"I have to say Steamer, the Mormon boy, is growing on me. I speak to him more than I ever spoke to my own kids. He's so...Mormony. But Patch, I don't know. If he's the future of hockey, it's in bigger trouble than I ever thought."

"I oughta march right on over there and punch his lights out." Abby attacked the air in front of her with a right and a left.

"Sweetie, how many times have I told you to keep your thumbs outside the fist?"

"Maybe I'll punch the appraiser too, and the mayor."

"That's my elementary schoolteacher, my gentle pacifist."

"Whoever said I was a pacifist? People are trying to take my house. Sometimes, in a revolution, blood must be shed."

"Oh boy." David patted his jeans to summon Garith. "Listen, you girls catch up. I'm off to run some errands."

Abby threw the keys to David. "The appraiser's coming to our place at 12:30 and then she's doing Shirley's. I'm going to stay here."

"Are you sure?" said Shirley.

"Absolutely." Abby put her arm around her. "You can help me think up names for my grandchild."

David walked out of the Rabbit Warren with Garith bounding into the cool air. On the corner, Barry Strongman's corner, David looked around and shook his head. Heartbreak was a terrible way to die.

56.

the m-bomb Business was light at Sparkle Vacations, so Madison put on a fleece jacket and sat outside with a cup of herbal tea. Morning traffic down Whyte Avenue had slowed enough that exhaust fumes were scarce. Students in their scarves and early-season toques with sardonic logosI Love the World Bankpa.s.sed with name-brand coffee cups in one hand and cellular phones in the other.

The air of prosperity in Alberta seemed thickened with each penny added to the price of oil. Madison noticed it in designer jeans and shoes and jackets, and in the trucks the students drove to school. Of course, few young Albertans owned energy stock. They had just absorbed a sense of ent.i.tlement from their leaders. It was a conceit, a feeling that the future had migrated west from Upper and Lower Canada to the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. Students were confident that a foothill of cash waited for them on the other side of that degree so they were saying yes, yes, and yes to the credit card offers that arrived in the mail.

She didn't make a commission, so Madison hadn't enjoyed a cent of Alberta's largesse. When she graduated, the country had been coming out of a recession. She had spent what should have been the best years of her life under fluorescent lights in a travel agency with bad ventilation.

The cool morning air, heavy with the scent of decomposing leaves, couldn't chill her. Though she and Rajinder had not yet kissed or re-booked their first date, they had spent hours of informal time together. Two rollerblades through the river valley, a bike ride up and down the Mill Creek Ravine, and an impromptu luncheon at Roots Organic around the corner from Sparkle Vacations.

And there he was, right on time, crossing the street from Corbett Hall in a deep-brown suit and tan overcoat. This morning, he had attended a meeting with the university's board of governors, hoping for a reprieve. Madison got up and rolled her chair back into the agency.

She knew it was ludicrous but each time she saw Rajinder she had to suppress an urge to say, "I love you." It was not possible to love someone after a non-date, two rollerblades, a bike ride, and an impromptu luncheon, so Madison knew she was misinterpreting hormonal outbursts for something else. When a woman declares her love too early, a fist of fear hits a man's major muscle groups. When a woman declares her love too early and announces, shortly thereafter, she also happens to be pregnant by a man who may be called Jean-something, the fist threatens to squeeze the blood from his heart.

The door opened, Rajinder appeared, and Madison pressed the word love down into her duodenum. "How did it go?"

Rajinder looked down at his polished brown Oxfords. "I failed."

"No, you didn't fail. You knew they'd say no."

Rajinder walked across the room, pulled Tammy "Sparkle" Davidson's chair out from behind her desk and sat. "I was hoping we would not have to rely on plan B."

"How do you mean?"

"I cannot fault Raymond for his enthusiasm. He is working twelve hours a day on the project, conducting interviews and phoning museum experts around the world for their advice. Consulting elders. But"

"He wants to build a museum?"

"I was hoping to organize another community meeting tonight. Raymond can present his plan to the residents of the block. And yes. He wants to transform 10 Garneau into a museum."

"What sort of museum?"

"We shall learn tonight, I hope."

Madison looked at her watch. "What time is the appraiser coming to your house?"

"Later this afternoon." Rajinder got up to leave. "I suppose I should get home and tidy up, leave messages for everyone about tonight. It has been peculiar, the change from no contact with my neighbours to near constant contact with them."

Though she risked showing off her belly, Madison walked with Rajinder to the door. She had a strong desire to lick his neck, but, along with the urge to declare her love, Madison buried it. At the door, Rajinder put his hand on her shoulder and managed to smile. "I shall see you later."

"The black under your eyes is almost gone."

"At my meeting this morning, the university administrators asked if I had started kickboxing. I told them yes, daily lessons. I had hoped to physically intimidate them into placing a five-year moratorium on development. But even in this I failed."

"Next time just haul off and plow one of them in the stomach."

"Next time." Rajinder started out the door.

Madison waited alone in Sparkle Vacations for a moment. The fluorescent lights buzzed. She opened the door. "Hey!"

Rajinder turned around.

"Are you busy tomorrow night?"

"I do not think so."

"You still want to have a first date?"

