The Second Part of Chapter 6: Cleaning and Arranging

Belinda, upon hearing the news, felt in a way similar to the way she had felt after the divorce; she was angry, frustrated, and had a sort of disbelief of her circumstances. If what Pia was saying was true, then she deserved it. If it was not, then this was clearly an attempt to ostracise her. It might be both; attempts to isolate people usually go with some “justification”. Thinking this made her reflect on her divorce, which had occurred under similar circumstances, insofar that she was an alcoholic at the time and may have stepped on a few toes. Whom am I kidding, she thought. I’m still an alcoholic, just not to the extent that I was before the divorce. Just what had she done that night? She remembered Kevin, all right; who wouldn’t? She could also recall, faintly, the sound of a baby crying very loudly. Maybe it was true about me stepping on baby Jason when I was wearing my stilettos. I must get an opinion of a sober person, she thought; which is to say, a sober person other than Pia. That was why she called Clarissa.

“Hello?”

“Hi Clarissa. How was last night?”

“Last night was wonderful. I’m engaged!” Belinda was unclear on all the details of the garden party; she simply knew there was plenty of food and noise.

“Wow, really? Jim proposed to you at the garden party?

“Yes, he did. We ‘went to the washroom’, so to speak,”

“Ooh, sounds frisky. What about the wedding?”

“Oh, it’s in August. So, why did you call? Are people doing anything interesting? I hear there’s some kind of game of broken telephone going on at Parliament Hill.”

“No. I’m actually calling about last night. Pia read me The Riot Act, and now I’m having doubts about how everything went.”

“I wasn’t there the whole time, but you were making sexually suggestive gestures at David, which is a major faux-pas, especially considering his wife could see. I wasn’t there the whole time because I was busy with, uh, other matters, but I could hear a baby crying when I went back out with him.”

“She said I stepped on Jason’s foot with a stiletto,”

“That would explain the crying. I think it’s just her disliking your behaviour in general last night. Which reminds me, I’m faced with a choice of having a dry wedding and you not being there, and I would prefer to have alcohol at my wedding. Hence, you are not invited. I’m sorry.”

“Is there a chance things will change?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

“Well, goodbye then.”

“Goodbye, Belinda,”

The initial shock of the termination of the friendship with Pia prepared her somewhat for this; still it made her feel bad, as she was missing the major event of the season. Just imagine all the people who would be there! On the other hand, the wedding was likely to be full of economists, considering how both James and Clarissa were themselves economists, and that would make for decidedly uninteresting talk about Taylor series, Nashian equilibria and such other conversation that would fly right over her head. This thought assuaged her somewhat.


Arranging a wedding within a month and a half was a tall order, which would take a lot of planning and a substantial amount of luck, but James and Clarissa were good at that. They were also helped, by the bankruptcy filing of a car seat maker, Inxton Car Seats, which had recently gone out of business; this particular company had booked a ballroom in a convention centre for their annual shareholder’s meeting, and as the company had shuttered its doors, there was not going to be any shareholders’ meeting any longer. For some reason, the name of Inxton was familiar to James, but it escaped him for the time being; he was doing a financial analysis of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund, and that had taken most of the morning. Of course, it helped that this particular ballroom was five kilometres from their house, and James was quick on the uptake; he was listening to the radio at work when he heard that the company went bankrupt; fortuitously, the details of the annual shareholders’ meeting was mentioned with this piece of news; he called the convention centre at once, and within ten minutes, the wedding had a venue. Now, all he had to do was find a local church for the ceremony, and he would be done with the hardest part of planning the wedding.

He arrived home that evening, and greeted Clarissa, who had also recently arrived home. “Hi honey, guess what? We have a venue for the wedding reception!”

“Really? That’s great!”

“It’s at the Lakeside Convention Centre; some car seat maker went bankrupt, and that opened up a spot in their convention schedule.”

“Awesome! I mean, about the venue, not the car seat maker. Anyways, I also looked into the question of where the ceremony would be, and two churches have spaces open. Neither of us is particularly religious, so I wasn’t fussy. I found a church close to home, and another one out in the suburbs that have open spots. The Lakeside Convention Centre, you say? That’s in the west of the city; well, I called a Baptist church near there, and I think there’s also a Catholic church nearby.”

“So, things are going well, in other words.”

“Yes.”

“What do you think we should do for Canada Day?”

“I was thinking of going biking in the hills,” she said, referring to the escarpment just north of the city.

“That sounds nice.”

“Yeah, we’ll make a day of it,”

“And then, there’s fun to look forward to on the Bruce Peninsula. By the way, how were you planning on getting there?”

“Well, there’s a train that leaves for Toronto in the evening, and then it’s a matter of renting a car to drive to Owen Sound or Wiarton. Yes, I think the group’s going to Wiarton.”

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The First Part of Chapter 6: Cleaning and Arranging

It was the day after the garden party, and David and Pia were cleaning up the mess that inevitably resulted from such things. There were three bags full of paper plates, disposable tablecloths, plastic cutlery, beer bottles, plastic glasses and the like. “Pia,” he called out, “We need to talk about Belinda,”

“Are you referring to her behaviour last night?”

“Yes. Where did she come from?”

“She’s an old friend from university, we had classes together, and I’m sorry for the way she acted; she stepped on baby Jason’s fingers for goodness sake.”

“You know, Laura and Clarissa called last night to complain.”

“Yes, and Rick did so earlier, and that was Jeannine who just called. Needless to say, I’m not impressed.”

“Yes, and that’s why I don’t want her invited here. She was doing all sorts of things. Did you see the gestures she made at me? I certainly wasn’t going to reciprocate her ‘come hither’ stare, and I felt very uncomfortable avoiding eye contact all evening.”

“Yes, well, I’ll call her,” said Pia, as she wiped down the kitchen counter. David took the last garbage bag to the garage.

“How is Jason doing?”

“He’s sleeping soundly, which you can tell because you can’t hear any screaming; getting stepped on with stiletto heels is no picnic, though,”

“About that. Belinda seemed like she was dressed to go clubbing. That’s very different from socialising at a garden party. Where does she get her fashion tastes from?”

“I saw her mother a few times, and I noticed that they like to wear similar sorts of clothing.”

“Shall we focus on the ways the party succeeded? You did very well on the punch. How did you know I liked lemoncella?”

“I saw a bottle of the stuff in the recycling once when we were courting, and I figured that you must have a taste for it. Oh, and the calls weren’t all bad; Clarissa complimented me on the food, and she said that she liked the bread you made. I’ll call Belinda now.”

While his wife was talking to Belinda, David turned to a story in the newspaper about the Prime Minister’s wife, as written by Ford Dasker, a reporter who seemed ambiguous about nearly everything; he never seemed to take sides, and when one day he would write a glowing piece about someone, the next article he would write would be decidedly more negative. The affair in Parliament seemed a soap opera writ large, and Cathaline Meach was feeling disengaged from her husband, according to all the gossip columns and magazines that his wife liked to read. Why would she act cold? He wondered. She has so much, after all, being close to power; one only has to enjoy the benefits. “I feel unloved” was a quote that an errant reporter had attributed to her during the past week. It was an obvious slow news week, which was often what happened in June. It turned out that she did not actually say, “I feel unloved”; that was actually the reporter poorly paraphrasing what she had said. She had actually said was, “sometimes I don’t feel [Bruce Meach] pays attention to me. He still cares for me, but it can get a little lonely at times.” He had no idea how the journalist twisted that simple statement into “I feel unloved”, and the story he was reading (in the Focus section of The Globe and Mail from the previous Saturday) was about this:

The misquote by reporter Thomas McNulty caused a considerable brouhaha when it was taken inappropriately out of context on CityTV, which opens a new debate about the role of the journalists in reporting on the personal lives of parliamentarians. The questions are, how shall accuracy in reporting be ensured, and where should the line be drawn on reporting on the personal lives of politicians? These questions are particularly relevant given the quantity of talk it has inspired in Ottawa it has inspired about a matter that ought to remain private. The Prime Minister, while a public figure has a right to private life and the events in that bedroom is, to paraphrase Pierre Trudeau, none of the nation’s business.

Really? Then what was The Globe doing perpetuating this soap opera?

Pia was concurrently talking to Belinda.

“We need to talk about what happened last night,”

The voice on the other end of the line sounded sleepy. “Oh yeah, great party. Thanks Pia.”

“I think the party was rather too good for you. Do you recall what you did last night?”

“Um, I had a couple of drinks. Hey, you know Kevin? What does he think of me?”

“Never mind Kevin. He said he was gay, anyways. This conversation is about you.”

“What about me?”

“Your behaviour last night was less than exemplary, to put it mildly. You had four drinks, you were saying all sorts of things about Henrietta that I would rather not hear, you were making eyes at my husband––and hands off, by the way––and you stepped on my baby Jason’s toes in your stilettos.”

“Really? Oh my, I’m so sorry,” Belinda was beginning to break up; Pia could tell, even over the phone, when somebody was crying.

“How can I ever make it up to you?”

Pia wanted the conversation to be over quickly: “It’s simple. We are not inviting you to any of our parties anymore. Goodbye,”

Pia hung up the phone, not wanting to hear Belinda’s caterwauling.

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The Third Part of Chapter 5: Yes!

James and Clarissa went inside on the pretext of going to the washroom. Actually, James had said he needed to go, and then motioned for Clarissa to follow. James had butterflies in his stomach due to the true purpose of this trip; he had convinced Clarissa to go with him on some flimsy pretext of “attending to his needs,” which she took at face value for the naughty behaviour best performed in private that it suggested. Once inside, he revealed the true purpose of this trip: James went down on one knee and proposed to Clarissa. Clarissa gasped.

“Of course I want to marry you! It’s such a beautiful ring!”She exclaimed, beaming.

With Clarissa’s reaction, James was glad. He stood up; they kissed, and then went outside after lingering for a little while indoors, to witness the antics of Belinda, who was now stumbling towards David. The Vanetti’s baby son Jason was visible, crying behind her while clutching his hand; David did not look pleased.

