“Maybe I should. I could do it on the blog.”
“Or an ebook. That’s what Uncle Palak does. He’s written ten books so far and made a few thousand dollars for the spiritual institute he founded. He’s even recorded the first two as audiobooks.”
“I’d love to read his stuff but would have to go with the audiobooks, since my eyes are so bad now. I have to magnify Manny’s spreadsheets by 400%, just to squint at them. I don’t think that would work so well for books. Besides, Uncle’s voice is so soothing and calming that it would be like having another session with him.”
“Speaking of which . . . he emailed me his court date schedule and would love to come by and see you next week sometime, after your family has left. I think he was hoping to speak with Ana again, but when I explained that she’d finally moved on, he was excited for her. He really will help you see the big picture with all of what’s happening to you, Jerry.”
“Will he help me to understand where you fit into all of it?”
Mika laughed lightly. “I’m your friend, your assistant, and your shoulder to lean on. Anything else can evolve as it’s meant to be.”
She was rewarded with a big smile. “Then I am the luckiest man in Victoria.” Mika blushed, but at that moment their waitress arrived to top up their teapot and so they were both rescued from saying anything awkward. They took turns refilling their cups, and sipping the brew.
“When does your mother arrive tomorrow, and where have you got her staying? Not the sofa in your apartment, I hope.”
“They land about noon, and I’m putting them up at the Empress, smart ass.” A cell phone rang three tables away with the retro real-bell ring so popular with tech users, and when the woman answered it her voice was so loud that it felt like she was sitting right at their table. Jerry’s temper surged and he was about to turn and say something snarky, but Mika grabbed his hand and distracted him.
“the Empress is a great choice.” She nodded toward the loud woman. “Let’s get out of here.” She tugged him firmly up out of his seat and he let her. The fury was followed by a growing headache and he knew the cool winter air was a better choice than the loud, humid air of the tiny restaurant filled with the sound of the woman’s whine.
“Hmmm?” What had Mika just said?
“How old is your sister?” She released his hand, now that they were outside.
“Um . . .” He couldn’t remember. She was younger, but he had trouble concentrating. “Three years younger than me, I think. Maybe four.” The sidewalk was wobbling and Jerry had trouble standing still. “I think I’d better call a cab.” He abruptly sat down on a bus stop bench.
“Jerry? What’s wrong?!” Mika crouched in front of him, holding her hands in his and trying to look at his eyes, as if she could see what ailed him that way.
“A headache, triggered by that bitch on the phone.” He lowered his voice and took a long, steady breath, filling his lungs with the chill air. “A taxi . . . now.
Please
.”
“Yes. Um, of course.” She stood and turned to face the road, looking up and down the hill for any sign of a cab. It was midday, on a busy downtown street, and so it took only a few moments for a cab to come around the corner. Mika waved frantically and the cabby pulled up right in front of them.
Jerry pulled himself ungracefully to his feet. Mika took his elbow and guided him to the cab. “Broad Street.” He pulled the door open and climbed in. Mika made to follow him but he stopped her. “No, thanks. It’s just a headache. I’ll go get some sleep. You go back to work.” She tried to follow him again. “I’ll be fine, Mika, but Bruce Banner has left the building and I don’t want you to see me if I get all green and mean.”
“You need help, Jerry.”
“No, I need to go home and sleep.” His anger was growing without any real justification and it was tearing him apart that it was aimed at Mika. “Please. I’ll text you when I get home.” He leaned over and pulled the car door shut before she could make another attempt. “Let’s go,” he directed the driver.
JERRY ENDED UP
sending Mika a brief apology email from his laptop when he got home because he couldn’t read the tiny texting screen on his phone. He took a double dose of meds and passed out face down on the bed, with no music, no television, and no Ana to keep him company.
