Saturday in Toronto
May 31, 2005
This is a story about the weekend. If you need it, you can find a connecting piece.
We awoke in a strange house after four hours of sleep to the sound of girls giggling upstairs. Garage sale. For cancer. Cancer is doing well enough without our help, I figured, so we stayed in bed and whispered deep and meaningful things between soft moans, our sweaty torsos rubbing against each other.
Even though my throat hurt, I kissed her savagely with open lips and nearly chocked on passion and pieces of morning. We got up flustered and went upstairs to meet Dave and his family, who feed us bagels and coffee. In return for breakfast, we helped them move furniture for the garage sale. Beds. Tables. Cancer always needs more junk.
And then, when Dave’s dad was least expecting it, we hijacked one of the cars in the driveway, a sleek SUV, and drove it into the city to find the Red Room. I’ve never driven an SUV before — I’d rather bike. But for some reason I volunteered to drive through Chinatown and the whole of crazy Toronto; on the way I attempted to kill ten pedestrians and countless cyclists.
“Are you some kind of self-hating cyclist?” Greg Smith asked from the back seat.
Lunch at Red Room was greasy, cheap and served slowly, almost deliberately. The pain in my throat nearly made me cry in my coffee. Friends of hers came. Friends of mine didn’t. We set out to explore the city during Doors Open Toronto, and saw observation decks, courthouses, church organs, nails. We took it all in and then ate ice cream in the street.
And when we were sweaty and tired enough, we returned to Dave’s home. The garage sale for cancer was a success — the only thing unsold was the bed we moved on the lawn earlier, which we packed in the SUV and dumped in front of Goodwill’s across town before coming home and collapsing for endless hours.
“Did you mean what you said this morning?” she asked late in the night, naked and vulnerable.
“Yes, I want to sing on television.”
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