The Silver Age (14 page)

It would all have to go, he decided. Sure, it would be
easy to hide everything somewhere Natacha wouldn’t look, not that such a
questionable move would even be necessary. He could just as easily show them to
her, explain that she didn’t need to worry. He’d already told her a little
about Jenny Wynne, how they’d had a casual on-again, off-again relationship and
how they’d ultimately drifted apart. But he wanted to get rid of  the images
for his own reasons.

He gathered up the prints, negatives and contact sheet
and carried them out onto the balcony, then lifted the grill out of his
barbecue and turned on the gas. The lighter clicked drily a few times before
the burner lit with a gentle fwoomp, producing a ring of blue flames. He gave
it a minute to heat up, then began feeding the shots into the flame, using his
barbecue tongs to hold each item by its edge to avoid burning his fingers. Heat
from the flames wafted up at him. It carried a pungent chemical odour that
stung his nostrils and brought tears to his eyes. He kept his mind blank.

A couple of minutes later, everything was gone. It might
as well never have existed. After he’d finished, he let the blue flames lick at
the air for a little while longer. Bits of ash floated in front of his eyes,
dancing lazily within currents and eddies in the air. He exhaled, and their
dancing grew briefly more animated. He smiled to himself. After another minute,
he turned the main dial on the barbecue back down to zero, and the flame went
out with a second fwoomp. He shut off the gas and went back inside to continue
his packing.

The last stages of the move went smoothly, and Stephan
was soon settled in at Natacha’s place. Within a couple of nights of closing
the door on his loft for the last time, its scratched hardwood floors bare
except for the occasional dust bunny or deceased fly, its walls scuffed and
ready for a fresh coat of paint, he knew that it had been the right decision.
His hedging and foot-dragging over moving in with Natacha had, it seemed, been
a waste of energy. Being a live-in boyfriend, it turned out, suited him well.
He thought of something he and Pete had once discussed: when you were on your
own in a place, the colour could sometimes leach out of it. Gamblor had helped
to mitigate that for Stephan to some extent, but the greyness remained.

Sure, he loved black and white photography, the
simplicity and austerity of it. But black and white was for art, not life. When
you lived with someone else, the other person’s presence added colour to your
space, and to your existence. Their bottles of shampoo and shower gel in the
bathroom, their coats in the hall closet, their shoes lined up by the front
door, their food in the fridge and cupboards. It all contributed in a small way
to a sense of fullness and well-being.

There were a few minor hiccups during the move. They’d
had to get rid of several pieces of furniture since it wouldn’t all fit into
Natacha’s apartment, and most of what they got rid of had belonged to him.
There were frustrations on the work front too, that summer. He had decided to
do a mix of themes for his fall show – including pieces he’d salvaged from his
port lands project as well as some other miscellaneous shots – but the work had
been going slowly. He hadn’t mentioned any of this to Natacha. He didn’t want
to dim, even slightly, the warm light that suffused their first days as a
live-in couple.

All the important things were in order, anyway, and they
soon settled into a comfortable routine. Mornings, they would hang out for a
few minutes in bed, nestling in the cool white sheets, talking and joking as
easily as if they had known each other since childhood. Evenings, they would
have a drink together out on the apartment’s modest back deck, talking over the
day’s events and figuring out what they felt like for dinner. Amid such
rituals, he quickly realized that Natacha’s quiet, home-focused way of living
was more in keeping with his own rhythms than Jenny Wynne’s outward-looking
style had ever been.

One night in early September, after Stephan had been
living uptown for a few weeks and had fully settled in, they had Pete and Sally
over for dinner. It was the first time he and Natacha had entertained together,
and although their friends weren’t exactly a tough audience they still took
extra care to ensure that everything was just right. They spent all afternoon
in the kitchen preparing a huge spread of curries, salads and side dishes.
Between phases of the food prep, they’d hurry around the apartment to vacuum
and tidy. They arranged fresh flowers in vases in the front hall and on the
dining-room table. They even turned on the artificial fireplace – for comic
effect, and for (slightly out-of-season) ambience.

