"Send flowers to a homeless man?"

Madison saw that by making ridiculous suggestions she wasn't going to steer the conversation, naturally, to the importance of the Let's Fix It meeting. "Please just come. We need you there. We need your intelligence, Dad, and your experience with gatherings of a social and political nature."

"Bah."

"I'll give you fourteen dollars."

"Madison, come on. Just leave me to mourn in peace."

"I'm pregnant."

David dropped the remote control on the hardwood floor, and the battery slot popped open. Two AAAs rolled under the coffee table. "No, you aren't."

"Yes, I am."

"But you don't have a boyfriend."

Madison took a deep breath. "For about five minutes in the summertime I had a boyfriend in Jasper."

"Who is this five-minute boyfriend?"

"His name might be Steve but I suspect it's Jean-something. He's from Quebec."

"First the National Energy Program, then the special status nonsense, and now this. May they freeze in the dark!"

"Dad." Madison opened her arms for a hug.

"What is with those people? Distinct society, my a.s.s." David hugged his daughter and kissed her in the ear. "Well, this is wonderful." He took a step back, held her out before him, and wiped the burgeoning tear from his left eye. "I mean, is it wonderful? You're happy? You're going to...?"

"Yes, I'm keeping it."

"How far along are you?"

"Just entered my thirteenth week."

David shook his head. "What a dope I am. I thought you were just getting a little pudgy, not doing enough sit-ups."

"And that's why you have to come to the meeting. Pregnant women shouldn't be subjected to stress and uncertainty. I need my daddy to protect me."

For a moment, it seemed David was going to argue the point. Then he relaxed and walked down the hall toward his bedroom. "Just let me put on some decent clothes." While he changed, he mumbled about "the d.a.m.n Pepsis" and called out, "Hey, does your mom know?"

"Just you and Jonas so far, and my doctor."

"So I know before your mother?"

"Yep."

David came out of the bedroom in a pair of blue chinos, sandals, and a Hawaiian shirt. "How sweet it is!"

When Madison and her father emerged from the house, Shirley and Abby put their matching bowls of baba ghanouj and hummus on the sidewalk so they could clap. "Hurry," said Abby, "we were supposed to meet everyone at the Sugarbowl five minutes ago."

David took the pita and vegetables from Madison, as though the bag were burdening her. He put his arm around his wife. "Where's Raymond?"

"I don't know. Maybe he got held up at the U."

"He's coming though, right?"

Shirley raised her eyebrows. "This morning he was acting strangely, and I know he's deep into research on Victorian death rituals."

"Whoa." David kissed Abby on the cheek twice. "I can't believe someone pays him to do that."

They walked through the parking lot behind the theatre. Jonas was sitting on the Sugarbowl patio with a gla.s.s of red wine. When he saw them he said, "Finally. I had to fight some sorority girls to save these seats. Seriously fist-fight them. Where's Raymond?"

Everyone shrugged in unison. As Shirley, Abby, David, and Madison took their seats, Jonas snapped his fingers at the server.

"Mademoiselle. We're in something of a hurry."

The server didn't react to Jonas. Instead she smiled, said h.e.l.lo, and took their orders. When Madison ordered a soda with a spot of cranberry juice in it, David squeezed her hand. "That's my girl," he said.

Jonas took the plastic wrap off the hummus and sniffed. "So I was thinking maybe we should stop by the young Indian man's place and see if he wants to join us."

"He doesn't talk," said David. "I've tried. He's either a deaf mute or he doesn't know English. It'll just be humiliating for him."

Abby sat up straight. "We should stop anyway. I bet he's lonely. That's a perfectly lovely idea, Jonas. This is his neighbourhood, too."

"Whatever you think, hon," said David. "But he doesn't talk."

"Remember when we tried the Welcome Wagon routine on him?" said Shirley. "He could barely say thanks for the fruit basket."

Jonas finished his first gla.s.s of wine. "He was just stunned by your beauty. Who could blame him?"

"You only say that because it's true." Shirley slapped Jonas on the arm.

Raymond Terletsky approached with a box in his hands.

