pass, but he usually took vacation during July and August and it was more economical to buy ten-ride tickets that had to be cancelled for each ride. Wearily, he got up, inserted the ticket into a nearby machine, then slumped onto the bench again.
Maureen was right. No one would miss him. Sure, they might wonder where he was, why he wasn’t there, click their tongues and comment on how all work and no play made Hal a dull boy, but that was it. They wouldn’t give him another thought. Maureen. Joe. Rachel. That pompous old fart Wiseman. His parents, even though he’d promised to take them to the concert later that evening. The truth of the matter was, he was about as interesting and exciting as an old sofa.
And, he thought, looking down at his protruding gut, he was built a bit like an old sofa too. No wonder Maureen got all gooey-eyed over Joe. He didn’t look as though he’d gained an ounce in thirty years. In fact, he seemed even trimmer than he’d been when he’d quit the police and gone out west. Hal had never been exactly skinny, even as a teenager, but he’d started gaining weight in his second year of university and had continued to gain until he’d topped out at his current weight five or six years ago. When was the last time he’d been able to see his own dick without a mirror? he wondered glumly. Not for some time, even erect. Good thing he could find it by feel, he thought with bitter humour.
The train came and he climbed aboard with the other Saturday morning commuters and shoppers. He trudged up the stairs to the upper level of the car because it was usually less crowded. The only other occupants were a foursome of teenaged girls who fell momentarily silent, staring at him as though he were an alien just arrived from Mars, then dismissed him utterly, as though he’d suddenly ceased to exist. Or had never existed at all.
He found a seat and tried to ignore the girls as thoroughly as they were ignoring him, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off them. Try as he might to focus on his newspaper, his gaze was drawn back to them as inexorably as a compass needle is drawn to magnetic north. None of them was especially pretty, but they all wore skin-tight jeans that rode below their hipbones, and skimpy tops that revealed their midriffs and the shoulder straps of their brassieres, those wearing them. One girl, a chunky Chinese with shining black eyes and orange-striped hair, obviously wasn’t, and the nipples of her plump, immature breasts were like dark pebbles below the surface of the sand. None of them had tattoos, that he could see, or obvious body piercings. With a shudder of revulsion, he wondered if any of them had pierced genitals. Surely they were too young for that sort of thing. On the other hand, they were too young to be dressed so provocatively. Didn’t they realize the kind of message they were sending?
One of the girls became aware of his attention and whispered conspiratorially to her companions. They all looked in his direction and giggled. The Chinese girl glanced around the compartment, then locked eyes with him. His pulse raced. She plucked at the hem of her top, raising it higher on her midriff, as though she were going to reveal her breasts. Hal stared, mouth dry, perspiration pooling in his armpits and running down his sides, simultaneously fascinated and horrified. Then, laughing, the girl pulled the hem of her top back down. Her friends roared with laughter. Face flaming, Hal struggled to his feet and staggered down the stairs to the lower level, the girls’ laughter chasing him like the taunts of Yonge Street whores.
Marty Elias had teased him like that once, he recalled, as he sagged into a seat on the lower level. One day, when he got home from playing softball, he found her sprawled on the sofa in the basement recreation room of his parents’ house — she was Rachel’s best friend and always hanging about — wearing shorts and a stretchy pink tube top.
“What’re you doing here?” he said to her.
She looked at him. “Waiting for Rachel.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Where is she?”
Marty shrugged. Beneath the fabric of her top, her breasts were the size of half golf balls and shaped like foreshortened ice cream cones.
“How old are you now?” Hal asked, although he knew perfectly well how old she was.
“Same as Rachel,” she said. “Eleven.”
“You look, um, older,” he said.
“Yeah? Really?” She sat up a little straighter, thrusting out her chest. “My boobies are bigger than hers,” she said proudly.
“A little, I guess,” Hal said, face hot.
A sly expression crossed her small face. “I bet you’ve never seen a girl’s boobies before.”
“What? Sure, of course I have,” he lied. He had, but only in magazines.
“Gimme a dollar and I’ll show you mine.”
He swallowed dryly. He was certain she was teasing, but he dug into his jeans pocket anyway, feeling his erection as he fished out some change and a crumpled dollar bill. “I’ll give you fifty cents,” he said.
“Gimme the dollar.”
Heart hammering wildly, he gave her the dollar. She smiled triumphantly as she shoved it into the pocket of her shorts. She fingered the upper edge of the stretchy tube top. There was an almost unbearable tightness in his chest.
“Well,” he croaked.
Suddenly, she jumped up from the sofa and bolted up the basement stairs.
“Hey!” he shouted, starting after her.
Rachel came downstairs from the kitchen just as Marty flew out the back door. She frowned down at Hal from the landing. “What’s wrong with Marty? What’d you do to her?”
“Nothing,” Hal grumbled, then went into his room, locked the door, and masturbated into a dirty gym sock.
The train pulled into Union Station and he queued at the door to disembark. Without paying him the slightest attention, the four girls brushed past him as soon as the doors opened. He had ceased to exist for them, if he had ever existed at all.
chapter twelve
After breakfast, Shoe and Rachel walked to the small park behind the houses across the street. Shoe had never known its name, but a shellacked wood sign identified it as Giuseppe Garibaldi Park, a testament, he supposed, to the many people of Italian descent who’d lived in the area, and did still. He carried the heavier of a pair of file boxes of pamphlets and papers, and the rolled-up woven blue polypropylene kitchen shelter he’d helped Rachel get down from the rafters of the garage. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and, despite the omnipresent yellow haze of pollution, the mid-morning sun had a savage bite. Fortunately, the humidity had dropped a bit more overnight and there was a slight breeze, insufficient to disperse the pollution, however.
The park was a hive of activity. Where the outdoor skating rink had been every winter when he was growing up, a group of bare-chested, sun-baked men with bandanas tied around their brows was erecting a big white open-sided tent, driving two-foot metal stakes into the hard ground with sledgehammers, and stringing wire-rope guys to sturdy metal poles. A white five-ton truck stood nearby, “Rain or Shine Party Rentals” emblazoned on the sides, from which two men off-loaded folding tables and stackable chairs. Dozens of men and women and kids bustled about, setting up community action kiosks and crafts tables, portable garden gazebos and more camp kitchen shelters; dragging gas barbecues into position; lugging picnic coolers and boxes of hot dog and hamburger buns and cases of soft drinks from the backs of minivans and SUVs parked along the street on the south side of the park;
