A Loafer's Guide To Living E-Book

W.L. Liberman

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

A Loafer's Guide to Living is a story of disrupted lives during a search for the rarest of conditions: equilibrium.

Bernard Goldman is the son of a famous father, and can't get over it. His life is in shambles, as he gets grief from everyone and everything around him.

Trying to weather the storm the best he can, is Bernard's life ruptured beyond repair?

Leseprobe

A Loafer's Guide To Living

The Goldman Trilogy Book 2

W.L. Liberman

Copyright (C) 2019 W.L. Liberman

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter

Published 2019 by Next Chapter

Cover art by Cover Mint

Edited by Marilyn Wagner

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

This book is dedicated to Finn Michael Liberman, born June 30, 2019. May you walk among giants and one day become a giant yourself.

1

Toronto, 2002

It was the perfect moment. A loafable moment. And these were exceedingly rare. My wife had sashayed off to the gym. The twins played basketball outside. I wore my grey fleece cardigan with the overly large wingtip collar. I'd zipped it up to my chin with the collar covering my ears like the flaps of a leather helmet that had been up-ended. I lay prone with three large pillows supporting my head and my mother's old seersucker bathrobe covering my feet. I can remember the day perfectly. It was late April and the winter had been long, frigid and forbidding, enough to make a person feel like a northerner when there was everything about that idea that I loathed. No, give me sun and sand and light winds on the beach. But on this day, milder weather had flounced in and although it brought an underlying chill, the heat of the sun overlaid the cold air like an insulating blanket. I opened the windows to the bedroom for circulation. I don't think they'd been open since the previous September and it felt stuffy. And stale. That's why I wore the fleece cardigan, to keep me warm and cozy as I melted into the comforter on our bed. It was bliss, sheer bliss. The closest to nothingness a human being, specifically, a male, could achieve. With the exception, perhaps, of the swaying hammock beneath the leafy maple tree on a hot day. That wasn't bad, either. Pretty damned close I'd say.

Tragically, the moment remained short-lived. No sooner had I drifted off into unconscious tranquillity, than I heard a fiddling with the lock and the front door swung open with a bang. Basketballs bounced in cacophonic rhythm on the ceramic tile floor in the hall. Their voices had deepened with the onset of puberty and they didn't so much as talk as growl or croak in a verbal assault one might have mistaken for dialogue, interspersed as their conversation was, with lyrics from the latest rap ditty that repeated the phrase, “On your feet, muthafucka”.

“Shit.”

I kicked the robe away and rolled off the bed, unzipped the fleece cardigan and shrugged it off, leaving it in a heap on the floor. I shoved my feet into some slippers and pounded into the kitchen where the teenage mongrels devoured cookies between gulps of orange juice straight from the jug, passing it between them as if it were a coveted prize.

“What happened to basketball?”

They shrugged. “It was boring,” Nathan said, then crammed a cookie into his mouth. “Nobody was there,” he continued spitting crumbs and bits of chocolate chip on to his T-shirt. His brother, Sean, pointed and laughed at him. We don't get along, he and I. I'd describe our relationship as pointedly tense.

My name is Bernard Goldman and I used to be a writer. Several years ago, I published a book, Spinning Through Time, a semi-autobiographical examination of my family and my father, in particular. My father, Eph Goldman, is now a retired history professor who wrote a seminal work, The Global View. This book has proved extraordinarily popular for decades and it built and sustained my father's reputation. He is now living in Tuscany with his second wife, Catherine, a woman barely older than I am. Of me, my father would remark sardonically, “At least in this case, history is not repeating itself.” That says a lot about our relationship. Not warm. Hardly fuzzy.

I'm working two manuscripts at the moment bouncing from one to the other. The first is called, Memories and is about a man who has amnesia but I keep forgetting where I am in the story. The second is called Das Vidaniya and details the life of a Jewish warrior who finds himself thrust into tough situations during The Second World War. Basically, the main character, cuts a swath of violence from Stalingrad to Berlin. But at least, I tell myself, he isn't a victim. I have grown exceedingly tired of books about Jews during the War portrayed as victims.

I met Hugo at the local community centre. Now 87, he had been a tank commander in the Soviet Army. Still vigorous, each day I see the ruthless side of him. We play basketball and I have not beaten him once in the previous seven years. Over 568 consecutive games of “21”, my highest score has been an “8”. Hugo put up an arcing shot and the ball swished through the basket.

“That's 569, I think.”

“Bastard,” I muttered, bent over, panting like a winded turtle.

Hugo broke out into a broad grin. “Want to go again?” he rasped.

I shook my head. “I am going for a swim.”

Hugo ran a gnarled hand through his stiff, iron-grey hair. “Good. So am I.”

I groaned. It was always the same but he had good stories to tell.

After the swim, I went into the office. I had rather foolishly ploughed some of the fees I collected from the first book into a magazine about Writers and Writing. Titled Bookology, it has just lurched into its fifth year of near-death survival. We subsist on the meagre advertising I can dredge up and those who take pity on us and actually buy a subscription. The pitiers number some 1200 now and I am proud to say, the subscribership has leapt some three or four percent since we began. In total, we print 15,000 copies of Bookology and circulate them across the country through retail outlets, newsstands, college and university writing programs and those who seem to be interested in getting published.

I spend my days fending off would-be writers, fawning on real writers, putting off creditors and badgering advertisers, many of whom are book publishers and moments away from declaring bankruptcy themselves. Yet it is my task to squeeze some advertising out of them to keep us afloat. This includes my own publisher, Julian de Groot of the House of Erasmus. Julian is a very successful publisher and my book made him a lot of money. While he waits for me to turn out my next masterpiece, he throws some mad money my way as an incentive.

“How are the manuscripts coming?” Julian de Groot drawled during his weekly call. “How many are there now? I've lost count, is it three or four?”

“Just two,” I replied. “Incidentally, you haven't paid our last invoice. I sent it out two months ago.”