“Belinda,” said he, curtly.

“Hey Davey, did I ever tell you what a good cook you are?” her words were quite slurred.

“Actually, Pia made the salads,” he responded, looking with disdain at the wine stain on her dress.

“Oh yeah, my compliments to the chef, hic!”

Belinda poured another glass of wine, and then, seemingly forgetting that she had done so, fetched a Bacardi Breezer (orange flavour) from the cooler, thus being the first person to double-fist at a garden party. Unhappily, her manners seemed to desert her with increasing inebriation. She consumed the wine first, not in sips, as people would do in polite company and making conversation all the while, but in gulps, with no chatting in between. Jeannine and Rick were both watching her from their respective vantage points on the veranda and beside the koi pond, and both of them were wearing looks of pity. Rick lived near James’s parents, while Jeannine had an elegant old house east of Bank Street.

I hope she changes direction; I would like to see her dry rather than in the koi pond, thought Rick. It was too bad that she was not dry in another sense of the expression.

At this point, Belinda’s thoughts were fuzzy; she was feeling a vague feeling of contentment through her dizziness.

“I must say, Davey, you look much better after I’ve had a bottle of this good stuff,”
David heard that as “I nussay, avy, woo much better affer I had a butt of thizz gudd suff,”

David turned around and tried to start a conversation with Kevin, not wanting to spend any more time entertaining his wife’s drunken friend.

“So, Kevin, are you having a nice evening?”

“Yes, thank you. Your wife’s salad was particularly good, and I quite liked the punch,”

“That’s wonderful,”

“Say, who’s the drunk?” asked Kevin; he knew perfectly well that the drunk was Belinda, but he feigned ignorance. It was true that he had had almost as much to drink as Belinda, but as he was much taller and larger, due to muscle mass rather than fat, he was holding up much better, and while at least a bit tipsy, was not making an ass of himself.

“She’s one of my wife’s friends, who will not remain so much longer, by the looks of it,”

Belinda was thinking, my, I’m tired after all this booze. Maybe I’d better go home and sleep. Oh, there’s Kevin. My, what a piece of man, thought she, eyeing his posterior. He looks so much finer than Kale. What was I thinking marrying that piece of wood? It was unfortunate that she did not just think the last part. That she also spoke rather loudly meant that several other people heard this detail; not everyone wanted enlightenment to this window on her thoughts.

David looked at Belinda one final time and his lip curled as she stumbled toward the gate. What will Eunice think when I tell her? She is one of her close friends, for reasons understood only to Eunice. He also disagreed very much with Belinda on her assessment of Kale. She thought him a rather pleasant man, and was unhappy that he had moved to Calgary after the divorce rather than Belinda. She reminded him of a more unpleasant version of the Prime Minister’s Wife, Francisca Cathaline Gutzmann-Meach; Cathaline was indifferent, like a cat, but Belinda was worse than indifferent toward her husband; she was antipathetic, not showing any thanks for his providing for her, demanding gifts for love in a most unsavoury manner, and generally was an unkind person with stormy friendships; given this, it was no wonder that Kale divorced her. She resembled his cousin Viola in this regard, who had divorced some man named Ken, with Ken getting custody of the children. It was a tragedy this way: Viola estranged herself from her daughters, while Ken had to struggle with being a single father. Even though he had never met Ken, he still felt sorry for him at times. This was three years ago, however, and was yesterday’s drama, so to speak. The political drama on Parliament Hill and 24 Sussex Drive was much more interesting, mainly because all the people involved were incredibly wily politicians, which stood in contrast to Belinda. There was the revelation that Prime Minister Meach had forced out his predecessor using staff to spread rumours about Colm’s health; there was his wife, who was the very picture of unquestioning devotion to her husband when the cameras were near, who still showed a curious detachment when prying eyes and ears were supposedly looking the other way. In any case, thought David, my vote is with Duff in the next election; the drama is a real distraction, and Duff was a very smooth operator, standing by silently, watching the inevitable collapse of the house of cards.

“James!” Exclaimed David upon seeing the man of the hour, “You look much happier now than when you went into the washroom.” David failed to notice that Clarissa’s hair clip had reversed its direction from its initial position when she had gone inside, and the top two buttons on James’s shirt were undone, which was again not the case when he went inside.

“I should confess that neither of us had to go to the washroom. We’re engaged!”
Clarissa showed David the ring on her finger.

“Clarissa! James! I’m so happy for you both! Did that just happen when you ‘went to the washroom’? It’s not exactly a naughty thing, you know. I could have announced it. In fact, I’ll do that right now. Hey, everybody! May I have your attention! I have just heard from James and Clarissa that they are now engaged.”

The party erupted into applause.

“The wedding will be in August,” called out Clarissa.

“The fifteenth of August,” added James spontaneously. Now we’ll have to make reservations, he thought.

Belinda said to herself, “I was right!” James and Clarissa are getting married! This has to be the major event of the season. I would like to get married myself, again; Kevin’s single, and so what if he says he’s gay? He’s probably just playing hard-to-get.

David thought that this was exciting, and wondered how they were going to plan it. Two months to plan a wedding is rather fast, and Pia and I took nearly six months to plan ours. Have they considered a guest list? Are we on it?

Laura thought that they were moving very fast! Then she went on a fantasy trip in her mind about some handsome man who would arrive to sweep her off her feet.

How excellent of them, Kevin thought; it was so heartening to see friends to fall in love with each other. He had known James through David and Pia, which was why he was at the garden party, and they looked nice together.

Jeannine thought, how lovely! Her thoughts then turned to Belinda, as she really was at a loss as to why the Vanettis had invited her to the garden party.

How wonderful that they’re going to tie the knot, thought Rick as he applauded; I’ve known James for five years, essentially since he moved here, and he’s a very lucky man to be landing this sort of woman. Now, if only that drunk would stop stumbling around, this party improve. James and Clarissa left the garden party and went home to dive into the preliminary stages of wedding planning. The party continued with an even more cheerful atmosphere until 10:15.

At that time Pia said to the last guests, “Listen, I like you very much, but you know, Jason also needs to sleep,”

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The Second Part of Chapter 5: Yes!

At the garden party, the foccacia, which was the first item on the glass-bottomed table, was the first gone, and Pia quickly replaced it with a tray of assorted cheeses: Swiss, havarti, Saint-André, Oka, and Brie.

Laura looked at Belinda. She looks worse than usual, she thought. Normally, for this sort of party, she would be smiling in her way, well made-up, with not a hair out of place. Now, however, she looked somewhat dishevelled, sweaty, and her lustrous cocktail dress––she had a habit of dressing provocatively––had several wrinkles and sweat stains. She was usually up on the latest gossip, which in some respects was nice; who would want to be in the dark about friends? Tonight, however, she had a spritzer before she started talking about people––tonight it was about her ex-husband Kale––and the quality of her gossip was therefore noticeably lacking. She already knew that Belinda thought of Kale as “that asshole”, and she had no particular interest in the factoid that Christine––or whoever, the name was slurred––had planted chrysanthemums. It was additionally unfortunate for her that when she was drunk, she tended to lose control over the volume of her voice. Apart from Belinda’s gossip about Christine, Christine herself was a very nice person; like Belinda, she was single, but unlike Belinda, did not engage in gossip to the extent that it became tasteless or rude; whatever she said about others portrayed them in a good light.

Like Laura, Eunice also thought well of Christine. She kept her home spotlessly clean, seemed to know how to manage her money, and in every way was what a typical woman would strive to be, and could plausibly do so; she was intelligent, had a good job as a teacher, and was sensible in almost every way; all that was missing was a man. Eunice had a friend named Zachary, an accountant with a small firm that did her books, who would be a good match for her; she should introduce them to each other sometime, she thought.

In Laura’s mind, all the news was with James and Clarissa, rather than anybody Belinda was interested in discussing; there was definitely something going on. She could see the pair standing under the arbour, looking doe-eyed at each other. It seemed sappy, and was such a match made in heaven. They were both smart, they were both economists, and they talked each other to death on topics that only they could find interesting. They would probably have a pair of beautiful kids; they were meant for each other, she thought, as she had over the past four months that they had been dating. Something similar had happened between David and Pia three years back, as related to her by the elder Mr. Vanetti at their wedding, though she had also heard that the elder Mr. Vanetti had played matchmaker, something in which he turned out to have prodigious skill. She stared at James and Clarissa longingly, and thought, “I want a man like that.”

“Pardon?” It was Kevin; she hadn’t just thought that. Kevin also watched James and Clarissa as they went inside, giggling and telling each other small jokes.

“Oh, hello Kevin. I didn’t say anything,” said Laura, which left Kevin entirely unconvinced.

“You didn’t say that you wanted a man like James?”

At this point, Belinda butted in, and Kevin could clearly tell she was hammered: “Yes, just like I didn’t say that I was single and longing for partnership. I also neglected to ask you––“

“Sorry, I’m gay.”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Belinda, not entirely taking in what he had said. He’s gay? She thought, well, so am I! It’s a very gay party, after all.

“What I wanted to ask was: are you enjoying this party?”

