Waving Not Drowning

She's been away longer than she was here. So strange. Home. How that changes. At some point two years turned into twenty and the old neighbourhood is now unrecognizable. Everything's smaller, less foreboding. Even Mr. Robichaud's hand hammered lawn ornaments seem tiny. Spent, worn, rusted out. Marnie's old house feels minuscule, a bungalow on a postage stamp lot facing an overgrown, decommissioned public park. Barbed wire fence and tagged clapboard demarcate what was once their secret hideaway. Where Do Not Enter meant Come On In. Flashlights and stolen magazines, hooch water concoctions and bottle upon bottle of dry roasted barbecue peanuts. So many memories here. Whatever clarity she had is obscured by nostalgia. When something begins it also starts to end. She read that the other day and can't shake it loose. Why bother starting anything if there's no hope, no possibility of infinite happiness? She longs for the old days of pure potential wh...

She crossed the street and there he was. All dressed up, here on business, out with work, doing his thing, glad handing, networking, seeing and being seen. All the way from the other side of the country, he appears. No note, no text, no call. It was last minute, he says. I had no plans until I had plans. Plans that glaringly lacked inclusion of her on any level. They're not friends. Barely acquaintances. They were lovers; complicated emotionally, different levels of involvement and ability, desire to engage. She says hello. He's affable, his polite self, distant and guarded but never leads the conversation, remains firmly in response mode so in effect, unaccountable. Controlling, in his way. Wouldn't want to get emotional. Doesn't offer himself up nor make an effort to make time or space for her while he's here. Clear as a bell. She gathered he wasn't planning a call, she says. He counters with I figured you'd gather that. He offers up aphorisms of do yourse...

It's darker than she expected. Only 8:30. Closer to fall now, that didn't take long. It's risky but she's cutting through the church lawn and the new concrete walkway, freshly painted. A writhing dark mound appears at her feet, undulating, ebbing and flowing at it's outer most edges. Ants. Thousands of them. Small, fluid, perpetual motion machines. So busy, so fast. All clumped together on top of each other in the middle of a huge expanse of barren concrete, in a crack. What is it that draws them to congregate at this point, this fissure in the ground? She stops, pondering how they know that this is the place, the perfect spot to harbour a colony. To forage and feed, build a compound all for themselves. In the morning they'll be gone, washed away by the overnight storm. Ephemeral. Moment to moment. The steps of the church have transformed, freshly painted an ochre~y cappuccino with too much of a gloss, ridiculously slick. An accident waiting to happen. Come Mond...

There's a huge hole in the floor behind the bar where the softwood planks have worn through or rotted, Kylie can't tell. She's become adept at sidestepping it unconsciously, a pattern her body has memorized in order to safeguard her from falling clean through and landing in the cellar storage room downstairs. The joys of working for aged hippies in a legendary much loved restaurant on the hip strip of town. Had she known what she was getting into Kylie would have stuck with the fine dining gig on the east side but no, this was such a great spot, such an iconic hangout and the location, well- a five minute walk from home, so it seemed like kismet at the time. Dominic comes screaming out of the kitchen waving an 8" chef's knife, drunk, 4 in the afternoon, the lazy hour of the day between shifts. Thankfully only staff are hanging about. Bob, one of the owners, a dead ringer for James Taylor circa the Carly Simon years, only pushing 60, reigns him back into the kitchen...

Is he going to be there. She wonders about that, about running into him in a city of millions of people, of countless neighbourhoods and boroughs, hidden pockets and sharp corners. Is he even still there. It's been a long time coming; years after the two and half years where they promised each other every day they would be here, in this city; partners in crime, living through shared lessons in life and love and loss; encompassing everything, enveloped in each other's beings. If he is still there, will he be hidden or in plain view. How will she find him. She'll turn around on the platform, crossing from one train to the next. He'll be climbing a stairwell as she descends; crossing the street, ordering a cup of coffee, wandering in Central Park, singing in Washington Square, sipping cafe au laits in Greenwich just like they planned when they were one, when he was her person and she was well met. She tries to forget but he keeps coming back to her, unexpectedly, in dreams...

Oh darlin, don't mind if I do. Sidle on up to me and whisper sweet nothings in my ear. We can trip the light fantastic, rough and tumble in the ruins of our shared miseries and erect a monument to our mutual suffering. I like the way you talk, full of dreams and wonder, hope and contradictions. Turns me on, makes me believe I'm not so crazy, not entombed in a life of failures and whatifs. We woulda been great together before the wars, the bad decisions, the how about another, c'mon just one more days. I like the way you move, your swish and giggle, all gossamer winged grace. Untethered. Lemme fly up to meet you, unmoor myself from this hell we're anchored in. One more dance, darlin, just one more dance. One last long turn on the floor. The endless farewell, a lingering kiss, brutal embrace, desperate distraction before the sun comes up and carves us into grotesque shadows of our once glorious younger selves. Don't look at me, just bury your head in my chest and wrap...

