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My BlackBerry buzzed, eliciting another audible gasp from the masses as I quickly checked it. No cell phones were allowed in Max’s either. It was a text from Garrett:I bet I know where u r. 2 choc croiss pls.
“Sorry, Max, before you ring me up, can I take three chocolate croissants too?”
“Sure.”
He stepped away from the cash register, and the pressure of the line hummed behind me—toes tapping, stern looks, the lot of it. Max bagged up the decadent, butter-weeping deliciousness for me as I located my bank card deep in the most inaccessible pocket of my purse. I swore under my breath that I’d make Garrett pay for the line being so mad at me. He was my closest work friend and, due to the nature of his gender, someone my sister, Meghan, was constantly teasing me about.
“You have a crush,” she joked the twentieth time I brought up something Garrett had done that cracked me up or explained the cycle of lunch outings to her.
“I love Rob,” I insisted. “And Garrett has a girlfriend. We’re friends.”
“He’s your work boyfriend.”
“He’s not any kind of boyfriend.”
After effectively pissing off the entire clientele of the café, I made it outside in time to see the streetcar trundling down Queen Street, saved by the terrible weather and the fact that schedules mean nothing in the face of snow, sleet, and shitty drivers. As I raced through the slippery streets in fashionable winter footwear to meet it, I swore the next time boots went on sale I was going to invest in something practical like Sorels that would allow me to meet this weather on equal standing. Maneuvering the takeout bag into my mouth, I barely had enough time to flip out my Metropass, hop in, and then hold on for dear life before the doors closed, packing me in like a paratrooper on D-Day, except without the comradery ofBand of Brothers.
Stashing the food in my bag, I hooked my arm around a pole and took a deep breath. At least I was on the way. The cold had shocked my face back to normal under the residue of last night’s makeup, which was buried somewhere under today’s. My head hurt where I had tried and failed to unstyle an odd bump of hair, a result of the high bun I’d worn to the party and hadn’t unspooled before crawling into bed around four-thirty.
Still, I had gotten dressed somewhat professionally and, by piling on the concealer, had managed to hide the fact that I had only gotten my head down for three hours of sleep last night. My lashes were laced with old and new mascara, which was muddled up with leftover and repurposed liquid eyeliner. I was happy to be pulling off a sort of upscale Edie Sedgwick chic without the heroin.
The streetcar pole was cool against my forehead as I rested it there for a moment. The car wobbled, and after righting myself, I wrapped the arm that was not holding my coffee tight around it for balance. The streetcar was packed to the brim, which meant that I was elbow deep in urban commuters with their earbuds tapped in, wearing the half-bored, half-irritated stare of every passenger on the TTC. The coffee was hot, soothing, and a piece of heaven.
“You look like you needed that.”
There was literally nothing worse than someone trying to make conversation on a crowded commuter streetcar. The guy standing beside me had sleek, short hair and was wearing a rich deep-gray wool overcoat. His foot, encased in a sleek brown leather shoe, was inches away from mine. Garrett and I had looked at that very pair at Holt Renfrew last week when we were window shopping over lunch. When we flipped them over, the price tag said fifteen hundred dollars. Wearing them in this weather was a bold choice. The day could go either way—cold without snow or warmer but terrifically sloppy—and certainly ruin those shoes. Putting them on regardless of the whims of the weather seemed reckless even for a man who exuded the air that hecouldafford to waste expensive items.
“I did,” I said, taking another sip to attempt to ward off the conversation.
Never talk to strangers. A rule for children and for people taking the TTC to work in the morning. Case in point: the minute I let my guard down, this dude saw it as an opportunity to chat. About how crowded the car was, about him taking up too much of my personal space, telling me the coffee smelled delicious,boldly, asking if he might have a sip (I declined). Then he went on for a good three stops about how the city planners should have looked ahead for the needs of all these bozos who own condos and taxed them up so they could build a subway line.
“I’m one of those bozos,” I said. “My condo is right on Queen.”
Then he started in on how amalgamation all those years ago was a death knell for the city and how Mel Lastman was the world’s most embarrassing mayor. He laughed. “Those Bad Boy commercials alone areridiculous. Thank goodness David Miller has turned things around for now. Transit in the city is awful.”