“Um, yes,” said Kevin, who wished to be talking to someone else just then, to a person like Rick, or Laura before they had been interrupted, for instance; Rick, like himself, was an economist, but unlike him, was a monetarist after the fashion of Milton Friedman; they always had robust debates. He was not at all surprised when Belinda and Kale divorced; the two were very much unlike each other, and he was disappointed that Kale rather than Belinda had moved to Calgary, because he preferred Kale; the good thing about the divorce was that they had harmed no children in the process, as their marriage had been a childless one and, Kevin suspected, sexless. The case was different for his friend Ken, who had just finished a very messy settlement; he had custody of the children, while his ex-wife got the car, which was a Porsche, and thus considered a prize by both of them. They could not agree on the house, which they had to sell, with half the money going to each, while Viola carted off many other possessions, leaving Ken to purchase new furniture; this had been in lieu of them dealing with the divorce amicably. It was a pity about the house: it was a very old and elegant house, a relic from the Victorian era, and a builder quickly snapped it up in a desire for a much more modern house in a cubist fashion. Cubism was nice, but a cubist house would look out of place surrounded by three-storey buildings that had been standing since the 1880s. He also felt for the ex-wife, who was a nice person when not around Ken; they simply disagreed with each other, which they found out too late, only after they had two children, who he thought were unjustly alienated from their mother. He knew all of this due to a close relationship with the man; he lived on Cooper, a block over from Kevin, and the relationship went back to their university days; Ken shared many details with Kevin, though Kevin felt uncomfortable in that some of this information verged closely on gossip, with which he took an ambivalent attitude. His worries were mostly because when gossip spreads around, it looks too much like the game of broken telephone played by schoolchildren.

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The First Part of Chapter 5: Yes!

James and Clarissa had started sleeping together in early May and had grown even closer; they were still in the soppy phase of their love, which had rapidly grown like the plants outside.

Early in the morning of the day after the summer solstice, James was reading the lead story of The Globe and Mail while sipping his coffee before leaving for work, which was a very long article about Cameron Duff, and took the form of an interview by Nia Aitt about his tactics. He liked her interviews, as she was always engaging and got to the point fast, as was the case here.

“I like to think of myself as a calm man, but that may belie what you see on C-SPAN,” says Cameron Duff.

“Those are simply theatrics, as you must understand about our system. I predict that the Prime Minister will not last much longer; his cabinet meetings are basically an elaborate game of chess played against imagined opponents, when he should perhaps be focussing on his real opponents, which include me. It reminds me of a captain steering through the fog and imagining icebergs. The fog is all in his mind, though. My shadow cabinet, on the other hand, is the most united that I have ever seen in parliament, and I have been a parliamentarian for thirty-three years. This united shadow cabinet, our united caucus, the freshness and vitality of our ideas will lead us to victory in the next election, I am confident of that.

“As for the specifics of strategy, I don’t plan one way or another on whether to vote this government down in a confidence measure, but given that this is a minority parliament, and given that there is a lot of room for disagreement, and given the corruption that has been festering these past four years, essentially since Meach took office, I would say there is a fifty-fifty chance that I will decide to pull the plug on this government in the next year. Basically, if they introduce good bills, we’ll vote for them. Saying this keeps the boys, and I use that term well advisedly, on their toes, and on the lookout for any poor behaviour in their ranks. One might think of it as a way of getting what we want. The Bloc and the New Democrats are also supportive of us, and there is a lot of room for agreement; like them, we support Canada’s numerous regions, which is important given that we are a regional country. Our three parties agree that there is some support needed for Canada’s industries to change and become more competitive, although we must always ensure that they remain the best, and not let government support run amok. And of course, like them, we believe that Meach and his cabal have become too complacent and corrupt, which speaks to a larger detachment and alienation from the people who elected them.”

Asked what his ideas were, he responded “Well, we plan to abolish payroll taxes, including Employment Insurance premiums and Canada Pension Plan premiums. There is a lot of talk going around right now about how those are not good ideas and where the money for funding Employment Insurance and the Canada Pension Plan will come from, but those people who advance these ideas forget that these accounts are merely notional; there is no bank vault filled with cash, nor is there a dedicated bank account. The funds can come from general revenue. I also plan to maximise the value of the work contributed by the public service. I think that those are all the promises I can afford to make to you right now, as you know ‘a week is a lifetime in politics’, and anyways, I’m not prime minister…yet. Additionally, I believe that the government punitively taxes wages, which is another reason for my advocacy of the abolition of EI and CPP contributions. When abolished, the cost of labour will become cheaper, and employment will be higher as a result.”

When asked further about corruption, Duff said, “It’s no secret, and I’ll leave it at that; I’m sure it will all come out soon enough, and I shall let you do your job to discover the rot.”

James trailed off from reading, distracted, and pondered the drama, which one might also call a circus, on the Hill. Talking down his opponent, as Duff was doing, was what all politicians do in an adversarial parliamentary system; while some of the footage of question period was amusing, it was entirely predictable. The real drama was in the Prime Minister’s office and home, and had all the characters of a soap opera. There was the indifferent, catlike wife in Cathaline Meach, the authoritarian Prime Minister who attempted to rule his fiefdom, that being his cabinet, with an iron fist, and then there were the rumours of in-cabinet intrigue and infighting. Given that cabinet meetings were secret, almost everyone wanted to know where the leaks were coming from. Some suspected the Minister of Defence, Mopps Sousa, known for making flowery and overwrought speeches that carried no meaning, or the Environment Minister, Beraj Bing-Witt, who was known for long speeches that put one to sleep, and when pundits dissected the meaning of said speeches, they were unable to find any; it was said by many that he was clueless in his portfolio. Others thought some disaffected staffer who felt downtrodden and needed a way to get back at their bosses was to blame. This might not be true, but the media was particularly fond of portraying it in this light. It could still be worse, he thought. At least there was no corruption that he knew of, or at least no evidence of such. The minority government and the raptor-like opposition probing for any sign of weakness are taking care of that.

He flipped to the editorial section, where there was a piece calling for fiscal responsibility and praising the current government for being prudent in this respect. That was when Clarissa joined him for breakfast.

“Hello there, you ready for your day?”

“Of course, Clarie. I’m also ready for tonight’s garden party. I would normally consider those rather boring, but I have a feeling something will go down.”

“So do I; Belinda’s coming, and you know how Belinda and booze get along. I can picture her dancing on tables right now.”

“I was thinking along a different line; you’ll find out,” replied James, finishing his breakfast, which had consisted of bacon, brioche swimming in butter, a coffee, and a glass of milk, of which only crumbs and dregs remained with a spot of grease on a small plate.

For James, work that day consisted of finding a new customer to fill in the hole left by Omega Faucets, which was almost certainly going to go bankrupt, and in work on a number of other files, including Inxton Car Seats and several others. He wondered what the faucet maker’s troubles were, considering he had seen many taps and spigots with the Omega insignia, and they had diversified into toilets and sinks in addition to their usual product line of faucets and showerheads; the company was Colleen’s file, and she was reticent about it due to its impending demise. “Why didn’t they foster customer loyalty?” she muttered to herself.

James went to Hartman’s, just as he did three times a week, to pick up some fruit and olives, and with this obeisance to healthy eating done, he went to the snack aisle for some potato chips, which he ate on the way home. They would be enjoying a light dinner of pasta salad, which had been chilled in the fridge, because they were both going to David’s garden party later that night; he and his wife Pia had reputations as good hosts, and even though they had a son, they had not slowed down, and he was sure they would surpass themselves as usual with the salty foccacia that was Pia’s specialty; he always ended up having four or five slices of that.

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The Third Part of Chapter 4: Merging and Reawakening

On the following Tuesday, James was busy at work when Courtney entered his office; James liked Courtney, who was always energetic, composed, and enthusiastic about everything to do with Valoix Consulting. Maurice liked her too, for the same reasons.

“Hi Jim. So, listen, I have the details of the account from that person, what’s-her-name, from Venneris. Oh, her name’s Eileen; I almost forgot. They seem to be doing fairly well, but I think they could diversify into printer cartridge paper. At the rate we’re going, we shall need plenty of cartridge paper,”

“It would also help if they stopped giving out free spools of newsprint to the local college; I know newsprint is cheap, but it can’t be that cheap, I mean, come on.”

“Yes, I also told them that. You know the details?”

“Yes, I received the e-mail, and it seems fairly straightforward. Diversify into cartridge paper and letterhead, there’s really not much to it in terms of economic advice, though on the technical side, I imagine it would be a little more difficult, and I ran a cost-analysis, and apparently, it will take a million dollars for them to convert some space in their mill to the production of cartridge paper. I don’t know, they might also look into egg cartons,”

“Perhaps someone should pay her a visit?” wondered James aloud, idly.

“Go to Newfoundland?”

“I’m sure a holiday there would be nice; it’s cool in the summer,” said James. He had wanted to go to Newfoundland for a while; for him, it was a mystical land, untamed with many unpopulated places, in addition to its lovely towns and villages. His view of the province owed plenty to the Newfoundland government’s concerted marketing campaign, and thus James thought of Newfoundland as a place filled with vivid colours, happy people, and lush vegetation. Whether this impression was accurate remained to be seen.

“So, how’s Clarissa?”

In surprise, James said, “Oh, it’s going very well, actually. You know the hiking trip we’re going on as a company fling just after Canada Day? Clarissa’s coming.”

“Really? That sounds exciting; I asked my boyfriend if he wanted to come, but he didn’t seem too interested. It’s mostly work that gets him excited, but me, I prefer a balance; the work week can only be so long before it completely takes over your life.” She understood the workweek to have a limit of sixty hours; Maurice, however, was of a different mindset, as everyone at the firm knew; his employees knew him for working over 100 hours in a week, being of an entrepreneurial mindset. He exalted hard, long hours at the office, and believed that this made him more macho. His wife disagreed with this sentiment, however, and everyone could guess that this was one of the reasons behind the divorce, which had just occurred; whenever Maurice was not talking about business, he was griping about Rose, who had taken custody of their youngest son.

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The Second Part of Chapter 4: Merging and Reawakening

At lunch, Vilia, Nicolas and Clarissa went to the food court in the adjoining mall. Clarissa had her own lunch, and purchased only some freshly squeezed juice. Nicolas had some chicken wings from a stand, while Vilia had poutine.

“Always the healthy eater,” noted Vilia, as she watched Clarissa eat her whole-wheat sandwich with turkey, cheese and spicy pepper rings.

“Healthy eating’s important, you know,” said Clarissa.

“Did you ever, you know, live a little? This poutine is tasty and rich, you know; perhaps you’d like to try some?”

“I’ve heard bad things about the amount of salt that’s in the gravy,” said Clarissa.

