Page 4

What does come is the silver subway train. It grinds to a halt in front of me with a final metallic squeal followed by a puff and then a hiss as the doors slide open.

Several people step out—not nearly enough for it to be anywhere close to a weekday rush hour. The small handful of commuters makes me think it must be very late or maybe very early.

“Excuse me,” I call to a tired-looking man in a rumpled gray suit, suddenly needing to know at least the time.

He doesn’t look up or give any other indication he’s heard me.

I inhale and try a second attempt. This one is much louder. “Excuse me, sir.”

He pulls out his phone but still does not look up. Instead, he walks straight toward me, his sudden increase in pace so unexpected that I need to jump out of the way to avoid running into him.

But I’m not fast enough.

My arms come out in front of me to brace or push him away, but when he makes contact, it’s in a way I am not prepared for.

He walks straight through me as if I were a ghost or made of air.

Oh, god, am I dead?

I think back to the changing room.

How? I wasn’t eating anything, so I couldn’t have choked. Nor was I doing anything particularly dangerous. I would have felt the beginnings of a heart attack, wouldn’t I?

Maybe it was a brain aneurysm, then. A quick spark and then blackness.

But if I am dead, then why is the afterlife the Bloor-Yonge subway station? It feels…underwhelming.

I have more thoughts and more questions—all of which disintegrate at the sight of a man walking down the platform ahead of me.

His face is turned away, but the slope of his shoulders, the spring to his gait as he walks on his toes, and even the reflection of the lights bouncing off the bald spot on the back of his head are so familiar that my eyes immediately fill with tears.

“Uncle Larry?” My words come out as a whisper.

“Uncle Larr—” I call again, my voice cracking this time, cutting off the last syllable.

Like the man in the gray suit, my uncle can’t seem to hear me. He continues to walk, heading for the stairs.

In a few more strides, he will be on his way back up to the surface and the bustling crowds of Bloor Street.

I begin to run, momentarily grateful for the ability to pass through everyone.

“Uncle Larry. Please wait!” I worry I won’t catch him in time, but he stops just before he reaches the stairs.

I stop as well as if on instinct. My eyes trace the same path as his to the man standing against the wall, guitar in hand, the open velvet-lined case at his feet.

He’s wearing a threadbare yellow T-shirt. His long, auburn hair hangs past his shoulders. His beard, a brighter shade of red, is bushy and full. His eyes are closed, but his hands pluck the guitar strings with a practiced ease. Their melody is soft and familiar.

I can’t quite place the song until his low tenor voice joins in, the acoustics of the tiled walls magnifying it so it fills the whole station.

It’s an old Jimmy Buffett song. “Bring Back the Magic.” I only know it because my uncle owned an original LP, which he played all of the time on his old record player.

“You can get that on Spotify,” I’d tell him every time the record would skip.

“I know that, Beans,” he’d say with a shake of his head. “But it sounds better this way.”

My uncle—the one in front of me—closes his eyes and begins to sway. It’s such a characteristic Larry thing to do that the tears that only brimmed my eyes a few moments ago begin to fall like raindrops on my cheeks.

The musician finishes the song. Larry begins to clap. Like me, he is openly weeping as he reaches into his wallet and tosses twenty dollars into the open guitar case.