The two couples had much in common, and so spending time
with Pete and Sally was like looking into a kind of mirror. The friendships and
connections among the four of them went back a long way. This made Stephan feel
even closer to Natacha, since she’d already been a part of his history, in a
sense, years before the two of them had even met. There was a lot for them all
to discuss: politics, music, the real estate market, movies and television
shows, the future, interior decoration, the nature of true love. Sally let slip
that she and Pete were thinking about trying for a baby soon. It gave Stephan a
warm, excited feeling to think that his friend might become a dad, maybe even
within the year, even if he himself felt nowhere near ready for such a step.

Towards the end of the main course, Pete stood up, tipsy
enough for a corny gesture.

“Okay, guys, I really need to make a toast here.”

“I enjoy a good slice of toast now and then,” Stephan
said. He’d had several glasses of wine, too.

There were general groans.

“To Stephan and Natacha,” Pete went on. “A wonderful,
beautiful couple with a gorgeous home and a brilliant future together.”

They clinked their glasses and drank. The conversation
resumed, and after a few minutes the hosts cleared away the dishes and brought
out dessert, a rich, sweet rice pudding. Stephan topped up his glass one last
time. He would finish this final drink, be half sober by bed time. All was
well. In future years, it occurred to him, he would look back on this time as a
turning point.

Across the room, the artificial fire emanated a soft,
surprisingly cozy orange light.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

by Jenny Wynne

As Samwise Gamgee says at the end of the third Lord of
the Rings movie,
Well, I’m back.
(Don’t hate me for the fantasy
reference, cool kids – Liv Tyler’s in those movies, and she’s absurdly hot and
besties with Stella McCartney. Plus I’m a writer, okay? We’re all secret dorks.
There, I said it. I’m out of the geek closet. Take that, haters – now I’m one
of you.)

Sorry, where was I? Oh right, discussing my return to
this fair, if somewhat boreal, city, pardon my jetlag.

So it’s good to be back, eh? Sure it’s a bit small here,
a bit slow, but by the same token there’s a coziness and intimacy to this place
that I really, really missed. There’s so much that’s golden here – great shops,
gifted artists, cool neighbourhoods. The breeze coming in off the lake on a
cool spring morning, the whiff of champagne and rich dude at the annual
Innovators’ Ball.

I know it’s a cliché, damn it, but we have so much to be
thankful for here. (Aside from the weather, of course. Stilettos and an Ontario
January are not a match made in heaven.) Which is why I came back just in time
for patio season – all part of the strategic plan, troops.

I know some of the haters (one local element I did not
miss even a teensy bit – although there are plenty across the pond too) are
claiming I couldn’t hack it on the big stage. They’re saying that I was too
delicate a flower for the cut and thrust of the British tabloids. Bzzzzzt!
Wrong! Alex, I’ll take tall poppy syndrome for $100.

Nope, the honest truth is I’m back in residence because I
want to be. Sure, I may not stay put forever. (People keep telling me about
Argentina. Last I’d heard, it was some kind of dictatorship, but apparently that’s
no longer the case – now, word is, it’s basically Paris in the Twenties except
with a limitless supply of barbecued meats.) But for the time being I’m content
to cool my jets in this fine, fine city by a lake.

When I skipped town a year-and-change back, I was in a 
little bit of a rut. It was time to shake things up, to go boldly forth, like a
hobbit setting out from her beloved Shire. (Do lady hobbits have hairy feet?
Gak!)

I went forth, I did not multiply (thank you, Alesse).

I came to know the melancholy of retired Spice Girls, the
cold awakening in a friend’s air-conditioned suite on Majorca, the tedium of
the Tate Modern, the bitterness of disposable friendships.

I returned home, older and wiser.
Well,
she said,
I’m back.

Of course, time never stands still (not even in the
Shire). But somehow, I thought that things would stay the same here while I was
gone. Does that make me an egomaniac?

Perhaps.

So, yes, some things have changed. New condos everywhere
you look. New luxury outlets (hello, Hermès!) Meanwhile, Queen West has reached
its apotheosis as a garish theme park for adults of the hipster persuasion. And
of course, there are some absences – old, beloved boits have been shuttered,
old, cherished friends have dropped off the face of the planet.
It hurts us,
it hurts us, hobbitses.

