Fish Change Direction in Cold Weather Read Online Free PDF

raincoat, doing his usual banter. Bad weather was his moment of glory. That was normal – he was the television weatherman. It went
without saying that the sky held no secrets for him. He didn’t give a damn there under his umbrella. The anchorwoman seemed to think it was pretty funny.
    ‘Go and dry off! We want to see you again at the end of the programme. You must be completely frozen now!’
    ‘He can go piss himself, that’ll warm him up, fucking faggot.’
    Alex didn’t say anything. He didn’t laugh. Or smile. In fact, he didn’t even notice his dad’s sarcasm. Ever since Doro – his wife, his love – had left him
without warning, Alexis saw faggots everywhere. And when they weren’t faggots, they were Jews, rarely both at the same time.
    Alexis no longer looked at women and he didn’t try to attract their attention. So no women were attracted to him. And yet at forty-five he was still a good-looking man . . . but he
didn’t like himself any more. Hating others was what kept him afloat.
    ‘All fags! Fucking Jews!’
    Around his son he was different. He had a gentle side, nurtured no doubt by his sense of guilt. Alex’s hair was as black and frizzy as Alexis’s was straight and fair and
blondish-grey. Only their names were similar. Just the kind of bad idea a dad would have.
    ‘In Alexis, there’s Alex!’
    Every so often Alex asked Alexis to tell him who his mother was and why she’d gone away.
    ‘I just can’t, Alex. It’s as if she no longer exists.’
    It’s not something you can talk about, a thing that doesn’t exist. So Alex never asked again.
    ‘What bullshit! They never told us yesterday that there’d be black ice, and now there is, and I’ll bet you tomorrow there won’t be any. Can you imagine,
if I worked the way they do?’
    Alex looked at his dad. It was at moments like this that he most missed having a mother. She was the one who should have been glaring defiantly at Alexis. She was the one who should be making
him see reality, asking him, ‘Would you look at yourself?’
    Alex had often wondered if he’d really had a mother, if you could just come from nowhere. He had no memory of his early childhood. All he knew was that Alexis had been a musician, a
singer-songwriter and guitar player. Alex remembered how when he was younger he used to spend long days at the recording studio. He could remember those huge mixing desks, and how he would sit
sprawled on a sofa watching his dad behind the big pane of glass, his guitar strap over his shoulder. He may have been just a kid, and not meant to understand everything, but he had a fairly good
idea what was happening.
    ‘Alexis! It’s always the same thing with you! Can’t you just play what we asked you to play? C minor is C minor, and A minor is A minor . . . And we’re paying you to play
C minor!’
    ‘After a C minor you never play an F sharp, didn’t your music teacher teach you that?’
    ‘Alexis . . . All we’re asking is for you to play the damn score, we don’t give a fuck about your opinion.’
    ‘No F sharps after a C minor!’
    ‘You’re impossible . . . Just get the hell out of here.’
    ‘You don’t know who you’re losing! You’ll be sorry!’
    That was how the final sessions always went. Not one of the studios was ever sorry they’d lost Alexis. But he was blindly stubborn, so he didn’t give up on his career. When
you’re sure you have talent, sure that you have the keys to success, you don’t walk away from the profession that could turn you into a star. You just have to change direction.
    ‘I’ll make them understand what music really is!’
    And so Alex followed his dad onto the streets of Old Montreal. Alexis busked, playing his guitar all hunched over, more mumbling than humming, as if he were only playing for himself and
didn’t care whether anyone heard him or not. When you don’t have anyone to love, it’s hard to sing love songs. Lovers would walk past him, give him nothing,