"Charlene."

"Shhh. No talking. It ruins the healing."

"How much extra would it be, I mean just theoretically, if someone wanted more than a ma.s.sage?"

Charlene's fingers halted. She cleared her throat, walked to the light switch, turned it on and exited the room. On her way out, she slammed the door.

Raymond suspected this adventure was over.

Dressed again, and with some time to absorb and appreciate his humiliation, he checked the window. Charlene was on the eleventh floor, far too high to jump. So Raymond sighed, and opened the door.

"Charlene, I was just..."

"Out."

"I was conducting an experiment."

"Zero tolerance policy. Out."

Raymond opened his mouth twice more, but Charlene interrupted him sternly. She picked up her cordless phone and dialled three numbers. Nine-one-one? He hurried out of her apartment, down the hallway, and into the elevator. Four men in T-shirts and baseball caps were in the car, and they didn't stop talking when Raymond entered. It seemed the young men were on their way to Whyte Avenue, where they hoped to meet like-minded women, bring them back to Windsor Park Plaza, and do what comes naturally to drunk people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one.

Perhaps Shirley and his neighbours were still at the Sugarbowl. Perhaps he could catch them there, take his wife's hand and apologize in silence, secretly beg forgiveness. For the first time since 1967or was it 1968?Raymond ran.

17.

bison with fancy bacon and blueberry sauce.

Downtown sidewalks were crowded with noon-hour joggers and their opposites, the grey-faced cigarette people banned from office complexes. Young men and women in shorts and wrinkled T-shirts wandered down the promenade of lofts, not long ago a ghost town of deserted warehouses. Pimply high-school dropouts in giant pants and crooked baseball caps stood in front of the old Bay building, now home to a television and radio station, and swayed to the dull rhythms pumped out of little speakers on Jasper Avenue.

It was Friday and summer had returned in earnest. Edmontonians smiled and laughed into their cellular phones, adjusted their sungla.s.ses, flipped through newspapers, sipped coffee on patios. The everywhere construction workers, putting up yet another condominium, told each other blue jokes and stared at pa.s.sing women.

David Weiss wanted to kick every one of the idle workmen, with their hard hats covered in union stickers. If you love communism so much, why don't you go to China, or Quebec? Get to work! The dominion of Alberta isn't going to build itself.

Every Friday, he dressed in a black suit and took lunch with three other riding a.s.sociation presidents. Instead of paying six or nine dollars to park in an underground garage downtown for a couple of hours, David nearly always left his Yukon Denali in a Save On Foods lot and walked twelve blocks to the restaurant.

The previous evening had been difficult for his wife and daughter. Abby and Madison had hoped to discover the whereabouts of the remaining Perlitzes, Jeanne and Katie. But the cleaning crew that had been in 10 Garneau consisted of inarticulate dim-bulbs, working for someone else who may or may not have known anything.

Of course, the resonance of his family's disappointment explained David's failure to phone in a lunch reservation the day before. He didn't like to flaunt his power, but David had called the Hardware Grill as soon as it opened that morning and mentioned, casually, that he needed a table to discuss PC policy. The premier would likely join them this afternoon.

David arrived at the Hardware Grill and the manager was summoned. He shook David's hand and called him Mr. Weiss and asked if there was anything he could do to make the premier's experience an enjoyable one. There was a line of sweat along the manager's hairline, and a faint twitch in the skin beneath his right eye. David realized it would be immoral to break the news to the poor man now.

"We'll let you know. For the moment, just the table and a wine list."

"Right away, Mr. Weiss."

David felt he had made the best possible choice in restaurants. The air conditioning was at a civilized level, and the baroque chamber music inspired him to sit with excellent posture. Somewhere, he knew, a chef was wrapping fancy bacon around a hunk of bison and drizzling blueberry sauce over it.

David had spent his working life as a high-school math teacher, with a high-school math teacher's salary and pension, so the Hardware Grill and its pleasures should have been at least two notches above him. How barren and middling would his retirement be today, David wondered, if he hadn't joined the party? Why, at this very moment he would be slouching over a plate of grilled tofu at the Roots Organic Market with his wife and Maddy.

