you doing?"

I darted over and eased the box from his grip as he choked slightly, trying to swallow. "No, no, no, bad idea," I said, whisking it away. Kate and I immediately bent our heads together to examine the contents. "How many did you buy?" I asked.

"Four," she said.

"How many are left?"

She shook out the Smarties, and then fished out the Ecstasy tablets and studied them in her palm. "Three."

"Oh, f.u.c.k," we said in unison.

"Avery, are you insane?" I asked. "What did you do that for?"

"I wasn't thinking," he answered, beginning to pace in distress. "I just-I formed half a strategy."

"With no exit plan," said Kate.

"Alright," I mused, thinking aloud as I steered Avery over to his desk and made him sit down. "Okay. What time is it? Nine-thirty? How long does the drug last, Kate?" She pushed up her coat sleeve and looked at her watch. "He'll be fine by two-thirty," she guessed.

"Oh, Christ!" moaned Avery. "Are you saying that oversized Smartie I swallowed was a drug?"

"This is not going to be a problem," Kate replied, a.s.suming the crisp tone of someone taking command in a crisis. "It's not a psychedelic, Avery, it's just Ecstasy. If anything happens, and I'm not saying it will, if you can't handle it or you want to lie down or something, we can take you home. Not a problem."

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake," I muttered, rubbing my face, "this is so ridiculous." I looked at my cousin. "How do you manage to take my nutty life and make it certifiably insane?" I jabbed a finger at her. "Your penance for this mishap, Kate, is that you have to surrender those other tabs to me. You must forfeit your box of Smarties."

Kate was nothing if not scrupulous in her sense of justice. Still, she hesitated. "Oh, give it up, Kate," I argued. "There's a law somewhere, surely, that prohibits you from getting two unsuspecting people stoned on the very same day." She sighed, gave a dramatic shiver, and placed the Smarties on the windowsill. I plopped down in my chair and took a sip of tepid coffee. "Is Larry reliable with drugs?" I suddenly asked. "Like, how do we know that Avery didn't just swallow a hit of talc.u.m powder cut with speed?"

Kate raised her eyebrow, and made a dignified show of rewinding her scarf. "Larry uses MDMA in his shamanic practice," she said with mild indignation. "In exactly the way it was originally designed and approved for psychiatric use before it got banned. He's very careful."

"Okay." I nodded, appeased. Avery was pacing again, trying to shake off the shock of what he'd done to himself at the outset of a busy Tuesday morning. I watched him for a moment, and then glanced at Kate, shaking my head. He had not, as far as I knew, ever experimented with a synthetic drug. I had tried Ecstasy once in New York with my friend Marina in Central Park, an experience that left me so peaceful and gra.s.s-stained that when we attempted to cap the afternoon with our customary c.o.c.ktail at the Algonquin, I got asked for ID. That was the first time it occurred to me that looking old had less to do with being old than with feeling burdened by the dead weight of the world.

"Look, don't worry, Avery," I said. "You're not going to take a spooky trip and think you're seeing spiders. Or anything like that. I'm sure it will be fine. It's more like an opiate than anything."

Kate hastened to agree, and then left, after scribbling down her cell phone and pager numbers and apologizing to Avery. She promised to take him out for roast turkey "deluxe" at Canoe. A date with her would be his consolation prize for a day of being stoned out of his mind.

Fifteen minutes later, Avery still felt normal, so the two of us resumed working at our desks. Maybe the whole incident would go away. At ten-thirty or so I was picking up my phone to call a potential reviewer when Avery remarked from his end of the room, "Well, I can't say I'm familiar with drugs, Frannie, but I do find it interesting that my legs feel really good in my pants."

"That's nice, Avery," I said, and put the phone back down and gazed at him curiously. He placed his hands palm-down on his desk and stretched out his fingers, studying them.

"Really, when you think about it," he reflected, "wood has a remarkably smooth texture. Especially when you flatten your hands against it. It feels very harmonious and welcoming." He seemed to consider that for a moment, and then he had an idea. He slowly lowered his head and laid his cheek on his desk. "It works with your face, too," he announced after a few minutes. "I don't know why I never thought of this before."

"What about when you walk around?" I asked, amused. "How does it feel on your feet?" He stood up and took a few steps. "It's wonderful," he said, marveling. He hopped experimentally. Did a few jumping jacks. Then, abruptly, crouched down and carefully executed a forward roll. He sat up smiling. "Frannie, you should try this. I never realized you could roll over on your head on hard wood."

