Send Me A Lover (35 page)

I grab a note pad, and my diary/calendar, which is empty. I had dreamed that because I bought the thing, it might automatically fill itself with appointments. Or that, Jonathan, if he could swing it from up there, could land me a few interviews so I might open my appointments page every morning and find that it had magically filled itself up. But not so far. I’m trying hard to get excited at the thought of volunteer work for Epilepsy Canada, but the need for a paycheque is starting to get palpable.

‘I’d be thrilled to meet, Crystal! Just tell me when, and I can write up a bit of an agenda and email it to you if you think it might be helpful.’ My old habit of over-committing to clients.

‘That’s great news. How is next Wednesday night for you? Say six thirty? Dinner—or at least a sandwich and pop—will be on us. And an agenda sounds good. Send it through.’

‘Sounds good,’ I parrot back. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’

We hang up and I take stock. Okay… I’m going to get up to my eyes in work that’s probably the most worthwhile thing I’ve ever done, and will ensure me direct passage into heaven, but I’m doing it for free. I can just see myself—the only homeless person in Vancouver who sits in a doorway typing away marketing plans on their laptop.

Progress.

~ * * * ~

When I wake up on Sunday morning, I’ve had a very horny dream. It started out as a dream of Sean. We were in Vancouver and he and I were somehow together but we hadn’t yet kissed, and I was anticipating the moment when we would. And then we were kissing. And it was lovely. Only somehow during the kiss Sean became Richard. I was kissing Richard and enjoying it. It was so nice that my heart was throbbing; my stomach was tightening… Then I was telling Roger that this kind of thing can’t happen again.

I wake up feeling like I literally have just been in a hot snog. My lips even feel the imprint of another person’s mouth. The tingle is there in my pelvic region… yet I’m lying alone in bed, with a racing heart. I try to go back to sleep, to pick up where I left off, but I can’t. I’m just lying there staring at the ceiling when my phone rings.

‘It’s done. It’s up for sale.’

I feel a thud of panic. ‘Your condo?’ I thought she wouldn’t go through with it!

‘No. The Telus Building… Of course my condo!’ My friend lets out a blood-curdling squeal.

‘Are you thrilled, or has somebody set you on fire?’ I ask her.

‘I’m thrilled!’ She squeals again.

I wince and move the phone from my ear. ‘But your fabulous Coal Harbour condo! You’re selling it to move thousands of miles away to a godforsaken city that you don’t even know you’re going to like.’

‘I do like it! I’ve been there many times on business.’ She falls silent for a moment, then her tone changes. ‘You’re supposed to be my friend and be happy for me, Ange.’

I feel terrible. When I think how good she’s been to me... ‘I am happy for you! I’m happy for you being happy. But I’m sad for me. Does that make me a horrible person?’ It’s the God’s honest truth. Even when I thought she was serious, I still didn’t think she was
serious
. ‘I’m going to miss you! What am I going to do without you?’ A part of me is shamefully thinking if I can’t pay my rent here any more, moving into her condo is not going to be my fallback position if she’s sold it. What’s wrong with me? Why do I always need a fallback position?

‘But I’m never here to miss as it is, Ange! That’s the whole problem. I’m never anywhere half the time. I used to despise roots. But now I realise we need them, because they feed us, don’t they? Without them, we’ll, we’re just slowly starving ourselves.’

‘That’s poetic!’

‘I know. I’ve been working on it.’

When I sold our house, Sherrie offered for me to move in with her. I didn’t do it, because I didn’t want to be dependent on her, to be sat there waiting for her to come back from her travels to save me from my grief and depression, to make her my replacement Jonathan. But I realise I am dependent on her. We do depend on our friends. We start to put our rights to them ahead of their rights over themselves; we have a strange marriage with them.

But the thing is, and I only realise this now: it’s okay. If Sherrie goes I will miss her desperately. But there are a few other things on my priority list that will take precedence over missing her.

‘Have you given any more thought to what you’re going to do for work?’ I ask her.

‘Dunno. May go on the market side. Trade futures. I know some people who’ve made the move…Actually, you won’t believe the timing, I got headhunted for Lantic Sugar in Toronto. Just the other day.’

I instantly picture trips to sugar plantations in the far-flung exotic corners of Hawaii or the Caribbean. ‘That sounds fabulous!’

‘No it’s not though! I don’t want to trade sugar. That would just be same shit, different heap.’

‘So you turned it down, I take it. God I wish I had your luxury!’

‘I said, sling it, man. Just sling your sugar trading job. Angela dear girl, I’m very focussed on what I want. Or rather, I’m very certain of what I
don’t
want. A bit like you. You knew the minute your feet walked into that building that you didn’t want to work for a top ad agency any more.’

‘I’m flattered you think that makes us alike... But aren’t you apprehensive, even a little bit?’

‘Not in the way you mean. Not bad-apprehensive. Good-apprehensive. You know, the other night I was thinking about myself and my life, and I realised something interesting. I’m a lucky person because I’ve never really known what unhappiness is. I’ve had the best years of my life in this job. If I could have had the exotic job and the husband and family and a base I could feel was truly home… Or if I could have had the crazy career and all the fun and not grown a year older, then I could ditch it all, still be the same age, and be able to go out and get the husband and the kid and the house and the dog…. then it’d have been perfect. But life’s not like that, is it? It’s only now that I’m starting to feel unhappy with things—or maybe frustrated is a better word. And I don’t want to feel that. I want to move on to new happiness. Just like you’re doing.’

