Author: David Barker

Categories
Street Photography

Flash Fiction: Elevator to the Floor of Death

A worker stands on staging, power washing the side of a building high above Bloor Street, Toronto.
Working on staging above Bloor Street, Toronto

He walked to the elevator and pressed the down button. There were the usual sounds of whooshing and clanking as the elevator cars zipped up and down their respective shafts. The bell dinged and the doors to the left car slid open. He took a single step toward the open doors when he remembered that he had meant to bring sunglasses. The weather forecast called for a sunny day and he planned to spend as much of it as possible outside. He said “Sorry” and retreated back down the hall, laughing at himself for apologizing to an elevator. Such a Canadian thing to do.

When he’d located his sunglasses, he returned to the elevators and again pressed the down button. Again, he listened to the sounds of whooshing and clanking. This time, however, he suspected the car on the left whooshed right past his floor and went on up to the penthouse. He glanced at his watch while he tapped a foot on the carpet. He reviewed a conversation he’d had the day before with a colleague from work and tried to come up with the perfect retort to the colleague’s discomfiting passive aggression. Too late, he supposed. His therapist said this sort of thing was a waste of mental and emotional energy, but he couldn’t help himself. It was the adult version of his childhood superhero fantasies. Instead of Superman, he was Perfect Comeback Guy.

The elevator took so long, he began to suspect they’d put one of the cars on service, maybe for a big delivery like a fridge or a washing machine. When at last he made it to the lobby, he looked back at the two elevators to see if they’d put one on service, but no, both were operating normally. At the end of the day, he stepped into the lobby and a group of residents was boarding the car. It looked crowded so he took the stairs instead. Although they lived on the 15th floor, he didn’t mind the climb; it would be good for him.

In the evening, after dinner, he and Elaine went down to the 4th floor terrace where they could stretch on lounge chairs and share a drink and read by the evening light. He pushed the down button and waited. Even Elaine noted that the elevator was taking longer than usual. At one point, it seemed as if the car raced right past their floor. There were clanks and rumbles and stutters and jitters. When the door opened, it did so with a screech that made them feel nervous about stepping into the car. Even so, as Elaine reminded him, she wasn’t about to use the stairs, not with her sciatica. They pushed the button for the 4th floor and Elaine joked that in predominantly Chinese buildings there was no 4th floor because it was like going to Death floor. She laughed and said they were going to the floor of Death. He scowled at his wife and wondered why she was being so cheerful.

After they had gotten themselves comfortable on a pair of lounge chairs, he confessed to Elaine that the elevator had been giving him a strange vibe. He worried that the elevator had it in for him. Elaine laughed and told him not to be silly. She asked why he couldn’t resort to alcoholism like a normal husband.

He accused Elaine of being flippant.

Elaine gathered herself in the silence then asked if he had talked to his therapist about it.

It only started today, he said. I don’t see my therapist until next week.

When it grew dark, they left the terrace and walked to the elevators. As she pushed the up button, Elaine promised to hold his hand.

He grimaced, saying it wasn’t an issue of fear. It was just something he knew. In his bones.

When they stepped into the car, Elaine pushed the button for the 15th floor but when the elevator arrived and opened its doors, they found themselves staring out into the lobby.

Do you see? Do you see what I mean? It has a mind of its own, and it doesn’t like me.

Elaine pushed the button again for the 15th floor and, as the doors closed, she wondered aloud if maybe he shouldn’t bring it a gift or perform an act of atonement for hurting its feelings.

Although her ideas seemed reasonable, he couldn’t help but think his wife was mocking him. He could feel it in his bones. She was giving him a strange vibe.

Categories
Nature

The Authentic Self

A snail crawls across wet Queen Anne's Lace in early morning light.
Snail on Queen Anne's Lace in Toronto's Evergreen Brick Works

Ron had to run some errands. There was the post office to send a parcel, then the bank to deposit donations he’d collected for a charity, then the convenience store for groceries. However, it took him longer to move from one location to the next, and when he checked his watch, he realized that at his current pace the entire morning would be gone by the time he had finished at the convenience store.

He couldn’t explain why he was moving so slowly. It felt as if there was more resistance from the sidewalk. Maybe the city had sprayed a special coat on the sidewalk to make it less slippery. With winter coming, a non-slip surface would be useful.

At the corner, where a huge billboard overlooks the parking lot, two workers were putting up a new ad. Ron paused to watch them unfurl rolled up sheets of paper then smooth them into place with glorified squeegees. The ads featured young people, physically exceptional, like everyone in the world of advertising. They smiled with gleaming perfect teeth and wore brightly coloured clothes. Each held a smart phone, some, texting, others, talking. The workers hadn’t unfurled all the words yet. Something about living your most authentic life. Sharing your true self with your true friends. Sentimental goop. Ron didn’t wait for them to finish, but moved on.

As Ron was arriving at the post office, his cousin Andrew approached from the opposite direction and seeing Ron, his stony face came alive. He shouted Ron’s name and asked how he was doing. It was an animated exchange until Andrew glanced over Ron’s shoulder to the sidewalk behind him and his lively face turned to stone again. He excused himself. Said it was great to see Ron. Would love to shoot the shit but he was late for a dental appointment.

On his way to the bank, something similar happened. He saw an old friend named Marty who was drinking coffee while sitting on the edge of a concrete planter, so he stopped to say hi. At first, Marty seemed happy to see him. All smiles and sunshine. But after looking past Ron, on down the sidewalk behind him, Marty’s expression clouded. Unlike Andrew, who tended to be contained, Marty was more inclined to let everything out.

Geez, Ronny boy, you having bladder control issues?

Christ, Marty, what a thing to ask.

Despite the insult, Ron checked the crotch area of his trousers to be sure he didn’t have any leakage and found that all was dry. He pointed emphatically at his crotch and told Marty to check it out. In turn, Marty pointed to the sidewalk behind Ron and told him to check it out. Ron turned and saw a wide line of moisture trailing from the place where he stood and extending all the way back to the intersection. The moisture gleamed in the morning light.

Christ, Marty, what’s happening to me?

Not your bladder?

No.

Ron knelt beside the trail of moisture and dabbed it with an index finger. The fluid was clear and felt viscous, like the gooey trailings of a slug. It was clear to Ron that this was coming from him, this leakage, but he had no way to account for it. He raised his gaze from the sidewalk to the workers in the distance who were putting away their tools and climbing down from the billboard. Why was it, he wondered, that in the world of advertising, the authentic self was so neat and so pleasing to look at while here on the ground it was such a messy proposition?

