The Guardians

And I would give my right arm (for what it's shakily worth) to know how that life would have turned out. Sarah could have waitressed, I could have found work on a construction crew or factory floor. We would have had our own apartment, something on the second floor over a shoe store or laundromat, the bedroom in the back.

Just the two of us (the three? the four?), getting along fine without a coach or Heather Langham or friends I felt I should be ready to die for. Without a Thurman house.

For that, go ahead. Take both arms.

[4]

My room smels of ammonia and wet dog.

I'm on the top floor—the third—of the Queen's Hotel. A brick cube whose one gesture toward grandeur, a tin cupola over the corner suite, had over the decades been painted with coats of blue and yelow and green that wouldn't stick, so that these days it appears psychedelicaly polka-dotted. Other than a couple of motels on the edge of town—the inexplicably international Swiss Cottage and Golden Gate—the Queen's is the only place to stay in Grimshaw. For this reason alone, it enjoyed a reputation for fanciness that was never deserved. Though there were sporadic efforts to renovate its rooms or hire a 'French chef' to pour sherry and cream over the menu, eventualy the Queen's always returned to its fatigued self

I open the window that looks out over Ontario Street and breathe. Grimshaw is a farming town, and in the summer and fal there is always a breeze carrying the perfume of cow manure to remind you of the fact. Not to mention the afternoon traffic of eighteen-wheelers hauling livestock to slaughter. Pig snouts and cattle tails and chicken feathers poking through the slats of passing trailers. As a kid, I felt that only the pigs knew what was coming. Watching them now, the pink nostrils flaring, I feel the same thing.

I lie down on the bed for a time. I must have, because when there's a knock at the door, that's where I am.

'Who is it?'

'Wayne Gretzky. Team Canada needs you, son.'

I open the door and Randy is standing there. And while I am almost light-headed with happiness to see him, I have, at first, an even more overwhelming thought.

Good God, you look old.

And then, after a glimpse of ourselves in the hal mirror: We both do. The indoor skin, the lines of shoulder and chin grown soft. Randy and I look as though some internal dimmer switch has been lowered, puling us into partial shadow.

What the hell happened?

The worst part is we know the answer.

The project of Being a Man had shifted with overnight suddenness, so that we awakened one morning with the hungover certainty that something was wrong. Al the things we had been working for, what we had managed to achieve, now required maintenance. For most it is a home, a family. For Randy, an acting career limited to bit parts and commercials. For me, it was Retox, the girlfriend with a bar code tattooed on her inner thigh. Whatever it was, it would prove to be too much. Some of it was bound to slip away. It had been slipping away.

But here Randy and I are together again. Overdressed and middle-aged, improbably standing in a bare room of the Queen's Hotel like actors in a Beckett play who've forgotten their lines.

You too.

That's what we see in each other's eyes, what we silently share in the pause between recognition and brotherly embrace.

I see it got you too.

'Wel,' Randy says, slapping both of my shoulders. 'We're here.'

'Yes, we goddamn are.'

'Have you been around town yet? It's like a time capsule. The world's most pointless time capsule.'

'Can't wait to see al the sights.'

'I guess Ben's the only one who could have brought us back.'

'Ben's the only one who could have got us to do a whole lot of things.'

I was referring only to harmless stuff, of how Ben could talk us into goofing around with a Ouija board or playing Dungeons & Dragons, but as soon as it was out, I heard how it could seem that I was speaking of something else.

'You know what's funny?' Randy announces finaly. 'The last time I was in the Queen's, it was with Tina Uxbridge.'

'Todd Flanagan's girlfriend?'

'It was her idea, swear to God. I liked Todd. But I liked Tina more.'

'She had his kid, didn't she? In grade twelve or something?' And then: 'Jesus, Randy. Maybe it was yours.'

'Not mine. Trust me, I checked the calendar.'

'Wait. I'm stil a little dizzy here. You slept with Tina Uxbridge? '

'Just down the hal.'

'You amaze me, Randy.'