“So? It’s not like I’m going to get high blood pressure; I only do this every two weeks,”

“I heard that about salt too,” said Nicolas. “They just like to use it as a cheap flavouring. By the way, what does your boyfriend like to eat?”

“Salty snacks. I don’t see anything wrong with it,” said Clarissa. Nick raised his eyebrows.

“He is your boyfriend, though; you aren’t going to mould him in your image, starting with the gruelling workout regime?”

“I don’t see any need for a regimen; as long as he’s healthy and smart, I’ll take him,”

“Maddie tried to mould me,” said Nick. “It’s always, ‘you need to exercise more’, or ‘ne mange pas les croustilles’.”

“Yvon complains about that a lot,” said Clarissa. “You ought to hear him sometimes; just yesterday, he came into my office, and I thought he was going to talk about funding a program, but he just talked about how his wife was pushing him to give up chocolate mousse; I would never go that far,”

“You mean for yourself?”

“No, I mean for Jim.”

“You let him eat whatever he wants? Good woman; that’s exactly what I would want in a wife, by which I mean, not nitpicking over my eating habits,” said Nick. “I prefer not to worry about heart attacks and other results of high blood pressure and cholesterol, especially when the risk is low,”

“Thank you,” said Clarissa. “I mean, the risk might be higher for other people––I have heard of some people keeling over just out of the blue––but fortunately, that’s rare. Oh, and have I told you? I moved in with him. Now, instead of catching the bus at Hurdman, I’m walking to work,”

“Is that out of a desire to stay thin?”

“Actually, it’s because I don’t want to drive, and bus service isn’t that good downtown. It’s either half an hour walking, or twenty-five minutes on a bus. That’s how bad it is,”


When James arrived home that evening, he found Clarissa already there, cooking a dinner. “Thanks honey, I’ll wash up when we’re done,” he said. Thus, the relationship changed from courting to a more domestic one, although the couple still went on frequent dates; living together would also be cheaper than the two of them living separately, considering the lower costs of living, as far as housing and food were concerned.


The relationship progressed such that James and Clarissa did their grocery shopping together. On their first joint trip to Hartman’s, the nearest grocery store, they met Belinda, who knew the couple through their mutual friend, Eunice. Neither of them knew Belinda particularly well, but both of them knew her reputation for gossip.

“Hello, don’t you two look simply lovely,” said Belinda upon seeing them.

“You look nice too, Bela,” replied Clarissa. This was not entirely true, thought James; her slightly wavy hair was dishevelled, and looked like she had not washed it in a couple of days. She was also slightly sweaty, which was an effect that alcohol had on people during heat waves such as the one they were currently experiencing. Indeed, it seemed that it was summer immediately after the last vestiges of snow had melted; there was hardly any spring of which to speak.

“We’re just going to Hartman’s,” said James. “We need to stock up on vegetables, you know,”

Vegetables like potatoes that I can cut up and fry, thought he.

“I just told Jeannine how lovely you look together, and that you will be quite the item in the summer. I hope this impression is true,” said Belinda.

“Oh, it’s very true,” said James.

The interrogation went on in this vein for several minutes, covering everything Belinda could think of; towards the end, James and Clarissa were becoming slightly evasive in their answers; neither of them were willing to reveal every single personal detail.

“Well, see you around,”

“See you,”

“What do you think of her?” asked Clarissa.

“She seems rather prying. Is it really necessary for her to know every last detail of our lives?”

“For her, yes; she thrives on gossip like you and I thrive on bread and water.”

“Do you think we should um…try to minimise our contact with her?”

“She lives on Lyon Street, you know,” said Clarissa. “If she wants to come over from time to time to discuss the neighbours or whatever, I don’t see any reason to stop her, provided she doesn’t get too out of hand. She also has a reputation when it comes to the bottle; she likes anything alcoholic, as long as it tastes good, which is why I could never understand her obsession with wine. I hate the stuff; I think it tastes horrid.”

Belinda actually drank substantial amounts of wine, and considered herself a connoisseur; she had a substantial wine rack in her basement that dated back to her marriage to Kale, who was now divorced from her.

James opinion of Belinda declined steadily over the next few weeks, just as he and Clarissa grew more and more attached. Both of them were busy, but they could still spend their evenings together.

On one such evening, the two were discussing a seasonal topic: their mothers.

“Mom can seem overbearing at times,” said Clarissa.

“How so?”

“She seems to have her own suggestions for how everything in my life should go; it’s all done out of love of course,”

“Is she one of those who put the ‘mother’ in smother?”

“I wouldn’t say she’s smothering me; she let me go my own way when I turned twenty; she thought that by then, the mothering duties insofar as guiding her children had run its course,”

“Mom was not so much like that; she was much more hands-off with me; she would always say ‘boys will be boys’, and leave it at that,”

“Was she like that with Kate?”

“Not so much; with Kate, she was more like your mother,”

“I wonder why mothers would treat their sons one way and their daughters another,” said James.

“I think you’re pulling too broad a conclusion from too small a sample size; we are only talking about two mother-child relationships here,”

“I heard Eunice’s mom would let her do whatever she wanted,”

“Really? I heard that she was simply skilled at slipping through her mother’s fingers and flouting all the rules; she was quite the party girl in university,” said Clarissa.

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The First Part of Chapter 4: Merging and Reawakening

The week following Easter found both James and Clarissa in high spirits. Maurice noted that quality in James, even though he had always been a chipper man, and Vilia, Nicolas and Yvon noted the same quality in Clarissa. Yvon started referring to her as “Miss Head-in-the-Clouds,” or its French equivalent.

He commented, “Là va Mademoiselle Tête-dans-le-Ciel,”

“No, no, Yvon, I’m just as much grounded on the earth, just like you are,” said she after he made that comment when she passed by his office on her way to a meeting.

“She must be in paradise,” he said to himself; he, on the other hand, was beginning to grow bored of his married life; only his teenagers provided him excitement.

Clarissa moved in with James on the weekend following Easter. Her rental apartment was in the eastern suburbs, which meant that moving into James’s house would be a step up for Clarissa, so it was essentially a no-brainer: Clarissa should move in with James, not the other way around. Although James had owned his house for five years, his workweek was fifty hours, he was not particularly sociable, and therefore knew only a few of his neighbours, which amounted to only seven people, which was hardly anybody for such a densely populated area. It was a cold, crisp day in April, and last year’s detritus lay soggy on the ground, compressed under the weight of the heavy mantle of snow that had been present since November. There was also five centimetres of fresh snow that had fallen the previous evening, which was now melting, and creating large, slushy puddles. For this reason, Clarissa hurried in and out of her car and the moving van she had rented, which, considering she was renting her apartment, thankfully had plenty of spare room: she brought a mirror, her clothes, books, dresser, clothing, and various odds and ends. It was over in an hour, and the process had now moved to the spare bedroom that James had been using as an extra lounge. They had agreed to sleep in separate rooms for a month, and then get more intimate. This was not so much principle as circumstance: James did not have a double bed, and in an earlier discussion, Clarissa said she wanted to go further than just a double bed and get a queen-size bed.

“You know, I think we can buy a queen bed in three weeks or so; we’ll go to Ikea or somewhere and look for something on the first of May,” said James.

“We’re going shopping? This is obviously a sign of progress in our relationship. Come here, you.” They kissed.

“I think there are several other things we need to do…” said James vaguely, while pondering just what they had to buy: they needed new bookshelves, bed sheets, fresh herbs to put on his steaks and chickens, perhaps a carpet, and all manner of other things; he had not entirely grown out of his old buy-nearly-everything-you-see persona. Some features of his house had obvious qualities of a man-cave, including pictures of women in bikinis hung on the walls, a decided paucity of vegetables in the crisper, and clothes lying on the floor. James thought that it was the opinion of most women that par-terres should be made of plants arranged in an artistic pattern in a garden, not shirts and old socks laying at random on the bed and floor.

“Now that there’s a woman living in the house––I’m not just visiting anymore––the clothes lying on the ground are going to have to go.”

“There’s an easy concession. Will you promise to keep the bathtub drain free of hairs? I haven’t had that problem, as nobody with long hair has lived here before.”

“You know, I’ve just realised how many friends live nearby; there are Eunice and Mario, who live just down the street, Laura lives a few blocks away, and I believe Kevin’s house is on the other side of Dundonald Park.”

“Yes, it’s so wonderful knowing so many people in the neighbourhood already; I haven’t been too quick in getting to meet people; I’m more a work kind of guy and this home has essentially been a bedroom.”

“It’s been a similar situation with my apartment on the east side of the river; now we have each other; I expect this will become a real home. You know something else about this house? I can walk to work from here; it should take about half an hour,”

“I can’t do that, but I walk to the grocery store all the time, and since I take the bus to work and my friends either live close by or come to see me rather than the other way around, I rarely use my car; the last time I drove it was in mid-March on a trip to Cornwall.”

Moving into James’s house on McLeod Street improved Clarissa’s mood significantly; she did not explicitly tell James what the main factor was; he simply assumed it was a combination of living in a nice old house, being able to walk to work, not having to worry about the busses being stuck somewhere, or having more room, but he could tell she was happy, and he suspected that he wasn’t alone in this observation; her co-workers would notice, the neighbours who knew her would notice, and her parents would notice the perk in her voice during phone calls, which he knew she made at least once a week.


During the morning coffee break on Friday at 10:15, Vilia was talking to Nicolas while they sat at a small table among the tropical plants in the atrium of their office building; it was not anything important, but simply gossip.

“Clarissa’s looking unusually happy lately,” said Vilia.

“Have you heard? She’s dating someone who made a presentation here back in February.”

“That’s really nice for her,” Vilia had always admired Clarissa’s work ethic, and was really impressed: she was engaged, always smiling, and never batted an eyelid at anything, and contrary to many others in the office, never showed any signs of fatigue, even though she frequently put in extra hours and the directors noted her very high productivity. “Was he the really tall middle-aged man?”

