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and tasted, along with the alligator, the gaminess of the prey, the copper-salt taste of its blood. He shared the creature's satisfaction at biting down hard, and for what seemed hours, Baddeley felt in equal measure the rightness of terror and the justice of hunger. He enjoyed the sweetness of human flesh. He experienced unspeakable fear and a savage complacency. His soul was torn in two and, finally, he cried out for mercy.

As soon as he cried out, Baddeley was brought back to himself. He was not brought back to the “real” world, however. He was once again in the ward with the mannequins. The three he could look at with impunity were comfortingly familiar. They were all versions of Anna Akhmatova, young and beautiful, middle-aged and sensual, old and dignified. The mannequin he was not meant to look at spoke.

– You mustn't cry out, it said. You must learn to bear it as I do. There was no malice or unkindness. The words were said and then, in an instant, Baddeley was in a service elevator going down to where the ambulances came in.

To Baddeley's surprise, the character of his communion did not seem to affect the inspiration that followed. If anything, this disturbing episode was more inspiring than the ones that had preceded it. Baddeley set about writing as soon as he entered his apartment. He spent weeks immersed in the world of
Parakeet
. He resented anything that took him away from the work: eating, sleeping, washing. And yet, he felt a curious distance from the novel. For all the passion and dedication and inspiration that went into it,
Home is the Parakeet
seemed not to belong to him. Yes, he recognized the various bits of his life and thinking distributed through the work, but they were not the novel's raison d'être. Insofar as the work had, for Baddeley, a raison d'être, it was in the images and feelings that flooded from his imagination, a glorious release he could share with no one. In the end, the work was nothing but a shrine to his solitude.

(Why was he writing a novel, anyway? It had never been his ambition to write fiction.)

Baddeley began to understand what it was that had driven Avery Andrews to live away from the world. How had Andrews managed to spend so many years — so many decades — with the astounding visions
and
the inescapable solitude?

In fact, he came to appreciate Andrews' plight even more deeply in the year that followed.
Home is the Parakeet
was published, an event that should have brought him joy. In his previous life — that is, in his life before Avery Andrews — he'd imagined the moments of publication (the launch, the pleasure of meeting other writers, the admiration of strangers) as pure joy. But the launch of
Parakeet
was nothing like pleasure. It was dull and insignificant. It took place in a room filled with people he did not know, who did not know him. The food on offer was tasteless; his own nerves dulled the acuity of his senses. And beyond all that there was a feeling of fraudulence. He had not written the novel.
He
did not like novels. The thing had been given to him by a being whose only interest was in the supposed peace the invasion of Baddeley's psyche brought to it. A more hollow event than a book launch Baddeley could not imagine.

That is, he could not imagine anything more hollow until reviewers — and, to an extent, the public — decided they liked his book very much.
Home is the Parakeet
was, for the most part, warmly received. Baddeley had not been known as a novelist, so there were envious critics who would have preferred to knock him down a notch. But none could do so without ignoring the flagrant fact that something interesting was up with the novel. Yes, of course, a handful of reviewers stared down their own doubts, in order to deliver to the public a disdain they assumed, as Baddeley had once assumed, was what the public needed most. But few listened to them, save for readers who did not like novels in any case. Outdoing its publisher's expectations,
Parakeet
was what is called a bestseller. It was bought in great numbers and read by almost half of those who bought it.

This success, which meant nothing to Baddeley, was followed by a handful of surreal events that meant even less. He spoke to a thin, freckle-faced man on
Radio One
. On
Radio Two
he spoke to a stocky man with a Vandyke. And then he was invited to read at the “Festival of Authors,” the invitation extended by the festival's artistic director who also invited Baddeley to a reception for a handful of writers who were at the festival that year.