Categories
Street Photography

Wine Pairing Suggestions For The End Of The World

Night photograph of a homeless person sleeping underneath an orange blanket on the sidewalk at the intersection of Queen and Bay in Toronto.
Reclined on sidewalk, NE corner Queen and Bay

As a matter of habit, Peter Hadley III turned on his TV. He was now more than 90 days into it and yet another day with no TV signal, no internet connection, no cellphone service. He’d even tried old media like radio, shortwave, and CB, but all he heard at any frequency was a fitzing sound like when he pressed his ear to the mouth of a freshly opened bottle of Champagne. He wouldn’t even have electrical power if it weren’t for the building’s backup generator and a stack of jerrycans filled with diesel fuel. At least he could keep his wine collection chilled at the proper temperature.

Every day, Peter wandered the city streets, finding no one, not even human remains, and only now was he beginning to reconcile himself to the possibility that he was the sole survivor of whatever mysterious holocaust had taken everyone else. But on the 91st day, he discovered Cliff sprawled by the entrance to the city’s largest grocery store and eating potato chips and gulping diet cola from a two litre plastic bottle. Peter introduced himself and asked how long Cliff had been on his own.

Cliff answered that it’d been maybe two or three years.

Peter said that was impossible since things had gone haywire only 91 days earlier.

Still, Cliff said, I been living rough maybe two or three years. The rest of the world vanishing don’t really change that none. Tent in the ravine, just like always. Come up in the morning, just like always. Only, instead of begging for change, I bust into grocery stores and eat Twinkies.

Peter suppressed the customary feeling of revulsion that seized him whenever he encountered a homeless man. He observed that Cliff’s clothes were ragged and dirty. The man smelled. His fingertips were black with grime. Even so, Peter had grown tired of eating alone and craved the company of a live body, even if it was the live body of a homeless man. Besides, as Peter Hadley II had once said: You cannot drink a fine wine in solitude; it tastes so much better when you share it in the company of men. Given that, in the current situation, it appeared the only people left alive in the world were men, Peter was inclined to overlook the sexist undertones of his late father’s dictum.

Peter asked if Cliff wanted to join him for a proper dinner back at his apartment. Cliff could get himself washed up and put on some clean clothes. Peter had caught some fresh trout off a pier on the lakeshore and they could fry it up and, in lieu of lemons, they could accompany it with a crisp Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough.

Cliff didn’t care one way or the other about a snooty wine-paired dinner, but he did like the idea of simple human contact. He followed Peter to his penthouse condo and when he walked through the front door said holy god almighty. Peter had been the CFO of a Fortune 500 company before he retired at 40 with his stock options and his Bentley. It was easy for a man in Peter’s position to forget that most people aren’t accustomed to sprawling accommodations with views that go forever.

While Cliff whacked off in one of the guest room showers and picked at a corn on his foot and trimmed his fingernails, Peter prepared dinner in a kitchen whose hardware rivaled that of any Michelin rated restaurant. Cliff gulped his Sauvignon Blanc in precisely the same way he had gulped his diet Cola and, as before, finished with a belch. He took no time on the nose, didn’t pause on the front end, ignored the mid-palate. And as for a finish, the wine had disappeared before there was any hope of that. Then again, it wasn’t as if he’d wasted a Lafite Rothschild on the man.

Peter Hadley III kept a wine room weighted heavily in favour of left bank Bordeaux wines along with a selection of Grand Cru Burgundies. One of the challenges in the current situation was finding appropriate pairings for his wines. While he found it easy enough to catch fresh fish and had even slaughtered a couple chickens while wandering through Little Portugal, locating red meat was a greater challenge. When the power went out, butchered meat began to rot. Peter had grabbed whatever cuts he could find and had stored them in his personal freezer, but that was no long term solution. There were still cows grazing in fields north of the city, but Peter had no idea how to slaughter a cow, much less carve it into pieces suitable for laying out grilled on his fine china. He wondered if maybe a pig would be easier. Burgundy would pair well enough with pork. He lived in Hogtown. Surely there must be pigs nearby.

Peter savoured the grassy notes as he took a modest sip of the Sauvignon Blanc. He gazed across the table at his guest, and beyond to the open kitchen door where he saw a wide selection of knives stuck to the magnetic strip across the far wall. With a roofie in Cliff’s glass, the man would be easy to handle, certainly easier than a fat sow. Peter could drag him unconscious into the guest shower and drain him there. What makes a good pairing with human flesh? he wondered. He had a twenty year old Romanée-Conti he would love to try with a well seasoned flank.

Categories
Street Photography

Socialist Poker

A man walks down the middle of Toronto's Bloor Street holding a sign overhead that says: "Freeze the accounts of the World Economic Forum!"
Anti-Vax Protest, Bloor Street West, Toronto

Saturday night poker. It was Norm who hosted these things, but given his unspecified underlying condition, he had decided to suspend our weekly ritual until such time as the local public health unit declared it safe to hold in-person gatherings. Nearly eighteen months had passed before he phoned and said he felt comfortable sitting with five others around a felt-topped table in a close room. On the side, a couple of us speculated about the nature of Norm’s underlying condition. We doubted it was respiratory given Norm’s custom of puffing on a fat stogie from one end of the evening to the other. Had it been fear of respiratory complications that prompted Norm to cancel his weekly games, he wouldn’t have answered the door, as he did tonight, in a haze of smoke. That would have made him a hypocrite and Norm was too principled a man for that. So, for the first time since the pandemic began, six of us gathered for a night of stud poker, all while knocking back shots of whisky in our own strange communion while cigar smoke settled over us like the tailings of an old censer lately swung through our holy chapel.

Aubrey got the first black jack, so she began to deal while the rest of us ante’d up. I wouldn’t call this a high stakes game. But it wasn’t a penny ante proposition either. It sat somewhere in the middle as did its players. Our host, Norm, was a retired history teacher and his wife, Hanna, was librarian at the school where Norm had taught for years. In fact, that’s how they met. Norm had presented himself at the counter, asking if the library had a copy of Jack Layton’s book, and it was love at first sight. Together, they had retired to healthy pensions, active in their respective unions, and remained relatively unaffected by whatever financial strains the pandemic had imposed on others.

By contrast, there was Aubrey’s husband, Sergei, who worked in a meat packing plant and, when things were at there very worst, was deemed an essential worker. It sounded noble, but really it was just another way of saying expendable. He tried to wear a mask at work, but the mask kept slipping below his nose. Inevitably, a sick co-worker who couldn’t afford to take time off infected Sergei who came home and, in turn, infected Aubrey. Both were miserable, but never so badly off that they had to go to the hospital. Even so, they were both too sick to work and lost their jobs. When she recovered, Aubrey found a new job soon enough. But Sergei’s was a case of long Covid and he had such aches and pains and feelings of malaise that he still struggled to get out of bed in the morning. That’s why he hadn’t joined them this evening.