“Oh dear, I must have Clarisse look into that right away.” Clarisse was the bookkeeper.

“Do that.”

“You haven't answered my question, dear boy.”

“No, I haven't.” I imagined de Groot, all six foot six of him, dressed in a white suit, long silvery hair hanging about his pristine collar, his yellowed fingers dangling a cigarette in a silver holder. “As well as can be expected actually.”

“When will you have something to show me?”

“I don't know.”

“Ollie North is looking for a good biographer, you know.”

“So you said.”

“So is Alan Greenspan.”

“Julian, I don't want to do biographies. I only did the last one to get me started. It's time to move on, to expand, to grow.”

I could hear him draw on the cigarette through the phone, then exhale languidly. “Well then, you need some Miracle Grow on the plants, old boy because things have been a little stunted lately, hmm?”

“Don't forget the invoice.”

I hung up the phone and cursed. He always got my goat but then he was a publisher waiting for something he could publish. I held up the gravy boat. Didn't qualify as a train.

Despite all the moaning and fumbling, Bookology, almost in spite of itself and despite my heroic leadership, gained a reputation in the industry that meant I was invited to all of the main line parties and publishing events. As both an author and a magazine publisher, I had sat on panels in conferences that examined the business of book publishing and the nuts and bolts of getting published. I had been asked to speak about the writer's life and offer advice on getting published in what is a brutal, cut-throat sort of business. My talks tended to be short and to the point. “Have a famous father,” I'd say. I wasn't often asked back but it was the best I could do and it had worked for me. Speak and write from personal experience was a common axiom exhorted to young up and comers, the sort I loathe really. The sort that actually get somewhere because they are talented. How irritating in the extreme when the opportunities dwindled down.

So in my natural discombobulated state, I stood in the loo taking a whizz. I came to my senses upon feeling a warm, wet sensation on my right leg. I looked down.

“Oh shit.”

At that moment, my nemesis of sorts, one Eric Schwilden, found me standing, sans pants, in front of the hand dryer desperately rubbing the legs together and cursing under my breath.

“Goldman,” he smirked. “Wet yourself, have you?”

“No, of course not,” I retorted.

“And that's why you're standing there half-naked drying your pants with the hand warmer?”

“It was coffee actually. My hand slipped and the cup spilled. Pretty clumsy, I'll admit.”

Schwilden gave me a knowing grin. “Sure. If that's the way you want to play it.”

“It's the truth.”

Schwilden smiled and shook his head of perfectly groomed hair that rounded the backs of his ears and just covered the nape of his long neck. He stood tall and slim, about 30 and wore clothes well. They just hung on him properly like you see on runway models, no silly bags or bulges. His teeth were even and white and he seemed to have a perpetual tan. Schwilden was a partner in a successful software company and drove a Porsche Targa. I knew this because his parking spot sat next to mine. His car made my 12-year old Saab, held together by rust and diminishing paint, look like a found object in the forest. He dated only beautiful, intelligent women. I hated him ever since he tried hitting on my wife, a tall, well-proportioned redhead who, at age 37, could still make them whistle. Sharon and I married at 22, just after she finished her accountancy exams. I stood five-eleven and weighed in at 155 pounds and when I examined myself in the mirror, I looked gawky and uncoordinated. I went to the community centre and put up with the indignities foisted on me by Hugo so I wouldn't turn into one of those paunchy dads who wore a baseball cap, Bermuda shorts, knee-high, white socks and open-toed sandals.

Schwilden dried his hands on some paper and grinned at me sardonically while I continued to air out my trousers. Then, he cocked a finger at me, dropped the paper in the bin and took his leave. I could hear him laughing all the way down the corridor. I looked in the mirror. What a yutz, the image said back to me.

Back in the office with my trousers nicely heated, I contemplated the “loafable” moment and decided that today I wouldn't find one. It was difficult. There was no office in fact, but a large open space shared by myself, my editorial assistant Jessica, my partner Roberto, his graphic assistant, the lissome Angela and our crusty, wheezy receptionist, Ruth. Ruth was a dumpy little woman who travelled on a cloud of nicotine trailing wisps of cat hair in her wake. She lived for her two cats. Otherwise, she took surly and mean-spiritedness to new levels but unfortunately remained the only living entity that understood our convoluted invoicing system. Without her, we'd be bankrupt in short order and she knew it. My partner, Roberto, spent more time worrying about what he was going to have for lunch than working. He didn't put any money into the business but brought a lot of computer equipment and in exchange I gave him a minority interest. If he wasn't talking about food, on the phone with his mother, his wife, any of his several sisters or his children, he kibitzed with the lovely Angela, who, at six feet and gorgeous, intimidated us all. No, we stood together as a community and, as such, lived in close quarters. No chance for obvious loafing, I'm afraid. Without walls, it seemed virtually impossible, except for Angela, who, having a date the evening before or attended the latest rave, would simply put her head down and fall asleep. We never said a word. I didn't dare tell Sharon, or she'd scream bloody murder that we hadn't fired the girl for this sort of behaviour. But you see, we liked Angela and I didn't want to fire her. She was good company and a crack graphic artist when she was awake. Needless to say, Schwilden hit on her constantly. So far, to my delight, she had turned him down flat, thinking him a stuck-up poser. I couldn't be more pleased.

I suspected my assistant, Jessica, harboured deep thoughts and conflicted emotions yet barely a word came out of her mouth. She was tall and slender with remarkably long, brown hair. Although she would reply when spoken to or asked a question. Thankfully, she was dedicated and extremely diligent, picking up where I slacked off. If I was having a bad day, which truthfully, could be any day, she'd pick up after me. I wouldn't feel like writing the intros or the blurbs or transcribing the interviews or taking calls from press agents and publicists. Some days, I wanted to shut it all down. Jessica would smoothly take over with a shy smile and a quiet demeanour. I think she was very intuitive. Perhaps those that don't speak much are that way.

