worked very hard for, his delicate normalcy, slipping away.

So he put his soaked clothes in the dryer, clamped his laptop under his arm, and went out. He moped around the park and the fountain, but the stroller moms whose tots were splashing in the wading pool gave him sufficient dirty looks that he walked up to the Greek’s, took a table on the patio, and ordered a murderously strong cup of coffee.

He opened up the screen and rotated around the little café table until the screen was in the shade and his wireless card was aligned for best reception from the yagi antenna poking out of his back window. He opened up a browser and hit MapQuest, then brought up a street-detailed map of the Market. He pasted it into his CAD app and started to mark it up, noting all the different approaches to his house that Davey might take the next time he came. The maps soothed him, made him feel like a part of the known world.

Augusta Avenue and Oxford were both out; even after midnight, when the stores were all shuttered, there was far too much foot traffic for Davey to pass by unnoticed. But the alleys that mazed the back ways were ideal. Some were fenced off, some were too narrow to pass, but most of them—he’d tried to navigate them by bicycle once and found himself utterly lost. He’d had to turn around slowly until he spotted the CN Tower and use it to get his bearings.

He poked at the map, sipping the coffee, then ordering another from the Greek’s son, who hadn’t yet figured out that he was a regular and so sneered at his laptop with undisguised contempt. “Computers, huh?” he said. “Doesn’t anyone just read a book anymore?”

“I used to own a bookstore,” Alan said, then held up a finger and moused over to his photo album and brought up the thumbnails of his old bookstore. “See?”

The Greek’s son, thirty with a paunch and sweat-rings under the pits of his white “The Greek’s” T-shirt, sat down and looked at the photos. “I remember that place, on Harbord Street, right?”

Alan smiled. “Yup. We lost the store when they blew up the abortion clinic next door,” he said. “Insurance paid out, but I wasn’t ready to start over with another bookstore.”

The Greek’s son shook his head. “Another coffee, right?”

“Right,” Alan said.

Alan went back to the map, realigning the laptop for optimal reception again.

 Prev. P 64/295 next