In Sergei’s place, Norm invited an old buddy from university days named Grant who, in before times, had been a sports writer for a national news organization. Sports writing of course had dried up during the pandemic, so they shifted Grant to medical reporting since there were so many breaking stories about the WHO and the SARS-CoV-2 virus and vaccine development and conspiracy theories. It wasn’t as much of a stretch from sports to medicine as you might think. Grant used to write all the time about concussions and soft tissue injuries and doping, so he already knew some of the medical lingo. Most importantly, it meant he went blithely along without a blip in his personal income and since he could do much of his work from home, his employer was grateful for the savings and gave him perks along the way.

Finally, there was Janice, younger than the rest, someone Hanna had met while shopping for clothes at a leisure wear store. The pandemic had been hard on retail and Janice’s employer had boarded up the windows when the government first declared an emergency. They promised that her job would be waiting for her when things opened up again but, in the meantime, they couldn’t afford to keep her on the payroll. As a gesture of goodwill, they helped her file her application for the government handout. It wasn’t enough to pay all the bills, but with the occasional cheque from her parents, she’d survived. She shared with everyone that she was hoping this evening to win enough to cover next month’s rent.

It was a good evening and the time vanished in a fog of whisky and smoke. We enjoyed catching up with old friends and getting to know the newcomers. We told stupid jokes. And we shared our unique stories of life in the time of Covid. Sometime in the early hours of the morning, we decided to bring the game to a close with an all-in hand. Grant and Aubrey were already tapped out so there were only four of us in the final hand. In a strange piece of good luck, I took the kitty with a pair of sevens. I reached into the centre, but before I could draw all the chips to my corner of the table, Norm wagged a raised finger as if I had done something naughty. I saw in Norm’s expression something of the teacher he used to be: he had caught me doing something I shouldn’t and he was going to send me to the principal’s office.

Not so fast, Dave, he said.

I withdrew my hands, unsure what to make of Norm’s wagging finger.
These past months, I’ve had a lot of time to think about our poker games, and I’ve decided we should do things differently. Sure, this pandemic has been tough, but if all we do is talk about how tough it’s been, then we miss the opportunities it’s given us. We can build back better, you know. Even when it comes to poker games. So I’m proposing a reset here.

I eyed the pile of chips waiting for me in the centre of the table and thought about how that would translate into a couple of bottles of really good Bordeaux wine.

Aubrey asked Norm what he had in mind.

Well, I was thinking: no more winner take all. The fact is, Hanna and I, we’re all right, and Dave there, well, financially he’s okay too. I don’t know about you, Grant, but you give the impression you have a good income. So I’m thinking we should split the kitty between Aubrey and Janice. To each according to their need. That’s how I’d like to do things from now on.

As you might expect, I objected to Norm’s idea. It didn’t seem natural. It sucked all the fun out of poker night.

Norm gave me his sternest look. Fun? You didn’t have any fun tonight? Laughing with friends? Catching up? Good drinks? Good company? That didn’t do it for you? Not until you could take everyone’s money, too?

But those are the rules, I whined.

And I say: Fuck the rules. It’s time for a reset.

Christ, I said. Those World Economic Forum types have really sunk their teeth into you, haven’t they?

I could’ve stood on my rights and demanded the kitty, but the whole evening had faded into a fog of whisky and cigar smoke and didn’t feel real. I’d wake up in the morning with fuzz on my tongue and a dull ache behind my eyes, and maybe I’d have more cash in my pocket or maybe not, but whatever Norm said, at least I’d have the satisfaction of knowing, in my deepest truest self, that I’d played a better game of poker than the rest of them. It’s not how you play the game. It’s whether you win or lose.

Categories
Street Photography

Things Are Opening Up

A man wearing a mask passes a store window that has been papered over but has the word "open" in red letters still stuck to the glass.
Man Passes Store Window, Yonge Street, Toronto

Things are opening up now.

That’s what Jeremy’s father had said when his parents came upstairs to his bedroom to tell him he’d be going back to school.

But I’m already at school, and Jeremy pointed to the tablet sitting upright on his makeshift desk.

Honey, we’re talking about real school. You’ll get to see your friends.

Jeremy didn’t think much of his first day back at real school. The problem with friends at real school is that when they shove you at recess you fall down in the pea gravel and tear a real hole in the knees of the new jeans your mother bought you special and when you get home you’ll have to tell your mother how you tore your jeans on the first day and she’ll give you a lecture about not appreciating all that you have. Jeremy didn’t see how appreciating your new jeans would keep your so-called friends from shoving you at recess. Maybe he’d figure that one out when he got older. If his friends didn’t kill him first.

On the way home after his first day of opened up school, Jeremy noticed something he’d never noticed before. Standing at one end of the longest street between school and home, Jeremy looked to the far end of that street and saw how it was littered with discarded masks. Most were blue or white. Some were cloth with logos or patterns stamped onto them. A couple were funny, with cartoon characters or teeth or giant lips. Some lay in the dirt by the curb. The wind had blown a few under shrubs in front of the building where he went to get his teeth cleaned. There was even a mask hanging from the lowest branch in a tree. When Jeremy got close, he saw that it was an Arthur the nerdy aardvark mask, nothing any normal child would wear.

Jeremy had an idea. His mother would give him proper hell for this one but, seeing as she was already going to give him proper hell for the knees of his new jeans, he didn’t see how things could get worse. He pulled off his own mask, a white N95, and tucked it into his back pack. Then he pulled down the Arthur the nerdy aardvark mask and put it on. It didn’t smell as bad as he thought it might. He could hear his mother scolding him, telling him he was being gross, yelling at him about germs and the need to be hygienic. Jeremy didn’t know what the word hygienic means but he figured it had something to do with not putting on masks that other people have worn.

As soon as Jeremy put on the mask, it felt as if he was somewhere else, like someone had flipped a switch and there he was, instantly transported. He could hear three older kids, like the bullies he knew from school, teasing him. Only they didn’t call him Jeremy. They called him Arthur, or shitface, and they kicked him, and when he wet himself, they howled like animals. Jeremy tore off the mask and when he looked down at his crotch, he saw that his jeans were dry. What he’d felt seemed real enough but it must have been virtual, like going to school on his tablet before the world opened up.

Jeremy threw the Arthur the nerdy aardvark mask into the bushes and tried another mask, a blue medical mask that was clean except for a patch of lipstick on the inside. Right away, the mask dunked him in a world of chatty Cantonese and, for reasons couldn’t grasp, she understood every word. She was complaining to a friend that she never had enough money, always behind on the rent and the car payments, and although the books she kept told her there should be enough, there wasn’t; the money seemed to evaporate. She worried that her husband was gambling again. If one of them got infected and they couldn’t work, she didn’t know what they’d do. When Jeremy pulled off the blue medical mask, he found that he was gripping his stomach like there was an acid hole burning through the middle of it.