This is what vexed him about Edmonton: the city's tragic habit of voting against its interests, of settling for grilled tofu when it could have bison with fancy bacon and blueberry sauce. Calgary had a better airport and more head offices than Edmonton simply because its citizens voted as a Conservative block. In the nine years since he joined the party, David Weiss had come to see himself as a walking and talking Calgary. If he hadn't joined, he would be a plain old Edmontonneedlessly complicated, unsure, artsy, and angry.

David waved when his colleagues entered the restaurant. That morning, he had tipped them off about the premier ruse. He watched the manager of the Hardware Grill bow before them, and hoped his friends wouldn't spoil the man's day with the truth quite yet.

All week, David had been eager to meet with his fellow riding a.s.sociation presidents. Though he would never admit it, David had grown somewhat concerned about the notion of oil running out. His research on the Internet had only inspired further anxiety, as Barry's warnings and conspiracies were only heightened and expanded on American web sites. Since reading the street magazine, he had stared at the ceiling each night in the darkness, listening to his wife's gentle breathing and thinking about a world without oil.

David wanted his colleagues, especially Grant, a former executive with Suncor, to tell him this peak oil stuff was left-wing hocus pocus. The middle-cla.s.s Canadian lifestyle was invincible. It would last forever.

Right?

They shook hands and sat around the table. David's three colleagues each motioned to the empty chairs. Grant leaned forward. "You didn't tell the manager yet?"

"I didn't have the heart."

The four men turned to the manager, who smiled and nodded enthusiastically from across the room. Grant offered a thumbs-up and turned back to the table. "It's sort of sick, what we're doing here."

"Who's going to tell him?" said David.

Grant and the others laughed. It was obviously David's job to tell the manager, as he had fashioned the lie. The server pa.s.sed and Grant ordered a bottle of Australian Cabernet. David borrowed a cellular phone from Al, president of the Mill Creek riding a.s.sociation, the only one among them to have a winner in the legislature.

Then, for a minute or so, David had a pretend conversation with the premier's chief of staff. "What?" he said, into the silent phone. "An emergency involving cattle? Well, yes, we understand completely. G.o.dspeed, G.o.dspeed."

18.

jonas has a stalker.

Friday afternoon, only two customers came into Sparkle Vacations. They were first-year university students, girls, wondering about flying home to Kingston and Montreal during the Christmas break. Madison saw them every year, the shy kids in residence who haven't made any pals by the end of the second week of cla.s.ses. Missing the smell of their own beds, their parents' cooking, and boyfriends who had stayed behind.

Then, by December, all that is forgotten. They don't want to leave their new beds or their new boyfriends.

Madison browsed a few local cla.s.sified Internet sitesmen looking for womenbut it only discouraged her. So she clicked around looking for "Perlitz" in white page listings across Mexico and flipped through the new winter travel brochures. As soon as the days turned as cold as the nights, business would increase dramatically at Sparkle Vacations and Madison would have to know her southern destinations as though she had actually been somewhere more exotic than Knott's Berry Farm.

Most travel agents go on free trips paid for by a variety of resort and hotel chains to introduce them to their properties. However, Tammy "Sparkle" Davidson didn't allow it. At a Chamber of Commerce luncheon, just before Madison was hired, Tammy had a long conversation with the then-editor of the newspaper. The conversation touched on various subjects not limited to their mutual love of sailboats as ideas more than actual things, what with all the waves and ropes and dependency on wind. The then-editor told her that his journalists were regularly invited on free trips, junkets, organized and bank-rolled by Hollywood studios and the tourism departments of cities around the world. Of course, it was immoral to take such trips; one's objectivity would be compromised.

Tammy found the then-editor of the newspaper quite charming. They went out on a couple of theatre dates together and spent a sunny afternoon at the Folk Festival before they both realized, over a plate of chicken bhoona in Gallagher Park, that a relationship between them was more interesting as an idea than an actual thing. But she bought and retained the compromised objectivity argument, even if it made very little sense in the context of travel agencies.

When the door beeped a third time, just before six, Madison exited the Guadalajara white pages directory. She had made a list of seven possible Perlitzes in the state of Jalisco, and even though she didn't have anything more productive to do, Madison didn't want to argue with Tammy about wasting company time and resources.

It wasn't Tammy but Jonas, in one of his blue rehearsal sweatsuits, looking as though he were on the verge of an asthma attack. He sat across from her with his eyes open wide.

"What?"

Jonas raised one eyebrow. "Do you really want to know or are you just humouring me? I know I talk too much."

