Part 12 (1/2)

He isnt new. I knew him back with Earl. My parents knew him then, too. They wanted to see him.

Well he's new to me, then.

Tell me what you want to know.

This, said in a stiff way.

What he's doing, his life, his ambitions, his humour.

He's managing this software design, which is a two-year project. He's kind of goofy, he doesnt get a joke right away but then laughs and that's sort of cute and he's handsome and he doesnt own any possessions. He's given them up except he has a dog, which he loves, and he remembers Tinker in his youth. He wears business kinds of clothes now, but you soon realize he's someplace else.

So youve got a little crush on him.

Lydia: And what do you think of that?

What, should I be jealous of a handsome man who lives on the Pacific and has cute ways and a dog and youve spent seven hours with him?

She cuddles into me and I can feel a laugh in her body. So did you kiss him?

Do you really want to know?

7 The story of my life with Lydia is the conflict of desire and being sated. Lydia is satisfied with me but dissatisfied with all other things. I'm the opposite. She appraises the world as a canvas to improve. I accept the canvas, am content to live within its confines. I dont think to upgrade the armchair or paint a room. I exist in a state of being, Lydia in a state of flux.

8 I've walked down to Ryan's Plumbing with Lydia's faucet. Mr Ryan is serving Boyd Coady, who has clear green cat's eyes. They are in disagreement. Boyd says to me, Do you know anything about plumbing?

I say,You can't be serious.

Mr Ryan dont know anything, Boyd says. He won't be able to help you with that. Boyd points to my faucet spindle. I walk back to Lydia's with the busted spindle.

The shadows of trees are more p.r.o.nounced because of the new leaves.

Lydia is out weeding the back. Tinker b.u.mbo is barking at the backs of houses on Duckworth Street. He's just standing there, barking at the sun. Barely notices me.

Two girls sit on the steps of a house next door.

There's an electric chainsaw at work.

A gangly boy with thin wrists and sungla.s.ses plays basketball in his paved driveway. Slow smack of the basketball. Thump of the net as the ball pushes through. Wind, warm, streaks of blue-and-white sky.

Lydia straightens. I kiss her on the cheekbone.

9 Lydia asks me what I'm thinking of. I say Wilf Jardine's tattoo.

Wilf has a tattoo?

The one on his arm.

She says, When have you seen it?

Several times.

Funny, I havent seen it.

You have seen it.

Oh, yes, that tattoo. Usually I dont like tattoos, but Wilf's is nice.

How did you forget he had a tattoo?

I dont think about Wilf.

You are, I say, much more into the here and now than I am.

Lydia: Youre caught up in introspection.

Do you think introspection and regret are connected? Are you regretting something?

I'm just following a train of thought.

Lydia: I dont think you'll regret much.You think about the past, but youre not emotionally wrought by it. Youre pretty solid.

There was this man sunning himself today. He was sitting in his front door. His whole arm was a tattoo, down to the fingernails. In his late forties. It looked like he had a reptile sleeping on his chest.

10 We're having a drink at Noel Wareham's wake. Max said he witnessed what he calls his father's chain-stoking. Inhaling, mouth open, eyes wide, then exhaling, fourteen hours of this. His liver crashed, they had him on morphine, looking at photos of his kids, saying goodbye to Max, but living five more days. Sixty-eight years old. How Max finds himself imitating the faces his father made. We go to the washroom to urinate and when we're was.h.i.+ng our hands, I watch Max make that chain-stoking gesture. Like a goldfish who has exhausted the water's oxygen.

11 To know what someone looks like by what he says, how it's said. Tone and diction. Dialogue can describe a character's facial features.

When you hear basketb.a.l.l.s dribbled and thrown at hoops, then you know the rain has ceased.

12 Three houses have burned to the ground on Cook Street. I watch a tractor yank down the charred chimneys with the shovel on his crane. As I sketch this in my journal Boyd Coady peers and says, Is that like a book youre putting in everything that happens to you? I say that is exactly right. And show him some drawings. Boyd's son rides over on his banana bike.

All I can see of the southside hills are the silver pipelines that snake up to the tank farm. And now comes the ridge against the sky. The contour pulsating in and out of greyness.

13 Max Wareham is wearing a denim cowboy hat on his back deck. There is a lilac tree. Daphne Yarn clutches a bunch of flowering sage. She keeps admonis.h.i.+ng me with it.

We've agreed on the canoe trip: down the Exploits, mid-July. Lydia will do it. And Max and Daphne are in. Craig is up for it and Alex would like to do it, and Maisie, staring at Oliver, who is oblivious to the conversation, says she'll go if Oliver's not along and she doesnt have Una. Max: Who here invests in the stock market?

About half the hands go up.

Alex and Craig Regular dance to country music. Oliver bids goodnight and pockets his half bottle of Grouse Scotch. We all know he's going to meet his pregnant paralegal student. I hear Maisie's voice rise and say she disdains a limp p.e.n.i.s because it immediately becomes a urine thing instead of a sperm thing.

Max: It has not been admitted yet on our media that power rests not in Parliament, but in big business and multinationals.

Craig takes Lydia aside and I look at her face. In that moment of nervous knowing, of climbing into bed with Craig, I see her face and it is the same face, the face I know, and that comforts me.

She says, Max, can I have a refill?

Max: Lydia is some bossy.

Lydia turns to confront Max.You want to get into it, Max? Max: No.