barbara fletcher

I didn’t catch his name. He was a yellowed man: sepia skin and rust-coloured teeth in fractured stages of decay. Stained fingers curling like an old photograph. He spoke with a weathered tongue, consonants leathery and tough. Words left out in the sun too long.

But his face could still crack a smile.

He was on an adventure, out on a two-hour leave from the Addiction Centre. On this bus, then onto the subway to another bus to Scarborough to his old house: the house he’s pretty sure he’ll lose someday. There’s nothing in my fridge, he laughed. His son had taken out all the food. And his daughter had been trying to get his status upgraded to a Form 3. Not sure what that was, but it sounded bad.

Then fragments of stories about being locked up, surgeries, broken things: twenty years in a few minutes, aged and ugly and pockmarked.

He stopped and looked at the cardboard cup in my hands, asked about my coffee, how it tasted. It was actually weak and watery, and I had spent the five-minute wait for the bus inwardly whinging about its deficiencies. But I said it was good. And he grinned with a wide stretch of brown teeth.

He said the coffee inside there was terrible. De-caf served all the time: a grey-brown swill with no spark. Awful stuff. And just six cigarettes a day. But, before going in it was two packs per day. So there’s progress. A jubilant ochre finger upwards.

We reached the subway station a few minutes later. He left with my cup and a rusty smile. I left with something else.

There is no lake by Lakeview Avenue. No lake, no watery landmark in sight.

This street, with its stretch of Victorian houses in various states of disrepair. Red brick, yellow brick. Some with paint peeled back, splaying an onion skin of colours. Turquoise, aquamarine, and royal: the blues on this street do not belong to water.

The lake is ten or fifteen blocks away from this pot-holed street and boulevard of tattered grass. The only water collects in a few scattered brown puddles, into wet cracks where the pavement breaks. And then its blocks and blocks of similar streets, houses with suspicious or smug expressions. Some with shifted smiles or drooping eyelids; melancholic, remembering happier times.

Like when there was a lake closer by. Or at least it felt closer: a mad, furious bike ride away, houses blurring into the periphery; a soft, summer evening walk lit beneath pale streetlights.

When the city was quieter. When puddles were bigger and laughs were louder.

“Miss, would you buy me a piece of cake?”

The tall, heavy-set man had been ambling between the rows of tables, his gaze moving slowly back and forth, from face to face. He stopped at mine.

I had been typing away at my laptop, half-way through my second coffee. Today the ideas were liquid: a smooth ebb and flow. But they lacked a container, something solid to shape them.

I looked up. His sheer size blocked the light overhead. But I could see his face. Expressionless. Tired. If it wasn’t immediately apparent that he was harmless I may have shook my head.

“Sure, just give me a minute.” I grabbed my wallet. Left my words on the screen. “Let’s go.”

He shuffled to the counter. I followed. His rumpled coat clung to his hulking torso. Long, fat fingers dangled at the end of his sleeves. He didn’t say a word.

And then, after a few moments in line. “What month were you born?” June.

“So you’re a Gemini.” No, a Cancer.

A sweetness spread into the corners of his eyes. The trace of a smile. “I’m March. Aries.” Within seconds the vacant look returned. But there was a softness to it. Like drifting back into a happy moment from childhood. A birthday. Licking icing off the spoon.

“What kind of cake would you like?”

His massive finger raised and pressed against the counter glass. Holiday Gingerbread. A large, moist fingerprint marked his choice, then evaporated.

I ordered and paid. The woman behind the counter slid the cake slice into a paper bag, handed it to him. Said nothing. As the man grabbed it, I caught the warming scent of ginger and nutmeg.

And then he was shuffling to the door. Gone.

Back at the table, my words on the screen were still there. Waiting to take shape.