TORONTO: A NOVEL—Chapter 19

     Tom Dollop turned to his wife, Violet, in the middle of the night, pushed himself up close to her milky warmth and slid his hand delicately over the satiny knoll of her belly.
     “How are you feeling?” he whispered.
     “Wary,” she replied, slowly opening he eyes.
     “Why?”
     “I don’t know,” Violet said, yawning as sweetly as a cat.  “I expect I was dreaming.”
     “About being wary?” Tom asked her.
     “In my dreams, it’s always a risky, unusable world,” Violet told him. “Things that were solid melt and shift, and things that were soft and supple harden as solid as cement.”
     “Well it is like that.  And not just in your dreams either.  You know what I was just thinking about?  That big crazy girl I told you about on the subway, the one with the cake and the stupid dog.
     “That’s odd,” she said, rubbing her eyes.  “What time is it?”
     “Four.”
     “The witching hour,” smiled Violet.
     “Listen,” he told her, “I don’t believe in witching hours.”
     “Oh, well, actually either do I,” she said, snuggling back down into her pillow.
     “Let’s make love,” he said.  “Sweetly and gently.  Lovely, sleepy sex, dear Violet.  Won’t that make things less risky and shifty and unstable?”
     “Maybe,” she said.
He took her gently in his arms.  A siren hurled by two streets away.  Three dogs began barking, all of them quite near the house.
     “I like it when you hold me before we make love”, she tells him.
     “I thought women liked to be held afterwards.”
     “Yes, that too.” 
     Her belly ripples slightly as he moves his hand down to the soft triangle of hair between her legs, spindrift, he thinks, unable to remember where he’d read the word, but just liking the sound of it for her there.  It was something about sailing, or about the sea.  She sighs and opens her legs a little. 
     He is hard and it always feels so great, so expansive, to be hard.  He lifts his stiff cock from his jockey shorts and bends it over against her public hair, holding it there—an arrangement, a configuration in erotic space, the archetypal figure-ground projection.  He suddenly notices how quiet it is now in the bedroom and in the house itself and in the neighbourhood.  And in the city.  Who knows, he thinks, how far this plush silence extends?
     “Sometimes it’s thicker, and that’s so nice”, she says, gazing up at him.  “And then sometimes it’s longer.”
     “Not so nice?” he asks her.
     “No, that’s nice too”, she tells him.
He’s grateful.  He’s also a bit relieved.  But there’s a rind of worry, just a rough little edge of something unquiet and unresolved, starting up in his head.
     “Did you turn the furnace down?” Violet asks him.
He gets out of bed.  He likes to be useful.  He likes to be active.  He likes to do what needs to be done.  He goes downstairs.  Violet returns to sleep.
     Three days later, they are having Sunday morning Dim Sum at The Noble Restaurant, their favourite Cantonese restaurant, on Dundas Street West near Spadina. 
     They have finished the first four sevenths of their Dim Sum selection when the waitress deftly adds the final three dishes to their table—three puffy, barbecued pork buns—like hot snowballs, three little deep-fried bars of tofu (each surmounted by a pink, hat-like mastication of mashed shrimp), slices of turnip cake, and a spiky dish of flash-fried squid tentacles, Violet’s favourite.
     Tom spears a slab of turnip cake and saws it in half with his chopsticks.  He loves turnip cake.
     “You know,” he says to Violet—who detests turnip cake—“I bet these bacon bits sprinkled all through this stuff come out of a bottle.”
     “I’m sure of it,” she says.
     Then they begin talking again about having children.
     “For one thing, they cry all the time”, says Tom, lifting a pork bun out of its bamboo steamer and onto his plate.
     “They only cry if there’s something wrong.”
     “There’s always something wrong”.
     “Oh that’s not true”, Violet says, more defensively than she really meant to be.
     They eat in silence. 
     “There are always lots of parents with children here,” Violet observes at last, glancing around at their fellow diners.  She waves at a Chinese boy who looks to be about three, and he enthusiastically waves back.  It makes her feel warm and cozy.
     “Isn’t he cute?” she asks Tom.
     “Who?”
     “The little boy over there in the turquoise sweater”.
     “Ummm,” he says, absently chewing on a squid tentacle.  Violet waves again.  This time the boy doesn’t notice.  She is crestfallen.
     Just then a couple seats themselves at a table opposite their table, against the far wall.  They have two children, a girl about five and a toddler of some indefinite toddler age, but old enough to require packing upright into a highchair.  Violet is expecting the young man and his wife to go on adjusting their children when, much to her amazement, the husband suddenly leaves off with the kiddos and, walking around to his wife’s side of the table, plants a long, solid kiss on her forehead.  Prim feels something akin to shock.  What is it?  The specificity of the act?  Its deliberation? 
     Tom notices too.
     “Now there’s a good marriage!” he says.  He means it more or less as a joke.
     “Yes,” Violet agrees.  And she feels like weeping.
   

