can’t let go of the topic. “Is it feasible to believe this woman is on the cusp of a major performing career?” he asks, though it isn’t a real question.
“Why not?” Manuel asks.
Jon spreads his arms. “Because she’s forty-six years old, man!”
An antiquity, barely clinging to life. Manuel reaches into his coffee cup, retrieves the corpse of the gnat, and flicks it onto the floor. “Is it our business to forecast future performances, or to reward the recital we have just heard?”
“Come on, Manny,” Portia sighs, reaching under her blouse to give her bra strap a tug. “You’re being philosophical rather than realistic.”
That word again.
“I only know what I have heard and seen,” Manuel insists. “Not what I might hear at some point in the future. Who can predict this?”
Portia comes to the rescue again. She’ll make a fine president of the federation. “Let’s proceed to the next name on the list,” she suggests, peering over a pair of flaming red reading glasses. “We can revisit Lucy Shaker’s case at the end. Agreed?” She fixes her gaze on each judge in turn until she receives a confirming nod.
“Toby Hausner.” Jean-Paul adjusts his own glasses to read from the list. “Name rings a bell.”
“Indeed it does,” Portia says. “Do we all recall Paris? Jon was present as a youthful competitor.”
“Which year?” Jon asks. He entered the Paris competition twice.
She reminds him.
He sighs. “Never made it past the preliminary round. Small problem with tone and warped fingerboard.”
“Toby Hausner made it to the finals.”
“He did?” Jon seems mystified, then gradually a look of astonishment crosses his face. “Christ! That kid in dreadlocks who scorched through the semis, then came out barefoot for the final?”
“The very one.”
“He self-immolated out there. It was a horror.”
There is a short silence as they digest this sorry tale.
“He played magnificently today,” Jean-Paul eventually says. “This is an artist I’d pay to see.”
“Yes, but …” Portia ventures. “Do we dare promote him?”
“Come on, lads an’ girls, let’s hear it for our courageous driver!” This is Marcus holding forth as he lunges down in the aisle of the rented bus.
“Rah-rah,” someone says.
He slaps his hands together. “Who knows a song? C’mon, you lot. I want to hear boisterous singing.”
The bus brakes sharply, and Marcus tumbles forward, grabbing the back of Trace’s seat for balance. “Fucking shite!” He’s been hammered since being dropped from round one.
Pine trees spin by on the old highway, a river route following the crevice of a glacier-age gorge. Let the judges deliberate, Toby thinks. You can’t sit on your ass waiting for your future to arrive. Worse, you can’t let your recital haunt you, endlessly replaying the program in your mind, each hiccup going stereo, every misstep and string buzz pressed into memory. “A hundred bottles of beer on the wall!” he roars, and everyone joins in for a verse.
“Sit down!” the long-suffering driver pleads.
Acting like a bunch of unruly camp kids, the gang’s on furlough from the competition, trying to pretend it doesn’t exist for a few fragrant hours. Air streams through the open windows, message from the larger world.
Marcus, the Brit who was expected to ace the first round but didn’t, ignores the driver’s instruction. “What’s our national anthem, mates?” He starts ripping an air guitar version of the opening chords to “London Calling.”
The rented school bus crests into the final leg of the journey, then drills a sheer downward slope to the launch area next to the riverbank. A picturesque log cabin is set up next to stacks of kayaks, canoes, and rubber rafts.
The group clambers out, stretching and yawning after the hour-long ride on hard seats.
“Fuck those,” says Marcus, pointing to the row of kayaks. “Eskimo tippies. I want something with a nice fat arse.”
“You must wear PFDs, sir,” the youth in charge of rentals insists. “It’s the law.”
Marcus lifts up one of these objects. “Did the mighty voyageurs wear lifesaving vests? I think not.”
Lucy and Armand haul the cooler of beer from the bus as the door swooshes shut, and they all watch the rattletrap vehicle take off, due to return in two and a half hours.
Many competitors elected to stay back in their dorms, continuing to practise, not allowing their precious focus to soften. Toby was like that once, but now he grabs a beer and clambers up on a rock — Champlain discovers the new world. It pours in from all sides, the rolling foothills of the Laurentians, the river curling below, and behind them the highway buzzing with traffic. The universe is a bigger place than an airless room and a guitar.
Hiro, looking capable in track pants and purple tank top, scrambles down the hillside and lifts the bow of a kayak, testing its weight. Toby leaps off the rock, beer can in hand, and skips after him to the launching area. They could be a normal group of pals on an outdoor lark. Daniel, a francophone guitarist, negotiates with the youth in charge, and soon a pair of kayaks slides into the water, Hiro deftly stepping into one and Trace in the other. The girl lives on an island, so she swings away from shore with an effortless tug of paddle. The rubber raft bobbing dockside is for everyone else. They pick over the stack of orange vests, and Toby pushes his arms through one bulky number, not bothering to fasten the ties. He can almost see Jasper pointing a warning finger. Rolling up the cuffs of his jeans, he steps into the unsteady craft, clambering over the benches toward the bow.
The gorge is a placid waterway this time of year, long past the unpredictable surges of spring. Armand, followed by a musician from Belgium, then Marcus and Lucy, all settle into the raft, lurching as they find their seats.
“Who’s in charge here?” Lucy frets.
“Call me skipper,” says Toby, lifting a wooden paddle. “Cast off!” He takes a final gulp of beer before stashing the can under his seat.
The craft rocks as Baldo, a Serbian guitarist with shoulder-length hair jumps onboard, cigarette dangling out of his mouth.
“No smoking!” the Belgian shudders, and the others chime agreement until Baldo is forced to extinguish, shooting the spent cigarette toward shore.
They’re all wearing ball caps emblazoned with the vanished Montreal Expos team logo — even Lucy, who looks like a kid in her capris and T-shirt. She shrieks with glee as the craft enters the current and picks up pace, cruising down the centre of the river, cliffs rising on both sides.
Toby paddles like crazy, then remembers that this is no time to mess up a shoulder and eases