Finally, Jeremy put on a mask the colour of night. It was dirtier and smelled of something he couldn’t name, though it reminded him of the smell on his father’s breath whenever he went out with the men his mother didn’t like. There was a sweet yeastiness mixed in with the mud. He became a man of few words, with no friends to speak of, who drifted through the streets cadging coins from strangers and taking shelter underneath the bridge behind the school. He didn’t like to wear a mask, but he needed it to get into certain places, like the shelter where he sometimes slept, and the clinic where they treated the scabs on his feet. He’d only had the one mask for months but now he knew where he could score a clean one.

Jeremy tossed the black mask onto the street and ran home. He didn’t understand why everybody was so excited about the world opening up. As far as he could tell, it was open enough. Any more open, and it would make him bananas.

Categories
Street Photography

Managing The Little Shits On The First Day Of Wizard School

A person wearing a sun hat and a T-shirt with the word "Slut" on it walks down the middle of Toronto's Church Street holding a soft drink.
Slut, Church Street, Pride Toronto 2022

It was the first day of a fresh term at the Academy of Magical Arts and the air crackled with excitement as the children took their seats in the Great Hall. The new students, young and fresh-faced, had been allotted seats at the front where they had an unobstructed view of the raised platform where the Head Wizard and other members of the teaching staff waited for the children to settle.

The hall was a fine example of late Gothic architecture with its stone columns rising to a rib vault ceiling and its pointed arches inset with stained glass windows. To the left, the windows featured scenes of wizardly prowess drawn from the Academy’s own ancient lore; to the right, a procession of the Academy’s luminaries literally illuminated by a brilliant morning light shining through the glass. Had the children been older and more attuned to affairs of the world, they might have appreciated that the grandeur of their surroundings demanded a tuition that only the most privileged could afford, billionaire fantasy authors, for example.

The Head Wizard rose and greeted the children with a tired speech he had delivered year after year until now, well on his way to senescence, the best he could manage was a somnolent drone. The aging pedagogue thought to himself how much he hated the little shits and prayed that none of them possessed enough natural ability to read his mind. He concluded his greeting by announcing that it was time for the sorting hat and he surrendered the proceedings to his number two.

A buzz rose from the children, none of whom knew anything about a sorting hat. On acceptance to the Academy, the children had received reams of printed material describing everything from payment to code of conduct to curriculum to travel instructions. But nowhere did the printed material mention a sorting hat.

The Head Wizard’s number two, a benevolent woman with a not-so-secret addiction to certain potions, rose from her seat and settled the children with soothing tones. The sorting hat was nothing to worry about. Just a fun way to divide the student body into its appropriate groups. She explained that each new student would take a turn putting the sorting hat on their head and the sorting hat would assign them to their proper group and, as a bonus, it would assign their proper pronouns.

After the greater part of the student body had submitted to the game, the children began to recognize a pattern. Invariably, the sorting hat took the children who had penises and put them in the boy group and assigned them the he/him pronouns. As for the children with vaginas, the sorting hat put them in the girl group and assigned them the she/her pronouns.

The process was quite orderly until one of the children with a vagina (whom the hat had put into the girl group) corrected the benevolent elderly teacher when the old woman referred to them as her.

The child said they were non-binary and insisted on being addressed as they/them. All their life, people had called them she/her but it didn’t line up with the way they experienced their body in the world.

Are you suggesting that the sorting hat is wrong? The benevolent woman’s tone was not so much patronizing as indignant.

I don’t know that it’s a matter of right or wrong? Right and wrong are simple binaries, just like boy/girl, and that’s the problem. In a way, I feel sorry for the hat for having such a limited view of human experience. One of the reasons I’ve come to the Academy is to find a magic that might transform my body so that it lines up with how I feel. 

The Head Wizard wasn’t having any more from the precocious shit and interjected, speaking with more force than at any other time that morning: This is the way they’d always done things. They trusted the hat. The magic the girl sought came from the dark arts and the dark arts were forbidden at the Academy. The only magical transformation the girl would find here went in the opposite direction; it would transform how she feels to line up with her body. And that was the end of it. If she didn’t like it, she could go back where she came from and live amongst the Muddles.

Categories
City Life

When The Smile Fades

Worn advertisement with the words "Chocolate Cone" appearing on a ribbon above a portion of a face that excludes the mouth.
SW corner, Wellesley & Yonge, Toronto

Take a letter-sized page and fold it in half, then fold the result in half again. As a theoretical construct, like the point or line in Euclidean geometry, you can fold such a page indefinitely, because it has no width, no imperfections. But in the imperfect world of real paper, you can complete no more than six folds (seven with tools) before the exercise comes to its necessary end.

As the Louvre’s Chief Conservation Officer, Lisette faced a similar problem in her efforts to protect La Joconde. Taken as a theoretical construct, the Mona Lisa’s smiling face would last forever. But every year in the real world, she lost a little more of her substance, a molecule here, an atom there. Perhaps a gust would issue through the gallery and dislodge a few wisps of paint.

To guard against such mishaps, early conservators had replaced her with a clever copy and hermetically sealed the original in a protected vault. But even there they could not guard her from the ravages of cosmic radiation and the force of Earth’s gravity. It does not seem like much, a molecule here, an atom there, but in our imperfect world, such a diminution leads to a calculable end, as it does for the body, as it does for the Earth itself.

Over the millennia, Earthly powers had risen and fallen. First, there was the Europe of the Renaissance that had given rise to this most famous of paintings. Then the British Empire. Then revolutionary America. From its ashes rose the Canadian Empire which soon gave way to China which in turn surrendered its prestige to the Sub-Saharan Coalition. We compare the ebb and flow of power to the tides, but that is a strange analogy because, one day, even the tides will cease.

In all this ebb and flow of historical power, Lisette happened to be the person, a real person, not a theoretical construct, to preside over the passing of one of its great symbols. Whatever else Art might be, it was a symbol of power. It had grafted itself to Earthly longings and had turned itself into a standard bearer for the march of time. Lisette was convinced that the Mona Lisa’s smile was no great mystery: it had about it a sly mix of mockery and contempt that the privileged always bear for those who stand outside their circle.

Lisette stepped into the shattered remains of the Louvre’s glass pyramid where media waited for her announcement. She had memorized a carefully prepared speech, but worried that her emotions might unsettle her words:

Friends of the press, Citizens of the World—

she introduced herself and her colleagues, their offices and credentials, then went on

—it grieves me to announce that our beloved masterpiece, La Joconde, is no more. The last strands of canvas have crumbled to dust. The smile has faded to nothing. For thousands of years, this institution has presided over the care of this great work by an unknown master whose name is lost in a murky past. However—

In the silence, as Lisette struggled to recall what came next, a voice from the press shouted: Failure. You had one thing. One thing. And you failed.