The reception took place at a Korean restaurant on Bloor called
Fennel and Rue
. Its second floor is where food was served, but its first floor — a few steps down from street-level — was a tea house. To one side of the entrance was a barrel filled with rotting cabbage for kimchee. The tea house itself was predominantly wood — exposed beams, dark brown slats, knots and whorls like maddened veins. It was the kind of room that made you think of splinters until you actually touched the wood of the tables and benches and could feel them, smooth as polished stones. On offer in the tea house was tea: a varied and sometimes unexpected selection of flavours — grapefruit and cranberry; cranberry and walnut; orange and vanilla, etc. — served without any of the ritualistic fervour that sometimes poisoned tea houses.

Had he been alone, Baddeley would almost certainly have been comforted by the elegance of the room. But he was not alone. Little by little, the room filled with those for whom the reception was meant: writers, publishers, editors, and their various consorts. All were polite and all of them seemed kind. He should not have felt the least anxiety, but Baddeley was anxious from the beginning. He simply could not understand the connection between what he had gone through to write
Parakeet
and this bustle. He was conscious of how little he deserved to be in this place with these people. It seemed to him that everyone else — from the waitresses to the well-known — had better cause than he did to drink tea and eat the anise- flavoured biscuits that were passed around on silver platters.

Baddeley spoke briefly with a writer from the uK. And insulted him (or seemed to, though he hadn't meant any offense). He spoke even more briefly with an American writer, and seemed to insult him too. In any case, neither of his contemporaries had anything much to say and abandoned him, after politely smiling and turning away. So it was with almost everyone at the reception, even those who approached him first. The only exception was the slightly unwashed André Alexis, a writer whose work Baddeley despised. Alexis would not stop talking until Baddeley himself nodded politely and turned away, waving a hand in the air as if to signal to someone he'd seen on the other side of the room, though there was of course no one.

It occurred to Baddeley, as he turned away from Alexis, that it was possible — that it was perhaps true — that
all
the writers in the room felt as awkward and fraudulent as he did, that all of them were as unfit for society as he was. He dismissed this thought almost immediately, however. On the evidence, it could not be true that they
all
felt as he did, because the one thing his contemporaries did most consistently was to congregate at these dinners and launches, celebrations and memorials. Some of them, somewhere, had to be having something like fun. It was perverse to think otherwise.

The reception was, in a word, a damp squib. But the dinner upstairs was worse. The restaurant was not unappealing. It was high ceilinged, the walls above the white wainscoting a light blue. Framed and hanging on the walls were variously patterned, full- sized kimonos; perhaps a dozen of them in all. Tables of all sizes were distributed about the room. Half of the restaurant was reserved for the literary gathering. There were cards at the tables (white cards on which, in silvery, cursive script, names were printed) to indicate where one was supposed to sit. Someone had made a mistake, however, because when he found the card with his name, Baddeley saw that Gil Davidoff's card was at the place beside his. He was about to discreetly exchange his own card with that at another table when Gil himself appeared.

– Hey! said Davidoff. Where you been, Badds?

Davidoff was in his
tenue de chasse
: black jeans, a green, crewnecked sweater, a loose-fitting jacket with tweed patches at its elbows. He had new glasses: thick tortoise shelled rims, rectangular frames. His brown hair was boyishly dishevelled, as if he'd just stepped from bed, thrown a few things on and come to the reception at the pleading behest of the reception's organizers. Perhaps instinctively, Davidoff turned to look about the room thus affording Baddeley a view of what had been, at some point, a vaguely Keatsian profile but which was now a ruined, patrician vista: broken nose, protruding chin, gapped front teeth, greying hair, the face of a blowsy concierge.

– I didn't know you had a novel in you, Davidoff continued. I even heard it was okay. But you should be writing non-fiction. That's the thing these days. I'm writing about all the great television I'm making my son watch.

– That sounds interesting, said Baddeley.

– Plus chicks love it when you're an authority on something, said Davidoff.

Then, pausing for effect and turning to allow Baddeley a view of his hazel eyes, Davidoff said

– I don't know what I did to make you go all silent, Alexander, but I bet you miss me even more than I miss you, eh?