I’ve seen a few of my old peeps already, and I’ll be
touching in with more of you darlings in the days and weeks ahead. We have so
much to talk about, so much to catch up on. I learned a lot in the UK, and
can’t wait to apply some of those lessons to my interactions with the local
scene.

So, without further ado: giddyup! Let’s ride this pony
till the dawn do us part.

Chapter 13

Panting from the unseasonable heat, he dropped her heavy
suitcase into the trunk and slammed it shut, then checked his watch again. They
were running late, and Natacha was going to miss her flight if they didn’t head
out soon. He skipped up the building’s front steps and buzzed their unit.

“Hello?” she answered, all polite.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said. He resisted the urge to ask
sarcastically who she was expecting, Papa Smurf? “I’m ready to go down here.
All we need is our precious cargo, which would be you.”

“Sorry, I’m an idiot, Steph – I was just looking for my
toothbrush.”

“See you in a minute,” he said. She’d forgotten to pack
her toothbrush? They’d been living together over a year now, but her sheer
absent-mindedness continued to astound him.

He went back to the car, slid into the driver’s seat and
punched the stereo’s on button. The radio was tuned a classical music station,
and a Bach violin sonata began wafting elegantly through the speakers,
sketching out intricate designs that shimmered in the air as if painted there.
In all fairness to Natacha, they still had a little time to spare. And even if
she missed her plane, well, worse things had happened. No doubt the airline
would simply get her onto a later flight.

She was bound for Chicago, with a team from her office,
for a five-day mega-conference, some sort of major confab on the planning
circuit. It was the first time she would be away for more than a couple of days
since they’d moved in together the previous spring. Maybe that was why he was
so jumpy – he was prematurely missing her. He had offered to tag along on the
trip (having never been to Chicago), acting as her sidekick and all-purpose
gofer. He would have taken a camera, done some shooting around the city, maybe
even spun a paying job out of it. The newspapers and airline magazines were
always looking for quick pickups. But she’d said it wouldn’t be worth the
trouble, since she’d be working the whole time, and anyway her boss was a
tyrannical sort who would disapprove.

The car was as stuffy as an attic. It was hot enough out
to warrant air conditioning, even though it was barely May. If the recent
weather was any indication, 2005 was sure to be a banner year for global
warming. He started the engine, hoping to freeze his frustration with a blast
of cool air, but at that moment she stepped through the front door of the
building in a grey business suit, her carry-on bag over her shoulder. She
normally worked in casual attire, as per the municipal way of things, so it was
strange to see her all dressed up, armoured for convention-hall combat.

“Right this way, Madam,” he said, holding the door for
her like a chauffeur.

“Why thank you, sir,” she replied, in a demure and
ladylike voice.

It was slow going on Avenue Rd., on their way over to the
Allen Expressway, and he soon began to fret again about the time.

“I’m sorry Steph,” Natacha said, having noted his
frustration. “Look at the traffic out here today. I should have called a cab
and spared you the hassle. I could’ve charged it to the office.”

“No, no, I don’t mind,” he cried. “I wanted to see you
off properly.”

“That’s so sweet!” She reached over to tousle his hair.
It felt good, the affectionate hair tousle. Such gestures were not to be
underrated on the pleasure scale.

The Allen was smooth sailing that morning, but up on
Highway 401 traffic was stop and go. A beat-up Honda sailed past them into the
collector lanes, cutting them off. He tapped the brakes and tooted the horn.

“Asshole,” he breathed.

“Easy there, boy. You know I’m going to make my flight,
don’t you?”

She was right. It didn’t feel like it, but they were
covering a lot of distance between the backups.

“So, Chicago,” he said, to change the subject. “You’ve
been there before, right?”

“Once a few years ago, for another conference.”

“How was it?”

“I liked it. It’s a lot like this city in some ways, a
bit bigger, although the downtown core is more compact. The waterfront is
gorgeous, a planner’s dream. That’s what you get when you have a dictator for a
mayor, instead of the tangled bureaucracy of overlapping jurisdictions we have
up here. But I was mostly at the conference centre, so I didn’t get to see as
much as I would’ve liked.”