“No, his name’s Maurice. She’s dating the other guy, James.”

“I would have thought that she would pick someone better looking; there’s nothing particularly special or eye-catching about him; he wasn’t too tall, and he seemed to have gone a bit to seed.”

“I don’t think she picked him for looks; if she did, that would severely limit the dating pool.”

Talking about Clarissa like this seems awkward, thought Nicolas; fortunately, in the atrium nobody pays too much attention to us. It was then that Clarissa came down the escalator for her morning coffee. Vilia and Nicolas both heard her approach first due to her pumps.

“Good morning, Nick, Vilia,” she said.

“Good morning, Clarissa,” said Vilia. Nicolas nodded. Their conversation turned to the labour market until Clarissa went back up the escalator, coffee in hand. Nicolas noted that she was looking unusually trim lately, but perhaps that was an effect of her smiling all the time.

“Do you find it rather odd that she always has a grin plastered to her face?”

“That would be her thinking of her beloved; I bet they’re quite enamoured of each other: couples become that way in that phase of their relationship,”

When Vilia arrived back at her desk, she went back to her original work, which was composing a long email for the head of a Service Canada Branch in Vancouver; it was on policy and the details of new programs, and she found the details too boring to discuss with someone who was not a co-worker, and everyone in the office knew about it anyways, so there was not any point in discussing it with them, either.


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The Second Part of Chapter 3: Easter

Their arrival at James’s parents’ house saw them greeted with open and welcoming arms.

“Jimmy, how are you? You should come over more often––you live so close, after all.”

“I call you often enough––”

“And you must be Clarissa. I’ve heard a lot about you, of course.”

“Jim told you?”

“No, I just heard it from Jim on Wednesday. Eunice told me in March.”

“Oh,”

Then, Clarissa met James’s sister, Katherine; the brother and sister looked very much alike, except that Katherine was female; Katherine smiled at Clarissa, and greeted her cordially.

“Well, let’s go in then. Ryan’s roasting a duck, and it should be out of the oven by six.”

James asked, “Is there any bread?” Patricia liked to make bread, and her favourite was foccacia, which she had often.

“Yes, Jimmy, there’s bread,”

“It’s a very nice house you have, Mrs. Miller,”

“Thank you, Clarissa. You can just call me Pat, or Patty,”

“I have an apartment myself; it’s nowhere near as nice as this. It’s in one of those ugly towers built in the sixties.”

James agreed; there was something decidedly lacking in taste in that era. The four sat down in the living room in the front, in which there was a radio tuned to the CBC, two couches, and a shelf filled with books. The walls were a shade of brown that Ryan said reminded him of Prince Edward Island. A couple of books were out of place on a small coffee table in the centre of the room. James looked at the titles: Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and The Fire Dwellers by Margaret Laurence.

“It’s such a charming living room,” remarked Clarissa as she looked around.

“You seem like such a happy couple; do you see a future together?” asked Patricia.

“Possibly; we’re talking about moving in sometime,”

“I hope that’s not just idle talk; Jimmy has a very nice house, a very big house, and it can get lonesome for him sometimes.”

“Mom, I’m not lonely; were that the case, I would be visiting you more often.”

“Of course, honey. I was just getting worried, what with you single so long––it’s been a few years now––you might turn into one of those weird old men people talked to behind their backs. You never met anyone since your Toronto years until now,”

“I don’t think there’s any risk of that happening,” said James.

We have a thing going on, Clarissa and I, he thought.

“So, what type of person would you say you are, Clarissa? Are you happy-go-lucky? You seem simply radiant and so exuberant,” rather like Mrs. Dalloway, thought Patricia.

Clarissa laughed. “I don’t know about all the time, but right now, you might say that, but With Jim, well, you know,”

“You have visited his house often, of course; I know that because Eunice told me,”

“Did she tell you everything?” Patricia ignored James’s question.

“Jim doesn’t come to my place quite that often; it’s much smaller than his house.”

“It’s still a nice apartment,” said James.

“It’s small,”

“It’s tastefully decorated, and much more so than my place; there’s so much room that parts of it feel empty.”

“Are you referring to the man-cave parts?”

“I’m referring to the room in the back specifically; there’s just a bookshelf and a chair in there. I’ll admit I’m not a very big spender; shopping isn’t exactly my hobby,”

“That wasn’t always the case,” interjected Patricia.

“I remember you buying all those things,” added Katherine.

“The car,” remembered Patricia.

“The television,” put in Ryan.

“The computer,” said Katherine.

“The second, fancier computer,” said Ryan.

“That elaborate surround sound stereo system,” added Patricia.

“Let’s not forget the house,” Katherine said with finality.

“Such are the joys of youth: the overspending, magnanimous, youth,”

“I only finished paying off the car last year, and there’s still the mortgage,” said James.

“I can also remember you endlessly snacking on chips, chocolate and ice-cream in your teenage years,”

“I loved those teenage years,”

“I wonder how much all those goodies cost?”

“I think that will be one of life’s eternal mysteries,”

The conversation continued in this manner as the rich smell of roasting duck permeated their nostrils.

Ryan said, “What do you think of the radio programme?” He was referring to the phone-in show hosted by Daniel-Matthew Night-Haig; the present topic of discussion on that show was unemployment, and a young person was talking.

“I think there’s a bias against young people in the hiring process; the signs are obvious,” he was saying. “You can see it every time you see in ad or hear someone say, ‘experience preferred.’ I once tried to get an employer to explain to me why they wanted someone with experience, and I found their response evasive,”

“Yes, that is a problem that a lot of people encounter,” said Night-Haig.

“What do you think of that?” asked Ryan.

James answered, “I think we need to encourage employers to make an effort to assume more training costs. That’s what it is, really; people don’t want to have to pay the expenses of training people, so they want people who are experienced and therefore already trained.”

Patricia remembered at five-thirty that she had to put her brioche in the oven and went into the kitchen.

“The smell is very nice; it’s making me hungry,” said Clarissa.

“Good; it promises to be very nice dinner,” said Ryan. He went over a mental checklist, ensuring he had done everything that was required: he had pierced the skin with a fork, he had rubbed the inside with salt, he had stuffed the bird, put water in the base of the dish to prevent a nasty cleaning job later, and he had seasoned the outside of the bird. He just now recalled something that he had forgotten to do.

“Pat? Could you put the giblets in with the duck?”

“Sure thing,”

“Oh, Katie, I almost forgot to ask you: how’s teaching lately?”

“It’s all right; I told you the classes are nice and quiet, and my grade twelve chemistry class is getting started on a hard unit right now.”

“I saw on Ratemyteacher.com that some of your students find you less than adequate,” said Ryan.

“I think the students who post on that site are the dregs of the class.” Katherine knew that what she said was disingenuous; it was simply that she did not really like her students that much, and did not treat them with the respect they deserved. This may have been due to her rocky relationship with her ex-husband; now, she had something of a bias towards most men, with the exception of her older brother and her father. Wishing to change the subject, she said, “are they still dealing crack on the corner over there?” She was referring to the street corner on the southeast side of the park, on the other side of Lyon; she thought that the customer base for this particular hotspot was composed of the disreputable-looking women who lived a few doors down in what she suspected was a halfway house.

“Are they still dealing crack on the corner over there?” She was referring to the street corner on the southeast side of the park, on the other side of Lyon; she thought that the customer base for this particular hotspot was composed of the disreputable-looking women who lived a few doors down in what she suspected was a halfway house.

“I think now that hotspot is so widely known, the police are keeping a closer eye on it. We can see a police officer patrolling the park nearly all the time, so if you wanted to buy some, you’re out of luck, my dear,”

James and Clarissa laughed at this joke; Katherine did not.

“Always the kidder. What I’ve wanted to know all these years is: why you chose to move into the city at a time when so many people were fleeing,”

“It’s a bit of defiance, I guess; I’ve always been contrarian, both you and Jimmy know that.” The question posed by Katherine had always had its implicit meaning; she would have preferred a suburban childhood, such as the ones relentlessly portrayed in the media as good and wholesome; the main source of Ryan’s objections to the suburbs was the car: he usually drove five times a year, and that was quite enough. Here, on the other hand, work, shopping, entertainment and friends were all within a fifteen-minute walk; he enjoyed being able to, on a whim, decide to visit his friends or his son, or go to the grocery store, all without needing a car. He also preferred not to abandon the inner city when so many others had; it made him, in his own mind at least, a reverse pioneer.

Dinner was delicious, as always, and the couple, after exchanging pleasantries, went home.

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The First Part of Chapter 3: Easter

At Easter, James’s relationship with Clarissa reached a significant stage: he was about to introduce her to his parents. His relationship with both of them was quite warm and loving, and was ideally what every parent-child relationship should be; it was a bit uninteresting, perhaps, and resembled something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, but it was predictable, and that was what James preferred. The predictability even extended to their jobs in the public sector, which tended to be more stable than the private sector. His father seemed to take on a variety of roles in life, in reflection of his multiple careers; a journalist at the CBC was merely his latest job, and before he had been a university lecturer, proprietor of a bookstore, and a semi-professional activist, advocating on behalf of sundry causes. They had discussed her introduction to his family one night at Clarissa’s apartment, and he called his parents’ house on the Wednesday before Easter.

“Hello?”

“Hi mom,” he said.

“Oh hi Jimmy, how are you doing?”

“I’m doing great, actually; I don’t suppose I told you about Clarissa,”

“Your new girlfriend? Eunice told me, and Kevin confirmed it. Gossip travels, you know; we only live a few blocks apart.”

“I wanted to tell you that I’m bringing her over for Easter,”

“We’ll be glad to welcome her into our home,” said Patricia.

“Thank you mom,” said James.

After he hung up the phone, he thought that it had gone well: on Easter Monday, they agreed that James and Clarissa would be visiting his parents’ house. He had always thought of that house, which he had first seen when he was eleven, as a cozy place, with its short picket fence in the front, shaded by a large maple, and decorated within with many exposed beams, dried flowers and carved objects.