All Anthony wanted was a few bananas and some peanut butter. His kingdom for Nutella but he wasn't hedging his bets. He was slow going, still half in the bag from last night's commiseration session with Isabelle gnashing and wailing about Kev's new girlfriend. Anthony gets it, he does. Lord knows she put up with the Great Heartbreak of 'o8 with him. A solid year of despair and self loathing. Surviving the war. They forgot to get breakfast fixings and it's going on noon. His stomach was beyond rumbling, it was a full blown orchestra with kettle drums pounding. It's a fine line between nausea and hunger. He realizes the sound isn't emanating from his intestines but rattling the windows from College Street below. Christ almighty, the Resurrection parade. Thousands of devout Catholics lined up 5 bodies deep, celebrating the Easter holy days. For six blocks police cordoned off both sides of the street and locked down traffic. He'd never get out his front door...

Jason had her number. He had everyone's number as soon as they walked onto his lot. The only reason anyone ever comes onto a used car lot is to find a great deal or what they believe is a great deal because they can't afford to drive anything else. The young guys can't afford insurance on their foreign status symbol dream cars and the recovering drunks and reprobates can't afford anything else. Young couples with kids and dogs in search of a second car they can rationalize as relatively safe yet can drive it into the ground for a few grand; new divorcees who walked away from it all rather than put up a fight. Jason's seen them all, sometimes within the same day. He's lucky. Ahmed and Karim are top notch mechanics. He lets them work on side projects in the service bay when nothing else is moving on the lot. Ahmed's cousin of a cousin's sister's brother or something has a line on old cabs, cop cars and delivery vehicles. They don't move many of the...

I should probably go. He gently unbinds his limbs from hers, elevates himself up and over to the side of the bed. Her fingers trace the length of his spine. She imagines her hand leaving an imprint visible only when their bodies interlock. A secret branding. His fingers come to rest in the crease where her hip portrudes like a handle. Grab on. He gives a quick squeeze, no more than a pulse, then starts to dress. She can tell by the set of his shoulders, the turn of his head that he's already gone. They are unaccustomed to being seen, known, revealed. She draws herself up to match his height, drapes herself across his body from behind, clasping her hands over his heart. For a moment they fuse into each other's skin, their breath aligned, tempted to begin again. Her head falls into the curve of his neck. The air changes between them. I have to go. What transpires in that ephemeral communion between two lovers, what causes the incremental shift of tectonic plates to slide out of b...

It was an irrational fear, he knew that. Intellectually Craig understood that he wasn't going to drown or be eaten alive by sharks or electrocuted by eels but ever since he was a child, lakes have paralyzed him with fear. He was 8 years old when his new neighbours Dana and Eric convinced him to tread hip deep into White Creek lake to pick up the abalone shells, telling him they were magical and possessed special powers. Craig was desperate to impress. He didn't make friends easily. Too heady, too quiet, "socially awkward" was what the teachers wrote. Gifted was how his mom translated it. Craig didn't notice the leeches at first. It was only when Dana and Eric couldn't stifle their laughter any longer that he saw them covering his ankles and inchworming up his calf. Stuttering and wailing in terror Craig begged the brothers to get them off. Eric finally pulled out a matchbook and started burning them off, one by one, putting a flaming match to each leech. They...

A cup of coffee, all Frank wants is a bloody cup of coffee. He doesn't give a shit where it's from, Sumatra, Peru, Ethiopia, who cares, it's not like he's the UN for cryin out loud. Just a freaking cup of coffee, black, no milk or cream or soya or what the jesus, almond milk. What the hell is that. Who drinks milk made from almonds? How do you even milk an almond? When did everything get so bloody complicated. All Frank wants is his cup of morning coffee to help shake off the bourbon fog. Hot and black so he can slug it back with his smokes. That's it, that's all she wrote. Coffee that doesn't cost him four bucks a shot. Whole neighbourhood's gone to ratshit since Jimmy's Place closed. Thirty two years Frank counted on Jimmy's for a decent cup of joe, corn beef on rye, bottle of Blue, Maker's Mark when he was feeling flush, and time on the table where he didn't have to hustle frat boys to get a game in. Easy living. Now these bloody hipst...