While I'm confessing, I might as well get it all out. I was conducting a cyber affair with a young woman in my wife's office. A graphic designer named Charlotte. We met at the Cablestar Christmas party, the media conglomerate that Sharon manages as the CFO, the previous year and have been carrying on a lively correspondence ever since. I should say that's all it has been and likely ever will be. Charlotte is married as I am but I've suspected it is a marriage of convenience, more like a friendship, really. Her husband, Michael, is Australian and needed to stay in the country. Charlotte hasn't admitted as much but she travels a good deal, usually on her own. No children, obviously. We talk art and books and movies and architecture, the sorts of things that bore Sharon to tears and for which, she really has no time, focused as she is on the pragmatic things in life. Finance, for instance, which is her field, after all.

As I returned to my desk and punched up my email, a message pinged from Charlotte. My heart always quickened a bit. I couldn't shake the feeling this was something very elicit yet I couldn't say we were doing anything wrong. After all, I corresponded with a lot of people. Sharon did the same and probably more. Her inbox regularly had a couple hundred messages every morning. I was lucky if I had ten or twenty but that was more than enough. Corresponding with writers was never brief. Some of the emails I received ran five pages and more. So why did I feel a pang of pleasurable guilt when Charlotte's name and address came up?

Charlotte wrote: Hey you. Went to the Bergman festival last night. Simply fab. I'd forgotten how eerie and dark Seventh Seal was. Creepy really but creepy in a good kind of way. Afterward we retired to the Irish pub and got a bit smashed but it was good fun. I was drinking Guinness, which I never do, so that tells you I was in a strange mood after the film. You know, dark, brooding story, dark ale. There's a psychic connection, don't you think? Umm, I know we've never done this before but I'm going to the new China exhibit opening at the museum Friday evening. Care to join me? C.

My mouth went very dry as I read that last bit. This was a turn of events and I began to panic. As I got up from my desk to go to the water cooler for a drink, I tripped over the lamp cord and it came crashing down bringing a load of files with it. Jessica jumped up.

“No need to panic. I'll get it,” I said as Roberto and Angela looked up from where they were huddling. Ruth twisted her fuzzy lips in what I interpreted as a smirk.

“Just an accident.”

And bent down to pick up the papers and file folders that lay spread out on the pitted hardwood floor. Before I could protest, Jessica swept things up while I fumbled and cursed under my breath.

“Really, there's no need.”

She moved quickly for a wraith revealing a coiled strength in her sinewy arms as she stacked everything back in proper order on the surface of my old, glass-topped desk.

“Thank you.”

Her smile appeared; a grim crease that quickly sent crackling lines running up her face. Perhaps that's why she smiled so seldom, preferring a composed complexion that suited her better, I'll admit. At certain angles, she was a lovely looking girl, pert nose, a bit pointy and a pale complexion, too pale, almost ghostly.

“Sure,” she said and bustled back to her computer and immediately began pounding the keys as if she'd never left or merely paused in mid-strike. The others turned away, back to their scheming or worse, loafing.

Charlotte had thrown me and I was stymied with indecision, a natural state of being for a loafer. It was easier and less stressful not to do anything, or put things off while tucking them away from active thought. Don't do anything, I told myself, there is danger in every direction. I liked Charlotte, I really did and I was attracted to her, no question. But I also loved and was attracted to Sharon and had been faithful these past 16 years, not a slip or a hint of a slip in all that time. No desire, in fact.

Lately, our sex life had been wanting. One night she was tired and the next I felt like going right to sleep. I put in long days rising at five in the morning to get to the community centre so I could be outclassed by bloody Hugo and then home by seven-thirty, just in time to nag Sean and Nathan to get ready for school while Sharon headed out the door for work. Beside my soiled Saab, her massive, four-wheel drive, Lincoln Navigator, a shrunken motor home in leather, made me feel like I belonged in a trailer park. And so, I was legitimately tired, coming home at five-thirty, making dinner, helping the kids with their homework, tidying up, settling down to the inevitable reading I'd bring home, then a little television, around ten-thirty came the tedious ritual of badgering Sean and Nathan into bed, a half-hour ordeal at the very least.

Finally, around eleven, we could tuck in. When home, Sharon would get herself ready, flossing and brushing and washing while I chased the twins up and down the stairs, in and out of rooms while they conspired to elude me and by the time they'd settled in, Sharon would have the light out and was gently snoring. This insidious habit of hers infuriated me further having been aggravated enough frolicking with two idiots who happened to be our children. That is, when Sharon wasn't working late or on the road travelling or spending time with her personal trainer, Sven, at her exclusive club near her office.

Truthfully, it could be months or more. I reacted in one of two ways. The first meant moving through the day in a boil, a perpetual state of lust. Then I felt sort of dead as I experienced life being sucked out of the marrow of my bones. Bookology dragged me down into the mire and along with the lack of cooperation from my confreres, the plotting, the wheedling that went with being a 'businessman', something I was supremely ill-prepared to be. The inertia in my own work that plodded from sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph. Was there no bright light? Apparently not. When I was in that frame of being, a porno queen couldn't rouse me if she sat in my lap naked and gyrated to a boogie beat. So, maybe I was ripe for Charlotte. Perhaps it was time?

What stopped me? Was it guilt, the Jewish mother's invention? Nope. In pondering this, I think it was the magnetism of inertia. Running around with Charlotte meant activity, expending energy, plotting, planning and God knows what else. Secretive dinners. Finding a time and place to be alone. I didn't want to be disappointed in her and I didn't want her to be disappointed in me. It was inevitable, I reasoned after the first guilty rush of emotion engorged us. And then? Back to the mundane things. The things that taught us to be disdainful and over time, show contempt. The familiarity thing. I didn't want that for either of us. So I made a decision. I returned Charlotte's email.

I wrote: Hi C. Friday isn't going to work for me. Let me get back to you. B.

How was that for inaction?

