LITMIR.BIZ

      McKelvey opened his eyes. Like waking up. The meeting was closing in its traditional fashion, some of the men hugging, others patting one another on the back, congratulating each other for progress made in this battle against grief—or perhaps simply for making it through one more Tuesday night. McKelvey was one of them, and yet he was apart. He found it impossible to imagine himself slumped forward in his chair, head in hands, crying in front of strangers. He couldn’t do it; it wasn’t in him. He slipped out the door and was down the hall before the moderator finally caught up to him.

      “Charlie,” he called, “Charlie, wait up. I’m glad I caught you,” Paul said, pausing for a breath. He smiled. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

      “Listen, about tonight—”

      “No, no. I wanted to ask a favour. It’s Tim, he’s...”

      McKelvey glanced at his watch, but not really. He said, “It’s just I’m running late and...”

      Paul moved a hand to McKelvey’s shoulder and looked into his eyes, unblinking.

      “My daughter was hit by a car on her way to school six years ago, Charlie.”

      “I know, Paul,” McKelvey said, “I know, I know.”

      “We’re in the same club, you and me. All the guys in that room. We’re all on the same side of the street watching everybody else go on about their lives over on the other side.” Paul was a tall, slender, soft-spoken man. His eyes were hazel, moist. His eyelids fluttered when he spoke. He struck McKelvey as the sort of rare man who manoeuvred easily and completely without shame in the realms of emotion, sensitivity. It was for this reason a certain type of man—a man like McKelvey, say— often assumed at first glance that a man like Paul must be weak.

      “Nobody else knows what it’s like. How can they?” Paul said.

      McKelvey said, “I know...”

      “I need you to help Tim. He’s not doing so well. Will you have a coffee with him, maybe go for a beer? I think you could help him. Maybe help yourself while you’re at it,” Paul said.

      “I guess,” McKelvey said. “It’s busy right now at work, but maybe in a week or so.”

      Paul reached into his pocket and handed McKelvey a folded square of paper.

      “Give him a call, Charlie.”

      McKelvey held the note between his thumb and forefinger, as though he had been handed a summons to appear. So the whole thing was pre-meditated, planned before the meeting had even begun. Paul was no fool, McKelvey knew. He knew the man had a way of getting more out of the group members than they set out to divulge, putting on this act of the eye-fluttering half-wit. The man possessed the sort of quiet intelligence that could not be underestimated by a police detective. McKelvey was always on guard in the presence of psychologists and social workers and group therapy moderators. Their craft was emotional sorcery.

      “All right,” McKelvey said, shoving the paper in his pocket, “if it’ll get you off my back.”

      He turned and walked away, wishing he’d rounded that last corner about thirty seconds sooner. That was the truth of it, and he felt a pang of guilt for even considering the request a burden. It was a privilege to be asked. You’re such an asshole, Charlie.

Three

      McKelvey came through the door of his home, the simple abode he and Caroline had purchased on a quaint little drive off Queen Street East long before the east end neighborhood known somewhat piously as “The Beach” was out of the price range of a working class family. The tiny old white-washed cottages nestled across from the beaches of Woodbine, Kew Gardens, Scarborough, Victoria Park, had over the decades been bought and sold a dozen times, renovated for the yuppies of the 1980s, renovated yet again for the high tastes of the urban young in the 1990s. At the very closing of the twentieth century, the old cottages wore skylights, their innards gutted to accommodate open concept lofts, kitchen islands beaming with marble and slate, walls smooshed in the latest designer colours, and owners could be overheard on the local Starbucks terrace dropping names like Gluckstein. The McKelvey home was finished with a newer kitchen and hardwood flooring in the hallway and living room, but that was where the upgrades ceased. All else was preserved in its original simplicity. McKelvey did not see the sense in replacing a functioning faucet simply because it didn’t look a certain way. Caroline, in her continual frustration, said it was one thing to change just for the sake of change, but another thing altogether to forget that time moves forward. She said one look at his collection of blazers and ties was evidence enough that McKelvey did not buy into the myth of first appearances.

      He put his coat on its hook and stepped lightly down the hall to find her seated at the kitchen table. He watched her there for a moment, unnoticed, a voyeur. She was an attractive woman, plain and confident in her beauty, at ease in sloppy clothes, old fraying pyjamas. She was writing in her “healing journal”, a cup of herbal tea at hand. He longed for her patience, for her ability to pause and sit like this, to be quiet and still, to listen to the beat of her own heart against the din of the city. It was half past nine in the evening. The room smelled of toast made some hours earlier, the lingering scent of burned bread. She looked up. Their eyes locked, and for the first time in a long time, they were in the same room together at the same time.

      “Home,” he said.

      She glanced at the clock. The Tuesday night meetings ended at eight. He caught her eye and followed her gaze to the timepiece on the wall. He blinked. Like a kid caught, getting ready to explain.

      “I went for a drive after the meeting,” he said with a shrug. And he was chewing gum, which confirmed everything. He coughed, too, and cleared his throat on cue.

      “You need to quit, Charlie,” she said. But there was an indifference to it. Or perhaps it was simply exasperation. A lifetime with McKelvey and his bad habits, broken promises.

      “I’m working on it,” he said. “Christ.”

      She tilted her head a little but didn’t say anything.

      “Listen, I was going to tell you after I got the confirmation,” he said, “but I have a meeting with Aoki tomorrow

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