LITMIR.BIZ

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there aren’t any elk down south. It’s exciting that Nickel City College and Shield University have been involved in restoring the species to this area.”

      With a brief tour, looking out each window in approval across the eight-by-eight-mile lake, he agreed to take the house without persuasion at a thousand a month. “The Lavoies will be pleased,” she said, explaining how to handle the utility bills. Sweet Maureen was cutting her in for ten per cent of the rent.

      As Belle climbed into bed that night, she wondered if she’d done the right thing by asking Gary to dinner. Where was this new relationship going? Heady stuff, but would it only confuse them both?

       THREE

      Arriving the next evening for dinner, Gary presented her with a book. “I remembered you loved films. Didn’t your dad take us to that screening room once? I wish my father had been a film booker,” he said with a nuance of a smile on his expressive lips. A slight gap between his two front teeth had added a very human feature to the little idol she’d raised.

      She looked at the cover, recognizing Buddy Rogers and Richard Arlen in a pensive but provocative pose in the 1927 Wings. According to the blurb, this “acclaimed history of homosexuals in film” documented over three hundred movies spanning eighty years. She leafed through it. “Wow. Edward Everett Horton as the poet-reporter in The Front Page. Bert Lahr as the cowardly lion? Are they serious? And all the way back to the silents, even before the Hays Office regulations. Incredible.”

      Freya showed much interest in the new arrival, and the feeling was mutual, as Gary scratched her ears. Somehow Belle wondered if he was measuring the dog’s head for the boil pot, as he’d done before, assembling squirrel and raccoon skeletons in high school. They’d met as partners in biology, when they’d had to dissect a crawfish.

      “Moose, deer and bear, sure, but I’ve never seen an elk,” she said as they forked into one of her no-fail casseroles, made with lean ground beef, macaroni, tomato soup, red peppers and cheddar. Mâché salad with homemade blue cheese dressing rounded out the menu, along with blackberries topped with sweetened mascarpone.

      Gary pointed out the window, where a party barge was making for home, chugging along with its pontoons parting the rising waves. Raindrops had begun splashing the panes. “Lake Wapiti, isn’t it? ‘Wapiti’ is the native name for elk. Another coincidence.” As he blotted his mouth with the linen serviette, he told her that the elk (Cervus elaphus) were native to Ontario, but extirpated by the late 1800s due to hunting and loss of habitat. The Thirties and Forties had seen efforts to restore them, but the unfounded theory that they were passing liver flukes to cattle had initiated a hunt that decimated the fragile herd.

      “What do they eat? Do they compete with moose?” The extra glasses of the Sicilian nero red that was a bargain at ten dollars were winging her into a time warp with this ghost from her past. A generation had been born and raised to adulthood since last they’d met. If they’d had a child together . . . The spectre brought visions of prodigies, not that she’d been interested in motherhood. It would have been handy to have a teenager to shovel snow. She smiled to herself as he plunged on with his lecture. Her toes were tingling, or was it her imagination? She put down the glass and thought about coffee. Strong coffee.

      “Not exactly. They’re both grazers and browsers, but when the going gets tough in winter, moose head for dense coniferous stands and feed on balsam fir and eastern hemlock. Elk prefer cedar habitat along shorelines, pawing up buried grasses in early winter. A perfect compromise. Nature has a way of sorting things out, if we’d just let it.”

      Their own story in fewer than twenty-five words. “I’ve heard moose in mating season. Do elk sound similar?”

      He arranged his lithe fingers, tossed his head back, and gave a fair imitation of a “bugle,” which caused Freya to rise and come to his aid. Laughing, he ruffled her fur and accepted a kiss.

      “Very different from the birch-bark-cone moose call.” She poured the rest of the wine into his glass, sad to see it go, but glad that she wouldn’t be running her mouth without inhibition. She was beginning to remember the feelings she had entertained for this man. Far more powerful than muscle memory. “What exactly is your project?”

      “I’m based around the old Burwash area. Bump Lake. Sometimes I take the canoe into the more remote lakes. Cow/calf survival is my focus this time around.” He had also published monographs on parasitology and foraging trajectories.

      With cottages her speciality and over a thousand lakes in the region, Belle was familiar with every puddle and pond. Yet some areas were less habitable than others. “Burwash? Isn’t that where a prison used to be? Or a correctional facility, whatever they’re called?”

      “So I hear. Nothing’s left of the town. The jail’s just a shell, not that I went near it.”

      “When did these elk arrive?”

      “We did a pilot release here in 1998, and a few years later for a total of one hundred and seventy-two animals. A couple of hundred more in Bancroft, Lake of the Woods, and the Lake Huron North Shore. Moderate success, about four hundred and fifty in Ontario at last count. Ecotourism based on elk is a great possibility, too.”

      “Where do the animals come from?”

      He drained his glass with an approving smile. “Elk Island National Park near Edmonton. They have a rigorous disease-management program, and their reproduction rate is solid.”

      Belle stifled a laugh. “The Sudbury Star ran a story about those vaginal transmitters for pregnant cows. Ouch.”

      He tipped back in his chair with an embarrassed look. “They were supposed to help us track newborns, but the idea flopped. Small wonder.”

      Then he glanced at his watch with a sigh. A serious expression came over his face, and he smoothed his goatee. “Something else you should know. You’ll meet Mutt later this week.”

      “Do you have a dog, too? No problem, as long as it doesn’t dig in the gardens or scratch that pristine wood floor. Maybe we can hit the trails together. Freya can use the socializing.”

      “My . . .” He paused and gave her a wink. Laugh-lines around his eyes made him a man of self-confidence, far different from the serious boy with a secret. “. . . partner.”

      She should have known that he was no monk. Unlike her, he had a sex life. Being jealous of his soulmate seemed beyond silliness. “So he’s coming up? Tell me more about Mutt. That can’t be his real name.”

      “Malcolm Malloy. He’s a murder-mystery author. Writes a series about Lucy Doyle, one of Canada’s first female reporters. His books are set in Toronto in the Twenties.”

      “I’d love to read them, but I’m still focussed on the mutt part.”

      Gary laughed, deep and rich, with a spirit she’d never heard in the old days. “Mutt likes surprises. How about an open invitation for martinis? Bombay Sapphire suit you? Like them dirty? That’s with a tablespoon of olive juice.”

      Would she have dreamed all those years ago that they’d be up in Sudbury having a conversation about elks and cocktails? It was comical. It was wonderful. With the final sigh she’d ever give about the colour of his eyes, Belle said, “Smashing.”

      Later that night, she pulled a worn, cracked-leather five-year diary from her bookcase. She’d kept one from the age of ten until she’d left university. A spyhole into the teenager she’d been. When was their first date? Once she’d memorized them like holy days. She leafed back through the middle entries for senior year, then stopped and smiled at the lurid lavender ink she’d chosen when she’d learned about Mary Astor’s purple diary covering her affair with John Barrymore. March 6th. “HE ASKED ME OUT, SUGAR!” Then the writing got small and blurry. She grabbed her reading glasses: “In Eng, came up + bent down, saying, ‘May I see you after class?’ Then after, he said, ‘I hope you’re not busy Fri. Would you like to see a show?’ WOULD I! I’d

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