LITMIR.BIZ

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the door, Belle held up her hands. What was that saying about making lemonade? Why not let the woman show her stuff? A single day would tell. “We’ve had a bad start. Let’s begin again. Miriam said you had realty experience.” She waved the woman to a seat.

      Yoyo sidled into Miriam’s chair, crossed her shapely legs and pooched out her lower lip. “Ten years at Crown. Ninety per cent on the first two real estate courses. Best in my class. I’m gonna be a realtor, just as soon as I take the last course and pay my fee.”

      The easy ticket to wealth, a part-time job, many thought, but 24-7-365 was the reality. The assessment of several thousand dollars to join the hallowed ranks kept amateurs at bay. Belle nodded, blowing out a breath and leaning across Yoyo to punch on Miriam’s computer. She coughed discreetly at a cloying perfume that smelled like cotton candy. “Then you know the ropes. I’ll give you a brief tour and tell you what’s on the schedule.” She pointed to the coffee maker. “Still fairly fresh, comparatively speaking.”

      Grinning, Yoyo pulled a box of chocolate doughnuts from her purse. The dog drooled, and the phone trilled.

      Later that afternoon, Belle drove down Edgewater Road and pulled into a large property bearing one of her business signs. At the entrance to the drive, Maureen had located a six-foot-high boulder, a “pearl”, as rockwall builders termed the valuable commodities. She’d had a wrought-iron sign custom-made and drilled into the rock. “Pebble Beach,” it read, casting artistic ivy shadows when the sun moved to the west. Inheriting the cottage property from her parents, then building a permanent home, Maureen had landscaped the place with a bevy of perennials, rock gardens and woven willow arbours with climbing gourds. A mass of parrot tulips raised expectations for the growing season. Daffodils were nodding in the sunnier areas. If this man . . . how maddening that they hadn’t exchanged names . . . liked plants, he’d fall in love with the yard. Lilacs, white and mauve, were in glorious array, as were the pin cherry trees and a flowering crab. Their redolence filled the air, and each breeze off the water scattered papery petals onto the ground like wedding confetti.

      The same balmy weather that coaxed that picture had also brought a curtain of bugs. The bloody slaughter on her van’s windshield was clear evidence. Belle retrieved a bottle of spray and a roll of paper towels to clear the massacre. Then she sat awkwardly in a slanted Muskoka chair on the covered porch, swatting now and then at a delta-winged fly that tried to burrow into her hair. Each winged destroyer had its signal features. And even the smallest, the no-see-ems, could creep through a large tent screen and leave exposed flesh burning like an iron had scorched it.

      She heard the crunch of gravel. Into the driveway came a GMC 2500 Sierra 4x4. A tall man with ash blond hair got out. He wore sensible khaki work clothes and a red plaid light-wool shirt. She stood as he approached, noticing his trim Van Dyke beard. He polished his glasses with a white handkerchief, a nicety she hadn’t seen in decades. Something in his cerulean-blue eyes summoned distant memories and left her speechless. Her mouth was opening, gaping, in fact.

      “Ms Palmer, or am I presuming? Sorry, I didn’t get your name. Things were happening rather fast, and I was excited about finding a house. I’m . . .” Then as he put on his glasses, he stopped, and the handkerchief fell to the ground like a forfeit in a medieval joust.

      “Gary Myers.” Her boyfriend from Scarborough Collegiate Institute in Toronto, or at least for the three months leading up to the senior semi-formal. At eighteen, he’d been much heavier, called Blubs by cruel peers, and yet his gifts had drawn her to his shining light. In the years since graduation, he’d been a cypher, a vanished man.

      Gary had been the valedictorian with special medals in biology and zoology. More than that, he’d been a talented actor and a sparkling tenor. Goaded on by mutual friends, they’d started dating during Brigadoon, Gary as Tommy Albright and Belle playing trumpet in the orchestra. How she’d gritted her teeth when he’d kissed the female lead, some blonde Swedish sophomore headed for Julliard. He also announced for the football games, sitting high in the box while Belle marched with the band.

      And another oddity. Though they’d dated fourteen times, as tolled in her diary, he hadn’t kissed her until date ten, when she’d summoned the annoyance and gumption to ask him. It had been a well-timed but perfunctory performance. She’d felt humiliated, despite the delightful experience of brushing his soft lips and smooth cheek. After that, he’d grasped the idea that a formal farewell was mandatory. How naïve had he been? Was it her fault? She brushed her teeth three times a day, swilled mouthwash, and had to fend off other comers with a handy knee.

      He cleared his throat, offering his hand, strong and weathered. “Belle. It’s been a long time. I’ve never believed in coincidences, but I’ve changed my mind.”

      The warm contact moved her, a deliciously uneasy feeling spreading from the pit of her stomach. “Despite the territory, the North can be a small place when it comes to people.” She tried not to stare, but it was impossible. Whatever diet or metabolic reversal, he was now tall and lean. The clumsy black horn-rimmed glasses had vanished for trendy titanium models. He drew his fingers through a hank of silky hair, an endearing gesture she recalled with a pang. In high school, conversation had been difficult, fraught with teenage angst, double dates the salvation. Now perhaps they could communicate as adults. What kind of man had he become?

      A smile grew on his face, coaxing familiar dimples. He cocked his head at her and firmed his lips as though trying to make a decision. “I do owe you an apology, long overdue. Things were . . . not as they seemed.”

      What did he mean? A hot flash moved from her neck to her forehead, and she feared that she looked like a cartoon. She stammered his last few words. He always had made her nervous, and the feeling had been mutual. She’d completely lost her appetite every time they’d sat together for a meal, had toyed with her food like an anorexic. He had lost the conversational flair he’d had with an audience. “Long overdue. You mean when we were, when we . . .”

      Suddenly the curtain lifted. Hindsight had the clarity of a crystal blue morning at minus twenty-five Celsius, the birches eight miles across the lake as sharp as an Ansel Adams photograph. Belle nodded, then cleared her throat. “How long have you . . . I mean when did you . . .”

      “Forever. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Cub scouts.” He waved his hand. “Not that anything was happening at the time, but thinking back, I knew. Then there was Mr. Kluckhohn.”

      “Our Grade Seven geography teacher? Don’t tell me he—”

      “A sad old man, weeks from retirement. I told him I wasn’t interested in his dirty pictures. Then I played the waiting game until university. It seemed safest, especially with HIV/AIDS on the horizon. I owe you one, Belle. It wasn’t easy in the late Seventies. You helped me maintain a semblance of normalcy.”

      She took a deep breath, laughed in spite of herself. “Are you saying that I was your . . . what do you call it . . . beard?”

      “Peer pressure is very powerful at that age. I couldn’t take Richard Ralston to the grad dance, after all.”

      “The salutatorian? Whose father was an Anglican minister?” She took him up to the porch, digesting the information that was constructing a parallel universe.

      They sat for over an hour, filling each other in on their careers. At long last, honesty and a mutual sense of humour made them fast friends. “So when a kid told me to kiss his ass, I walked out of that school in Etobicoke before Christmas and came up here to take a job at my Uncle Harold’s business,” Belle said. “That was over twenty years ago. Since he died, I’ve been running it myself.”

      “Do you still play the trumpet?”

      “Last time I tried to put on lipstick, and don’t ask why, I couldn’t find my upper lip. Anyway, I’m much too lazy to keep up my embouchure by practising.” She wiggled the fingers on her right hand. “The muscle memory’s still there. Guess I could play the fight song.”

      Together they sang, pumping their arms. “Fight on, SCI. Everybody’s rooting for you. Crash right through that line . . .” Then they

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