fights, some after disappointments, while others simply vanished without leaving a clue as to where they’d gone. Or why. He’d become expert at ferreting out the signs, following them like a trail of breadcrumbs to learn how and why people reinvented themselves. Assuming they were lucky enough to be given a choice and a second chance, that is. He became adept at sniffing the air, picking up the scent of one life and following it to where it morphed into another, the mismatched remnants of a shattered vessel pieced together into something that resembled a whole again. Those were the relatively lucky ones, Dan knew. Then there were the thousands who approached some kind of vanishing point and were never heard from again, donning a cloak of invisibility. Who knew, but some of them could be standing on a nearby street corner right now, having joined the ranks of the Girls of the Night.
Dan’s stomach growled: it was payback time for staying up late. He swung south and headed down to the lake, following the concrete trail beneath the Gardiner Expressway, past the film studios and dockyard canals. A burger and fries combo from Wendy’s was uppermost on his mind. He stopped at the Leslie Street outlet, the one with the friendly Jamaican woman who was there every night, no matter what time he turned up. He imagined she had kids to support, debts to pay off. Otherwise, why would she be there grinning like a madwoman at 3:18 in the morning?
He handed over his change and silently wished her a better future, whatever it might be, while wondering if Darryl Hillary liked Wendy’s combos. Dan gratefully accepted the pungent-smelling bag of carbs and grease and a large Frosty before driving on. With one hand plunged into the paper to draw out a fistful of stringy fries, he passed the turn-off that would have led home. Instead, seemingly of its own accord, the car turned left on Queen Street, heading back over the Don Valley until it reached a cul-de-sac with a thicket of townhouses springing up like mushrooms. He stopped in front of a tall grey unit in a row of five. This place would soon have his name on it. His and Trevor’s, if things turned out. Kedrick’s, too, but that would be temporary now that Ked was nearing the end of high school and starting to think about university. And so the page turned, Dan mused.
His new neighbourhood was Corktown, a roughly triangular area bounded on the south and east by the Don River where it fed into Lake Ontario. To the north, Regent Park’s housing projects were jammed together with the privileged gentrification of Cabbagetown, while poor, unfashionable Moss Park and its homeless shelters lay to the west. With Dan’s rag-tag background, he could rightly claim to belong to all of these groups, and none.
Some declared that Corktown got its name from the wave of Irish immigrants arriving in the early-nineteenth century, though Dan preferred the local legend that it was due to the many breweries and a cork manufacturer that once employed a good number of the area’s residents. In any case, it was a decidedly old world slice of Toronto’s past containing the city’s first Catholic parish. Somewhere beneath a current-day schoolyard, an unmarked graveyard held the remains of those parishioners, fleeing poverty and famine in the old world only to find death in the new one. Poor Protestants who couldn’t afford the pew fees at nearby St. James Anglican Cathedral eventually erected their own place of worship, Little Trinity, the city’s oldest surviving church. A Tudor Gothic structure built “for all people,” it was set smack on King Street, the new arrivals seemingly unable to shake off the aristocratic shadows of the Dominion even here.
This would be Dan’s second house in the city. Fifteen years earlier, he had bought his current home at the foot of Leslieville during a slump in the market. It had cost considerably less than expected, but he’d taken his good fortune in stride and made the best of it. Now, with the anticipated addition — meaning Trevor — his domestic arrangements needed expanding. He’d bid on the current property and paid dearly for it, gratefully accepting Trevor’s offer to remake the interior and oversee the project’s completion. It promised to be quietly spectacular when done. Dan was counting on that. It had to be right; this was probably the last place he’d buy before his retirement, if that day ever arrived.
He rolled down his window and gazed up at the structure. So far, things had gone according to schedule.
The roof had been replaced and the interior gutted. Last week, the builders had installed new window casements on the upper floor. They gleamed in the dark. Once painted, however, they would blend in nicely. Trevor had worked hard to reassure the anxious community reps that no drastic changes would be made to the building’s exterior. He promised to maintain the historic façade, matching it with those on either side. Dan liked being the townhouse in the middle, though he hoped for nicer neighbours than the current ones in newly trendified Leslieville, where the money had been flocking of late.
Grabbing his bag of fries and half-eaten hamburger, he stepped out of the car. He approached the house as though it were a nervous horse, touching the brick with his fingertips and feeling the city’s restless pulse beneath his hands. Home. In his mind, he envisioned living here with Trevor and Ked, meeting the neighbours, learning the ins-and-outs of the community: which market had the best vegetables and fruits, which butcher to go to for the freshest cuts of meat, who the neighbourhood characters were.
Domesticity was growing on him daily. He couldn’t wait to move in officially with Trevor. It would dispel the unease he felt waiting for their relationship to settle. At present, Trevor travelled back and forth from Toronto to the west coast, where he carried out occasional renovation projects. When the new house was finished, he’d move here for good. A new neighbourhood meant a new beginning, a new corner turned in life. It felt right.
Dan’s mind went to the dark cloud on his horizon. Coaxing Trevor from his rustic British Columbia villa had been a protracted exercise. A self-proclaimed sociophobe, he’d lived in semi-retirement for the past half-dozen years on Mayne Island, a lesser-known cousin of Salt Springs in the Southern Gulf chains. One of the things Dan had enticed him with was the prospect of running the renovation project. Trevor had accepted, but on a no-promises, no-payment basis. If he stayed, the payment would be to live with Dan. He was unsure if he could fulfil that promise, however. Architectural design had been his occupation at one time, but he’d largely left it behind when he retreated to Mayne Island after the death of his lover. While living the life of a hermit had helped him regain his equilibrium, he wasn’t sure that returning to urban life was on the agenda for him.
Dan monitored the progress anxiously. From the start, Trevor found Toronto challenging. Too much concrete. Too many buildings swaying overhead and blotting out the sky. Too many people. It was very different from his west coast Pleasantville existence, with its sweeping vistas of snow-capped mountains on one side and the endless ocean on the other. Dan had promised him Toronto wouldn’t be all that different, but who was he fooling?
Meeting Trevor had transformed Dan’s life. He now woke with a sense of excitement and purpose, a fervour he hadn’t felt in years. Even Ked noticed it. “This guy does something for you, Dad. I hope he stays.”
“So do I, Ked.”
And so love came calling. Warm, funny, comfortable, just short of bearing tea and crumpets. A shimmering of light on the edge of the horizon. After all these years, it was looking like the real thing and standing in the shadow of the possible. Dan wasn’t reluctant to accept the feelings, just slow to trust whether he could manage to love and be loved without losing his sense of self.
Purchasing the new home had taken a leap of faith. After leaving his former employer to work on his own, his reserves had dwindled. The housing market was sluggish; otherwise he’d simply have sold his current house and moved. Instinct told him to wait. While the country’s neighbour to the south was mired in an economic recession, Canada had held its own for the most part, but he couldn’t afford to sell just yet.
For the past decade, Dan had wanted to leave the city nearly every day. Toronto rubbed him raw in every possible way, but suddenly, ironically, just as he met someone who lived elsewhere he found he wanted to stay. For one thing, Ked needed him here. Ked’s mother also lived in
