"No, don't even bother, thanks." Jonas sat up straight in his chair and lifted his chin like a new member of the royal family. "Mrs. Door Handle Toucher, Mrs. Didn't Wash Her Hands Before She Started Eating has already contaminated the whole bit."

"Um," said the server.

On the way home, Jonas stopped at A&W to purchase a bag of Chubby Chicken and fries. They didn't talk much as they walked, and Madison hoped the Ethiopian cuisine debacle had weakened his interest in dancing at the Roost. Jonas finished his dinner-in-a-bag as they reached the parking lot behind the Garneau Theatre. He rubbed his now-greasy hands together and began to cackle.

"What?"

"I have a scheme."

"What sort?"

Jonas remained silent and menacing, so Madison took him by the arms and shook him. "What? What?"

"Before we change into our club clothes and embark on an emotional and possibly romantic journey, I'm going to invite the young Indian man from across the street to come out with us."

"Oh, no, you're not."

"How long have we lived across the street from the young Indian man from across the street?"

"Just no. Please."

"You owe me, after the Ethiopian food thing."

Madison pushed him as they entered the Garneau Block. "No, you owe me. You acted like an a.s.s in there, and embarra.s.sed everyone."

"It almost sounds like you don't want to go dancing tonight."

"I never did want to go dancing, Jonas."

Madison hated the silent treatment but it was preferable to a night of thumping disco. So she decided not to apologize or allow herself to be manipulated by any wounded expressions. But instead of marching through his front door and slamming it behind him, Jonas started across the street to 13 Garneau.

"What are you doing?"

Jonas sauntered up the walkway, past a small rock garden with two choke cherry trees, a small paper birch, and a spruce. The house was a white wooden two-storey with red trim and a small terrace. From time to time Madison would watch the young Indian man from across the street through his front picture window, sipping a gla.s.s of wine or a single bottle of Dutch beer in the evening while reading a novel. She wondered if he was lonesome or if he just preferred things this way. No one had ever seen another being enter or exit 13 Garneau, but that didn't mean he wasn't caring for sick parents or grandparents inside.

Every morning the young Indian man from across the street left at the same time, 7:15, in one of his fine suits, carrying a black leather briefcase. He walked toward the university, presumably to take the LRT across the river. No one at the university, even in the business faculty, dressed as well as the young Indian man from across the street. Madison guessed he was a lawyer.

Jonas stood on the young Indian man from across the street's front terrace. Already he had rung the doorbell twice. He pressed the b.u.t.ton a third time, knocked, and waited thirty seconds. Jonas turned and addressed Madison. "You are so lucky."

The young Indian man from across the street appeared in the picture window. He watched Jonas walking away from his house, and looked up at Madison. The young Indian man from across the street shrugged. It was a "should I bother with this?" sort of shrug.

Madison shook her head. No.

Jonas had not stopped talking. "And you were going to be a freak because I know how you are about new people."

The young Indian man from across the street smiled and waved goodnight. At that moment, to her surprise, Madison was stricken by the desire to dance.

20.

dancing with herself Madison hoped they could stand in line on the concrete steps of the Roost for a while, with the people. The two men in front of her were talking about the cleverness of Conservative politics. One, who looked like an accountant, said, "It's the only way to get poor people in rural Alberta to vote against the welfare state. They make it seem like you and me and the Canadian figure skating team are on our way out there, in our pink Smart Cars, to get married in the Baptist Church and have a.n.a.l s.e.x in the town hall bathroom."

His partner fashioned his cardigan into a veil, and they walked along the step as though down an aisle.

Madison wanted to hear more but Jonas was already at the top of the stairs, and the front of the line, with one hand on the doorman's arm and the other waving her up. In certain Edmonton communities, Jonas was famous. The gay community was one of them.

There were two dance floors at the Roost. That night, the main floor featured thumping college rock anthems from the 1980s. Madison checked her coat and by the time she was finished, Jonas was already under the flashing lights with a gin and soda in his hand. It was wrong to drink and dance at the same time, and Jonas knew how she felt about this. But Madison joined him anyway, to the tired old sissy laser rock of "Tainted Love."