TORONTO: CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

     Officer Brice looked as helpless and abashed any officer might without support, sitting all alone on a stool in as greasy diner with cold coffee and a piss-wet leg.  If ever there were a candidate for a good sharp tasering it was this stupid dog, he thought to himself.
     “Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for Bliss herself,” he muttered, realizing too late he had gone ahead and spoken out loud what he had only been thinking.
     “What wouldn’t?” asked Bliss.
     “Nothing,” said Officer Brice Sweetman, draining his clammy coffee and standing up to go.  “What’s your interest in these two?” he asked, turning to Michael.
     Michael shrugged.
     “He thinks Homer is some genius painter,” said Bliss proudly.  “Isn’t that right, Mr. Zorba?”
     Michael started to answer her and then decided against it. 
     “Homer?”
     “Yeh , Brice—Homer.  What’s so friggin hard to believe?”
     “Well, geez, Bliss, he can hardly scramble eggs!  How can he be a genius painter?  I doubt if he’d even be a good house painter,” he added, glancing into the kitchen.
     Homer poked his head around the doorway.
     “What’s the talk about?”
     “You, genius,” said Bliss, “and whether you’re paintings are any good.”
     Homer spat onto the grill—which sizzled contemptuously.
     “They’re good enough,” he said to nobody in particular.
     “Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Homer,” said Michael, walking out to the kitchen.
     “What?’ said Homer, slapping three slices of greyish ham onto the grill.
     “Your painting.  It looks pretty good to me too.  What I’ve seen of it.  Which,” he added meaningfully, “isn’t  much.””
     “Well, it’s what I do,” Homer replied.  “And it suits me.”
     Michael explained to Homer—who seemed infinitely more interested in the progress of his sullen ham slices—that he wrote a lot about art for magazines and for art galleries and that he wanted to take a look at what Homer did because he thought his work might be exciting to write about.  He tried to explain to Homer that some art dealer might possibly be impressed too, and want to give him a solo exhibition.
     “You mean like that Lucy Crater friend of yours who showed the guy with the cellophane paintings?”
     “Yes, maybe.”
Homer spat again onto the grill, only just missing the sizzling ham slices.
     “That was total fucking crap.”
Michael was a bit taken aback.  
     “You didn’t like Rubel Force’s Cellophane paintings?
Homer spit again, this time catching a slice of ham on its flank.
     “Anybody could do it.”
     “Oh I hardly think that’s true,” countered Michael, “Could you paint those paintings?”
     “Sure I could, if I wanted to waste my time.”
 Bliss came sauntering out to the kitchen to join them, dragging Fish after her on his leash.  Offended by such high-handed treatment, the dog promptly peed on a cardboard box full of hamburger buns.
     “I told you, Zorba, my Homer is a genius,” boomed Bliss.  “He can paint anything he wants to.  But what he likes to paint, as I told you once before, are copies of the Old Masters.  Right, Homer?”
     “Raphael, Titian, Veronese, Caravaggio,” said Homer.
     “No Leonardo?” asked Michael.
     “He’s too weird and difficult.  And too faggy.  I don’t paint pictures by, like queers.”
     “Caravaggio was gay,” Michael pointed out helpfully.
     “Well, maybe,” conceded Homer, “but not queer!”
     

