Admittedly, I over think first impressions. I had showered, shaved, tried on four shirts before deciding on one that buttoned up, and I left the house early enough to arrive right on time. Tim, on the other hand, showed up in swimming trunks, and a funky, sun-stained t-shirt, late.

I got the job for a couple of reasons: partly because I lied on my resume and said I had more experience than I did; and partly because Sherry�s family lived right on North Rustico Bay, where Tim�s Kayak Shack ran its tours out along the coast of Cavendish Park.

�Tourists flock to this island like vultures to a corpse,� was how he put it. �We have to make sure they get their fill before they fly off again for the winter.� He found that quite funny. He went on about how narrow the channel could get when the tide was low in the bay, and how dangerous it was for him to squeeze his kayaks by the big boats. Being a co-guide meant I would be making sure none of the tourists got bisected by the lobster boats. It also meant I�d be able to get back out on the water, where I hadn�t been since I�d grown out of summer camps.

* * *

Sherry and I moved from Toronto into a two-storey duplex on Euston Street in Charlottetown. We were much closer to her family, which meant we were committing to try harder to be a couple. We both agreed to relax and love each other, and not fight as much over miniscule annoyances. It was a beautiful house. We had our shoes lined up neatly in the front entrance. There was lots of light in the day, and in the evening, tufts of cat hair would drift with the curtains on the breeze.

Sherry mentioned later that Tim and his wife, Jeanette, used to run the business together as a team. She didn�t know all the details, but apparently Jeanette had dropped out of the picture during a particularly wet summer two years ago when things had slumped. Tim�s awkward behaviour and obvious discomfort at the interview seemed to reflect this fact. Here I thought Tim was being an ass, but he was actually reluctant to hire a second guide. He had taken on sole ownership of the Kayak Shack and operated the business alone since Jeanette left him, maybe to prove that he could. Of course, now it seemed tourists were suddenly in love with kayaking again, and he was obviously too burned out to manage the crazy summers on his own. He must have resented admitting that he needed any help.

At the interview, Tim asked what kind of person I saw myself as. �There are two types of people,� he said. �Dog people and cat people.� He paused to take a sip of his coffee. �Dog people tend to push a little bit harder. They want to get outside, pull on the leash; they don�t want to just sit at home, getting up every now and then to shit in a box.�

I decided not to mention the three beautiful cats Sherry and I kept. Instead telling him I could see what he meant, that I loved dogs, having lived with them from a young age. Truthfully, though, dogs frightened me. Ever since I got bit when I was ten, they all seemed to look at me as if they were about to attack.

When I told Sherry I had gotten the job as a guide, she beamed, �That�s awesome!� Then she looked at me as if she wanted to say, You�re welcome, and I could tell she felt in some way responsible for my success. She thought I wouldn�t have gotten the job if her parents didn�t live in the same town as the Kayak Shack.

She wanted to stay on the island forever. She�d grown up there, skinny dipped with friends there, done Christmas gifts with family under little fake trees, etc. I�d catch her looking at houses and properties for sale online, sometimes nudging me to point one out, sometimes emailing me links to realtor sites, or posted pics of little cottages with children�s furniture out front. We played at being a couple like this, but this wasn�t home for me. Home was some dark shadow in the west, a land of Doctors and Hospitals, pills and therapies. Sometimes I felt it reaching for me along hundreds of miles of road, catching me in disturbing dreams. I didn�t want to stay here, but I didn�t want to go back to Toronto. I wanted to cross the ocean and keep going, kayak across, leave Sherry to deal with the nightmares.