"Very much." He took a step forward. "I was waiting until my face healed."

"Well this time it's a surprise. I'm going to take you on a date."

"Truly?"

"Yep."

"So you are asking me out on a date."

"Yep."

Rajinder took another step forward. "I should not say this, Madison, but I have been thinking: if my parents were still alive, they would disapprove."

"They wanted you to marry an Indian girl?"

"Absolutely."

"Not that we're getting married."

Rajinder opened his mouth to speak but did not speak. Madison's face went hot and she considered putting her head through the pane of gla.s.s on her immediate left.

"Nang," she said, through her teeth.

"I am looking forward to it, Madison. To our first date."

She waved and closed the door to Sparkle Vacations, slapping herself on the forehead for dropping the M-bomb, an even more destructive piece of ordinance than the L-cl.u.s.ter. When the phone rang and a man with a smoker's voice asked about honeymoon cruises in February, Madison pined for the desolation of February.

57.

a real talent David made his way to the fourth downtown homeless shelter. He didn't have much time before he had to get back and meet the appraiser, so David hurried up the cobblestone streets of the improvement district, past men and women in doorways and on the sidewalk, swivelling in their wretchedness. They asked him for money and cigarettes. If, as he expected, Barry Strongman was not at the fourth downtown homeless shelter, David would return to the Garneau Block satisfied that he had done everything, and more, to find the man.

Bruised by the slow savagery of self-destruction he had witnessed at the first three shelters, David found himself repeating, like a mantra, that these people had made a choice.

Several men and women were gathered at the entrance of the fourth shelter, pa.s.sing a bottle wrapped in brown paper. "How's it goin'?" one of the men asked, as David started up the concrete stairs to press the door buzzer.

"Very well, thanks. And you?"

The man looked down at himself, his layers of grey clothing and the ma.s.s of toilet paper and Superstore bags that served as his left shoe. "I haven't had a shower in a week and a half. Doin' brilliant, partner, A-number-one. I appreciate your asking."

David pulled his right sleeve over his hand, so he wouldn't have to touch the black buzzer. The intercom looked and smelled as though someone had seen fit to urinate on it.

"Yes?"

"My name is David Weiss. I'm looking for a fellow called Barry Strongman. I'm sure he isn't here. I was just..."

The heavy door hummed and David opened it. At the bottom of the steps, the man with the toilet-paper shoe said, "Liars told me they were full. Got half a mind to burn the place down."

Inside, pods of the unfortunate filled a vast room of chipped white tile. There was a pool table in one corner, several old couches in another, and what appeared to be a healing circle in a third. On David's right was a bulletin board. Five sheets, each a different colour, advertised a daily Let's Fix It meeting.

A woman with a big mess of dyed blonde hair, in red overalls, approached David with a wide smile. "You're here for the meeting?"

"Agh."

The woman shook David's hand, looked him over, and tilted her head. "I'm Jane, the a.s.sistant director. You're not...what are you doing here?"

"I'm a friend of Barry's. A few weeks ago I lost track of him."

"Well, he's in the middle of a session. Feel free to join in but don't interrupt until he asks for questions. Before question period, he gets a little testy." Jane led David to a door in the back of the room, not far from the pool table.

David recognized Barry Strongman's m.u.f.fled voice coming through the thin wall. Jane opened the door and David entered. It was a cla.s.sroom with only two empty chairs in the back, so David quickly settled into one and looked up. Barry Strongman, who had briefly stopped talking, stared at David and continued.

"There's top-down power and then there's bottom-up power. They're both important."

Near the front of the room, a few of the pupils grumbled in opposition.

"If you can't listen quietly, you can leave."

One of the pupils put up his hand. "But I think you're wrong."

"Really? Get out!"

"But."

"Out!"

The pupil, in a soiled lumberjack coat and CAT Diesel hat, shuffled out of the cla.s.sroom with a mumble. Once he was gone, and the door was slammed, Barry Strongman paced the front of the room.

"Anyone else think I'm wrong?"

A few of the pupils said no.

"I can't hear you."

"No."

"Louder."

"No!" said the pupils.

Barry Strongman clapped his hands. "Do you know why all the trees in this neighbourhood are so skinny? It ain't from folks p.i.s.sing on them so don't say it, Lou. They're skinny because no one's dreaming around them. No one's looking ahead and thinking, 'Dang, I'm gonna make something spectacular out of myself,' which is the vibe a tree needs if it's expected to grow. Anyone think I'm wrong about that?"

The pupils looked around at one another. It was close to noon and David was satisfied that Barry Strongman was safe and alive and, apparently, happy. So he made for the door.

"Where you going, David?"

He stopped and gripped the door handle. "Back home."

"Back home to do what? To fix it? We're fixing it right here, brother, where it counts. Let me tell you something, my people. This man kicked me out of a PC Riding a.s.sociation meeting because I was homeless."

"Barry, that is a private matter."

"You see, we can dream past this place, hope ourselves into the future. But then we hit barriers like this man, David Weiss, who wants to keep us down because we threaten him."

"He is a top-down man," said one of the pupils.

Barry Strongman pointed at the pupil. "Shut up or get out!"