Why couldn't Madison be like Jonas and everyone else on the dance floor? Why couldn't she stop worrying about everything? She knew there were probably pills she could take; she knew the secret to gaining pleasure from an overplayed song was to shut off her critical faculties, to stop being herself, to stop feeling that someone just like her might see her on the dance floor and think, "Guh. Loser."

She wondered if anyone in the club actually liked "Tainted Love." Surely, it was just a memory trigger. Jonas and everyone else screaming the lyrics, raising their arms and lowering their heads triumphantly, b.u.mping into each other with their eyes closed, were twenty-one again. Young and clever and beautiful again.

Like marijuana, h.o.m.os.e.xuality had lost its outlaw reputation. When Madison first danced at the Roost, in the wake of another notorious Edmonton gay club, Flashback, the room still hummed with the naughty energy of the 1980s. No one could be gay at a day job, so everyone had to be extra gay at night. Men dressed up as women, or at least wore makeup and black nail polish. Women took their shirts off and danced until they were shiny with sweat. They kissed with tongue, and more. There were those guys who wore nothing but chaps, and girls in bicycle shorts and pasties.

Now the Roost was just an older and smarter version of kiddy clubs, without the fistfights. Madison and Jonas were dressed like everyone else, in jeans and the most flattering T-shirts in their closets. As "Tainted Love" ended and "Love Song" by The Cure began with a howl of nostalgic joy, Madison spotted the only real wildcat in the club: a cowboy who looked like he'd just walked off the ranch. Jonas saw him at the same time, and said, "Giddy-up." He handed his drink to Madison, and approached the cowboy.

And that was the last Madison would see of Jonas in the Roost.

She put his drink on the bar and walked upstairs, where there was more room on the dance floor. Up here, the DJ played somewhat dated techno music. Madison found a corner, away from the small hordes of curious straight boys in Molson shirts and baseball caps, and watched herself dance in the mirror. She felt this would be her last night on a nightclub dance floor, ever. She wanted to remember what she looked like before she turned thirty and had a child, before her youth ended officially. The ba.s.s went straight to her stomach, and she imagined her baby swimming to the beat.

Several songs later, with a layer of sweat forming on the back of her neck, Madison left the dance floor to splash some water on her face and buy a gla.s.s of cranberry and club soda. Before she hit the washroom door, she saw Jeanne Perlitz pa.s.s on the other side of a pillar.

Madison turned and slammed into a man in an airline pilot's suit who had apparently taken a bath in Issey Miyake for Men. He spilled some beer on himself and said, "Excuse me!" If she had not been pursuing Jeanne Perlitz, Madison would have helped him sop the beer out of his sleeve. But there was no time.

"Sorry," she said, and ran to the top of the stairs. Madison looked down, and saw the top of Jeanne Perlitz's head in the crowd at the bottom. She pushed her way through heavy streams of people going up and down the stairs.

Madison weaved around the pool tables, toward the coat check. She ran past the lineup and out on to the street. Two women were hugging and crying, and some people were on the sidewalk across the street, smoking, but there was no Jeanne Perlitz.

Back inside, she retrieved her jacket and described Jeanne Perlitz to the coat check man.

"Blonde and pretty and sort of forty? That sounds like just about every woman to me." The coat check man leaned on the counter between them. "Just get back in there and find yourself another one, sweetie. Put a band-aid on that heart and get right back in the game."

Madison waited for a cab and bounced to keep warm. A large white SUV rumbled slowly up the street. The rear pa.s.senger window opened and a young man in a baseball cap yelled, "Lezout!" As his friends howled with laughter, he threw a McDonald's cup out the window and it exploded on the pavement in front of Madison. Strawberry milkshake covered her sneakers and the cuffs of her jeans. She looked down at the pink mess for a few minutes, until a cab appeared.