* * *

My third day at Tim�s Kayak Shack I was still more or less another tourist on the water except that, like Tim, I wore a silk-screened t-shirt with the Kayak Shack logo on the front. We launched for a tour with a good-sized group of maybe fifteen tourists. I was shadowing Tim until I got a better feel for how things ran. I paddled a single kayak while Tim paddled stern in a big tandem with a young girl up front. He called out to our group to keep everyone together: �Remember to stay out of the boat channel!�

My body was stiff and sore from the constant effort involved in paddling, but I fought to keep up and look professional. Tim�s tour evolved steadily after the quick paddle out of the harbour. Once we cleared the breakwater, the cliff walls of Cavendish Park towered off to the left. To get over to them meant paddling alongside Rustico beach, where the dogs barked at children, and the families splashed and shouted in the roped off water. Then, when the beach ran into the cliffs of the park, the laughter and play dropped off and disappeared. The cliffs seemed to grow majestically from the sudden silence. Defying logic, they were at once both whole and broken in a bright, but grim still life. Hidden among tableaus of unchecked erosion, secret beaches formed and disappeared with the rising of the tide. Gulls flittered about in the air. Herons leapt from their perches on the dwarfed cliff trees. Eagles looked on, watching, listening, as bank swallows swooped and plunged to their burrows high in the cliff wall. I had a moment of restful reflection and peace, and I wondered if any of it might last.

My kayak drifted to the back of the group. I was playing follow guide to Tim�s lead, waiting on stragglers and weak paddlers, encouraging them, making sure they didn�t fall too far behind. Tim had stopped the group up ahead in front of a large cove. He had the bow of his boat turned around to face everyone, so they could see how much fun the little girl was having, and tip accordingly. As I watched, one of the tourists pointed to a spot out on the water. I heard someone say; �Seal!� and I looked, and saw a dark head floating alone out there. The stragglers immediately started working to catch up to where the action was. Tourists in kayaks up by Tim pointed their bows toward the head and set off, pulling at the leash. But the head disappeared below the surface.

I could hear Tim�s voice calling the dog people back. �Seals are rare to see out here, so consider yourselves all extremely lucky. Mr. Seal�s probably headed home for lunch now, so who thinks likewise and wants have a snack on that beach over there? I know one little girl that does.� The little girl grabbed at handfuls of water and threw them into the air.

I remember smiling, and thinking, Old man Tim�s not such a hard ass after all. Then a shape broke through the water on my right and I felt the sweat burst from every pore on my body at once. I turned sharply toward it, just in time to see its black eyes. I heard myself call out, �Seal!� and then my kayak was up on its side, and I had tumbled out into the water.

I let go of my paddle, but kept a hand clenched to the boat. The cold shot through my groin like a swift kick, right away. I pulled my knees up, trying to trap some warmth, and managed to flip my boat upright. I could hear the stragglers talking behind me, �Oh, look, honey, the guide fell in.� My kayak was full of water. I tried to remember what to do next, but couldn�t, and felt like an idiot. I started to get angry to the point of losing control.

Then, there was Tim in his tandem boat with the little girl waving her hands like a flag. He began shouting commands for me to follow, and I did. His long arms wrapped around the kayak and braced it as I pulled myself up and slid my legs back inside.

�What�s the matter?� he said. �Scared of seals?�

�No,� I said, catching my breath. �It just startled me. It was right there.�

He grinned at me. The girl caught my paddle floating in the water, and Tim took it, and passed it to me. �Thanks, Tim.�

�You okay?� he said. My clothes were soaked. I was pumping water over the side of my cockpit. The seal had long gone, probably scared off by my spectacle. Saying no to Tim meant admitting that for a second I thought a demon had lunged at me from the water, from my dreams.

�Yeah,� I said.

He looked at me. �They�re just seals.�

I laughed. Tim blew his whistle to gather the group while I got myself together. He told them how we often performed rescues like this to teach tourists about kayak safety, even though we didn�t. He half joked about seals being wild animals, and then went off on a tangent about Irish folklore mixed with local history, and geography. When he was done, everyone applauded and smiled at me, and I almost felt like I had gone in on purpose.