"Shut up and tell me."

"I have a stalker! Finally, after all these years being astonishing, I have a stalker. Is there any coffee?" He hopped up and sprinted to the customer service counter. There was coffee but it was several hours old, and he seemed to sense it. "When did you make this stuff?"

"Ten."

"Gross, Madison." Jonas turned to her and shook his head. "That is so disgusting." Then he poured himself a cup and dropped in six lumps of sugar.

"Who is this stalker?"

"It's Carlos. Our friend Carlos."

"I don't have a friend Carlos." The acrid smell of the old coffee stirred up with half a cup of sugar brought forth a familiar trickle of nausea. Madison pushed back her chair and prepared to pick up the nearby garbage can, in case the trickle became a wave. "Is that your Spanish teacher?"

"Carlos! Carlos!" Jonas took a long drink of his coffee. "Yum, it's like iced coffee, but hot. From the Next Act that night? The nervous guy."

"The frat boy?"

"My stalker is a frat boy. What do you think I should do?"

Madison picked up the garbage can and walked to the door. She opened it and smelled the exhaust of late-rush-hour Whyte Avenue. It was much better than the syrup Jonas was drinking. Once, in high school, to impress a hockey player, she had guzzled a mickey of Kahlua. It was best not to remember this incident, so Madison thought of bears riding bicycles.

"If you throw up, preggy, then I'll throw up. We'll both be throwing up for hours, in an endless cycle of convulsions. So please, please try not to."

"That's why I opened the door."

"You don't even care about my stalker."

"Just let me be nauseous for a minute here."

Jonas got up and examined the travel wallets and pa.s.sport carriers for sale on the spinning trolley. "He isn't much of a covert operative, our Carlos. My rehearsals are at the Roxy, and he was loitering across the street in front of a quick cash place. The first thing I do, whenever I walk on to 124th Street, is dish an evil eye to those quick cash places. Usurers. Dirty usurers! And there was Carlos, crouched next to a Sunfire. At first I didn't know who it was. I recognized him, but from where? The gym?"

It was past six and the nausea had faded, so Madison closed and locked the door. "Then you remembered him."

"Then I remembered."

"Are you sure it wasn't a coincidence? Maybe he needed some quick cash. Maybe that was his Sunfire."

"Would you please let me tell the story?"

"Sorry." Madison turned off her computer and leaned against the poster of Athens.

"I walked to the bus stop and waited for a long time before I turned around. I knew Carlos was still there because my intuition is extraordinarily strong."

"Of course it is."

"Was that sarcastic?"

Madison felt another trickle of nausea. "I don't even know."

"I waited and waited and then I sprung. I turned and there he was, by that little fence around Albert's Pancakes."

"Wow."

"Jim howdy wow. So I yelled at him. 'Carlos!' I said."

"What did he do?"

Jonas demonstrated. "He made eye contact with me for a sec, did a little stutter step, and ran across the street. He just kept running and running, until I couldn't see him."

"Maybe he's touched. In the head, like."

"Maybe, but he's my stalker. You can't deny that. So are you ready?"

"For what?"

"Ethiopian cuisine, home to change into something tight and shiny, then boom boom boom. We're going to the Roost."

"I'm not going to the Roost."

"Oh, yes, you are." Jonas jumped up on Madison's desk. "Boom boom boom."

19.

the young indian man from across the street Jonas had read about the Ethiopian place in the newspaper, but obviously he hadn't read carefully. Instead of utensils, you pick up and eat Ethiopian food with sour, rolled-up bread. To Madison's delight, Jonas treated this like a practical joke. He folded his arms and pouted while Madison sopped up a lamb and spinach dish with the tasty bread.

"Just eat, Jonas. No one has to know."

"Listen, I saw you lick your fingers and put them right back in the platter. If I wanted to share your nasty hormone-laced saliva, I'd just French kiss you. No, don't worry about me. I'll just get something at the A&W on the walk home."

It was impossible to ignore Jonas in this state. The server came by. "Is everything good?"

"Fine," said Jonas.

Madison laughed. "Could you bring Mr. p.o.o.pypants a fork, please?"

The server explained the tradition of eating this sort of food with your hands, and mentioned that it is perfectly hygienic as long as all hands are clean. After the speech, Madison thanked her and asked, again, if Mr. p.o.o.pypants could have a fork.