She remembers how he had not a single zit on his entire face. Once she knocked her eraser off her desk and it bounced across the floor. He had to reach from an awkward angle to pick it up, his face reddening as he hung upside down. Did he know he only had a month and three days to live? He exhaled a breath when he tossed the eraser to her, his face scarlet— a crack in the veneer of him.
She never was his friend. She said Thanks when he threw her the eraser but that was all, she was so afraid she would miss catching it. If she’d known he was going to die she would have said something or written him a note saying Hi. She would have donated her virginity to him even though it would have meant giving up her chance at having a unicorn lay its head in her lap as her life companion, its pearled alicorn spiralling smooth and nourishing in her hand, its shaggy lips nuzzling her other palm. Even though he would never have slept with her because he was gay, but whatever, she would have liked to give. Let him know that soon a blessing of unicorns would be here to save them all.
She wonders how many days she has left to live. If sitting on this revolting sidewalk is one of her final acts. Formaldehyde stews behind her eyes. She clasps her bag in her arms, its stiff new-car smell.
Walter
Way back on Monday, 4:17 a.m., Walter, the guidance counsellor — stone-cold irritated at his boyfriend Max because of their fight the night before, stone-cold awake hours before the alarm clock is set to shriek them awake— hauls himself out of bed and shakes open the newspaper in the dark of the kitchen. His boyfriend Max now awake too, bumps into the wall on his way to the bathroom. Walter hears the toilet flush, so he flicks on the coffee machine. The coffee almost done gurgling as Walter cranks open a can of cat food while their cat, Lieutenant Fong, twines her tail around his shins, and Max sucks in his morning smoke on the back porch, wrapped in his parka, his boots trailing their laces. They spoon low-cal cereal and skim milk from their bowls, drink the coffee, bite into toast with peanut butter, Max still oppressively silent like a great big pouting man-baby, his silent fury left over from last night because Walter accidentally marked the coffee table with a ring from his glass of orange juice. The Cold War all over again because of a bit of marked varnish on the coffee table. It’s 5:32 a.m. as they knot their scarves and pull on their toques and boots. Walter stuffs the book he finished this weekend into the papers spilling from his satchel: Max’s secretary, Joy, recommended it, The Pride and the Joy it’s called, and he loved it. Loved it. He hasn’t cried so much since he read Sounder when he was eleven.
Max about to yank open the front door.
— Wait, says Walter. — Where’s my goodbye kiss?
Max purses his lips, his arms crossed. Leans forward and pecks Walter on the mouth.
— That’s right, says Walter.
— Doesn’t fix the goddamn table, spits Max, furiously shooting back the lock on the door.
— Oh bugger off, says Walter. Max pounds his feet into the snow.
— You bugger off.
Max violently brushes snow off the car windshield, the hood.
— No, you bugger off, whispers Walter, stepping through the front gate and out onto the slushy sidewalk.
That Monday morning before all the bad things happened. A normal Monday. Monday. Monday. Monday.
Monday, Walter decides to walk to work instead of taking the bus while the diapered and swaddled giant squalling baby Sir Max, His Royal Highness, the Sulking King of Coffee Tables, who as principal of the school and so technically Walter’s boss, drives away and onward to his special, reserved parking space at the school. Excruciatingly early for work. Walter estimates it will take him an hour and forty minutes to walk to school. Two hours maximum.
Walter forced to run the last fifteen minutes to work, he broke down and jumped on the bus part of the way there, his clunky boots nearly kicking off his feet as he lumbers through snowbanks, leaps icy gutters, his coat flapping wide open, his armpits soggy, his knees creaking, his lungs raw and heaving, socks sliding down inside his boots, his heels naked and rubbing against the felt lining. Bursting through the doors only one minute before the first bell which means he’s twenty-nine minutes late.
Walter mops and blots himself down in the bathroom with paper towels as best he can, his shirt drenched with sweat; ten minutes later, sauntering casually, his lungs still smouldering, to the main office to refill his coffee cup, The Pride and the Joy under his arm, when Joy the secretary says, — The Pride and the Joy? No no, I said The Pride of Provence! It’s a book about a man from Ontario who decides to renovate his country house in Provence. Look at this picture I took of my husband and son when we did a bus tour of Provence. More like an eating tour!
Walter crinkles his lips, — That’s awesome! he says, tucking The Pride and the Joy behind his back. His chest pings. His book a different book entirely.
She flips through her little plastic book of pictures twice, so he won’t miss the white canvas cap her husband is wearing, how tanned she is in her striped tube top, camera case slung over her shoulder, an irritating Frenchman who pops his head into the picture at the last second. Her son’s round face and barbed wire teeth blocking the view of a stone church, the outline of a quaint bakery window neatly arranged with iced pastries and loaves of bread. Walter gazes at the pictures, gazes at the bobby pins criss-crossed on the back of Joy’s head from where he is hunched over her shoulder for her exciting pictures.
— How wonderful! he says. — Awesome!
He grins when she swivels in her chair to watch the delight on his face. He’s read the completely wrong book — a dreadfully wrong book, a sentimental, gloopy, ridiculously happy-ending gay love story that he read for twelve hours straight on the weekend while Max was out, and which made him bawl.
— You should go to France! exclaims Joy. — You can borrow our Michelin guide. And the French women are beautiful. Beautiful! Very stylish. Find yourself a girlfriend in no time. In fact, I have a girlfriend in my book club, Yolanda, recently divorced…
— Getting too old for that kind of nonsense, Walter grins. He grips the wrong book, tucked even more firmly, behind his back. She’s new, been working here for less than a year. He’s a fat black man in his fifties, an old bachelor, who eats alone in his guidance counsellor office every lunch hour. Doesn’t she know to leave him alone?
He points at a picture of her son doing a grinning handstand in a fountain to distract her from Yolanda, from the book burning his hand. His spilling desire, his longing to talk about The Pride and the Joy with someone, anyone, in this relentless place, who might understand just one word. Max so absorbed in the damn coffee table, he refused to listen when Walter tried to tell him about the book this weekend. On the way back to his office, Walter grasps the book, title in, against his chest, its pages slippery with inadvertent radioactivity.
Walter puffs into his office, then realizes he forgot his coffee cup in the main office. He opens the Tupperware container on his desk, a jumble of carrots, celery pieces and cherry tomatoes. He pops a tomato into his mouth and bites on it while he scrolls his emails, flips through his appointment book, scratches his beard hard all over, beard dandruff flakes fluttering, then remembers with a start that graduation is in less than four months. He fritters the morning away printing up Grade 12 transcripts and trying to come up with a more time-efficient plan for the graduation ceremony.
