Sometime in July, Anne and I meet downtown at one café or another to celebrate our birthdays. When we began the custom in our twenties we talked about love, and now, in our thirties, we talk about work. We are artists, and we like to scrutinize our setbacks and promote each other’s aspirations. At times, in a dramatic swoop from the august to the mundane, we talk about hair.
Anne was trying to persuade me to start wearing my hair off my face, but I was disparaging.
“You know,” I said slyly, looking past her sleek head to the café window that framed it, “Mr. Mackenzie told me while we were driving to his house that I should keep wearing bangs; they suited me.”
“But that was in Grade Nine,” Anne protested. Then she looked at me. “How did you get to Mr. Mackenzie’s house?”
“We bought him a cake at the end of the year and we met his wife, Lynne—”
“I know her name,” Anne said with scorn, which I deserved. We were nearly thirty-five, and until we died we would know the name of Mr. Mackenzie’s wife.
“Do you realize that when I look out the window I still see Mr. Mackenzie, waiting for us to save him.”
Anne and I have been friends for so long that certain observations are rhetorical.
“He’d be old,” she replied. “How old would he be?”
“When he walked into class on the first day, his fingers came before him. They curled around the edge of the door and pulled his body in.”
“He stood in the middle of the room—” Anne...
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