As swiftly as the rise of a summer storm, Lisette’s demeanour changed from grief to anger. Failure? she cried. You may as well direct that accusation at yourself for allowing yourself to die. And I assure you: you will die. There are many extinctions that are a failure. A failure of stewardship. From the dodo to the white rhino. The African elephant. The honey bee. But this is death by a natural process. By your logic, we should blame the mortician when a man ends up on his slab because of old age.

Lisette stormed from the presser and locked herself in her office where she cried. She couldn’t say precisely why she cried, whether from grief or from anger, or perhaps from some as yet unnameable feeling her enigmatic painting represented.

Categories
City Life

Flash Fiction: Houston We Have A Problem

A Nuit Blanche outdoor contemporary art exhibit on Toronto's Queen Street West featuring orange cherry pickers extended high above the crowded street and laden with palm fronds.
Gap Ecology (Still Lives With Cherry Pickers and Palms) by David Brooks

A dick pic started circulating around mission control and, after some investigation, Dr. Laura Bybis discovered that it had been leaked from Commander Niezosi’s confidential medical file. Niezosi complained of tinea cruris and had sent a photo of his groin area to the ground-based medical team. Unknown to everyone involved, the default email settings automatically copied communications from the crew to a minor administrator who didn’t realize the sensitive nature of Niezosi’s complaint and laughed when she saw the poor man’s penis floating weightless between two patches of flaming skin. She’d been sleeping with a kid on the engineering team and forwarded the pic with a note: “If you ever let it get to this, don’t even think of crawling into my bed.” Once in the engineer’s hands, the image went viral.

Bybis called a team meeting and addressed everyone about the indiscretion and what it meant for crew morale. The crew, of course, was not present at the meeting because, at twelve million kilometres from Earth, a signal took forty seconds to travel in one direction. Forty seconds doesn’t seem like much time, but it’s enough to make live meetings unworkable. Instead, Bybis played a pre-recorded address from Niezosi to his colleagues on the ground. Bybis hadn’t screened the video before she pressed play, a decision that struck her in retrospect as regrettable.

Niezosi appeared on the main screen in mission control and addressed the team while framed on either side by screens that displayed diagrams of the mission’s trajectory to Mars. He was unshaven, haggard, dark circles under his eyes. But there was no hesitation. As you’d expect of a mission commander, he got right to it: “I want to thank all you assholes, all you dim witted engineers and shit-for-brains medical people for failing to anticipate the obvious. If you add up all the time we were confined to our space suits during the initial phase of the mission—prep in our cockpit twiddling our thumbs, then blast off, then the initial burn—you get nearly three days confined to our suits. Plenty of time for the rot to take hold.

“Now I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to tell me how Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent nearly nine days in their suits and neither of them complained about jock itch. But look what you give us to wear for the rest of the mission. For more than three fucking years we’ve gotta prance around in these skin-tight get-ups. No natural fibres. No breathable cloth. It’s as if you’ve vacuum sealed my dick in a Petri dish. What the hell were you thinking?

“And then there’s the medical team. I’ve searched our module from top to bottom and I can’t find a fucking thing. No anti-bacterial creams. No anti-fungals. I’ve searched the pantry for ingredients I could throw together. Make some kind of powder or balm. But the rest of the crew is worried I’ll compromise our food supply. I’ve taken to floating around au natural. At first, the rest of the crew thought it was funny, but between my feelings of humiliation and their feelings of embarrassment, it’s starting to take its toll on morale. Never mind morale, I’m so fucking itchy I’m going out of my gourd.”

The ground crew at mission control was an international team, and Dr. Bybis worried that many of the people wouldn’t understand the phrase “out of my gourd” but, as she later discovered, it’s an expression transferable to many cultures. Everyone on the ground knew exactly what Niezosi meant. And although a few of them suffered the same malady, they at least had the reassurance that, whenever they liked, they could drive to the corner Walgreens and pick up some ointment.

A man wearing special glasses stands in a crowd gazing at the sun. In the background is Toronto's Old City Hall on Queen Street West.
Gazing at the sun during a solar eclipse
Categories
City Life

Flash Fiction: Death Knocks On Luther’s Door

Black and white painting of skulls and hellish faces on fence in Toronto's Kensington Market
Painting on Fence in Kensington Market, Toronto

I must confess I was rather pleased with myself, almost giddy, for arriving at the Luther household with a hammer and a bag of gleaming nails to mark the 10th anniversary of that most illustrious of illustrious events. Like many of the others who shared schnitzel and beer at Martin’s table talks, we had taken to addressing him as Herr Doktor even though he affected modesty and insisted we call him Martin. So I felt somewhat deflated when the eminent man himself pulled open the door and, before I could utter a greeting or proffer my gift, advised that if I wished to cross his threshold I would first have to don a mask. They had received word only that morning of a fresh outbreak, a family on the next street manifesting buboes on their armpits and groins, and a little one who, sadly, had succumbed the night before. I complied of course, drawing from my pocket a face covering made from multiple layers of a fine linen which my Helga had purchased in the market.

Martin ushered me indoors. After surrendering my hammer and nails, I asked if he had any more theses he wished to add to the 95 he had already fixed to the door in Wittenberg, to which he answered that he could not say for certain; he would leave that for Herr Gott to conclude. I chortled until my corpulent midriff shook the floor and remarked that hopefully Herr Gott would conclude it in favour of brevity, otherwise the work would grow so large—

As large as you? and he elbowed me in the gut.

—grow so large that the weight would pull the door off its hinges.

I took a seat at the table where I stared directly at a woodcutting on the opposite wall, a framed work in the manner of Albrect Dürer, Death riding through the town on an emaciated steed. By contrast, Martin’s Katharina offered portions which were generous and, as she often said, would keep me looking as little like Death as any live man would care to look. I declared that I preferred not to be a Diet of Worms, but my joke fell flat amongst those at the table, most of whom were students from the university and either too thick or too drunk to appreciate the humour of intellectuals like myself.

Martin commented on the redness of my nose to which I answered that it was better red than black, for a red nose meant that I was still above ground.

As we ate, and as the Herr Doktor held forth on his latest theological musings, a knock came at the door. We fell silent while Martin opened the door and greeted a student, glassy-eyed and thin. As with me, Martin requested that the young man don a mask.

The young man’s voice rose as he spoke, and we could not help but hear his refusal.

Then I’m afraid I can’t allow you into my home.

Well then fuck you, Herr Doktor.

