“I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you.”
“Could be great material for your novel.”
“It’s not that kind of novel,” I say, which makes me wonder what kind of novel I
By the time I leave work, shortly after five, the day has already taken its wintry turn toward night. The backed-up traffic along King a red line of brake lights as far as the horizon, the only colour against the dusk. The new restaurants that have moved into the former textile warehouses are already full of besuited diners, each of them plunking down the equivalent of my biweekly mortgage payment to taste the dainty constructions of overnight superstar chefs. And what will the Rush boys be eating this evening? One sag paneer, one butter chicken roti, medium spicy, from Gandhi take-out. Sam’s favourite.
It’s the choice of tonight’s menu, however, that leads to my seeing him.
There is the usual clog of people in Gandhi, either eating from styrofoam containers at one of its two tables, or standing close together, waiting to hear our number called and make the last dash home. The air is steamy from the bubbling pans of curry on the stove, the open pot of boiling potatoes, the breath of everyone in here. It makes the windows that look on to Queen cloud and drip with condensation. Through the glass, the bodies of passers-by merge into a single, mutating form.
My number’s up. Now that I’ve side-stepped my way to the front, claustrophobia tickles a mild panic in my chest. One of those momentary near freak-outs I have a couple times a day negotiating my way through the city. A struggle I almost always win by telling myself to hold on. Just do the next thing—
At the door, I pause to pull my gloves out of my jacket pocket. It allows me to take a last look through the clouded glass.
It is only a darkened outline among other darkened outlines. But I know it’s him.
Standing on the far side of the street. Unmoving as the other sidewalkers pass in both directions around him. Taller than any of them.
As I push the door open and the street is brought into sudden focus, William turns his back to me and joins the others heading east.
I don’t get a good look at his face. That’s not how I know. It’s his
Someone pushes against the door and I step aside, murmuring an apology. All around me the inching traffic and striding pedestrians carry on their homeward journeys, oblivious. William had no effect on them. Perhaps this is because
But these are only the rationalizations I need to get my feet moving again. Whatever I just saw, just felt, was not a product of the imagination. I’m not sure I even
It was William, watching me. Which means it was William, following me.
There is one further possibility, of course.
One day I will look back and recall that tonight, outside Gandhi with a bag of take-out in my hand, was the first step on the road to losing my mind.
Sam and I eat our dinners by candlelight, the good silver and wedding-present wine glasses brought out for the hell of it. Curry on the plate, beer and ginger ale in the crystal. We talk about things. The proto-bullies who terrorize his daycare. A kid who had an allergic reaction at the playground and whose face “got fat and red like a giant zit” before an ambulance took him away.
As for me, I do my best to cushion each of these fears. But even as I do, I wrestle with my own nightmare material. The Managing Editor’s warning shot. The picture of Carol Ulrich on the TV, the lady who looks like Tamara. The parts of her found on the beach. Which leads my private thoughts to the larger, geopolitical worries of the day. The fallen towers. Sleeper cells, alternate targets, promises of more trouble to come issued from Afghan caves. How our corner of the world is less and less safe the richer it becomes.
After a while, what Sam is speaking about and what it makes me think of seem like parts of the same observation.
Of course I don’t tell Sam about seeing William across the street on my way home. What occurs to me now is that it’s not just William I’m keeping from him. Since I started going to the meetings at Conrad White’s, I have held the Kensington Circle out of his reach. Sam wouldn’t be interested. These Tuesday evenings when Emmie stayed late and Daddy went out for some grown-up time were so harmless, so dull, they weren’t worth the breath required to explain them.
Yet now I feel the restraint, the mental work required in keeping a certain topic covered over. What goes on in the writing circle has become a secret. And as with most secrets, it is meant to protect as much as conceal.
9
I arrive early the following Tuesday. I’m hoping for a moment to speak with Conrad White on his own. I begin with the irresistible bait of flattery. At least,
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” the old man says in reply to my praise of
“The controversy.”
“That, yes,” he says, looking up at me to gauge how much of that I might know. “It would be a lie to say I wasn’t inconvenienced by my banishment. But I was thinking more of the cost of writing the thing in the first place.”
“It’s taxing. The process. I mean, it
“It needn’t be. That book spilled forth with the ease of a sin in the confessional box. Which turned out to be my mistake. I should have held something back. Saved it for later. The total revelation of our selves in one go does not make for long careers.”
Conrad White pushes the room’s chairs into their circle formation for the meeting. Even this minor task leaves him winded. I try to help him, but he waves me off the moment I step forward.
“I suppose, in a way, you must be grateful to be out of it,” I say, expecting easy agreement. Instead, the old man’s knees stiffen, as though preparing to absorb or deliver a blow.
“Out of what?”
“You know. The whole game, the schoolyard politics. Attention/neglect, praise/attack. The so-called rewards of fame.”
“You’re quite wrong. I would do anything to have it back. Just as you, I suspect, would do anything to have it.”
I’m about to object—how could he know what I want?—when he releases a gusting sigh and falls back into his chair.
“Tell me,” he says, showing a pair of nicotined incisors to signal a change of subject. “Have you found our