THE ONLY LIGHT
on in the loft when Jerry finally woke up was the tiny one on Sushi’s fish tank. He rolled himself off the bed and shuffled to the bathroom. When he was done, he worked his way to the desk, still in relative darkness. As he rolled his chair out, he kicked something soft at his feet. He clicked on the desk lamp and found the camera bag when he bent down to investigate. He knew he’d been out taking pictures recently, but he couldn’t quite grasp the memory of when and where. He popped the SD card out of the big Canon, slipped it into the card slot on his MacBook, and brought the computer up out of Sleep Mode.
It took a few moments for Photoshop to open up but he was soon scrolling through the image previews, starting from the beginning of the disk. He swiped the touchpad and the blurry images moved past, right to left. He squinted hard, seeing Sushi in his travel bowl sitting on top of the Jeep back in St. Marys in a set-up shot implying that he’d forgotten his sidekick. “Yup. Fun times. You did pretty well on the trip, buddy, though your navigating sucked.” He scrolled onward, seeing the various “Welcome to . . .” signs at each state line, a few sunrises, some mountains, an eagle here, a hawk there. He finally got to the photos of the ferry landing in Victoria and his first view of the city. The next shot popped up and caught him completely by surprise. It was the first photo of Ana, taken right there in the loft.
“Oh, shit.” He pushed the chair back from the chair, not sure whether he was ready to see these pictures. But the Apple OS gave him a hint of the photos both before and after the preview he was seeing, so it was already too late. He could see what came next. “Then I guess I’d better get myself a drink.” He got up, started the coffee maker, loaded a K-cup of House Decaf, then sprinkled some flakes into Sushi’s tank, and waited. After a moment he realized he was hungry and so fetched a plastic tub of crunchy coleslaw from the refrigerator and a spoon from the cutlery drawer. The coffee was ready within a minute and Jerry took both his steaming cup and the slaw back to the desk.
He sipped his coffee or munched his salad as he scrolled through the photos, squinting, thinking he’d have to invest in a cheap pair of reading glasses tomorrow. Even with the photos as unclear as they were, he could see that Ana had a terrific sense of composition. Some of the angles she shot from gave her subjects an air of whimsy, especially the parking meters. A tear trickled down his cheek. “Dammit.” He wiped it away and continued. There were the shots where she’d clearly wanted to get the Chinatown lights but was stymied by the flash, then the flash-less shots followed. He stopped when he got to the photo he’d taken of her in front of Chinatown’s Gates of Harmonious Interest in her chin-raised regal pose.
“That’s the one right there.” He clicked on the Eject Disk icon, then removed the little SD card and took it over to the big screen. He fumbled getting it into the slot on the side of the plasma screen, turned the card around and finally got it to fit. He booted the screen up, then moved to the couch, grabbing the remote control as he shuffled past the coffee table. The buttons were tiny and his eyesight sucked, but he’d gone through the process of putting his images up on the screen so often that he really didn’t need to clearly see what he was doing. After a minute or two of slow scrolling through the screen’s menu and then the files on the card, he had the same regal photo of Ana up bigger than life. From this distance the image still wasn’t perfect, but he could now make out many of the details, including some of the sparkle in her eyes. He carefully placed the remote on the couch beside him, leaned back, and wept.
He wept for losing Ana, and for what the cancer was doing to him. He wept that he’d never see Isis again, or her parents. He wept for his new family at the station, and he especially wept for Mika. Then he wept for his mother, for Carole, and for Jean-Marc. Finally, he wept for his father. Of all the people he needed with him most right now, when the odds weren’t particularly good, it was his dad. A former Navy pilot and lumberjack, his dad had once been described by his future in-laws as a big teddy bear, and at this moment, in a city at the far end of the country his family had helped found and build, Jerry really, really needed to be held by that big teddy bear, and told that it was all going to be okay.
MIKA CALLED A
little after eight in the morning. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“It is damned early, but we’re radio folk, so I’m used to the early hour.” He’d slept on the couch with the afghan pulled over him, and it had been one of the most restful sleeps he’d had in years.
“Manny has given me the day off to make sure that you get to the airport on time to pick up your family. He’s even ordered a limo.”