As the boy grew louder, it appeared to us that he also grew larger, as if by a magical mechanism that pumped air into his body and expanded it, as one sometimes sees with sausage casing that fills with a noxious gas when the meat inside begins to rot.

The boy proclaimed Herr Doktor Luther a hypocrite who, though he held himself out as a reformer and man of the people, what with his shitty Bible translation and his cavorting with drunks and his rescuing nun/whores from the clutches of the Church, but he was still nothing if not orthodox when it came to public health protocols. Wear a mask! Your mind has been taken over by the forces of evil.

The boy pointed to the woodcutting of Death fixed to Luther’s wall.

You think a little bit of cloth will do any good? It seems you’ve fallen in with that Copernicus heretic who puts his science before faith.

Luther said he was sorry the boy felt that way. But it didn’t matter because, at least in his own home, Luther was free to exclude whomever he pleased. And it pleased him very much to exclude drunken fools who refused to wear masks.

With that, Luther slammed the door shut in the boy’s bare face and returned to his schnitzel.

Categories
City Life

Condo Living

Voyeuristic night view of people in condominium units.

He stood in the hall, dressed only in his scuffed bedroom slippers, white T-shirt stained down the front, and tartan pyjama bottoms with the frayed cuffs. Muffin-top isn’t how he would’ve described the way his gut hung over the slack elastic waistband, but Elaine was given to using the term and he’d never come up with decent rebuttal. His only hope for self-respect lay in the possibility that his T-shirt would obscure the girth.

He stood in front of the adjacent neighbour’s door—#2307—and listened to the sounds of a party raging from the other side: an indistinct thrum of voices and music punctuated at random by a piercing laughter or the bark of a dog. Elaine had sent him next door to tell them to tone things down since tomorrow was a work day and she needed to get a decent night’s sleep if she wanted to be on her game. It was a matter of consideration. If the neighbours didn’t quiet down, then Elaine said they’d have no choice but to speak to the concierge and, from there, maybe the police.

He’d never met the neighbours. They were new. He’d seen them only from a distance and so had formed no impression. But Elaine thought she had a good idea what they were like: young, she said, barely more than teenagers, recently let loose in the world and still a little wild. It was like parenting, she said, draw clear lines and then demonstrate that you mean to enforce those lines. He thought Elaine’s parenting comment ironic given the way their own children had turned out. And now she wanted him to inflict his prodigious parenting skills on neighbours he’d never met, who may or may not be young, who may or may not be straight, who may or may not be sober, who may or may not be in a hostile mood, who may or may not be skilled when it comes to wielding baseball bats. So went his thoughts, skittering off to the very worst corner of the mental room where he organized his vast collection of horrible outcomes.

He’d knock on the door and after some yelling from the other side, a muscled man in a wife beater would pull the door back and laugh at the pathetic figure in shambling bedclothes. He’d stutter his way through a badly prepared speech after which the new neighbour with the giant biceps would tell him to go fuck himself and then slam the door. He held his fist poised at eye level, readying himself to rap on the door, steeling himself for a humiliating encounter.

Fuck it, he thought, and he returned to his own apartment. He held his fist poised at the level of his muffin-top, readying himself to turn his own door knob, steeling himself for a humiliating encounter. But he paused, and in that instant, however brief, he discovered that he had no idea which confrontation he dreaded more: the one with a neighbour he’d never met, or the one with a woman he’d called his wife for 35 years.

The building had a common terrace on the 4th floor, so he rode the elevator down in his bedroom slippers, gazing at his shabby reflection in the elevator’s mirrors. It was dark on the terrace and he was alone. He settled onto a lounge chair, tilting it back so he could gaze at the few stars still visible through the city’s light pollution. But that meager collection of stars was enough to set his mind adrift to far worlds and alternate realities, places where men could wear fresh up-to-date clothes and knock on a stranger’s door in a way that sounded confident.

Categories
Street Portrait

Flash Fiction: Dave Writes Thinly Disguised Autobiography

Black and white portrait of a bearded man wearing a cap.

During the pandemic, Dave had let things go, sprouting a salt and pepper stubble on his face and wearing a “Peaky Blinders” cap to hide the sparse growth on his scalp. Ordinarily, Dave would shave his head to the smooth sheen of a cue ball. But there was something about the pandemic that sapped his will. These days, he saw no point keeping up his appearance. He lounged on his deck in the early morning light, taking in all the glorious songs of suburbia, the lawn mowers, the gas-powered grass whackers, the soccer moms yelling at their snot-nosed children to get into the friggin van, while his dog poked around in the shrubs at the far end of the yard.

Still in her pyjamas and housecoat, Dave’s wife stepped onto the deck and informed him that there was a stranger asking for him at the front door. Dave asked for details, but his wife had nothing more to offer. He dropped his newspaper on the low side table and rose from his deck chair, abandoning a cup of coffee while he ambled around the side of the house.

Dave approached from the west and the man stood on the front porch with the rising sun behind him, and while the effect was dramatic, suggesting a messianic glare, it made it impossible for Dave to discern anything more about the man except his shining outline. The man called to him by name, a question, and even as Dave answered that, yes, his name was Dave Barker, and shook the man’s hand, he couldn’t see enough detail to say if he knew the man.

— Sorry, you have me at a disadvantage. Dave shaded his eyes while looking up at the man.

— Ah, the insufferable glare. The man leaned down from the porch and offered a hand and announced that he was Richard Garfield, the story’s Black character.

— Huh? Dave might have offered something more articulate had he finished the cup of coffee that was growing cold beside his newspaper.

— And you must be that shallow stand-in for the Author, pathetic for the fact that the character you’ve written for yourself is so utterly one-dimensional that we have no choice but to assume the absolute worst of the person you represent. Simple. Transparent. Banal.

— You’re Black?

— Jesus Christ in a bat cave! You’re the one who wrote me.

— It’s hard to tell from where I’m standing. Morning light. Retinal afterimages.

There was a pause as Dave struggled to navigate the social niceties of the situation. Should he step up to join Richard on the porch? Or should he stick to his mark and draw Richard down onto the lawn? Richard appeared to struggle with the same questions, settling at last on a compromise. The man gave a nervous cough and, descending by two steps, proffered a manila envelope.

— This is a letter from my lawyer. A demand really. That you cease and desist, you know, from representing characters in your stories, Black or otherwise, who don’t share the historical experience of your personal identity. White. Colonizing. Cisgendered. Privileged. You know. That stuff. And let me say, our encounter this morning only confirms that this is the right course. I mean, if the best you can manage by way of self-representation is, quite frankly, a dull cardboard white bread mealy-mouthed version of yourself, then how can you be expected to offer full-bodied representations of people who aren’t the least bit like you? You have no business putting Black characters in your stories.