“Would you ever live down there?”

“The US? Oh, I doubt it. It’s too crazy and big. Maybe if
the right opportunity came along, but I’m too much of a homebody at heart.”

“Right.”

A few minutes later, he’d navigated the off-ramp from the
highway and was pulling up to the kiss-and-fly parking area at Terminal One.
Sure enough, they’d made it – with forty minutes to spare before her departure
time. Barring a major holdup at customs, she’d make her flight, no problem.

“See? I told you we’d be fine,” she said.

“Touché, m’dear.” He popped the trunk and hauled out her
bag.  “Well, enjoy your free moments, and watch out for those debonair city
planners. I happen to know they can be quite fresh.”

“Stephan, please – don’t be disgusting.”

“Kidding!”

“Hey, I meant to ask you earlier... I was going to bring
you back a souvenir. Any requests?”

“How about something old school? Like a White Sox
pennant, or one of those miniature silver buildings, a little silver Sears
Tower.”

“It’s called something else now, that building.”

“You mean, the Sears Tower isn’t the Sears Tower
anymore?” He found this news strangely disconcerting.

“And of course it’s not the world’s tallest building any
more, either, not by a long shot. But I’ll find you something special, don’t
worry. In the meantime, have a great week, okay?”

He helped her get her bag out of the trunk, and they
hugged and kissed goodbye. Then the glass doors at the front of the terminal slid
silently open and she stepped inside. He watched as her figure receded into the
gloom of the terminal. She paused to check the information on her ticket, then
looked up and around, searching for her gate. He gave a last little wave,
trying to catch her eye, but she was focused on finding her way and didn’t see
him.

On his way back into the city, he took the 427 south to
the Gardiner Expressway, exchanging the horrors of the 401 for a slightly
longer trip. The traffic was less maddening, as he’d hoped, but the view was
much the same: warehouses, chain motels, bleak apartment towers, ailing
restaurants. He saw what appeared to be a McDonald’s-like fast-food place
called Kabul Farms, and wondered how the food was. A steady procession of jets
thundered past overhead, flimsy silver tubes bearing south towards the lake.
Soon, the one carrying Natacha would waft through. He tried not to picture her
up there, a tiny speck in the sky, drinking an even tinier plastic cup of diet
Sprite. He really should have insisted on going with her.

His life with Natacha was quiet, pleasurable, laid-back,
prosperous, comfortable and really almost relentlessly happy. Yes, he sometimes
missed the busyness and excitement of his previous existence, but that was a
natural part of moving on, he supposed – putting childish things aside in
favour of something secure, something real.

Work, meanwhile, was going well enough, although he
sometimes chafed at the kinds of jobs he was getting these days. The market for
his services was changing yet again, becoming tighter and more brutal. He’d
even started shooting the occasional wedding to top up his income, something
he’d once vowed, snobbishly, never to do.

As for Jenny Wynne, he still received updates on her
activities now and again, whether solicited or unsolicited. A mutual friend had
recently informed him of another trip to Europe, this time for a travel story
on marmot spotting in the Pyrenees. Before that she’d been in Los Angeles,
workshopping her new screenplay at the American Film Institute. Somewhere along
the way she had also gotten engaged, they said, to a portfolio manager at one
of the big public pension funds, who’d enticed her with a white-gold Cartier
ring. It turned out to be a false alarm. Either she’d broken it off, or the
story had been mere gossip.

Despite everything, he was happy to hear that she was
making her way in the world. She was determined to live a life less ordinary,
and was succeeding at it with flying colours. Sometimes the purity of her
ambition had led to collateral damage for those around her, as he himself had
learned many times over, but the essential gorgeousness of her performance was
never in question.

He merged from the 427 onto the Gardiner Expressway. As
he followed the on-ramp’s curving path, the downtown skyline slid into view
before him, shimmering in the middle distance. Downtown had always looked great
from out here on the periphery, its glittering surfaces gemlike in their
intricacy. In closeup, too, it had an undeniable panache. You’d go to press the
walk button at an intersection and realize that some strange, talented
individual with significant metalworking chops had attached strings and tuners
to the traffic post, converting it into a makeshift upright bass. It kept you
guessing.