Loafing through life was a grand thing but it took so much work to organize. The arrangements required to ensure that everyone in your life was running in the right direction, away in this case, to give you, the loafee, some leisure time. This required a great deal of coordination, planning and strategic thinking.

2

Every Saturday morning around ten, I met some of my cohorts at the local coffee bistro, BoBo's where we would commiserate over the dilemma each of us faced. Nook, a Burmese national, married with a child and toiled as a software engineer. His daughter just turned seven. His wife was a lawyer and had a steel trap mind to go with it. Ramon hailed from Peru and spent his days in social work. He had no children but his wife, Luisa, was a nurse who worked shifts. She wanted to have children but Ramon kept hedging, knowing he'd have to give in eventually. I liked BoBo's and loved to inhale the smell of the different blends of coffee. It's just too bad that I gave up drinking coffee. I sacrificed myself because coffee gave me heart palpitations. We all managed to sneak out on the pretext of picking up the paper and bagels and cream cheese, in my case, at least. When I left the house, everyone remained fast asleep. By the time I got back, the boys would likely still be asleep and Sharon would have gone to the gym. I saved myself that humiliation on the weekends knowing I could barely take the psychological beating during the week. It just went with everything else. Hugo wanted to show me how to use the various weight machines. It seemed like there were hundreds of them, all very complicated looking. More ineptitude awaited me.

“What's your excuse?” asked Nook, sipping a mochaccino.

I dropped the paper and bagels onto the empty seat beside him. “Same as always. You?”

Nook lifted his paper and a sack of milk, smiling ruefully. Ramon looked up from his extra large, black Colombian. Misery itself would have looked more pleased.

“Luisa's pregnant.” There reverberated a stunned silence. Neither Nook or I knew what to say. We avoided each other's eyes until finally, I couldn't stand it.

“Think of it this way,” I said. “There's always things to be running out for. Diapers. Formula. Wipes. Not to mention the cravings. When Sharon was pregnant, I had to buy her double double chocolate fudge or a Fatso's superburger with the works. Mind you, that was almost always after midnight.”

“Thanks,” Ramon replied, glumly dropping his wide chin to his narrow chest.

Nook polished his glasses on a paper napkin. “How far along is she?”

“Eight weeks.”

“You never know, things can happen in the first trimester. It's a delicate time. The data is pretty clear, according to a bunch of research studies.”

Ramon's face clouded. “I don't want her to lose the baby.”

“No, of course not,” I interjected and shot Nook an angry look. He shrugged in that Buddha-like way. He should never have shaved his head. He looked like the Dalai Lama… or his younger brother.

“It's just that I know it's going to be a lot of work. Babies are a lot of work, right?”

Nook and I exchanged glances, we knew how much work it was.

“Right,” I said. Nook didn't answer, just took another sip from the mochaccino that left a white moustache on his upper lip. Nook drove a new Saab and was considering switching to a Volvo, more space he thought and better for travelling with the family when they visited his mother-in-law who lived out of town. He glanced down at the paper and took in the headlines.

“We'll help you,” I said.

“That's right,” Nook chimed in.

“We'll call you up and ask you out, make up things.”

“It's her shifts that worry me the most,” Ramon said. “If she's working nights or weekends, then I'm stuck.”

“Bring the baby with you,” said Nook. “We've all done it. I used to strap Liliana to my chest. When she started to cry, I gave her a bottle or walked around a little bit to quiet her down. It wasn't a problem.”

“I used to bring the kids in the stroller. Same thing,” I said.

Ramon looked at us skeptically. One thing about loafers, much went on below the surface. We had an intuitive understanding of each other. There wasn't a great deal of overt conversation or anything mildly active. We'd sip whatever we ordered, chat about whatever, glance at the newspaper and be on our way. Simple, easy and no stress. That's what we wanted. Ramon's interjection had been the most meaningful thing we'd heard in months. It put us right on the edge, actually. That was another implied rule. Stick to the trivial and even, the inane when possible. But it was all right to muse on things as long as the others weren't required to respond in any meaningful way.

For instance, whenever I wrote the Editor's Notes for Bookology or even conducted an interview, I often fell asleep. Nodded off right at the computer. Something about expending mental energy that drained me like a leaky battery. I could barely keep my eyes open and it was a bit embarrassing when it happened in front of the staff, even if it only lasted a few seconds. Jessica would politely tap me on the shoulder and quietly smile. I didn't fall asleep during phone conversations but if it were a particularly long or tedious call, then no guarantees. Phone interviews were the worst of the lot as writers tended to drone on and on about their work and really, if the truth be known, who cared what they thought? Certainly, I didn't but it was all a sort of continuum, you see. I had to keep the writers happy to keep the book publishers happy so they would continue to advertise with us so I could continue to pay my bills and even that was dicey at best. I had to admit that some of my suppliers were very good about it.

“If you don't cut me a cheque and send it by courier today, I won't print your magazine, Mr. Goldman,” shouted John Hawthorne, owner of Vantone Press, our printer of the moment.

“But I've got a lot of money tied up in that issue,” I protested.

“I know. That's why you'll need to get it printed, won't you?” Hawthorne growled.

“But I can't pay you until I send out all the invoices and I can't do that until the damn thing is printed.”

“So you're asking me to add to your bill by printing the magazine so you can do your billing?”

“That's right.”

“I'm not a bloody banker, Goldman. If you want to see the magazine in print, then you'd better send a cheque.” He hung up. And what happened? I was stuck, of course. I just didn't have $12,000 sitting around in the corporate bank account. It was more like $250. So, the contingency was, I dug into my personal line of credit and coughed it up. I had to be very quiet about this when it happened. If she found out, Sharon would rupture a few ovaries. She was very, very responsible, fiscally. But then she could afford to be, earning a significant six-figure salary as the Chief Financial Officer at Cablestar.

These were the sorts of things I lapsed into when I was ensconced at BoBo's, cradling my bagels and cream cheese. I couldn't blame Hawthorne but he was a bastard all the same.

“He's gone again,” Nook remarked.