On the other end of the line, Patricia looked out of the front window, which afforded a nice view of Dundonald Park, and thought: Jimmy has a girlfriend! It was not as if Clarissa were the first, as he had had plenty of girlfriends from high school and his university days, but she was excited all the same. She continued to look at the park, in happy anticipation of the time when the trees would have leaves, the snow, which was now forming slushy puddles, would be gone from the ground, the kids would be playing and Somerset Avenue on the opposite side of the park would be partially obscured by the foliage. She knew from Eunice that James was quite lucky this time; Eunice had described Clarissa as a tall woman, poised and elegant, and very pretty. In addition to spring, this was one more thing to anticipate happily. She only wished the same thing could be said of her daughter Katherine, who had divorced her husband a few years ago and had not looked back; she was still single, which bothered Patricia, who had started nudging her to meet other people, and had even gone so far as to attempt to set her up once or twice with some of her co-workers at the library; failing that, her daughter was a teacher, and there would always be a few eligible bachelors there. Ryan arrived home at five, and she told him about Clarissa. His reaction was quite happy. “It would be excellent to have Clarissa over for dinner on Monday. I’ll tell Kate.” Ryan talked to Katherine roughly once a month, slightly more so in the summer, and slightly less so in the winter. “Have you heard about Ollie?”

“The one with the hypertension?”

“Yeah, that one. He had a heart attack.”

“Oh dear, really?”

“He’s fine now, though. He’s on a low salt diet.”

“Well, that’s good for him,” said Patricia, who turned to her seed collection: things needed to be planted soon, considering that the last vestiges of winter were going, albeit with a seeming reluctance.

Easter arrived, and as happens in spring, there was a sudden snowstorm on Good Friday. Patricia grumbled as she shovelled the surprisingly powdery snow off the driveway and onto the dirty grey snow banks. The amount of snow gave her no bother, as it only came up to just above the ankles. It was more the fact that she had felt sufficiently warm just on Wednesday to go outside wearing her flower print skirt and set up the parasol on the back patio, and was planning to do some gardening on Saturday.

On Monday the weather was sufficiently warm to melt Friday’s snow. James was at home, relaxing with a book, which was what he did best; this time, however, it was to keep his cool in anticipation of Clarissa’s meeting with his parents. She had said she would be back from Toronto shortly after two, and would be coming to his house at three thirty. It was three o’clock at that moment. James rose from the chair in his living room and fetched a bag of potato chips from the kitchen; they were dill pickle. He like many men, considered himself a connoisseur of potatoes in all of their forms: fries, chips, mashed, cooked into soups, scalloped, barbecued, baked and boiled. There seemed to be a never-ending variety of potato recipes, as Kevin, who he had had over on Saturday, impressed upon him during a conversation about Keynesian stimuli, and how easy it was to eat too much of them. He reflected on his condition at that moment; in his opinion, he was doing quite well; he had a girlfriend, his income was decent, and his expenses, the largest portion of which was the mortgage he had paid on his house, were small; such were the fleeting virtues of being young and not tied down with all sorts of commitments, he thought.

The appointed time arrived, and James got out of his armchair and looked down the street. A tall feminine figure had just come into view down the street. He could recognise Clarissa from a distance, and there was no mistaking: this was Clarissa. As she approached the front walk, he stepped out the door to greet her.

“Hi Jim,” she said brightly. “Nice house,” she added. “It looks like it’s from the Edwardian era,”

“Clarissa, you look splendid,” said James.

She walked up the front steps and kissed him.

“The plan is to walk to mom and dad’s place; it’s on MacLaren Street and faces the south side of Dundonald Park.”

“That will be nice.” They then set off on the leisurely stroll to meet James’s parents; at this time, there were no leaves in the trees, and the winter had taken its toll on the ground cover, reducing it to a few sticks, the lawns lay flat, and so the earth was bare for all to see. Given that the shrubbery was non-existent or brown, their attention was drawn to the architecture of the neighbourhood, which, given that it was in the inner city and built in the Victorian era, was beautiful and covered in many places with the delicate traces of naked ivy vines. The buildings came in a variety of styles; some were unchanged from their construction over a century before, others had newer additions in various places, while still others were new. The architecture visible along the eight-minute walk made the trip almost as worthwhile as the destination, and it was for this reason that the neighbourhood was so desirable for so many people. James had made a hefty down payment on his house, and there were nicer and therefore more expensive houses on the street.

Given that it was a holiday, they did not pass very many people on the street, and there were very few cars on the road; Gladstone Street was nearly empty. On the way to the house, Christine waved at them from her front porch; she was putting some dried branches in a vase for decoration, as the weather did not permit any showy plants outside just yet. They waved back. Christine had moved in to that house on March first, and was thus just getting to know the neighbourhood. Eunice had introduced her to her husband, James and various other neighbours, including Belinda, David and his wife Pia in an effort to integrate her into the community; it was clear that Eunice had taken a liking to Christine.

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The Third Part of Chapter 2: They Find Out

When two people start dating, it is impossible to keep it a secret; hence, the neighbours started noticing James with Clarissa. One such neighbour was Eunice, who knew both of them individually, James because he lived down the street and Clarissa because they went to university together, but she only found out that they were dating on the vernal equinox. One month into a relationship was admittedly rather late for someone so close to both of them to be fining out about it, but Eunice had been keeping busy at her convenience store.

“Small world!” she exclaimed when she found out by seeing Clarissa and James holding hands.

“Eunice! It’s so nice to see you after so long,” said Clarissa upon seeing her.

Eunice went home to tell her husband, Mario, the good news.

“It’s a very small world,” she said by way of introducing the subject.

“Well, if you know Henry personally, then I’m quite frankly not that interested; he doesn’t sound like a very nice person. I mean, if you say you heard from Cora that he’s distracted and a bully and obstreperous and whatever, then why are you telling me?” Mario was referring to the previous conversation they had, which was about a man they knew through Cora, a friend from Eunice’s running club, who they had never met in person and thus had only her impression of him. Eunice liked running, and did it whenever she could, just as much for the gossip, talk about healthy eating and good living, as for the exercise.

“I didn’t mean that,” said Eunice. Mario was referring to their previous conversation when she was telling him about what kind of man not to be. “You know Clarissa, from university? She’s dating Jim who lives down the street.”

“Wonderful, Jim must be really happy right now.”

“They’re talking about moving in, and they’ve only been going out for a month and a half.”

“That’s very good for them, now I have to go shovel the driveway. Fifteen centimetres of wet snow is really annoying.” Mario did not share Eunice’s interest in gossip, and while he thought the idea of James and Clarissa dating very nice, he was not that excited about being aware; he would have found out one way or another, and that Eunice told him in and of itself did not matter very much. His work mattered much more to him than his wife’s mundane gossip, both in terms of time commitment and importance, as he managed a Food Basics that was very busy from the time it opened until late at night. It was common for him to see his wife for only six hours of the week while they were both awake. Although fifteen centimetres of snow was a bother, as he told his wife, it was not this particular snow fall that bothered him, or any other; it was all of them together, and while he would not have minded getting some light exercise––shovelling a porch, a six metre driveway and the small walkway out front was not hard work––the fact that he had to do this chore so often was grating on the nerves, and made him long for the sight of snowdrops and crocuses. This particular shovelling, like the others, was still good for clearing his mind of other mundane worries, such as one about which Eunice kept nagging him: children. She wanted children, and he kept saying that perhaps a little delay was good. One year into their marriage, kids were still far from their mind, if not their parents’, two years in, Eunice was idly wondering, but by four years, she was getting impatient, as was her mother, Katelin. Now, however, all other concerns left his mind as he held the shovel and threw the snow off the porch: push, and...there, now the snow bank is slightly bigger, which only today he could see over for the first time since Christmas. Looking down the street, he could see some houses whose owners had not been busy shovelling, while others had done their duty; he could see that James had been dutiful in shovelling his front walk.

Eunice would be sure to tell his parents the next time she saw them, and by that, she specifically meant James’s mother, Patricia. His father, even though he was the host of a radio program, took a much more neutral attitude to gossip, unlike herself, and still more unlike her friend from a few blocks north, Belinda; Belinda obsessively listened to everything on the grapevine, and passed as much information along as she could, or wanted; Eunice put it down to a feminine compulsion to gossip, and she routinely made excuses for this behaviour to her husband, whose idle talk only went so far as reports that Food Basics was doing well.

The next day, she went through the melting snow and the newly bare sidewalks to do charity work at a women’s shelter; on her way, she stopped by Ryan and Patricia’s house to tell them the news, which they took very well.

“How wonderful for Jimmy,” Patricia said.

“I hope we see his girlfriend at Easter,” said Ryan; this hope bore out, and he saw his wish fulfilled. Since Eunice knew, it would be inevitable that the whole social circle would know, because Eunice would tell everyone up and down the street, and Belinda would catch wind of it, by which point it would quickly become near universal knowledge. Such was a virtuous feature of the gossip: when one knew, everyone else would know before long; Ryan also recognised that gossip had a dark side, which resulted from rumour-mongering, factual errors and people simply telling beautiful fictitious stories. This story about his son, however, had the ring of truth about it. Certainly, people would like their stories to be true, but this was not always the case; given his job, he had become uncomfortably aware of this long ago; he was also perfectly well aware that his role in life had evolved from the ancient role of town crier––in a sense, the official gossip.

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The Second Part of Chapter 2: They Find Out

Margaret had just finished a busy day at the publishing house where she had worked for a while; it had been her career during the time when people of her generation were considering early retirement; she had never planned for retirement, and simply planned to quit when she felt tired, and her children, Jacob, Mary and Clarissa were happy enough with the arrangement. This particular day was tiring, given that she had to read two manuscripts, both of which were moderately good; she simply had to make a decision as to which one to publish; when she arrived home, she preferred to leave work troubles at work, and in the attempt to do so, started on dinner. She had just retrieved some carrots from the fridge when the phone rang; she picked it up.