TORONTO: CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

     They pushed through the door of the diner where Homer worked —which bore the unprepossessing name of Nick’s—paused by the cash register so that Michael, at Bliss’s urging and against his better judgment, could buy the incontinent Fish his favourite Crispy Crunch bar, and spotted Homer in the kitchen, presiding over his sweaty grill, laconically frying up a dozen eggs, a rasher of bacon and, to one side of the grill, a hillock-like mound of home fries and onions.
     “Yo, Homer!” yelled Bliss at the top of her substantial lungs, a greeting forceful enough to cause three customers to look up from their newspapers.  Homer waved.
     One of the now dislodged customers was the inevitable Officer Brice Sweetman, who was carving the final scrapings of red jam from its little plastic coffin and carefully spreading it on a slice of cold whole wheat toast.
     “Honest to god, I think you actually live here, Brice!” boomed Bliss.
     He smiled wearily. 
     “I drop in,” he replied.
     Bliss introduced him to Michael.
     You know,” Officer Sweetman said to him, looking sadly at his toast, “this jam actually tastes red.” 
     “Red?” asked Michael.
     “Yeh, red.  Not strawberry.  I wonder if an actual strawberry ever came close to it?”
     “And if it did, how long ago,” added Michael.
     “Hey Homer,” Officer Sweetman yelled in the direction of the kitchen, “why don’t you get some real jam?  Put it in a little pot on the table.”
     “Ask Nick,” said Homer, suddenly flipping the bacon so its violent new hiss drowned out everything else.
     “I’m asking you,” said Officer Sweetman.
     Homer shrugged.
     “Homer,” said Bliss suddenly, “Come out here a minute.  I what you to meet my big deal writer friend, Michael.  You can call him Zorba!”
     “No you can’t,” Michael told them both.
     “Who’s Zorba?” Homer asked, striding from the kitchen and wiping his hands on his apron.  
     “A Greek writer,” said Bliss.
     “He’s not a Greek writer, he’s a character in a novel by a Greek writer.  Damn it, Bliss, I’ve told you this a dozen times now!”
     “Weird name,” muttered Homer.
     “So is Homer,” countered Bliss.
     “I wanted to talk to you some more,” Michael explained to Homer,  speaking loudly  enough to be heard over Homer’s sizzling grease-fire, “because of what Bliss has told me about your love of Renaissance painting—and about how good you are at painting in that manner.”
     “What manner?” said Homer, walking back to his spitting grill where now lay the inert oval patty for the cheeseburger someone had ordered ten minute ago.
     “Your Old Master manner,” Michael replied.
     “I don’t know what that is,” Homer shouted, over the sizzle of the still frosty hamburger patty.
     Michael glanced at Bliss.
     “He really doesn’t.” She told him.
     “He’s just a cook,” interjected Office Sweetman.  “And not a very good one at that.”
     Bliss lumbered out into the kitchen.
     “But he’s my sweet babybaby,” she cooed affectionately, snaking her heavy arms around Homer’s apron’d waist.
     “He is?” said Michael, surprised.
     “Oh sure,” replied Officer Sweetmam taking a final sip of his cold coffee, “they’ve been at it for some time now—six months maybe.”
     “Bliss and Homer?”
     “Right.  Homer and Bliss.  Homer and Bliss and Fish.  Hard to figure, huh?”
     “Quite hard, yes,” Michael replied.
     Hearing the sound of his name, Fish padded over to Officer Sweetman’s stool and pissed against his leg.
     “Goddammit, Bliss!” howled Office Sweetman, “can’t you teach this stupid mutt some manners?”
     Homer came hustling back into the restaurant. 
     “Watch it, Sweetman,” he said, with what Michael took to be unusual menace.
     “Or else what?” said Officer Sweetman.
     “Just don’t call Fish stupid,” Homer replied.  “He’s not stupid at all.”
     “No, in fact he’s just as smart as Homer is,” added Bliss.
     Michael and Officer Brice Sweetman looked at each other and grinned.
     “Do you want the punchline?” Michael asked him.
     “Oh no, you go right ahead.   Be my guest!”