‘Is that how you see me? As moving on to new happiness?’

She seems to think about this. ‘Slowly. But yes, I think you are. And I think that even you yourself probably know it, deep down.’

‘I suppose I am Sherrie. I was thinking the other day that I’m starting to see Jonathan not as somebody I lost, but as somebody I gained… Does that make any sense?’

‘It makes more than sense,’ she says. ‘It makes music to my ears, my friend.’

When I hang up with her, I look around my floor that’s got pieces of paper, and lists, and phone directories, and letterheads, and attempted designs for my website all over the place. Argh… I put my head back and bite my bottom lip, and try to distance myself from the chaos.

I love what she said about me moving on to new happiness. I wish I could inscribe the very concept on black velvet, put it in a cute little picture frame, and hang it above my bed. Or above the loo:
Angela is moving on to new happiness.

Am I really though?

I wish we could all have an inbuilt green light that would come on to show us that the choices we are making are right. But all we have is our hearts, and our hunches.

I suppose I have a good hunch.

~ * * * ~

‘Have you heard anything?’ I get up at six a.m to call my mam because she’s been on my mind all night.

‘Oh not this again!’

‘If you don’t want me to give a damn about you, I won’t.’

‘Can I have that in writing?’

Before I can reply, she says, ‘I have had the results, actually. I went this morning.’

I feel a sinking dread. ‘Yeah..? And?’

‘They’ve found some abnormality. They want to do the tests over.’

I want to press delete, and erase the words. ‘What’s an abnormality?’

‘Well it means something’s not quite right.’

I tut. ‘Yes I know that! I mean, didn’t he say what it was?’

‘No.’

‘Didn’t you ask?’ my volume climbs.

‘No.’

I groan.

‘He said it was some abnormality with my blood…’

The word leukaemia strides through my brain.

‘He didn’t seem overly concerned,’ she says. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing.’

‘How can you be so dismissive?’

‘What’s the point of being anything else until we know for certain? Anyway, on another topic… I’ve got a bit of a dilemma I could use your input on. Georgios wants to see me again. He wants me to go there again.’

‘You can’t!’

‘Thanks. Now I’m definitely going.’

‘Not until you get your test results back.’

‘I know. Keep your tresses on. Anyway… I’m not going, I don’t think, am I?’

‘I don’t know! Why are you asking me?’ I thought she just said she was! I remember what Georgios said I should ask her. ‘Mam, tell me something. Are you in love with him?’

‘No,’ she says, like that didn’t take much thinking about.

‘Okay.’ I didn’t expect her to be so blunt. Poor Georgios. ‘I think you’re mad, if you want my opinion. What’s wrong with him?’

‘Nothing!’

‘Well if nothing’s wrong, then… I don’t understand.’

She’s quiet for a bit. ‘There’s no future with him, is there?’ she eventually says.

‘Why not?’

‘‘Because I’m sixty and he’s forty-five, Angela.’

‘What’s wrong with that? He’s clearly not bothered. He likes older women.’

‘Yes but will he still like me when I’m eighty and he’s only in his mid-sixties?’

I smile. ‘He might like you more! Or then again, he might trade you in for a ninety-year-old. Now wouldn’t that be an insult?’

‘You shouldn’t make fun of old age. One day that’ll be you, then the shoe will be on the other foot.’

‘Oh mam! Why don’t you just wait until you get your results, then if everything’s good, go there, stay for the harvest, pick the olives, have a fantastic time, have a bonk, come home, and if that’s it and you don’t want to see him again, tell him.’

‘Have a
what
?’

‘A bonk.’

‘Angela!’ I feel her smile. ‘I don’t bonk. I’m too ladylike to bonk.’

‘What do you do then?’ I fish. ‘I’m curious? Tell me.’

Of course I know she’s not going to answer.

~ * * * ~

In Stanley Park, I’m surprised to run into Richard and Emma. They spot me first. Or, rather, Emma does. I hear the patter of tiny feet narrowing the distance behind us, and when I turn, her little hand is just reaching out to surprise-tap me on the shoulder.

‘Emma!’ I light up, and look up to see Richard standing there smiling at me, in a very special way. His face is a little flushed. It crosses my mind that he’s blushing.

‘Hi,’ I say.

‘Hi,’ he says back.

Then the tension becomes so thick you could slice it.

‘Richard…’ I try to force offhandedness, try to not be bothered by the way he’s looking at me. Because he is looking at me oddly.

He seems to snap himself out of it, throws his hands up. ‘Of all the parks, in all the world, you had to be walking in this one…’ He comes and gives my cheek a quick kiss.

It takes me moments before I notice the tiny black puppy that sets about chomping on the top of my foot, its teeth like lasers. ‘Ooooh!’ I bend down to pet it. ‘Is it a he or a she?’ I ask Emma.

‘She’s a he. I mean…’ she slaps a hand over her giggle. ‘She’s a she. She’s called Spot.’

‘Spot?’ I laugh as her little wet nose sniffs my hand and then she decides to take a bite of it too. God those teeth hurt!

‘Because of the marking on her ear,’ Emma supplies, just as I register the little white splash that looks like a black ear dipped in white paint.