To Aid An_ Cage
2008-04-15 - 1:28 a.m.
Florida
The surface of our table is bare except for a glass water jug that is fluted near the top. The pinched glass holds a thin, round slice of lemon in place below the surface of the water. My friend and I are seated at the Fresh on Spadina, below Queen St. in Toronto. The restaurant is busy, and patrons look out at the smoke that is rising from the west. A quiet layer of music keeps a persistent, steady noise through the intermittent lulls in the different conversations that surround us.
We have been friends for a long time, and I've been staying on his couch while I visit. I've missed a lot of his recent life; he's been with a girl, but she has moved on. He is leaving for Florida later in the day, where his family is already vacationing. They have a house rented somewhere down there. He has to collect his things and make ready to leave; I have to find somewhere else to stay until I leave again. We sit quietly with menus and look them over.
The silence at our table foils the chatter and light of the restaurant around us. The buzz turns into words as it drifts over from the tables closer to the window.
�That fire's still burning at Bathurst.�
�Crazy � still? Is it contained to one area?�
�I think we're safe here.�
My back is to a mirror, so I can't see myself, or where my own shadows fall on my face, but the light has caught the brim of my friend's hat and shaded his forehead and cheek. I catch a dampness in his eyes that looks left from some passionate dream in the night. He appears filled with some deep and tearing emotion. Late in the night, we had agreed that love can be cheap as any free thing, like water�and just as readily polluted. He pours a glass of it past the lemon, and sips on it.
�Florida,� I say, making it mean something.
�Yeah.�
I order a wrap and an americano from the waitress, and he orders some kind of smoothie. This will be the last we see of each other for some months now, once he leaves, because I am returning to Montreal tomorrow and will be there till the summer.
�It will be good to get out of this cold.�
I'm not sure which cold it is. There are warmer ways she might have broken their relationship, I think. They had been friends before, and now it is over, and he is still deeply attached. My impression of romantic love is that it never seems to flow as easily back to friendship as it does from it. She had ended it to create a space she felt she needed, but he needs more space. It hurts him that his love is inappropriate.
I imagine him walking into a doctor's office complaining about a pain. He sits and waits inside the little room, absentmindedly toying with the roll-out paper sheet covering the examination table until the door opens. He's sobbing. The doctor steps inside and looks him over.
�What's the matter?�
�I've got a pain somewhere.�
�Where do you feel it?�
�I'm not sure.�
�Can you point to where?�
He moves his hand solemnly over his body, from his wet cheek down over his chest, and still lower over his ribs and stomach. He looks back at the doctor.
�No.�
A siren sounds from the street outside as a firetruck passes. Inside, there is empty noise from every table around us. My concentration has broken, so I can't think of what the doctor might have said to him. 'Go to Florida,' maybe, but that seems ridiculous. I can only sit and talk with him, and be his friend, and treat him like a full and complete person with everything worth caring for present and shining.
His eyes flick to one side, and I can tell he is remembering her from before. I've never seen him this haunted, but at least he knows why � in the middle of winter � he is burning up inside.
I overhear a nearby table:
�It was six alarms.�
�It's five now.�
�God � those men must be freezing.�
�It's freezing wherever there's no fire, just making a huge mess.�
People are peering out of the window. The column of smoke rising from the city is forming a cloud that covers the sky in a white veil. Somewhere, blocks away, water is freezing in layers over telephone poles and uniforms. My friend doesn't take interest. He is leaving, and doesn't care about another fire burning and another mess. Our waitress brings his smoothie and he pushes his glass of water away.
�Have you ever been?� I ask.
�Once.�
�What's it like there � nicer?�
He pauses to swallow and think. I have heard Florida is all guns and porno, but I've never been. The waitress returns with my americano, but I have to ask her for more hot water because there isn't enough.
�I don't remember what it's like. I was young. I remember the sun and ocean, and I remember the warmth of it.�
I want to reassure him that it isn't because of who he is, that people sometimes just need to force a change in their lives to help motivate a change in themselves, or that sometimes people just need to cut and run, but I can't. It's not the right place, and I didn't really know her, or them, and he is leaving soon and will be fine. I'm sure he'll be fine. Maybe he'll even meet someone there and feel better.
�Florida will be good. It'll be warmer there. You'll feel good there, warmer.�
My cup is empty. I'm not the doctor I imagined for him. I don't really know what Florida will be like, but I know I'd like to be heading there. I tell him this and he smiles, thank God.
�We'd have a blast, eh?� I say, grinning.
His eyes brighten as he thinks about it, too. �Yeah, man. You should come. Why not?�
I laugh; it's impossible, but I think for a second. There's no way. He's leaving in a few hours and I need to go back to Montreal, but still � I could go. Maybe a trip to Florida is what I need, too. A destination would be nice � just to be on the road again and moving, but then I think about needing to stay. How many more years? I promised myself I would stay for at least three, but I'm getting that itch again.
�I need to settle down for a bit.� It is a weak answer. I can't settle. I yank myself out of everything just to feel pulled, but I want to settle down. I need to not want to go to Florida.
He sips on his straw again. When was the last time I felt like him � that love sickness? A couple years, now. I usually leave before it gets that way. I pretend that I'd rather be lonely than sick sad, as if the sickness were the entire movement of love. I don't know love; I can say that. Sure, I love him, but it is different. We will never be lovers.
�There's no winter in Florida,� he says.
�The cold here will fade, though.� I'm trying now, before he leaves. �It will soften, and it'll be hard to remember that you ever felt winter like this � probably by the time you get back.�
There is a romantic love that brightens as it fades into lasting love, we believe, but neither of us has found it yet. He thought he had found it with her, and still believes that he has. It is his dream that remains from the night. It dampens his eyes and shades his face. The firetrucks passing and the smoke rising in the city are all a part of that dream veil that he still clings to, that the fire can be put out and everything put back the way it was before.
I'm looking at him, but he glances toward the window and the interest in what is going on outside. I can hear the music playing through the speakers.
�Those buildings are gone. There will be a black and charred mess for a while, but they will come back. The city rebuilds.�
�I know.� He looks at me.
�I think some buildings need to be burnt down to ash. Sometimes rebuilding is a better idea than just painting over the stains and gouges.� But I can see in his eyes that she is too special to him, and that buildings are not built to be burned down to ash.
He pays for his drink and stands.
�Thank you.� He wipes his face with the back of his hand.
I stand, too. We'll see each other again in a few months, and I will find out how Florida was. With any luck, we will both feel something different moving in our lives. We embrace, and he leaves.
My wrap comes. I'll stay with another friend tonight and head back to Montreal in the morning. I'll try to settle there for as long as I can, and I'll try to meet someone. I want to know the kind of love my friend and I still search for. I still believe it's out there, and that it can be found�and that if I learn how to settle down somewhere, I will know how to stay when I find it.
The wrap is dry. I pour water into my cup and take a sip. It is warm, and the lemon has made it sour. I close my eyes and imagine the ocean, and warmth.
before || after