To Baddeley's knowledge, this was as close to an apology as Davidoff had ever come: a vague allusion to a vexing incident in which he may have played some part or other, though what that part was, exactly, Davidoff himself did not know.

– Yes, answered Baddeley.

– Well, I forgive you, said Davidoff. Let's not talk about this fit of yours again, okay buddy?

They sat down at their places. At the table with them were other literary lights. To Baddeley's left, there was the aging son of a late, great Canadian writer. The son, corpulent, his face as if carved from pink and grey butter, was himself a writer, but not a good one. To the son's left was his publicist, a woman who wore her hair severely pulled back. Her lipstick was of such a bright red and her face so heavily made up that she looked, to Baddeley, like a Raggedy Ann doll. To
her
left was a man with a hearing aid who smiled and said nothing. And to the left of the hearing aid was the hearing aid's wife.

In all the faces around all the tables there was not one that brought comfort to Baddeley. Davidoff's brought the opposite – a creeping despair at the thought that this man had once been his friend. And it was no doubt this incipient despair that further distorted the small world lodged in the throat of
Fennel and Rue
. Wherever Baddeley turned, things seemed slightly or even distinctly out of whack. At the table behind his, for instance, Margaret Atwood sat regally, her grey hair an afro of sorts, her cheekbones like half-buried golf balls. Nothing unusual there save that, after a moment, it seemed to Baddeley that there was something of the iguana to her, and no sooner did that thought occur to him than Atwood flicked out her pinkish tongue, the rest of her head as still as if it had not quite escaped from the wax in which it had been carved. Beside her, Graeme Gibson's neck grew so that he resembled a stork with thick glasses. In fact, all the necks in the room seemed to grow and sway vegetally, save, three tables away, Michael Ondaatje's.
His
neck shrank. His head bobbed up and down, looking like that of a strangely tufted raven.

Raggedy Ann's shrill voice interrupted Baddeley's reverie.

– There'd be no publishing in this country if it weren't for people like me, she said.

And it was then that the sounds of the menagerie assaulted him: implements on porcelain, women's laughter, the low laughter of their consorts and companions, the scraping of wood on wooden floors, and then coughing, shouting, and the clearing of throats. Here, faces came at him: Gowdy, Dewdney, Johnston, Lane. There, they settled back into the mire, anonymous again: Redhill, Crozier, Crosby, Toews. The lighting suddenly seemed sickly, the same colour as the excrescence from a garter snake. The hors d'oeuvres tasted of kerosene, and though the dinner was just starting, Baddeley had to leave.

– I'm going to be sick, he said.

– Well, don't do it on me, said Davidoff. I just washed this sweater.

Baddeley rose from the table and made as casual an exit as he could. He said nothing to anyone, leaving Davidoff to do any explaining that might be needed. He went down the stairs to the tea room, as if he were going out for a quick cigarette or something equally trivial. He imagined each and every patron in
Fennel and Rue
watching him as he retreated but, of course, not one of them noticed his departure.

Outside, the sun had not quite set. Somewhere in the west — beyond Parkdale, beyond Brown's Inlet — its reddish flash was almost gone. He was on Bloor Street near Christie. Looking east, the lights were bright and life seemed to quicken around Bathurst. Looking west, various shades of blue accumulated above the world, as if in a layered shot. To clear his mind, Baddeley decided to walk north to Dupont. He walked past Barton, Follis and Yarmouth. On one side of the street, Christie Pits, Fiesta Farms; on the other, Christie Station, and a mile's complement of modest houses.

It seemed to Baddeley that his soul caught up to him somewhere around Yarmouth. He looked over at the Spin Cycle Coin Laundry — above which, five irregularly spaced windows gave life to the red brick — and felt all of a sudden the solace that comes from being both somewhere and nowhere. He thought of Avery Andrews in the middle of Parkdale, — that is , in the middle of a neighbourhood to which he'd had no evident personal ties. “God,” it seemed, was a drug that made company hard to bear.