Chapter 2

There were many places he could go from where he was. The park, for a run; summer nights in Toronto were too quickly gone not to take advantage of them when they came along. Or the diner, for a well-deserved, so-big-you-need-both-hands-sized burger complete with fries. He could grab a couple of beers or a bottle of wine, sneak up to the roof, and watch the neighbourhood go dark. There was also a text from his best friend Jeff, as yet unanswered, asking him to come out and watch their other best buddy Fig play an open-mike session at Lola’s. Which would be cool, if he wasn’t ready to fall down from exhaustion, and if he didn’t know for a fact that Fig wouldn’t see the stage until at least nine but probably closer to ten or eleven. So, he couldgo. He probably should go. There was only about a four percent probability that he would, though. After all, he was expected back at work tomorrow morning for eight. Probably Sunday, too. Then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…

“Kill me now,” Leo grumbled. Except even as the words left his mouth, he could hear both his parents talking about life choices, taking steps toward happiness, and retaining responsibility for the paths on which we walked. It was all said very positively—they weren’t the type for negative reinforcement—but it was still hard to hear. Even when he was the one thinking it.

“Everybody else gets to blame everybody else for their shitty lives,” he mumbled. He looked at the Miata, now a car’s length ahead of him in the far left-hand lane, directing his comments at it. “Why not me, hmm? How about I blame you, you yellow-car-driving, unbelievably annoying jerk?”

While he hated the idea of just going to the apartment and sleeping—relinquishing his dissolving youth to sleep, living out his life for the sole purpose of getting up and going to work—there was no doubt that his credit card statement would be more than appreciative of the continuing overtime. If his damn truck hadn’t needed that damn alternator last month, and if his hydro bill hadn’t climbed sixty percent in the last three years for no good reason, and if gas prices weren’t so high, then maybe he could have told work exactly where they could put their weekend shifts. But it had, and they did, and they were, and that was life. So, instead of the diner, he pulled into a Subway when he was free of the highway and picked up what the sarcastic side of his mind pointed out would be the only item of notable inches for him that night.

He had barely pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building when his littlest neighbour, Samir, made a run for him. Up the overgrown hill that was the “garden area” of the entrance, down onto the cracking asphalt of the laneway, and up to the side of his truck without a concern in the world. Leo had experienced his share of near heart attacks when the boy had first started pulling that move, and more than once he’d told the kid how dangerous it was. Neither Samir, nor Samir’s mother, seemed to care about that particular danger, however, so Leo had stopped trying. Now he knew to watch for the dark-haired disaster-waiting-to-happen. He dreaded the constant turnover in their building, knowing one day, sure as sugar, some new hotshot was going to pull into the parking lot without being quite so cautious and Samir would be no more. Or any one of the twenty-odd kids that gathered down there to play, because the other kids weren’t much better than Samir. They’d had a playground once. And an actual garden with actual flowers. Garbage pails that got emptied. Walkways that were maintained and cleared of snow. But space was valuable, litigation too damn likely, and labour too expensive and/or difficult to keep. Such was the world these days.

“And if you keep thinking shit like that, you’re not just going to feelold, you’re going to makeyourself old,” Leo mumbled as he lowered the window and shifted the truck into park.

“Leo, Leo, Leo!” Samir sang, extending the vowels each time so that his name sounded like it was thirteen letters long instead of three. “Leo, guess what?”

Leo leaned out to peer at him. “You won the lottery and you, me, your mom, your auntie, and every one of your buddies are moving to the Bahamas?”

“Ha,” Samir snorted the sound as much as he spoke it. His lips were that weird colour of pink turning blue that kids got when it was getting too cold to be out in short sleeves and not quite late enough to go inside, but too close to beinglate enough that no kid wanted to go inside for a jacket and risk getting told to stay in.