“I swear, Bernie, your mind is drifting like a paralyzed tuna,” Ramon said mysteriously.

“I didn't know a tuna could be paralyzed,” I replied.

Ramon pointed a finger at me. “You don't know everything.” And he drained his large, black Colombian and signalled for another.

I picked up my bagels and cream cheese. “Later boys.” Nook nodded, Ramon shrugged, the quintessential loafer's response. Spare the energy.

When I got home, I found Nathan at the computer playing some sort of strategy game that involved a lot of shooting and simulated blood. I made him put the headphones on. The last thing I wanted to hear on a Saturday morning were the agonized cries of the dead and dying, simulated or not.

“Bagels and cream cheese,” I said.

There was no response. Louder. “Bagels and cream cheese.”

“What?”

I held up the bag. “Bernie, you always get bagels and cream cheese. I know that's what you've got. You do that every Saturday after you hang out with your geeky friends.” Nathan paused the game to tell me this.

“My friends are geeky?” I put the bag down on the counter. “You have the nerve tell me my friends are geeky. At least we don't have our faces pressed into a computer screen all day long playing Cosmic Cowboy Blast-Off or something else equally inane.”

Nathan looked at me woefully. “First of all, Bernie, this is a very cool game that demands a higher order of thinking, strategy and hand-eye coordination, the sort of strategy game employed in the top gun fighter ace schools in the United States Air Force, so don't presume to tell me what is inane or not.” With a contemptuous gesture, he returned the headphones to his ears and unpaused the game. I wish I had a comeback to that or simply grounded the little bugger for the rest of his life. Instead, I picked up the newspaper and went into the living room to read.

Just as I was about to nod off, Sharon came bursting in, flushed from her workout, and dropped her gear by the couch with a thump. My heart still fluttered when I saw her and to my familiar eye, she looked and appeared eminently desirable. Wearing form-fitting stretch pants and a tight T-shirt sprayed on her elegant but fulsome figure stirred something in me. It usually did. Her auburn hair had been cut recently and it looked good on her, gave her an air of youth and vitality even though we were the same age. I, on the other hand, felt mummified by comparison.

“Hallo lazy bones,” she called. “Where are the boys, then?” Her Irishness came out subtlely in her speech when she was in a good mood, not so subtlely when she wasn't.

“Nathan's on the computer, destroying western civilization as we know it and Sean is sleeping through it all.”

Sharon glanced at her watch. “He is, is he? Jesus, it's almost eleven-thirty and thirteen hours of sleep is enough, even for a teenager.” She stomped off to wake him. I followed her undulating buttocks as she climbed the stairs. As if picking up my thoughts on radar, she stopped midway.

“What is it?” I shrugged, then grinned sheepishly.

“You dirty-minded bastard. Well perhaps, if you're a good boy.” And she continued on her way.

Somehow, she took the wind out of me. I mean, when put that way. I felt as if I had been scolded by my mother, hardly a lustful thought. I felt myself wilt a little bit and a piece of my soul shrank too. I know it's no good to dwell on the past but it wasn't like it had been before. Even when the kids were small, we'd just enjoy each other for the sake of it. There were no conditions or strings that tagged along. Is this what getting older is all about and naturally, my thoughts went to Charlotte and her invitation for next Friday. I had written my reply but in true layabout form, I hadn't sent it yet, relegating the message to my outbox so I might have the time to ruminate a bit further. I returned to the paper that I read quickly and cursorily as my main objective was to get to the crossword and finish it just after lunch. Then I would scout out any pending leisure moments.

“Dad?” Nathan appeared in front of me, sticking his dark face over the newspaper.

“What?” I was annoyed. He could be a very annoying child.

“I need a lift to the pool. I'm meeting a bunch of guys there.”

“What time?”

“One-thirty.”

“There is such a thing as the bus, you know. It has four wheels and a roof and normally goes in the right direction.”

He looked stricken. “The bus?”

“I'm coming too.” A rumpled Sean appeared, hovering above the bannister. His hair stood up in clumps and his face looked bruised from sleep.

“You're not invited,” Nathan said.

“Who's going?”

“Never mind.”

“I can come if I want to,” Sean said, and began to descend the stairs slowly hanging on to the bannister.

“I don't want you to.”

“Why not?”

“Because you're such an asshole.”

I heard the bang of Sharon's footfalls on the upstairs landing.

“Stop right there,” she said. Sean froze on the stairway. Nathan looked down at the floor.

“What is with the language?” she demanded.

“He is an asshole,” Nathan muttered under his breath.

“I heard that.” And before either of us knew what had happened, Sean had leapt over the bannister, launched himself on to Nathan and they began rolling around on the floor.

In one of those movie-like sequences, I dropped the paper and pushed myself off the couch while Sharon began to pound down the stairs. The coffee table had been overturned and a dish I'd always hated went crashing to the floor as the two boys thrashed about. On her way down, Sharon caught her foot and let loose with a piercing yell that brought the two boys to their senses enough so they sat up. She did a fine impression of a stuntwoman rolling down the stairs until she landed with a solid thump at the bottom. I made my way over to her. The boys looked red-faced and stricken with uncertainty.

I bent over her. “Sharon, are you okay?”

She was writhing in agony. “No, you damn fool, I'm not.”

She clutched at her ankle and I cleverly assessed the problem therein. “Boys, get an ice pack from the freezer. Move.” My tone seemed to jolt them out of their torpor and they scrambled off. Gingerly, I began to unlace Sharon's shoe.

“Oh good Christ, be careful, will ya?”

“Let's not be too harsh, darling. I am trying to help. Now just let me take a quick look.” Slowly, I eased the shoe off her foot, then slid the demi-sock off as well. The ankle had begun to puff already and quickly discoloured. “Badly sprained at least, possibly broken, I pronounced.”

“Oh thank you, doctor,” and squeezed out tears of pain. “Those little bastards,” she spat. “I'm going to kill them.”