Dave wasn’t sure what to say. He stood in the morning light, turning the envelope over and over, letting his housecoat fall open to reveal an embarrassing hole in his pyjama bottoms. He wondered what his dog had found in the far corner of the yard. Last weekend it was rats in the composter. The weekend before it was the remains of a dead raccoon.

Without taking the risk of writing anything further about the Black character, Dave ambled back around the west side of the house and returned to the deck and the newspaper and the cold cup of coffee. His wife brought him a fresh cup and asked what the stranger had wanted, and after he’d explained and after he’d shown her the cease and desist letter, she observed: if you take this demand to its logical conclusion, then fiction becomes impossible; at best, all stories end up as thinly disguised autobiography. 

— Maybe it’s a temporary thing, Dave said. A moratorium. Until we can to treat one another with more respect.

— How long do you think that’ll take?

Dave sipped his coffee and shrugged.

— Not in my lifetime, hon. That’s for goddam sure.

He folded the pages of this story and set it aside, unsure what to make of it.

Categories
Street Photography

There is a Difference Between Fact and Fiction

A woman texts with her left hand while holding a tray of Starbucks drinks in her right hand.
Coffee Run on Bloor Street West at Bedford

I had submitted the story, as requested, so it came as shock when the editor texted me that they absolutely COULD NOT USE IT along with an autocorrect that (presumably) converted my given name to “miscreant” and a link to a video call in 20 minutes unless I was immediately available in which case I should just FaceTime with them RIGHT NOW (again with the caps) all while I was struggling to pour coconut milk into my Starbucks.

Depositing my coffee on the nearest counter, I found the editor’s number on my FaceTime app and called. Too bad I’d left my ear buds at home because the people standing to either side of me discovered that I was an amoral pervert and purveyor of porn who was trying to wrap smut in literary pretensions and pass it off as the musings of the reasonable man on the Clapham bus with all that the Clapham bus entails.

Well fuck me! I shouted into my not terribly smart phone. I have no fucking clue what you’re on about.

Your piece, asshole. The one with the penis. And the things the penis does. Degradation. Defilement. Penetration.

Well, what can I tell you? Penises have a tendency to do that sort of thing when they’re attached to men who are, you know, complete shits.

No subtlety. No metaphor. No discretion. Just bald-faced description.

Well, like my mother always told me: call a thing by its proper name. Besides, how can you possibly find my writing shocking? We live in a world where the POTUS says worse every fucking day of the week.

That comes to us through reportage. You submitted fiction. There’s a difference.

Really!

I mentioned my Abraham Lincoln spoof: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers grabbed their women by the pussy.” But it fell flat. I blame my delivery.

The exchange devolved into something more civil and, at times, more esoteric, but the other patrons had left the coffee shop by then so there were no witnesses. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it turned into an intellectual debate about reader sensibilities and whether we should have a different regard for them depending on whether the subject matter is fact or fiction. However, in practical terms, the debate came to nothing.

I knew I wasn’t getting paid because my editor held firm to her view that, unlike reportage, a story carries the additional burden of having to edify its audience. If you read in the news that the POTUS brags his own daughter is supremely fuckable, that’s one thing. But incorporate that into a work of fiction, and the rules change. Rules? Really? Back and forth we went but neither of us would give any ground.

Knowing I wouldn’t get paid, I grew frustrated. Oh, the things I would have done. They would’ve been beyond the pale. Almost unthinkable in their depravity. Unfortunately, because these things never passed beyond fantasy, they were fictions and (at least according to my editor) unprintable. One day I’ll act on those things. And when I do… Oh, when I do … You’ll be the first to read about them. I promise.

Sticker on a utility pole on Toronto's Bay Street which reads: Dump Your Porn Addicted Boyfriend.
Sticker on Utility Pole, Bay Street, Toronto
Categories
Street Photography

Flash Fiction: What would it be like to win the lottery?

A woman sits in a window reading a note.
Reading Note In Window

Melvin phoned his mother and, as always, she asked if he needed money.

No, Ma, I don’t need money, he said.

Why not? Is something wrong?

It was hard to say who had the more annoying voice: Melvin, with his unctuous wheezing, or his mother, with her whining rasp. Between the two of them, they could have vocalized all the sound effects for a film shoot in a car parts manufacturing sweatshop.

Afterwards, when Delores had time to reflect on the conversation, she told Melvin’s father that it was the most bizarre conversation in a lifetime of bizarre conversations with the boy. He told me he loved me, Bert. Can you believe it?

Bert shook his head and agreed that it was a strange thing for the boy to say.

He said he was grateful for all we’ve done for him through years. For being his parents. For giving him life. I mean, what kind of crap is that?

Bert shook his head and wondered if Melvin was using again.

Delores didn’t think so. The boy’s voice sounded clear and he strung his words together in an orderly way, not like when he was at his worst.

And he didn’t want money?

No. All he said was how he didn’t need anything from us anymore on account of him winning the lottery.

Well that’s a load of bull. You sure he isn’t using?

Delores gave a helpless shrug and fell to silence. With great effort, Bert hoisted himself out of his easy chair and announced that he’d visit the boy, check to make sure everything was copacetic, take a look around the apartment for the familiar paraphernalia. Delores didn’t join her husband on these visits. Not anymore. The “G” diseases kept her confined to their home: gout and goitre. Gout affected her mobility, and goitre affected her sense of self-esteem. There was also the “B” word. Not a disease so much as a physical state. Breasts. Between the goitre and the breasts, Delores was so top heavy that the consequences of a fall could be devastating. As a precaution, she passed most of her waking time on the living room couch and relied on Bert to run errands. Of course, the trip to Melvin’s apartment wasn’t an errand so much as a duty.

Bert frumped his way across town and burst in on his son doing not much of anything at all. The boy lay on a student’s equivalent of an easy chair, a canvas cloth slung between the slats of a wooden frame, and he was watching YouTube videos on the laptop that rested on his bare stomach. Bert found no paraphernalia. All he found was a lottery ticket stuck to the fridge door with a Bart Simpson magnet. Beside it was the latest list of winning numbers torn from somebody else’s newspaper, a strange anachronism in an otherwise digital life. Bert checked the ticket’s number against the numbers on the strip of newspaper and saw that Melvin hadn’t won anything.

How come you told your mom you won?

I tell my mom lots of things.

But winning the lottery?

Melvin paused a video of skateboarders destroying their genitals on railings.

I dunno, he said. I guess I wanted to know what it’d feel like. You know. To win something. To be more than just a fucking loser.

Bert didn’t know what to say. He never liked speaking with his son. The boy had a voice almost as annoying as his mother’s. Bert shrugged and took his leave and backed out the door. Dolores would need help getting supper ready.

