The Third Part of Chapter 6: Cleaning and Arranging

As it happened, and as both James and Clarissa knew, they had been planning to be quite busy on Canada Day, and all of their plans came to fruition. The day started out very early, with both of them rising at seven to get ready for their biking trip; needless to say, it went very smoothly; they encountered very little traffic on the way to the reserve, and the roads in the reserve were nearly empty, which was a highly improbable event. It was also a pleasant sort of day for biking: not too warm and moderately cloudy but without the promise of rain; the whole trip went well, save one close encounter with a black bear––James saw it and mistook it for a Newfoundland dog, but it quickly went into a thicket. The trip was over at four when they pedalled to their house, and from there, they quickly packed for the Bruce Trail hike the next day, and getting there would prove much more complicated than travelling to King Mountain, because while they could both see King Mountain from their respective offices, Wiarton was five hundred kilometres away.

The train ride to Toronto also passed uneventfully, though the subsequent drive from Toronto to Wiarton went a little less smoothly; it was the most grating part of the trip, in James’s opinion, as he had always disliked travelling in cars, and this was due to a number of reasons: car travel always made him edgy, there was the unreasonable delay of car traffic, there was the pollution to deal with, and it was simply unhealthy. It was for all of these reasons that James used cars sparingly, and he thought of his car as mostly an expensive driveway “decoration” purchased for show, now having served that purpose.

After two and a half hours, they arrived in Wiarton. The hike on the Bruce Peninsula was a work party in the same sense that other businesspeople thought of golf as a work party, but this particular executive was an avid hiker and lover of nature and for this reason had arranged the trip to Wiarton. Maurice greeted them as they pulled into the parking lot beside the short path that led to the Bruce Trail. Courtney was standing beside him; they had travelled together.

“Hi Jim, oh, and you must be Clarissa! Jim told me a lot about you, of course.”

“Hello, Maurice. It’s a pleasure meeting you.”

My, James certainly made a nice catch, thought Maurice.

“I prefer to be thought of as more than just a catch,” said Clarissa.

Oops! I can't believe I just said that, thought Maurice. I had better be more careful; there had better not be any open mouth, insert foot moments.

“Was there a momentary disconnect between brain and tongue?”

“Er, yeah, that must be it. I haven’t had lunch.”

“Oh, good, we brought some soup along. It’s our mutual favourite: French onion.”

“So, um how far along are you in the relationship? And didn’t I see you in February?”

“Oh yeah, that’s when we met. Now we’re living together, and engaged; the wedding’s in August.”

“So soon? But I haven’t heard of it before!”

“We move quickly. Clarie’s just right for me.”

“­––And Jim’s right for me.”

“Well, I’m glad for both of you,”

The hike, both James and Clarissa agreed, was spectacular; the trail near Wiarton hugged the edge of the escarpment quite closely, and so afforded spectacular views of the azure waters of Georgian Bay. The flora was verdant and gave an air of adventure and mystery: ferns and mosses grew in profusion underfoot, fed by the moist air and frequent rain, which had thankfully not shown up on that particular day, and their hike was sheltered from the sun by the shade of various species of tree. In a word, it was perfect. The client was a man named Sergey Noganov, and was head of a company that sold tires; thus they were entertained throughout the hike with talk of all kinds of tires and their technical details: their tread, the grip, which ones were best for driving on muddy roads, which ones were preferred––by professionals, it was implied––for driving in the snow, among other things. Maurice, James and Clarissa discussed their specialty.

“Well, demand for machinery is picking up, which should be good for you, considering that you make tires for tractors; I hear the housing market is recovering quite nicely.”

“Not in the States, though.”

“No, not in the States; we anticipate the housing recovery there to be slower than it is here.”

“By the way, we are coming up with a list of wedding guests, and if you would like to attend, we would be delighted,” said Clarissa.

“Of course I would like to go to your wedding. Where is it?” asked Maurice.

“It’s a kilometre west of the office, and it will be on the fifteenth of August,” said James.

“The fifteenth of August; very good, that will be a Sunday,”

The rest of the hike passed uneventfully, and Maurice hoped he had a new client; new clients were important, considering how many were going out of business; that car seat maker was a particularly important client, who had generated nearly a million dollars worth of business since he had founded Valoix Consulting, and Maurice was sorry to see it go bankrupt. Maurice was always thinking of his firm, but now it was elevated; revenues were declining, and it wasn’t enough to cover his costs, and he was growing increasingly concerned.

The summer leading up to the wedding passed uneventfully for James and Clarissa; it seemed to them and all their friends that they were a run-of-the-mill, happily engaged couple, doing all the things that one would expect couples to do together, which consisted of dates, bike rides, picnics, and all sorts of things that best shared between two people. At the same time, they were incredibly busy, especially during the first half of August; Clarissa decided that their siblings and sibling’s spouses would be the bridesmaids and best men, which meant Mary, Alice, and Katherine all went to dress fittings in Toronto, while, Mary’s husband Andrew and Alice’s husband Jacob purchased new matching tuxedoes.

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