Having heard her, Nathan ran in quickly with two ice packs then skedaddled. “Don't worry about the lift,” he said.

I applied the ice packs not too softly. She winced and gave me a murderous look. “We'll keep these on for a bit and then it's to the hospital for you. Better tell me what you want to take. I'm sure we'll be there for quite a while.”

For some odd reason that I can't quite identify, it gave me a smug sense of pleasure to see Sharon in pain. Perhaps it was because she was an unsympathetic person. She preferred to move on and not get personally involved with others. When her employees started to tell her their personal problems, inevitably she'd say, “Too much information.” That closed them off pretty quickly. And so people around her, her work mates and colleagues knew not to approach her on that level. I also knew that she hated the idea of sickness and being ill. She wasn't the nursemaid type. I had joked often enough that if I ever became incapacitated to any degree, she'd have me packed off to a nursing home before I knew what had hit me. So, to see her in discomfort, her injured ankle cradled in my lap as we sat across from each other in the hospital waiting area, pleased me.

“You're enjoying this,” she said.

I looked up from the book I was reading, the new Le Carré. “What?”

“You're enjoying this.”

“Oh yes, it's very good.”

“I don't mean the book, you lummox. I mean, having me here like this. Seeing me at a disadvantage.”

I smiled very carefully. “Well, it is unusual. And you do look so fetching in your workout togs.”

Sharon tilted her head in acknowledgement, then turned to survey the sea of humanity about here. “Reminds me of the tenements back home.” Indeed, she had grown up rough and poor in Belfast. After they emigrated when she was 12, her father Rory left them to seek his fortune playing in a country bar band. This left her mother, Felicity, with four kids to raise, Sharon and her three brothers. It hadn't been easy for them. But she'd left all that behind her in a past life. It's unlikely that she could even relate to it now, having spent the past 15 years forging her way up the corporate ladder and doing better and better each year. She'll be running the company soon, I thought. And why not? She was capable, no question. But did people respect her? Did they want to work for her and do their best? That was the only question in my mind. On some level, you have to like the people you work with and work for. That doesn't mean you need to know all the intimate details of their lives or hang out in the pub together three nights a week but having that ability to inspire respect made the difference in my opinion. It's hard to get people to work for you if they don't like you.

“You're a long way from that.”

“I know. It seems like another lifetime. Well, this is the first time I've been back in a hospital since the boys were born.”

I looked at her and felt a surge of tenderness. What a comedy of errors that had been. Before we left for the hospital, I called the doctor and found I couldn't rouse him from sleep. He kept snoring while the line was open and I couldn't hang up nor could I wake him. Must be drunk, the bastard I thought. And us with twins on the way. When we arrived at the Toronto General Hospital, it was chaos, five sets of twins had been birthed that same morning. We were the sixth. Nurses hustled about, hastily admitting the expectant parents, six women in varying degrees of discomfort, ranging from low moans to high-pitched shrieks, very unsettling for the would-be fathers, all of us looking as if we were about to pass out. One fellow did. He hit his head on the corner of a desk and opened a nasty cut to his temple. He had to be rushed off to be seen by a resident. Sharon looked and felt very ill. I had brought a bed pan with me in case she vomited, something she had been doing on a regular basis for the previous nine months. Why should this be any different? They shunted us from room to room. Sharon was given an epidural, had an intravenous in one arm, a blood pressure cuff on the other, and two fetal heart monitors strapped to her distended belly. And nobody could find the great, bloody Dr. Swann, the elderly patrician baby doc who was the best in the city we were told, who had the lowest Caesarian rate in the entire hospital. All I could think was, where the bloody hell was he? Well, true to his name, the old fart swanned in just moments before the babies came. Sharon had been prepped by the resident and the nurses. In the delivery room buzzed some fifteen people, not including me. I was shunted to the back like I was standing in a slow rising elevator and couldn't get out. Sharon and the action seemed very far away.

“That was something, wasn't it?” I replied thinking how quickly 15 years had passed.

Sharon shifted her weight awkwardly. “These chairs are bloody uncomfortable, aren't they? Listen love, do you think you could get me a water or something? It's awfully dry in here.”

I patted her knee. “Sure thing.”

The x-rays came back negative. Sharon was given an elaborate bandage, a set of crutches and told to stay off her ankle for a week. By the time she had hobbled out to the parking lot and settled herself in the passenger seat of the Navigator, Sharon had arranged a limousine service to ferry her to and from from work for as long as she needed it.

She snapped her cell phone shut and regarded me as I maneuvered the oversized vehicle through the suddenly too narrow streets of the city. Saturday was a shopping day and there was more traffic than I would have liked. We had arrived at the emergency department shortly before noon and it was now just shy of five o'clock. The shoppers poured into the streets to head home.

“I'm famished,” she said. “Didn't have time for lunch.”

“Why don't you phone home, see if the kids are there.”

She nodded and pressed an exquisitely tapered finger and lacquered nail on the speed dial. “You don't feel like cooking tonight, do you?”

Sharon didn't cook, she had no aptitude or feel for it. I liked to cook and in addition to a host of other chores, all of the shopping and cooking fell to me. Through some shrewd negotiating and outright bribery, I'd managed to get Sean and Nathan to do most of the yard work, although I stopped at hedge trimming. God knows the carnage that might result in. It was scary enough to think about the two of them obtaining a driver's license in less than a year's time. Legalized homicide in my opinion. “No one's answering,” she said.

“They could be listening to music. Nothing penetrates that.”

“I don't know,” she mused. “Sean seems to have a sixth sense about the phone. Sometimes, I think he can hear it in his sleep.”

“That's only a result of limiting himself to four hours of chat a night.”

Sharon looked down at her bandaged ankle and her bare foot, then wriggled her toes. “They put the damn thing on so tight. It's cutting off my circulation near enough.”

“Is your foot all tingly?”

“Yes.”

“Wriggle your toes.”

“Oh, thank you, doctor.”

“You're welcome. Standard therapy, you know. We'll adjust the bandage when we get home.”