“Hello?”

Margaret could hear Clarissa’s voice. “Hi mom, guess what? I finally found a boyfriend!”

“That’s wonderful dear,” replied Margaret. Clarissa was the last in a family with three children to find a boyfriend, and was the latest in life to do so; Clarissa was in her thirties, while her brother and sister had both married in their twenties. Perhaps it had something to do with her being the youngest child, or that she was living far from home, while the other two were no more than an hour’s drive away.

“What’s he like?”

“Well, he’s an economist, like me, and he’s with an economic consulting firm; they do business with quite a lot of clients,”

“So, you met through work? That sounds very nice,” said Margaret, assuming that was the case. “Am I ever going to meet him?”

“I don’t know; both of us are always very busy,” she replied.

I hope this ends in marriage, thought Margaret.

“What was that? I heard you mumbling,”

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking to myself of what to plant in the garden this year, as Hyram already has some bulbs on the go in the basement, and there’s just the question of what seeds to put in the ground. Let’s see, there’re lettuces, some legumes, squash, carrots, and all sorts of other things. Have you got anything growing?”

“No; north-facing apartments aren’t all that good for growing plants.”

“That’s too bad. What about your boyfriend?”

“Oh yes, he has a nice three-storey house downtown, and there’s a small garden. It’s the winter, though, so I have yet to see it in bloom.”

“I’m quite looking forward to spring; the snow has almost melted here, and I can see buds on all the trees.” There was something not so appealing about the advent of spring: in the light of the evening, she could see that the mild weather had laid the earth bare in all its inglorious detail and the deposits of winter were there for all to see, without the concealing mantle that afforded everyone the illusion of a neat front yard. She could see several deposits made by neighbours’ dogs on their own front yard, which in contrast to its lush summer colouring, was an unsightly shade of ochre in some places, yellow in others, and interspersed with patchy brown. This ugliness heralded the start of lawn work season, which she relished because she could sit back, relax, and watch Hyram do the work.

“That hasn’t happened yet where I live,” said Clarissa. Well, it’s been nice talking to you. Oh, and one thing I meant to tell you is that, um, for Easter, could you pick me up at Finch? I can take the subway from Union Station; you don’t have to drive me from there,”

“Very well, Clarie. I look forward to seeing you again.”

Margaret hung up the phone. She was happy for Clarissa, and for herself; perhaps she would get lucky, eventually, and have a second grandchild. On the other hand, her boyfriend would not be over to visit for Easter.

“It was Clarissa,” she told Hyram in response to his inquiring look. “She has a boyfriend.”

“Is it serious?”

“I don’t think so; she’s not bringing him here to meet us, she told me that. They seem to have separate plans for Easter.”

“It’s very nice to hear that Clarie’s trying to find someone to marry and hopefully grow old with,”

“At least trying is something; for a while I thought she was going to do without, or maybe she was a lesbian.”

“I, on the other hand, never thought that. It seems like they’re attracted to each other’s inner qualities, or that’s Clarissa’s side of the story, anyways. That’s what happens when you meet someone through work.” That had not been the case for Margaret and Hyram; their marriage had been an elaborate machination between their respective parents, composed of many rendezvous, seemingly spontaneous but in reality carefully arranged encounters, and dates; The parents had wanted to grow closer and chose their children as a surrogate vehicle for this to happen. It was quite propitious that they had found in each other a kindred spirit, which resulted in a happy marriage and three children.

“If she’s not really planning on having us meet the man, then perhaps she’s using him as practice. I don’t think we have anything to get all excited about.”

Hyram said, “I thought ‘practice’ would have been reserved for a really good-looking man who didn’t necessarily have to meet any other qualifications.”

“Where did you get that idea from? That wasn’t the case with us,” replied Margaret.

“Well, you know, it’s what Jacob and Mary did. Remember Mary’s first boyfriend Allan and Jacob’s sweetheart, Elena? He looked like a dancer, or an athlete and she looked vaguely like someone I saw on the cover of some glossy magazine,”

“You still want them after all these years? Alice and Andrew are perfectly good spouses, and it’s too bad Allan and Elena were lacking in other areas,” said Margaret, referring to their intelligence, or lack thereof. As high school sweethearts, they were the best for that time: good-looking, without much underneath. Alice was married to their only son and Andrew was married to their eldest daughter, Mary.

“Oh no, don’t get me wrong; I was just commenting on the manoeuvrings of it all. Anyways, I forgot to ask you at dinner, how was work?”

Hyram’s reply sounded bored, and she had heard it many times before, in that age-old marital progression towards some happy boredom: “Same old, same old: it was slow today; it always seems to be that way this time of year.” The work they were referring to was his work with the Ministry of Transportation, where he was a bridge safety inspector; this was a substantial career change from his more youthful purchasing and sales jobs that he had with various companies. On the one hand, stability with the Ministry was nice, but on the other hand, it was boring and unlike sales or purchasing jobs. This was one of the hazards of having been married for so long, and Hyram thought that perhaps they were due for a vacation to an exotic part of the world. By exotic, he meant that he wanted to go somewhere completely unlike Canada; it would be exciting, unlike Canada, or an old city, unlike Toronto. So, he said to his wife, “How about a trip somewhere. We have the money, so why not?”

At his suggestion of travel, Margaret said, “Did you have any particular place in mind?” Her work was getting stressful, and she felt that she needed a break; she sat on the board of Twaddle and Twankfors, her publishing house where she had worked many years, and they had spent a mind-numbing meeting that day debating a change to the company logo, which was T&T over a silhouette of what was supposed to be a cupola representing the tower of a stately building somewhere, but everyone who saw the logo said it looked like something else altogether, which led them to wonder, “What do you guys publish anyways, erotica?” It was for this reason that she had suggested a bell tower. She had worked at the publishing house since the mid 1980s, and thus her career path was much more stable than that of her husband. This was her second career after an earlier life working in retail and writing fiction.

Hyram suggested a place where he had never travelled: “How about Russia?”

“That sounds nice; do you mean this summer?”

“Sure,”

The two carried on the conversation into the night, turning from their family to friends, politics, science, the garden, until they tired and went to bed.

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The First Part of Chapter 2: They Find Out

It was Monday morning, and there was an all-company meeting. Karim turned to James, sitting on his right beside Colleen, and asked, “How was Montréal?”

“Clarissa and I had a lovely time there,”

“That’s nice to hear,” said Maurice. Riley nodded in assent.

Without further delay, Maurice got to the point. “The ends of this meeting run thus: Septara, the computer chip maker, remember them? Anyways, Intel absorbed them, Le Chateau is lukewarm about us, and Venneris is struggling. In short, we’re losing market share. Are there any ideas? I’ve asked everyone in the office to come here today, in the boardroom, for who our next clients should be.”

The meeting, despite the urgency given the shrinking market share, was quite boring in James’s opinion, and he stared at the clock, as it slowly approached the appointed end of the meeting at 10:15. Riley said, “We should continue in our efforts to help Venneris,”

“My file,” noted James quietly. “They should diversify their product lines––and I told them as much––from simply one paper product, namely newsprint, to others, such as packaging, toothpicks, or perhaps pencils.” That was that for Venneris; the final decisions rested with Venneris executives in Corner Brook, not themselves. Riley, Karim and Courtney respectively called companies in trouble, including Magnus, which made ball bearings, Evitron, the hubcap maker, and two publishing houses. Colleen and Marcus meanwhile went over the daily news to see if they could find any companies to be concerned about, and had found the proverbial butcher, baker and candlestick maker, or that was what James had heard; his mind was still with Clarissa, and his body yearned for her too; fortunately, Courtney, sitting on his left, didn’t look down and notice. The meeting lasted an hour, which was much too long; he wanted to be back on the phone with Clarissa––no, wait––the CFO of Venneris. The meeting was at last over, and at 10:15 James went to his office and picked up the phone. He had the chief financial officer of Venneris on speed-dial number one, and he made sure he pressed that and not Clarissa’s number, which was on speed-dial number two. Within two rings, there was an answer.

“Venneris, this is Eileen O’Murphy.”

“Hello Eileen. We just got out of a meeting; anyways, we at Valoix Consulting are really passionate, as you know, and to cut matters short, we think you need to diversify.”

“Diversify?”

“Into other paper products, of course; there are all kinds of paper that we need––”

“Yes, we know, and let me tell you, we’re working on it.”

“Would you like to set up a conference call sometime so I can go through the numbers? I can run them in two days or so, and I expect they will get the same results as I have just told,”

James reflected on Venneris’s corporate image: it was squeaky clean, but not especially known for creativity, and this collective persona for that company was reflected in Venneris’s company motto, “never sin”; it was a staid logo, and good enough for survival, but not expansion, and that attitude would not hold off potential shocks.

When the day was done and James went home, which was at six, as usual, James’s thoughts turned from work and Clarissa to just Clarissa; he was obsessively and constantly thinking of her, and assumed she was doing the same. His thoughts went from various romantic moments touring the hills by bicycle, strolls along the river, much hugging and kissing, body contact, and various fantasies that cast him and Clarissa as heroes out of legend. He assumed Clarissa would tell her parents some time; he was planning to get around to it, though it kept slipping his mind; perhaps he should simply let a neighbour tell them?