"Oh, there's my professor." Shirley pushed her chair back and started out to meet her husband. She turned back to her neighbours and smiled. "Looking cute and rumpled."

32.

cute and rumpled In the past, whenever he had mused upon personal apocalypse, Raymond Terletsky imagined physical torment. Severe gastrointestinal problems in public, migraines, an invasion of c.o.c.kroaches and termites. Yet there had been an unexpected, dreamlike quality to the worst day of Raymond Terletsky's life. Neither his bowels nor his head was troubling him, and so far no insects had crawled out of his mouth or a.n.u.s. He hadn't even walked through a spider web.

That afternoon, after Claudia Santino and Dean Kesterman had sacked him, Raymond opened a bottle of champagne and sat in his office. It was Veuve Clicquot, a gift from one of his colleagues upon the "Hierarchy of Funerals" publication in the Maltese Journal of non-Continental Philosophy. Since he didn't have a gla.s.s handy, Raymond sat in his office and drank the champagne straight from the bottle.

It is dispiriting to spend five hours drinking champagne and thinking up a good lie to tell your wife. It is especially dispiriting when, at the end of those five hours, you have nothing to tell her but the truth. Shirley Wong was a wise and insightful woman. She knew it was extremely difficult to fire a tenured professor.

An instance of physical violence was the only possible alternative, but Shirley would not have believed it. Raymond couldn't picture himself striking a student or another professor, so selling the story to his wife would have been impossible. If he told her the reason for his dismissal yet pleaded innocent, she would support him all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. However, in the end, the university would win the case. Raymond would lose Shirley and the legal fees would swallow up everything they owned. Their children would be shamed.

So on the way to the Sugarbowl, with a box full of his most cherished books, Raymond practised the truth. At least the university was buying their house, which would carry them financially until he found another job.

Perhaps the Maltese were hiring.

Shirley met him in front of an old two-storey house in the midst of renovation. There was dust in the air, from the process of refinishing hardwood: generations of foot sweat. Shirley laughed and waved it away. "It feels like we're in the middle of a desert storm."

"It does," he said. "It really does."

"What's in the box?"

Raymond lowered it so his wife could see inside. Shirley Wong was five-foot-two and he was six-foot-three, which had made for some comical wedding photographs. There were five or six first editions in the box, historically significant works in Latin that needed repair, and several copies of the Maltese Journal of non-Continental Philosophy.

"Why are you taking these home?"

Raymond had practised. It was best to be simple and direct about it. He didn't want to stutter his way into an explanation, and telegraph his guilt, so he looked her in the eye.

"Hey." Shirley smiled. "Are you drunk?"

"They fired me."

The smile faded and then returned in a more authentic way. "Go on, you."

"Claudia Santino and the Dean fired me today. This morning."

Shirley sniffed and took the box from her husband. She put it down on the gra.s.s next to them, and embraced her husband in the hardwood dust. It took Raymond close to a full minute to realize he was crying. "I made a big mistake, Shirley. I deserved it."

"The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. What happened?"

"They're only giving me two weeks. No severance, nothing."

"Do you want to go home, talk about it?"

In their usual manner of hugging, Raymond was bent forward so they resembled an arch. It seemed, at that moment, that he was the short one and Shirley was the tall one. She stroked his head. Over her shoulder, Raymond saw their neighbours at the Sugarbowl with a bottle of red wine. They all looked away or at their gla.s.ses. Even in the desert storm they had seen him shaking and rubbing his eyes. And when he tried to stop himself it only got worse. He sobbed and held his breath, hoping that might help. But it didn't help.

"Raymond? Can you tell me what this is about?"

A few students walked, rollerbladed, and bicycled past them. Eventually, Raymond found clarity and a measure of control. He wiped his face with the bottom of his untucked white shirt. "Wow. Sorry."

Shirley laughed too. "That's very healthy, you know."

"I'm a new man."

"We can skip this meeting."

"No, I want to go." Raymond picked up his box of books and led Shirley to the Sugarbowl patio. "I'll tell you all about it later."