"Well, it is an intriguing discovery, Avery," I offered cheerfully, "but I was actually just about to make a phone call." He ignored me, intent upon his own small pursuits. For the next little while, I tried to think about the Must Reads for spring and juggle phone calls and e-mail while my a.s.sociate editor felt objects and provided me with a running commentary on their wonderful intrinsic traits.

A publicist called, wondering if I would include a review of a particular author. "Well, I'm certainly considering it," I said, cupping my hand over the receiver to block her from hearing Avery, who was just then expressing his admiration for the gentleness of paper towels.

Finally I gave up and closed my notebook. "How's it going, Avery?" I asked. He was lying on the floor, bent at the hip with his legs pressed up along the wall.

"It's funny how much you take for granted," he replied. "Here I've been in this office for a good three years, and I don't think I've ever really noticed it before. It has so much to offer. Why haven't we ever thought to have our editorial discussions over at this wall before, I wonder."

I laughed. "I'm quite jealous of you right now," I said. And I was. What a sweet experience to get out of one's tormented head, and instantly achieve what the shamans and hypnotists and yogis so tirelessly aim you toward.

"Why don't you take some of this stuff?" Avery asked. "Kate left it here, didn't she? On the windowsill. I think you have to, Frannie. I need you to understand what I'm saying about the wood."

I looked at my watch. I didn't have to collect Lester from Tweedle Dee until six. "Okay," I agreed, feeling a surge of daring. "But only if you barricade the door. There's no way I'm dealing with Hilary or Sherman. Or a courier, or something."

"Alright," Avery said gamely. He swung his legs over his head, rose to his feet, and went off to the closet beside Goran's desk. He retrieved a pair of my high-heeled shoes, and placed them carefully in front of the door.

"I don't think so, Avery," I said, chuckling. I followed him over and slid the bolt across. Then I leaned my head against the door and sighed. "I can't do this."

"Why not?" he asked, taking up a position on the windowsill, which he proceeded to proclaim the most comfortable four-inch-wide perch he had ever had the honor of resting upon in his life.

"I can't get stoned, Avery. It would be cheating. I'm in the middle of a whole lot of sobering things. I need to stay in control of myself."

"Ah, Frannie," he mused, tilting his head back as if he were sunbathing, there on the windowsill on a rainy Toronto morning. "Do I look out of control to you? Or do I look relaxed?"

I returned to my desk and sat down, pondering him for a minute. "You look relaxed," I allowed. "You haven't scratched your neck or twisted your arms in at least an hour."

"Weren't you the one, Frannie," he continued, "who theorized to me that the people who insist on absolute explanations and strict standards are the ones who fear losing control?"

"Yes," I answered, "but I'm not talking about a lifeview, Avery, I'm talking about not getting stoned today, because I'm responsible for rather a lot at the moment, and it seems ill-advised."

"Ah, Frannie," Avery said again, and then he went on a brief tangent about how the sound ah felt really wonderful coming out of his mouth, and he understood why yogis liked to say om. "Anyway," he said to himself. "Where was I? Oh. Yes. Ah, Frannie. Here's what I wanted to ask. Has it ever occurred to you that this G.o.d you seek eludes you because you're afraid to lose control?"

"Jesus, that took you a long time to spit out." But then I considered what he had said.

"Okay, Avery," I finally answered. "I'm going to do this for you, and for the practice. To rehea.r.s.e what it's like to open up and let go."

For forty minutes after I chased a tablet of Ecstasy with tepid coffee, I soberly listened to Avery's observations and insights, and was fascinated when he elected to explain his thing about turkey. "It's one of the only things I remember about her," he said. "The roast turkey I helped her prepare for Thanksgiving, the month before she died. I don't know what it was about that, whether it was the goodness of the meal, or the excitement of the occasion or the fact that I did a commendable job cutting up the parsley for the stuffing. But I remember it. And I hunger for it again and again."

Moved beyond words, I went over to hug him, which caused him to remark upon how soft a hug can feel. And then I joined him in this world of being present, and surrendered. The two of us lay side by side on the floor of our office, feeling as flat and still as two body shapes chalked at a crime scene, and for the next few hours talked about the people we loved, and how much we loved them, including Bono of U2 and William Thackeray and the guy at my local Starbucks, and then of the people we forgave, for all of us were nothing if not stumblingly human, and finally of the unheralded gentleness of a hardwood floor, as shared between lifelong friends.

37.