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The Fifth Part of Chapter 1: Encounter

I could not agree more with that young man’s sentiments, thought James. The mention of Shakespeare had brought up the thought of Macbeth, and that lead to a thought of people in power, namely the current Prime Minister, Bruce Thomas Meach. He pondered the lead article in that day’s Globe and Mail. Helena Perari, a journalist and television personality known for making strongly moral judgments about people, and making enormous issues out of people’s genuine or supposed dishonesty, wrote it; he remembered many times when she lit into an interviewee she found to be dishonest. He remembered a quote from the highly opinionated piece: “If he really wishes to project sincerity, he actually needs to be sincere.” It was about the aforementioned Prime Minister, and it was about a brouhaha surrounding his questionable dealings in the retirement of his predecessor, Andrea Larissa Mercuria Colm. “The affair always carried a whiff of scandal,” she had written. Circumstances pointed to some arm-twisting by somebody linked to Meach; everyone had expected her to retire eventually, and people remembered her quite fondly, which meant that a few people were at least a little disconcerted. Colm was changeable, a highly adept politician and thus able to read the public’s overall mood with great skill, and commerce flourished under her. Meach, on the other hand, was a man devoid of emotion and everyone except his wife compared him to a robot. The article had quoted his wife as saying, “Well, people thought that it was time for Andrea [Colm] to retire, and my husband agrees; but I assure you he had no hand in the matter. He just happens to be her popular successor,”

“James, you’re staring, darling,”

“What? Sorry,”

“No need.” He noticed that her voice carried a faintly musical ring.

“What do you think of the Prime Minister?”

“He seems all right. There’s nothing much remarkable about his policies. You know, balancing the budget after that hyper-Keynesian splurge, keeping inflation low, promoting free trade, the stuff economists are happy about.”

“I know that, but it that could also describe Colm’s policies. What about personally?”

“I can’t really recall him smiling. He seems like such a boring technocrat.”

“I know; all our politicians seem wooden right now. You might replace Cameron Duff with a talking mannequin, and nobody would notice the difference.”

Cameron Duff was the leader of the opposition, and nobody took much notice of him except for Meach, who ridiculed him, this being the period between elections, when only the Prime Minister’s thoughts really counted for anything in politics; some people preferred that it was not that way, but James and Clarissa were not of that persuasion. James knew other people who took a very different view of Duff, and idealised him as a modern-day globetrotter, an intellectual, the satirist, the jester, and the anti-hero, all essential roles in the public sphere. One such person was Rick, a neighbour, who had said to James a few weeks previously, “God how I wish I were him,”

Some even viewed him as a saviour, an avenging angel, or a knight in shining armour; for those who viewed him as an avenging angel, it certainly helped that he liked to wear light-coloured clothes. There were also some sordid stories, which one should always take with a grain of salt, that the opposition leader had once been and still was a womaniser; those rumours raised the ire of numerous feminists. His mother, for instance, refused to call Duff by name, simply referring to the man as “him”.

James, however, simply thought of Duff as someone who one shouldn’t take too seriously.

“Speaking of hyper-Keynesian splurges, what did you think of the American stimulus package?”

“A lot of it was waste; it didn’t create any jobs––their unemployment rate only just went below ten percent, and it was too much and not enough at the same time,”

“Too many roads and not enough libraries,”

“Yes,”

The conversation continued in this vein until the bill came, which came to fifty dollars. They stayed in Montréal over the weekend, and they did typical, romantic couple things, which to them seemed magical but to others seemed soppy.

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The Fourth Part of Chapter 1: Encounter

Malcolm, Thanh Pho and Eric were three university students from Kitchener on a weekend trip to Montréal, and they had just ordered their dinners at a restaurant that, while not seedy, was well within their budgets: poutine for Malcolm, a quarter chicken for Eric and a decadent sounding sandwich for Thanh Pho. Malcolm was decidedly unconcerned with such matters as his health: he intended to enjoy himself, and anyways, poutine wasn’t a heart attack in a bowl; that could only happen after a lifetime of unhealthy overindulgence.

Thanh Pho was continuing a conversation that he and Malcolm had started outside: “You see, my passion for literature derives from my experiences, and it’s sad hearing people say that literature is irrelevant.”

Malcolm said, “But it is irrelevant, or at least its study.”

“I take it that you’re an intelligent person, so I find it disheartening that you take such an unenlightened pre-renaissance view of the arts. You see, English promotes the flow of arts, while economics promotes the flow of charts.”

“That hasn’t been my experience. For me, English class in high school promoted the flow of endless headaches.”

There was a pause as the flow of conversation from a nearby table was overheard:

“You know what I would like to do this summer, James? I want to go to Halifax,”

“Me too, Clarissa darling. I went there once as a child, and I would love to return,”

The couple stared into each other’s eyes lovingly, as the animated conversation of the young trio two tables down reached their ears. James could recall when he was their age, about ten years before, and remembered that all of his impassioned discussions were on the relative merits of the random walk model in time series forecasting; given, it was a rather arcane subject, but still afforded the opportunity for much self-deprecating humour.

Malcolm regarded the couple momentarily, wishing he could find a girlfriend.

“But you see, Mac, you’re a cold fish; in my case, the study of literature arouses my passions,” responded Thanh Pho. Eric, rather than debate the merits of studying English literature, was enjoying his chicken.

“Women arouse my passions. Anyways, I think of literature the same way that I think of dissection in biology class. It’s very interesting for those involved, but it always entailed the death of the animal. That’s what studying Fifth Business and Shakespeare did to those works for me; had I not studied them in high school, I am sure I would have appreciated Davies’ quick wit, and I would have laughed gaily all through productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Now, however, all I can think of is the theme of religiosity over materialism, or the role of Titania and Oberon as holding a mirror to more earthly love affairs. That’s what the study of literature does. It saps the soul out of otherwise vibrant works.”

“But the study of literature has taught me so many things, and I don’t think it should be used simply for entertainment, as you postulate; for instance, it has given me wit, it’s the source of culture, it promotes the flow of human creativity, it’s the way in which humans relate to each other, there’s just so much; and you denigrate it? Why? Let me understand you,”

“That’s not the case; you see, economics provides a view of the world that no other field of study could possibly explain; it illuminates those parts of human behaviour not governed by emotional attachment or sentiment; for us it is strictly rational, if only in theory. The study of literature, on the other hand, obfuscates; do you know how many standards by which teachers––who always seem to have it in for you––may judge you? I am pretty much convinced that the kind English teacher who always shows compassion to their students is confined to fiction.”

“Really? I don’t think I’ve ever found that. English has so many real-world applications. Consider journalism; while my grammar isn’t the best, I have considerable verbal flair. I expostulate to you that, well, it’s unenlightened to disparage literature, the study of literature and a literary canon; you’re missing the point; how many experiences are covered by economics? Two: buying and selling. How many experiences does literature cover? There’s the panoply, there’s everything, and I’m happy to say that I’m living out your fictions.”

“They gave you flair but not grammar? What kind of an education is that? There is still, however, the issue of all English teachers being horrible; in all my years of schooling, I have never had a good English teacher, not one; either they were too demanding and thought they were your only teacher, or they were disorganised, or they were rude, or they were horribly sexist, or all of the above,”

“Horribly sexist men?”

“No, horribly sexist women,”

“I am sorry that you have never had a good English teacher; I find you to be something of a panjandrum, someone without sight. And I think your experiences with English teachers is indicative of the many standards used, but you learn them,”

“That’s what’s wrong with it,”

“What about poetry? How do you find poetry; for me, it speaks of the soul, it’s very visceral,”

“It’s endlessly fascinating how something so visceral, so emotional and full of life can be dried up into a husk; that’s what English class did to poetry, through endless analyses, rather than simply saying ‘isn’t that beautiful’ and leaving it at that; it’s the same way that a butterfly is beautiful.”

“Well, that’s the one area where teachers always fall down; they can never seem to get it right, and I’ll admit that high school teachers don’t do it well. But do you listen to music, songs? That’s poetry. Life is poetry, poetry is song, poetry is sunshine, and poetry is all things lovely,”

“Poetry is that which gives me cramps,”

“How can you be so dismissive of the entire literary canon?”

“I have sight, and I could see, through iteration, that there is simply no such thing as a good English teacher. That’s not merely a statistical aberration, you know. That all of my English teachers have been judgmental and unkind demonstrates a self-selection bias in which the ones who believe in the milk of human kindness are weeded out by the back-scratching and shameless flattery that is necessary to do well in it. And incidentally, I’m not dismissive of the literary canon; I love to read good books; rather, I have had teachers who taught me not literature, but to hate literature.”

“Have you ever taken English?”

“No; I was dissuaded by the inferior quality of my high school teachers. You?”

“Oh, yes; for me, English is the lifeblood of my academics; my raison-d’être, if you will.”

“I have always found a similar passion with economics.”

“I didn’t know there was any passion in economics classes; in my one econ class, people hardly ever raised their voice; the professor had to invite questions. It was always so dry, and so single-track; what meaning is there in utility maximisation anyways? The only thing I remember is the professor endlessly praising the market.”

“Because you weren’t paying attention?”

“No, because it was dry and un-passionate,”

“We’re passionate in a quiet kind of way,”

“I’ve noticed that we have become the opposite of quiet; perhaps we should leave Eric to enjoy his chicken,”

“Thanks,” said Eric.

“Perhaps it is time to remind you of something that Shakespeare wrote: ‘Brevity is the soul of wit.’ Maybe you should take his advice and keep your rhetoric brief, like my economics papers.”

“What? You’re so mean!”

“…And it is quite fortunate that most papers in economics are confined to only a few pages, while I hear of papers in English that exceed twenty pages on a regular basis. I might suggest, indeed, that no analytical essay need be longer than a hundred words necessary to describe the book. If they wanted a more in depth description of a novel, they would read the novel, rather than some essay produced as a make-work project.”

“They’re not make-work projects; they promote a deeper understanding of the work; essays promote the flow of ideas, the y promote a higher understanding of what the author was really intending,”

“Sometimes they run on longer than the book upon which they are making comments, accumulating like leaves on the ground in the fall. You only need to read the work; that’s what I find so annoying about published Shakespeare: there’s the play, and then there is an introduction at the front of the book, and then comments after it; they’re longer than the play itself! They form what I like to call parasitic literature: literature that’s not fiction, or non-fiction, but commentary about fiction.”

“And your objection to it is?”

“It’s uncreative,”

“Most of economics is uncreative,”

“Most of economics serves some real-world application; textual analyses of Shakespeare do not do that,”

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