“Sure enough,” she said, then switched on the radio to the oldies station. Elvis Presley singing, “Suspicious Minds” filled the interior. I decided to concentrate strictly on the driving. I didn't want to pulverize anyone or anything, after all.

I put Sharon's arm around my shoulder and helped her hobble up the front steps. Having her balance against me, I fumbled for the keys and only managed to drop them twice while she gave me an exasperated look, then unlocked the door. “The alarm's not on,” she remarked.

We short-hopped into the living room where I deposited her on the couch. I got her foot elevated, propping it with a few pillows. “I'll see if they're here.” I checked their rooms, then the basement and finally, the kitchen. There was a note, Gone to the movies, back around 11. It was in Nathan's hand but I assumed he wrote it for the both of them. “They're out,” I said.

Sharon looked at the note. “Do you really think they've gone to the movies? Or are they making out with some girls, do you think?”

“I don't know. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt. You know Nathan has shown no interest in girls, at least not yet. Sean's a different story altogether.”

“He is, isn't he? Let's hope he doesn't knock anyone up.”

“They've had sex ed in school.”

“Fat lot of good that'll do in the heat of the moment.”

“Well. Shall we keep a bowl of condoms by the front door. Help yourself on your way out?”

Sharon thought about it. “Mightn't be a bad idea, at that,” she concluded.

“You don't think we'll be encouraging them to be sexually active?”

“Well, they're going to do it anyway, whether we like it or not. Isn't it better to be open than have them sneaking around? Wouldn't you rather have them practicing safe sex than getting some poor lassie pregnant?”

“No,” I said. “I want to be a grandfather before I'm forty.”

Sharon fell back against the pillows. “Button up, will ya? You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think you like to wind me up, that's what.”

“So?”

“You're the only one who can do that. Now why is that, do you suppose?”

“You've forgotten about your brothers and your mother. I think they've got your number.”

“Why don't we order some take-out? How about Chinese? It'll be just the two of us.”

“Like a date?”

Sharon shaded her eyes. “Uh-huh.”

I bent down to loosen the bandage. “Sure. Why not?”

“I'm worried about Sean.”

I looked up in surprise. I was too but I didn't think my concerns extended to her. “And why is that?”

“He's just secretive in another way. I see too much of my brother in him. Never tellin' the truth, always sneakin' about thinkin' we'll never catch him out. Has the mind of a compulsive fool.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “That sounds a lot like Egan.”

“And Sean,” she said. I hadn't yet told Sharon about Sean's latest escapade. Apparently, he forged my signature on a permission form and told the office he'd be away the following week on a 'family trip'. The head secretary at the school became a little suspicious and called me at the office to confirm the story. I wondered what sort of family trip he'd had in mind and where this family might be travelling. This wasn't the first time Sean had pulled a stunt like this nor, I surmised, would it be the last. He was a devilish child who preyed on the good nature of those around him, especially his brother, who seemed willing to forgive him anything and follow along in the next antic, something that usually came back and bit him in the ass. “There's not much we can do, I suppose,” she said and stretched her arms out behind her head.

“No,” I agreed. “Why don't I go order?”

She eyed me with a small smile playing on her lips. “All right then.”

The boys rolled in around eleven-thirty. Sharon had gone up to bed, or rather hobbled as I helped her up the stairs. I offered to help her undress but she told me that wasn't necessary, she hadn't become an invalid yet. Chastened, I beat a retreat back to the living room to read and wait up for them, the miscreants. I heard the fumbling at the door and then Nathan's dark head poked around the frame. From my vantage in the living room, I could see them clearly. The foyer was in darkness but I could see well enough.

“All clear,” he whispered and stepped quietly inside, his sneakers scuffing but not squeaking along the floor. Sean breezed in after, unaware or not caring about the noise he made. He kicked the door shut.

“I need a drink,” he said and made a beeline for the kitchen, his lean frame undulating in the semi-darkness. Nathan froze in the doorway as he glanced in my direction.

“Hi Dad.”

“Have a good time?”

“How's Mom? Was she badly hurt?”

“Well you didn't stick around long enough to find out.”

“Sorry about that.” At least the kid had a conscience.

“What was that?” asked Sean, drinking from a tumbler.

“Your mother.”

“Oh yeah, how is she?”

“Resting, thank you for asking.”

Sean shrugged. “Yeah well, whatever. Uh, listen can you give me a couple bucks. We had to use our own money for the bus.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It was your choice to go to the movies. What it cost and how you got there was your problem, not mine.”

He drained the glass. “Oh, thanks a lot. I'm going to watch TV.” And he stalked off. Nathan hadn't moved.

“Is Mom really okay?” he asked.

I nodded. “Just a bad sprain, that's all but she'll be hobbling about for a week or two, so bear that in mind, all right? And the two of you might ask after her tomorrow or even get her a card or some flowers, that would be a nice gesture.”

“Okay. Goodnight, Dad.”

“Goodnight Nathan.” I saw his dark shape melt away into the shadows of the hallway.

“Is that them?” Sharon asked, tipping her reading glasses down her nose so she could look up and over the lenses at me.

“Yes.”

“Concerned for my welfare, are they?” she muttered, bitterness creeping into her voice. “What have I ever done to them except give them everything they wanted and more?”

This was a familiar refrain. I didn't want to encourage it. Rather, I began to change into my pajamas, well, a ripped T-shirt and a pair of old boxer shorts actually. Then I went about my exercises as solemnly as I could, knowing that Sharon was eyeballing me. She'd cut off the lament. I didn't want to talk to her because I would lose my concentration and when I went through the motions of doing crunches and push-ups, I needed very badly to concentrate or I'd collapse and never get beyond the first five or six. She always watched me with an amused expression on her face, an expression that communicated something like, who are you trying to kid? Still, I was attempting to keep middle-age and all that goes with it, at bay. I didn't think I was doing a terrible job.