“What? Mom will go nuts. She’s not one for flashy. I should make him come with us so he can explain it to her in person.”
“He was going to, but he has a meeting with a member of the local CRTC staff. He wants to make sure your cool proposals are kosher with the Radio and Television Commission before we start implementing them.”
“Smart man.”
“He says it was
your
idea.”
Jerry laughed. “At least
one
of us remembers our conversations.”
“So, what’s your Mom’s flight number and exact arrival time, please? I’ll drive over to your place and have the limo meet us there an hour before they land.”
He knew the flight info, but at the same time, he didn’t. “Noonish. Westjet, I think. How about I forward you the email I sent to Carole with everything from flights to hotel?”
“Perfect. In the next ten minutes would be great, if you can, please. I want to give it to the limo company.”
Jerry walked the phone over to the laptop and woke it up. “I’m at the computer now. Give me just a second to find that email.”
“Sure.” She went silent on the other end of the line, letting him work. Eventually he found what he was looking for and forwarded it to her. “Done, I think. Hard to tell when I squint like Gilbert Gottfried. If it’s the wrong one, give me a call right back. Otherwise I’ll let you figure out the timing and I’ll see you whenever you get here.”
“It’s a plan.”
“Good.” Damn! He still needed to shower and clean up a bit. The alarm sounded on his phone and when he strained to read it, he was pretty sure that the alarm’s reminder note told him to call and confirm the hotel and ask for early check-in. He’d even added the phone number for the Empress so a quick tap of the link and in three minutes he confirmed the reservations, secured 1pm check-ins, and even pre-paid the entire stay and guaranteed incidentals to his credit card, just to eliminate any argument from his mother that he couldn’t afford to look after the charges. Now it was done and locked in. She was probably going to be pissed off and the thought made him snicker. He opened his iTunes Barenaked Ladies playlist, set it to play randomly, and shuffled off to the bathroom. Steve and Ed’s voices followed him, telling him what they’d do if they had a million dollars.
JERRY SHOWERED AND
shaved, mostly by feel because he couldn’t exactly see his whiskers. On his way back through the kitchen, with the now dry pyjamas draped over his shoulder, he hid the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, tossed two slices of bread in the toaster, and started the coffee maker. He was pretty sure he was low on decaf, so that would have to go on the list he hadn’t started yet.
The bed was easy to straighten up, even with his wonky vision. He stuffed his dirty clothes into the big orange laundry bag in the closet, and then gave the entire loft a quick squint to see if he’d forgotten anything. The place was a bit chilly, but he was going out, so starting a fire would be risky.
By the time Mika arrived, he’d started the draft of a blog post about his diagnosis and the direction things were going. He left out any mention of Ana, preferring to save that story for a fiction, like Mika suggested. He buzzed her into the building and opened the door to the stairwell a crack so she could get into the loft. He’d left his coffee somewhere and he wanted to find it before it got cold. Seeing his mother again had him needing fuel, even if it was decaf. He probably should have had something more than toast, but he planned to take them to lunch at the Empress once they were checked in to their rooms, so his belly’s rumblings could wait.
“Jerry?” The door swung open and Mika came in. Jerry looked up from the kitchen island, mid-sip of his coffee. He waved and Mika finger-waved back at him. “Hey, mister.”
“Hey, lady. You’re looking good, I think.”
“That’s a compliment?”
“From a guy with crappy eyesight, yeah. I can see dark boots—probably leather—an almost floor-length dark coat that doesn’t shine, so it’s probably wool and not leather, and a jaunty bright yellow beret. So, yeah, you’re looking good.”
“Thanks.”
He couldn’t see if she blushed, but her voice was soft and a bit huskier than usual, so she probably had. “Coffee? Tea?”
She hung up her coat. “The limo won’t be here for half an hour, so a tea would be nice. I can get it, though. You relax.”
“Done.” Jerry remained on the stool and Mika found the mugs, the tea for the one-cup maker, and set about fixing herself a cuppa.