* * *

I talked it through with Sherry and then invited Tim over to our place for dinner. We cleaned and straightened, hid the ashtrays. I swept up the roving balls of cat hair. Tim arrived late, on his bike, still wearing his clothes from work. He came in and immediately one of our cats walked over and rubbed herself on his leg below his knee. We sat drinking beers and laughing about tourists and fishing boats, about the boat that threw its engine in reverse to avoid running one over the other day. He and Sherry had a laugh about my episode with the seal.

When the burgers were all gone, and our plates sat empty on the coffee table, I decided I had changed my mind about Tim; I liked him now.

�Tim,� I said. �I want you to know how in love I am with this job. I haven�t felt this complete since years ago, when I tripped through Northern Ontario. Your ex-wife must have been crazy to walk away from guiding.�

Sherry shot me a reproachful look, as Tim�s shoulders sunk forward. He put his beer down on a coaster. Then it came, the revealing of the most god-awful, heartbreaking story: Jeanette out kiteboarding when a storm came up, a gust of wind twisting her sail, a rope catching around her neck, tightening. Apparently, the waves pounded her against the rocks for several hours before the rescue boat arrived. I got up to start the dishes while Sherry rubbed his back and shoulders, his head hanging down, sobbing quietly.

Before he left, I pulled him aside and apologised. �You didn�t know,� he said. �I should be the one apologising. I ruined a really nice evening.�

�Not at all,� I said.

* * *

That night I dreamt I woke up back in my bed at the CAMH on Spadina. It was the same little room with the two windows, only Tim was there in the tandem with the little girl. When I woke up back on Euston Street, I remembered the door to my room in the dream was ajar, and the sickly-yellow triangle of light that crept in. There had been footsteps approaching down a long hallway. The girl in the kayak had stopped playing, and Tim�s face had turned serious.

When I got to work the next day, the dream was completely forgotten. Tim acted warm. He put his hand on my shoulder as we walked down to the beach to get the kayaks. He knew I knew that life was hard, and I did. Even though he didn�t know me, or my past, I no longer felt like we were strangers.

* * *

Sherry and I decided we would split up in the fall. She cried, which made me cry. I lied, and told her I was too worried about my mother and family, my grandparents� failing health, my own demons. I needed to get myself back to square before I could involve myself with kids and families. I didn�t want to leave her, but I couldn�t bring myself to stay. I told us both it would be better this way, and that we�d both be happier.

About a week later, I went on a tour with Tim and a group of tourists in town for a conference/golf tournament. We had just come out of a two-day system of high winds and rain, and the scenery had changed significantly. New hunks of rock grew out of the sandy beaches below the cliffs. Trees that had stood on the cliff�s edge all summer had disappeared. We were taking our time with the paddle, enjoying the sun. Tim had gone up ahead to scout a beach to land on for a break.

I was pointing out a boat made into a house to the tourists when I noticed Tim on a beach, out of his kayak. He was bent low over something. I told the group to hang tight while I paddled over to where he was crouching. I called out to him as I approached, and heard him say �Yeah,� but he remained where he was, with his back turned.

By the time my bow hit the beach, I could already see the silver-black skin of a seal glistening oily in the sunlight. �Don�t bring the group,� he said.

The sand around him was dark, rusty. �Is it alive?�

I guessed that it wasn�t. There were cuts running up the side of its body in regular intervals. The pink flesh under the skin looked raw. Blood oozed from the long wounds. A boat must have not seen it and run it over. It looked like it had got caught in the propeller and sliced up. It must have died quickly and then drifted in to shore.

�Tim?�

I looked at the seal�s face; the damage there was bad. The propeller had carved a long furrow around its snout. An eye had popped out and was dangling, drying. I looked at his hands. They were bloody, as if he had been touching it.

�It�s just a seal,� I said.

He looked at me from where he had been looking down. I could hear the tourists behind me splashing about, closer. Tim didn�t say anything, but I could see in his eyes that he had seen something else, something other than a seal. His own, sad nightmare washed up on the beach.

�I�ll get the group back,� I said. And I left him there.