21.

louis chopin of armstrong crescent Toward the end of the Monday Introductory Philosophy cla.s.s, Raymond Terletsky questioned his motives. Earlier that morning, he had received an e-mail from Claudia Santino; the department had decided not to cancel his Death in Philosophy seminar. In a gushing fit of animation and fellow-feeling, he sent a message to his five seminar students. If any of them was interested, he wanted to take a cla.s.s field trip to the World Waterpark at West Edmonton Mall tomorrow. They would meet in the lobby at ten in the morning.

An hour after sending the message, as his survey students debated whether or not a modified version of Plato's Republic would be better than Canada's const.i.tutional monarchy, he stared at the back wall of the cla.s.sroom and wondered: Did he truly see any philosophical value in sliding down the Sky Screamer? Or had his guilt over the unpleasant episode with Charlene the ma.s.sage therapist already faded, leaving only an impish desire to see his female seminar students in bikinis?

"But the guys we elect are c.r.a.p," one of the survey students said, while chewing gum. "At least a philosopher king would be smart."

A nearby woman with purple hair snuffed at the words guys and kings. "Yeah, but what if she went mental? What if she woke up mental one morning and decided to bomb China? Then we'd all end up dead. Thanks, philosopher queen."

Raymond glanced at his watch as the debate continued. He worried, briefly, for the collective intellectual power of this generation. Then he questioned his motives again. Nay, his sanity. It wasn't healthy to drive past hookers on his way to buy pickles. It wasn't healthy to fantasize about Claudia Santino and to make subtle suggestions to his ma.s.sage therapist, not when he had a beautiful and utterly supportive wife. As the cla.s.s ended and the students filed out into the bright hallways, Raymond considered Purple Hair's warning. What about waking up mental one day?

Back in his office, he flipped through the yellow pages until he found a list of psychologists. Most of them were downtown, a short LRT ride away, so he chose one at random: K. L. Fisketjon and a.s.sociates. The woman who answered the phone was jolly. "You know, we had a cancellation this afternoon at one. Are you free?"

Raymond was free.

"Your name and address?"

In the next few seconds, a variety of events took place inside Raymond's skull. He didn't understand the process, which is why the fields of philosophy and psychology exist. But he was startled by his answer. "Louis Chopin."

"Okay, Mr. Chopin. Your address?"

"Thirteen...Armstrong Crescent."

"Wow," said the scheduling secretary. "Your name and address, together, are a jazz singer. And Chopin, too. You sure sound famous."

"Everyone seems to notice that."

Raymond took lunch, a donair, in Hub Mall. As the sweet yogurt sauce dripped out of the aluminum foil and down his wrist, he watched the women pa.s.s. So many of them on their cellular phones, having inane conversations. Presumably with thug boyfriends. If they only knew how well a certain fifty-four-year-old philosophy professor could treat them, how carefully.

In Hub, he made an effort to look down at the newspaper instead of at young women. As usual, he read every word in the obituary pages. From a philosophy of death point of view, the contemporary funeral ritual was fascinating. The last paper Raymond had published, in a journal out of Malta, had been about the hierarchy of funerals.

Family and friends gather so they can be introspective together in the glow of the body, so they can use the body as a means of communication and a social trophy. It is a special day for the family and friends of the corpse, whose names are in the obituary section of the newspaper. They are princ.i.p.al mourners, surrounded by peripheral acquaintances. Pretenders. Even in their exalted position, princ.i.p.als will stand over the dead body and wonder about their dry cleaning, remember a gag from the rerun of Seinfeld that had been on television as they changed into their black suits that morning.

Eloquent and typically self-concerned members of the princ.i.p.al group will offer to say a few words in tribute to the corpse, tell some lighthearted anecdote about that time the corpse spilled coffee on the dog. Members of the audience will laugh before the corpse and afterward, over a table of date squares and caffeinated refreshments, they will compliment the speaker for delivering an entertaining eulogy.

Raymond had bought several hundred copies of the Maltese journal to send to colleagues across North America and Europe. Only two sent notes of congratulation, and they were largely personal. About his two children, how they must be grown up by now.