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TORONTO: A NOVEL--CHAPTER SIXTEEN:


 
     Coal was off early, speed-kissing him through a cloud of Issey Miyake Pleats Please, and murmuring something, on her way out the door, about going to see the mayor. 
     For Lincoln Ford, it was hard—virtually impossible—to bring together Coal and the avoirdupois Mayor of Toronto in the same sentence, especially in a sentence that stood there shivering by itself in time and space, beyond the reach of coffee and therefore vulnerable to misinterpretation.  Coal Blackstone sitting and talking demurely to His Worship Cass Tamberlaine?  He must have misheard her.
     But anyhow, Coal, he knew, could take care of herself.  The only danger he could envisage was her gradually expiring of boredom in conversation with the Lardly Cass.        
     But now his need for coffee was urgent, and while he usually made espresso for the two of them, he decided that just for this morning, Coal being off to the lair of the Mayor, he’d go visit his friend, dear old Peter of the Athens Astoria.    
     A diet’s a diet right enough, he thought as he came blazing up out of the parking garage in his red, 1960 Austin-Healey 3000, but a Greek coffee with a Greek custard pastry is something else again.
     Linc liked sweet stuff for breakfast and he particularly liked cold, creamy, pudding-like things—such as this devastatingly mild, milky, lemony custard Peter, the owner of the Astoria Athens, made fresh every day.
     Peter’s name was Peter something or other and while Linc had known him for seven or eight years now, he still had no idea what his last name was.  Linc knew a couple of things about him, though.  He knew, for example, that before he came to Toronto and opened his dark little restaurant on Bloor Street West, Peter had worked as the cook on a Greek freighter and made breakfast, lunch and dinner every day for twenty-five shipmates.
     Peter was a dab hand with Moussaka and with heavily herbed baked chicken legs (just the legs, never the breasts; what does he have, thought Linc, against chicken breasts?) and with olive-oil-soaked peas and rich, sodden but delicious green beans.  Sometimes he would make stuffed tomatoes and stuffed green peppers, and occasionally—all too rarely—he’d prepare his really spectacular stuffed zucchinis baked in a rich lemon sauce.  Still, it was Peter the Baker that Linc cherished, Peter the maker of morphologically inventive baklavas and innocent, angel-touched-custards like the tray of them sitting milky cool and buttery on Peter’s counter. 
     Peter had never learned much English, and a hearty “Yassou!” pretty much exhausts Linc’s Greek, so they simply nodded and smiled a lot.  Peter seemed remarkably fond of Linc and was very paternal towards him, and so whenever Linc would order a custard pastry and coffee—like this morning—Peter would bring him the coffee and two slabs of the custard.  Which he then had to consume (no problem!) with a sustained gusto (also no problem!) or Peter’s feelings—which were immense—would be hurt.
     Peter brought the two pastries to the table.  Two heavy, creamy portions of the gelatinous custard on flaky, slightly sharp, slightly vinegar’d phyllo pastry—each with a dusting of fine cinnamon on top.  Linc tucked into them—and was as delighted as always.
     “Delectable as usual, Peter!”
     Peter smiled and went to fetch coffee.  When he got back to Linc’s table with it, his hand was shaking.
     There’s been a change in Peter, thought Linc.  Every time now when he brings coffee to the table, his hand shakes.  And it’s getting worse.  Last week, Linc remembered, Peter had brought coffee and his hand had trembled so much that most of the coffee ended up in the saucer.  When that had happened, Linc had simply taken the saucer carefully from underneath the dripping cup and poured everything back inside again.  No need to mention anything.
     Today Peter’s hand was shaking so violently the full cup of coffee rattled in the saucer like castanets and the liquid brimmed over everywhere—onto the floor, onto the counter, some of it even dropped back into the cup.  Peter looked at Linc, wounded, humiliated.  Linc smiled encouragingly.  
     “Thank you,” said Linc, adding cream to the little bit of coffee that was left. 
     “You’re welcome,” Peter replied.  Linc had never heard him say that before.
     Linc was halfway through his second custard when an odd thought occurred to him.
     “Peter,” he asked, “does the mayor of Toronto ever eat here?”
     “The Mayor?  No, never.  Why?”
     “Oh I don’t know.  I was just thinking about the Mayor.”
     “Why would you think about the Mayor?” Peter asked.  “I bet he never thinks about you!  Why not think about that beautiful lady you live with instead?  Much more happy a thought!”
     “Coal?  Well, I was, as a matter of fact.  She’s in his office right now.”
     “Why?”
     “Apparently he’s been receiving death –threats.   She’s fascinated by things like that.”
     “The beautiful detective.”
     Linc smiled.
     “Tell her to be careful,” said Peter, attempting to refill Linc’s cup without slopping most of the coffee into his saucer.