“I don't think you listen to me anymore,” she said and sighed. In reply, I grunted, my face about to burst from effort. I'd finished the 150 crunches and moved on to the push-ups, light blinked at the end of the tunnel, only 10 more to go.

“For God's sake, you sound like you're going to blow up.”

“Thank you,” I panted into the carpet, silently counting my blessings. I managed to make it through. I pushed back to my knees, face down, and breathed into the beige shag, that is, until I felt well enough to struggle to my feet. Sharon had pushed down the covers and I could see she wore only a silk teddy that had inched its way up her thighs. Lacking any self-control whatever, I felt myself stiffen almost instantly. She smiled at me.

“I want my pound of flesh,” she said. I got into bed beside her. “Mind the ankle, won't ya?” I must admit, this had been a saving grace in our marriage. Whatever else may not be right, the sex remained pretty wonderful most of the time. And she always smelled good.

Sharon lay on her side, stark naked. We remained entangled under the covers. She stroked my face and I drifted into sleep, the heat of our actions slowly beginning to dissipate. “I was thinking, luv.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was wondering about having another child.”

My eyes popped open. I felt her thighs turn to steel effectively pinning me where I lay. God damn that personal trainer. “What? Are you insane?” I struggled, trying to pull back without success, feeling the semen leak out of me, microscopic traitors to the cause.

“No,” she said in a low voice. “I just wanted to hold a baby again. I can't explain it really, it's just a feeling I've got. Men just don't understand it, I suppose.”

“And don't want to,” I retorted. “We've got children. We've done our bit to augment the population.” My mind raced and thought about how much work a baby was, the sleepless nights, the changing, the feeding, the constant, never-ending list of tasks and chores, I wanted away from all of that. “You don't think we're a bit, uh, old, now?”

“Are you sayin I'm too old?”

“Well, it's just that, we're not 22 anymore. Personally, I don't think I've got the energy for a baby.”

“Ach, you talk like you're a pensioner, Bernie. Lots of couples have children later in life. Sean and Nathan can help us out. They're old enough to assume some responsibility.” I almost cackled out loud at that one.

“Sean and Nathan?” I exclaimed. “You've got to be joking. Getting them to put a way a dish is a major effort. Or putting the cap back on the salad dressing or picking up the clothes they've strewn about the floor. And you think they're responsible enough to help look after a baby? That's a laugh, that is.”

“Don't underestimate them,” she replied tartly. “Give them the responsibility and I think they'll run with it.”

“Yes. In the opposite direction from a baby.”

I was still pinned by those iron thighs and somehow the injured ankle didn't seem to be bothering her anymore. Perhaps it was the extra strength Tylenol with codeine she'd gobbled before bed. She put her hand on my face and squished my cheeks. I felt like a fish caught in a vise. “I want you to give some serious thought to this, luv. I mean it.” Her face loomed very close to mine. I felt her hot breath.

She released my cheeks and I moved my mouth around to restore the feeling. “You're not, uh, I mean, you haven't… now, have you?”

Her green eyes widened. In the darkness, I swore I could see sparks flying off the flecks of gold in those captivating irises. “No, not yet. I didn't think that was quite right. You're entitled to your say, after all.”

“Right. And then?”

“And then… I'll do what I like anyway, just as I always have.”

Her thighs parted and I rolled on to my back, wilted and sticky. Inwardly, I groaned. There wouldn't be a moment's peace now, for years. Now I felt Ramon's pain right where it hurt, in the nuts. “Goodnight,” I muttered. Sharon rolled over and fell asleep almost instantly. I marvelled at how she could do that but she had the knack for it. After this latest bombshell exploding my peaceful existence, smashing it to smithereens, I lay awake in the dark, imagining my life frittered away under an avalanche of stinky diapers and discarded wipes.

3

You might say that a swimming pool was a perfect place to loaf. After all, the water was warm, your body floated on an undulating current and your mind could drift wherever you or it wanted. And it was in this blissful state I put myself each and every morning. That is, when Hugo didn't kick me in the face with his wide leg sweeps or some other interloper didn't hog the lane or cause turbulence through sheer displacement. I tended to drift, literally and psychically, in the attempt to make the morning swim as pleasant as possible. There was something about getting wet in the morning. Most sane people found it rather repulsive and I was no exception.

Thus I drifted, floating up and down the lane, thinking the most tranquil and pleasant thoughts. I wanted to remove myself from the harsh realities I would face upon leaving the pool, purge all the poison and oppression I felt. Come out from under the pressures when I went to the office, distance myself from the latest load Sharon had plunked on my shoulders, forget about the stress of writing two novels at the same time and getting absolutely nowhere with either one. I imagined sun and sand and green fields, pleasant Vivaldi-like music wafting over undulating hills. That was it. I'd found paradise.

A sharp tug on my ankle jolted me out of this utopian reverie. I sputtered up and came face to face with an elderly woman in a yellow bathing cap. Even through my fogged-up goggles, I could tell she was upset about something, especially when she began to poke me in the chest.

“Ow.”

“You have no right,” she said with great indignation. “How dare you?”

What was she on about, I thought, the old biddy. “What do you mean?”

The old woman beckoned to the lifeguard, the pugnacious Maria, a dark-haired, tattooed girl with a wrestler's body, who took no crap from anyone. We stood in the shallow end and by now had attracted some attention from the other swimmers. Maria got down on her haunches, closer to our level. “This man,” the old lady said and poked me again.

“Stop that.”

“This man,” she repeated. “Was peeing in the pool.”

Maria's face pulled back in disgust. “That's ridiculous,” I said. “I've been swimming here for years and I'd never do such a thing.”

“Don't lie to me, young man. I saw you.”

“Saw me? Can you even see anything let alone what you claim you saw underwater?”

Maria smirked a little then her face moved into an expression of studied concentration. “Ma'am, are you sure?”

“You're darn right I'm sure. I know pee when I see it. Didn't I raise four boys and believe me when I say I saw plenty of it above and below water.”