Categories
Street Photography

Flash Fiction: A Ghost Story with a Scary Ending

A black and white photo of a man walking past a steam vent while a cement truck passes in the background.
Temperance Street Steam Vent, Toronto

When he showed up at the office ten minutes late on a Monday morning, everyone noticed. They didn’t notice that he was ten minutes late; they noticed his general appearance. No one came right out and said: Geez, dude, you look wasted. Instead, they stabbed him with their judgmental, Puritanical stares and that was as good as coming right out and saying what he already knew. He’d seen it reflected back at him in the subway window as he rode to work: the bags under the eyes, the coarse stubble that made him look apathetically desperate, the tie that never quite settled into place. All in defiance of the office ethos and its strict professionalism. But most striking of all was the shock of white hair. On Friday afternoon, he’d left the office with a thick head of dark brown hair, and on Monday morning, he’d shown up with the scalp of a man thirty years his senior.

His office colleague (the one people assumed was his friend) approached and put an arm around his disappointing shoulders: Geez, dude, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.

That is precisely what had happened, but he was afraid to say anything. The ghost had arrived at midnight, teetering on the fulcrum between Sunday and Monday. He wasn’t sure whether he was awake when the disparate wisps coalesced at the foot of his bed or whether he’d been dreaming when it first assumed its form. He had thought the ghost was there to scare the bejeezus out of him since scaring people seems to be the point of ghosts. But things didn’t play out that way. They shot the shit for a while—this and that—and things grew comfortable enough that he excused himself to get a beer from the fridge. When he returned, he found that the ghost had cracked a cold one, too, and was lounging with its feet up on the spare night stand.

He wasn’t Roman Catholic, so he couldn’t be sure, but he’d say the ghost was in a limbo situation. At one point, the ghost mentioned the bardo, but that could’ve been the brand of beer. Limbo. Bardo. Whatever you call it, the ghost had unfinished business on this plane and he expected that, as the night progressed, the ghost would ask for help concluding whatever it had to conclude in order to release itself from its entrapment in the netherworld. But the request never came. The ghost had another drink, and then another and another. The ghost was having too much fun to ruin it with talk of unfinished business, preferring instead to ramble on about the joys of a full life, the love of a good woman (or man, as the case may be), the passionate pursuit of interests, a deep curiosity about the world at large.

As the earliest light began to unfurl itself across the city, he interrupted the ghost and asked: but aren’t you going to frighten me, you know, say boo or something?

The ghost laughed and swung its feet from the night stand: Really? You want me to say boo?

The ghost excused itself to take a piss and when it came back it said: You know, I’ve been thinking about what you asked and, to be honest, you don’t need me to say boo. You have enough to be afraid of as it is.

As the first light slipped through the cracks in the window shade, the ghost vanished. He was angry. This was the best the ghost could do? He’d stayed up all night, talking, drinking, baring his soul to an apparition. And this? This? He slapped on a rumpled shirt and didn’t bother to shave. He skipped breakfast and ran to the subway station. Riding into the office, he stared at his reflection and noted that he looked like hell. He rode the elevator to the 33rd floor, coffee in hand, and steeled himself for his office job, noting the semantic detail that he didn’t actually work in an office, but in an interior cubicle with no view of anything except a stupid screen saver of his employer’s corporate logo jittering across the monitor.

Categories
Street Photography

Flash Fiction: The Magical Land of Janice

Entrance to ION Orchard viewed at night from Scotts Road, Singapore
Entrance to ION Orchard viewed from Scotts Road, Singapore

Janice fell asleep on her way to work. She’d got on at Greenwood and was lucky to find a seat. That, perhaps, was her downfall. She hadn’t drunk her morning coffee yet, and there was something about the subway’s side-to-side sway that set her mind adrift in the magical land of Janice. Ordinarily, she switched at the Bloor/Yonge interchange and rode down to the financial district where she worked in a clothing store that sold tight-fitting yoga pants to people with too much money. Had she been standing, she might have noticed the missed stop, but this morning she lay slouched in a corner, oblivious as the train rumbled past her station and continued west. She woke to a voice on the public address system announcing that they had reached the end of the line and all passengers must leave the train. Oh God. Janice jumped to her feet. Heart pounding, she grabbed her things and ran from the train.

The station didn’t look unfamiliar. It adhered to the rules laid down by a secret global society of subway station designers. All walls must be covered in glossy porcelain tiles that looked (and sounded) like the interior of a giant shower stall. All floors must be of a polished aggregate like the floors in virtually every high school ever built. And, most important of all, the structure must reinforce an ethos of soul-deadening conformity. By these rules, this station could have been the station she used when she left for work in the morning, or it could have been the station she used when she arrived, or it could have been the station she used for her regular visits to the local liquor store.

The only way to distinguish one subway station from any other was to look for the name neatly etched in the porcelain tiles, always in the same sans serif font, maybe Helvetica, like the default font setting for Janice’s email client. She saw that she was exiting Orchard MRT Station. She’d never heard of the Orchard MRT Station. Then again, she never went to the west end of the city. She harboured a private fear that if she went all the way to the west end of the city, she might fall off the edge of the planet, flailing her limbs and screaming into the soundless depths of space. When she shared her fear with her cousin, the one who lived in Wingham, the girl scowled and accused her of going full Toronto, what with her centre-of-the-universe pretensions and general uppityness.

Orchard MRT Station, Singapore
Orchard MRT Station, Singapore

Conveniently, the Orchard MRT Station had an exit straight up the middle of a mall that looked like any other mall. Janice rode the escalator and found the shop where she worked with its stock of overpriced yoga pants and its sales staff with their generic pasted-on smiles. She threw her bag in the back and swapped her flats for heels, then began her day. There were pleasantries with the customers. A few good sales. A short lunch break in the food court downstairs. It was a good day like any other.

When her shift was done, Janice swapped her heels for her flats and decided to go for a walk before riding the subway home. She strolled all the way down Orchard Road, in and out of malls, until it turned into Bras Basah Road, then she walked along North Bridge Road across the river and down along the quay. She paused for a drink at a table overlooking the water and waved to tourists who chugged by in a boat on its way down to the Marina Bay Sands. A little further along, she realized she was hungry and found a place that served fresh seafood. Others joined her under a patio umbrella, and although she didn’t know them, they would do just as well as any of her usual friends. Together, they drank. They laughed. They did group poses for influencer posts to their social media accounts.

It was getting late and Janice had to be up in time for work the next morning. She had to stop doing this, going out late, drinking more than she had planned, then sleeping past her stop the next morning. She walked over to the Clarke Quay MRT, and although she didn’t know exactly where it went, she had faith that, one way or another, it would take her home.

Boat at night on the Singapore River
She paused for a drink at a table overlooking the water