As they drew nearer, Shirley announced, "Raymond feels strongly about Fixing It. Very, very strongly."

Abby applauded. "Hooray for you, Raymond. Let's Fix It. But first, put that box down and take a fortifying drink of wine. It's Shiraz, if that's okay."

Raymond sat next to Shirley and took her hand. A cloud of discomfort had settled over the table, despite Abby's efforts to blow it away. Jonas snapped his fingers and ordered the server to bring another wine gla.s.s. There wasn't time for a new bottle, as they had to be downtown for the meeting in thirty minutes. But after Jonas filled Raymond's gla.s.s, there was enough left to top up everyone else's.

"To the future of the Garneau Block," said Jonas.

They touched their gla.s.ses together and took sips and sat back in their chairs. Then they smiled politely at one another, and nodded, and watched the students and professors and Kung Fu pract.i.tioners and home renovators pa.s.s and mingle in the avenue. Finally, when the collective anguish seemed unbearable, and Raymond was on the verge of crying again, David brought up the weather. He had heard it was supposed to rain overnight or in the morning.

"That'll smell nice," said Madison.

"We could sure use the rain," said Abby.

Shirley nodded. "And the farmers."

"Just watch, the bas.e.m.e.nt'll flood," said Raymond.

Jonas stood up. "Oh, finish your drinks and let's get on the LRT before we all kill ourselves."

33.

light rail transit The Australians who lived in the other half of Jonas Pond's duplex were away studying monkeys in southern Nigeria, so the young Indian man from across the street was the only other missing resident of the Garneau Block. Abby suggested that even though he was eerily quiet and perhaps dangerous when provoked, Let's Fix It was a call to him as well. Maybe the young Indian man from across the street wanted to join them on the LRT.

No one was keen to knock at 13 Garneau, so David Weiss volunteered. He hoped the young Indian man from across the street would answer the door in flowing white robes, splattered in sacrificial blood and holding the severed head of a kitten or a swan, to sate his neighbours' desperate appet.i.te for mystery.

David volunteered to knock because he would be a grandfather soon. Nothing about the university annexation or Barry Strongman or Raymond Terletsky's emotional breakdown or even the end of oil could p.r.i.c.k the balloon of pride that had formed in his chest. Pride and wisdom. Proper grandfathers showed the way by calm example, and knocking on the young Indian man's door when everyone else seemed nervous about it was his first opportunity.

The young Indian man from across the street did not concern David. At least not now. Of course, in the aftermath of 9/11, David lay awake a few nights wondering about the quiet occupant of 13 Garneau. Who wouldn't have? As Jacques Chirac had said, Nous sommes tous americains now, and George W. Bush was asking his countrymen to report suspicious activity.

Eventually, as politics and economics and episodes of The Apprentice had come to drown out the multiple anxieties of imminent terrorism, David stopped worrying. Some folks were just peculiar and shy. There was a decent chance the young Indian man from across the street didn't talk to Osama or anyone else over a satellite phone.

David jogged up the red stone walkway as the professor dropped his box of books off next door. Jonas and Abby remained on the sidewalk, chattering.

"The young Indian man is really cute in his suits, though, isn't he?" said Jonas. "I just want to take him home and seal him up in a jam jar."

"There's very little in this world more attractive than a trim man in a dark blue suit," said Abby. "A fireman's outfit, maybe, or a unitard."

"Yahtzee, Mrs. W.," said Jonas. "Yahtzee."

David sighed and knocked. Long ago he had learned to tolerate the h.o.m.os.e.xual tendencies of his daughter's best friend, but sometimes he wished Jonas would just shut it off for an hour or two. David knocked again, and rang the doorbell. Then he turned to his neighbours on the sidewalk. "He's probably already on his way, driving a vehicle like civilized people do."

This was a shot at his wife's ridiculous suggestion that they take public transportation. There were only six of them, and the Yukon Denali seated eight comfortably. Why pay to ride the smelly train with a bunch of young offenders in sweatsuits? On weekday evenings, downtown parking was only two dollars. And that way, they could have taken Garith.