At a quarter to one, Raymond started down into the LRT station. The chance of receiving a fine was more remote than being slapped across the face by the schizophrenic woman playing the ukelele, but Raymond bought a ticket. At five to one, in front of the Western Canadian Bank tower, Raymond decided he didn't need a psychologist after all. He feared it would be an uncomfortable and expensive experience. The jovial secretary would attempt to locate Louis Chopin of Armstrong Crescent, and she would fail.

Raymond continued to the City Centre Mall, where he browsed the clothing and accessories at Urban. This is where the wealthiest and most fashionable of his students shopped. Complicated music played out of the public address system. A man with a black Mohawk, wearing ripped jeans and a blazer that looked as though it had been vandalized by spray paint artists, asked if he was shopping for himself or his son.

"My son," said Raymond. "Of course."

22.

s.p.a.ceship sounds One of these days, before she actually gave birth, Madison would have to tell David and Abby about their impending grandparenthood. The thought struck her as she waited in the rain at a long, long red light on her way to the clinic. Keeping the pregnancy from her parents made her feel like a mischievous teenager, a shoplifter. A lonesome shoplifter.

Madison had borrowed her father's Yukon Denali for the afternoon. Perched above the rest of traffic in the puffball of imaginary convenience, she usually ducked whenever she saw someone she knew. But as Madison pictured her child in the backseat, protected by all this weight and leather, she saw how the automobile companies created demand. Bring on a meteor strike or a jihad or a dinosaur attack or World War III, she thought. Junior and I can bivvy in.

The cellular phone on its cradle began to ring. Its tone, to her dismay, was "Born to Be Wild." a.s.suming it was one of her father's friends hoping to meet up and be exceedingly right-wing sometime soon, Madison ignored it. Then the phone rang again. And again.

She pulled into a gas station. "h.e.l.lo, David Weiss's phone."

"Why weren't you picking up?" Her father cleared his throat. "I've been calling."

"You need me to grab something for you, Dad?"

"Nah. How's the old girl running?"

"The Yukon? Fine, I guess." Madison turned off the engine. "Do you need groceries?"

"Not really."

"So why did you call? I left the house five minutes ago."

"Can't a father call his daughter just to talk once in a while?"

"We ate breakfast together. And I don't like talking on the phone and driving. It's dangerous and I look like a goof."

David Weiss sighed. "The old girl runs like a dream though, doesn't she?"

"Not my dream. And stop calling it an old girl. It's a 2003."

"Oh, don't get all David Suzuki on me. Buy your own hybrid, you want one so d.a.m.n much. They aren't cheap, you know. And what if it blows up, with that big weird battery? It's not like we're gonna run out of oil around here, right? Right? You haven't heard that, have you?"

"I'm gonna go, okay Dad?"

"Don't worry about filling her up. I'll take care of that."

"Thanks."

"Love you."

"Love you too, Dad."

"Love you. Bye. Love you, sweetie. Say bye to Maddy, Garith. Woof woof. I ruh you. I ruh you ro ruch."

In the waiting room at the clinic, Madison chose from among five 2002 Maclean's magazines and looked at the words in an article about Leonard Cohen's son without actually reading.

She doubted the machine would hear the baby's heart over the insistent hammering of her own. Reaching twelve weeks in her pregnancy meant it was actually going to happen. Soon, too soon, Madison would be a mother. A mother. The thought sent a jolt through her so potent that she pressed a thumb through Adam Cohen's neck.

When the nurse called her name, Madison surveyed the room. Maybe someone else wanted to go first? Large woman with a beard in the Old Navy shirt? Terrified teenager with her parents? Anyone?

In the examination room, Madison looked at the ill.u.s.trated chart. According to the full-colour drawing, at this stage in her pregnancy the baby resembled a naked mole rat. There was a knock and without waiting for a response Dr. Stevens opened the door.

On Canada Day, Madison had run into Dr. Stevens at a bar downtown. There, out of her white doctor coat, Dr. Stevens was known as Cecile. They hugged and reminisced about that party Madison had hosted in grade eleven while her parents were in Italy. Burned carpet downstairs, that couple no one recognized having s.e.x in the bathroomwith the door open. Where you living now? Yep, same bas.e.m.e.nt.