“Are you a politician?” I asked. “Do you work for the city or something? Your opinions are, well, opinionated for an a.m. commute.”
He replied that, no, he wasn’t on the city council; he was simply a concerned citizen. I did my best polite nod and smile between sips of coffee and silently prayed that the trip to St. Andrew station was quick. The last thing I needed was a mess of taxicabs blocking the route because then I’d be stuck talking to this guy the entire ride. The car chugged through the Fashion District and, lucky for me, he stepped off at Spadina, but not before asking for my number. On the TTC. At eight-thirty in the morning.
“I’m flattered, but I’ve got a boyfriend,” I said. “Hope the snow doesn’t turn to slush for the sake of those gorgeous shoes.”
“I had to try.” He winked before squeezing by to step down and open the doors.Winked.
The streetcar emptied out at University Avenue, and this allowed me to take a seat and text Garrett:Two for you. One for me. Be there in 20. The rest of the ride passed calmly, and I had a chance to finish my coffee in relative quiet, no booming headphones beside me, no nosy neighbors checking out what I was reading. After hopping on the subway at Yonge and Queen, I opened my wreck of a purse, and the novel I was reading,Alias Grace, wasn’t there. The only thing I could find buried deep in my bag was an old Harlequin of my mother’s. My sister had stuffed it in there as a joke last weekend when I was at home and complaining about the titles that littered the bookshelves in the family room—all Maeve Binchy and endless rows of romances. I must have left the novel on my desk before heading out last night for the holiday party. Who knows? I’d find out when I got to work. In the meantime, I spent the rest of my commute engrossed in the story of a single woman turning forty who found out she was pregnant only to discover her beast of a husband was cheating on her the whole time. Abandoned by him, she leaned on his best friend and then struggled with the idea of letting him into her life. I texted my sister after almost missing my subway stop and surfacing back up to ground level.
Okay, this book is actually good.
Ha!she messaged back.I told you.
The habit of my job was something I enjoyed more than the work itself these days. The practical nature of the day to day got me out of bed in the morning, and my paychecks provided a basis for a very nice life with Rob—we had our condo, took vacations, were saving for a rainy day. But there are moments, like today, when I wished I didn’t have to grind it out nine to five, Dolly Parton excepted. Three years have already passed by without my making any meaningful effort to research grad school. Each New Year’s Eve I make a list, order my transcripts, try again, and January drifts into February, February into March, and suddenly half the year has elapsed, and I’m still working a dead-end job. Maybe this New Year’s Eve will be different. Maybe this year I’ll put myself on a strict money diet, give myself an exit strategy re: my job and finally get myself out of this rut. Where there’s coffee, there’s hope. But as the wind blasts me halfway across Yonge and Bloor, and the snow’s already turning to slush with another gray day on the horizon, I’m not filled with hopeful, sunny optimism.
Chapter 2
BY THE TIME I got to my desk, I was only forty-five minutes late. Not bad considering. Half the floor was empty. Co-workers smarter than me had taken the day off—they had clearly understood the nature of the massive post-holiday party hangover and had acted accordingly.
After booting up my computer, there were only sixteen new messages, and none urgent. This gave me time to settle in, properly hang up my coat, and swap my heeled boots for a pair of sleek Michael Kors pumps. Grabbing the pastry bag from my purse, I left my computer on with the desktop set to wait a half hour before switching over to the screensaver. I put my empty coffee cup in the middle of my desk, right beside my missing book in case Siobhan, the manager of our department, passed by and wondered why I was not actively engaged in, well, work. I headed off to find Garrett and deliver his pastries.
We worked at a large cable-television conglomerate in downtown Toronto. The company owned a bunch of so-called specialty networks: channels filled with programming about homes and gardens and cooking, and a few more “serious” stations like history and documentary channels. I worked in the publicity department. Garrett was in programming—a far more fascinating job. Every time I sat down to write a press release about another show that would tell you how to rebuild your house properly or what kind of wallpaper might work with your drapes, that line fromBridget Jones’s Diaryechoed in my head. You know, when Hugh Grant’s character tells Bridget that she wouldn’t know the first thing about the company being in trouble, blah, blah, blah, because she bandies about with press releases all day?
