help

Deb Quinn actually used the word serendipity when she broke off her engagement to Wood Bridges. That was the weirdest thing to Wood. For one he had never heard her use the word before, Deb is an accountant, and two he wasn’t sure that she was even using the word properly. After all, Deb had been on a team-building retreat in Algonquin Park and slept with the Guide. Wood wasn’t sure if that could be considered a serendipitous experience.

slipknot

He would never tell anyone what he actually did that night. What did he care, anyway? He was on vacation and ‘being on vacation’ meant that you could do things that you normally wouldn’t do. He lay alone on the bed and then picked up the phone to call his wife on the other side of the country.

“What time is it there?”

“We’re sleeping,” she says.

He pauses then looks at a painting of a baby in bathwater on the wall. It was above a desk.

“The cabinet door came off its hinge again,” she says.

“Just tie it with some rope and I’ll fix it later,” he says.

“What do you mean rope?”

“A knot. A running knot. Christ,” he says. “Just tie a god damn slipknot.”

She hangs up the phone. He removes the picture from the wall and leaves the room.

exercise #3, 5/10

franklins

During grade nine gym class we would always listen to Nick Franklin’s stories about fingering Trish Chestnut. We’d be out doing laps and as we slowly made our way around the gravel track, Nick would brag about going down on her at the St. Clair Reservoir the weekend before. We all thought he was lying, though, because Trish wasn’t allowed out on weekends. Eventually, we’d duck behind some bushes next to the track and have a rest, while the other guys kept running.

Nick’s mother was blind. His house was dark and dusty. There would be unwashed plates and glasses, open cereal boxes and bowls of stale milk. The stove usually had something half cooked from the night before glued to a pan or pot and there was always a plate of stale chips by the TV. It felt like being frozen in time at the Franklin’s. Some days after school we’d go there and smoke joints on the roof, while the sun set in that way it does in late September. Chestnut red and bright. Indecisive about where to go to next.

exercise #2, 4/26

not

It was just a quick thud. Then Jack heard a woman on the other side of the street say ‘my God’, but he kept driving, at least for another block and a half before he stopped. By that time, the usually quiet street, with the elm trees that hang lazily over the newly paved road, had become almost violent with the sound of car horns honking and even a grown man slapping the hood of Jack’s car.

Jack had hit a kid on a bike. Not really a kid, more like a young man; a man that had run a quick errand to get milk from the same store where Jack was buying popcorn for the Habs-Bruins game. Jack looked back and saw a crowd of people around the spot where he first heard the thud. He didn’t look back again. Then he opened the door and walked away from the car. No one said a thing to him.

exercise #1, 4/17

fade

Henry visited the library twice the first week.


“My mother’s dying wish was that I don’t die alone,” Lisa said.

Henry gave her a funny look.

“I’m kidding,” Lisa said. “She lives out west. Although after my divorce she said that I couldn’t raise a boy on my own. ‘Boys need men’, is what she said, ‘men understand boys’.”


Henry placed his coffee on the bench and then lit a cigarette. Lisa hadn’t seen someone light a cigarette in years. The smoke faded into the afternoon light.

away

What happened with Carly? Lately, that was how these phone calls had begun. He would listen to his mother talk and then pause to light a cigarette. He figured she was somewhere in the kitchen perched on the stool looking out the back window and simultaneously flipping through the pages of Women Today. That’s what she did on the phone.

“She’s fine,” he would answer. He lay in bed. The morning light gently fell through the curtains. “Everything is fine. Everyone is good.”

He could hear his mother take another drag. “Then how long are you planning to spend away from each other?”