But along with all of that, of course, came the noise,
the pollution. So many goddamn neighbourhood festivals it made you want to cry
out for mercy. When he’d first come here, from the suburbs, he’d had the idea
of building a life in the same way he crafted one of his prints. If he tried
hard enough, worked through a sufficient number of iterations, eventually he’d
arrive at near-perfection. That was what he had believed, or at least hoped.
But that wasn’t how life, as opposed to art, actually worked. In life, the game
was always changing, and you had constantly to adapt, to cobble something
together on the fly.

For months now, he and Natacha had been circling around
the question of an engagement. In fact, he was planning to use the occasion of
her absence to go ring shopping. He’d heard about some jewelry stores in the
east end of the city that carried antique diamond rings. He was even toying
with the idea of proposing to her the moment she returned from her trip, going
down on one knee in the arrivals lounge.

The downtown skyline loomed up larger now, no longer the
miniature that it had been when he first merged onto the Gardiner. It was
almost as if he could hear its voice, a low humming murmur. He exited onto
Lakeshore at the Humber River and veered up into High Park, where he was at
once immersed in a world of quiet side streets and sturdy brick homes. It
relaxed him to be heading north again into the outer city’s leafy embrace.

Stephan had briefly worried that without Natacha at his
side he’d be at loose ends, but it wasn’t so bad. He hadn’t been on his own in
ages, had forgotten how enjoyable it could be. With Natacha away, he fell into
once-familiar routines. He took a long walk that first afternoon, one of those
perfectly balanced May afternoons on the knife edge between spring and summer
weather. He put in some quality time with Gamblor, who had advanced to a stage
of lazy, contented seniordom, her days of playful kittenishness now behind her
forever. For dinner he had chicken noodle soup from a can, washed down with a
cold beer, a surprisingly satisfying repast.

The next afternoon he went out shooting downtown. It had
been ages since he had done any photography for his own enjoyment. Amid the
recent grind of wedding jobs and last-minute magazine shoots, he’d gotten out
of the habit. His expectation was that he would struggle to get his groove
back, but that turned out not to be the case at all – on the contrary, he felt
fresh and alert behind the lens, as if gazing through the viewfinder for the
first time. He shot people shopping at fruit stands laden with bananas, mangoes
and pomegranates. He shot a group of kids doing parkour stunts on the front
steps of a public library. He shot a street artist rendering a near-perfect
Botticelli on the sidewalk with sticks of coloured chalk. It felt good to be doing
it again, like reconnecting with an old friend.

He tried calling Natacha on her cell phone, just to say
hi. He’d spoken with her a couple of times shortly after her arrival in
Chicago, confirming that she’d landed safely and checked into her hotel. But they
hadn’t touched base since, and he wanted to hear her voice again. He missed its
bright music.

Her phone rang several times, which wasn’t a big surprise
– she’d warned him that she’d be working nonstop. He was about to press end,
not wanting to bother with voice mail, but at the last moment she picked up.
The sound of her voice was a surprising relief, as if on an unconscious level
he’d been afraid that she’d come to some harm, been run over by a drunk driver
or abducted from a busy street corner. But the line was thick with
interference, its tinny connection robbing her voice of its usual warmth.

He asked if she’d been able to do much sightseeing.

“A little here and there, saw the waterfront again,” she
replied. “A couple of good restaurants, but mostly we’ve been working… hang on
a second, there’s someone at the door…”

He could hear muffled voices, her hand over the receiver.
Then she was back on.

“Sorry, Steph,” she said. “My boss is here. We’re just
heading out to a dinner meeting.”

“Okay, then, bye – I love you.”

“You too, baby. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

He had never really considered becoming an office worker,
had never had an urge to gird himself in khakis and a light blue button-down.
Even so, he was jealous of Natacha and her team, with their RFPs and strategy
documents, their action items. His own career had its charms, too, but they did
not include leaping into taxis and rushing off to important meetings.