The Delusionist Read Online Free PDF

out, like good little soldiers: canned soup, canned peas, canned tomatoes. Tomatoes. Tomatoes was another word for breasts. But the cans were hard and cold and clammy, just like the IGA where everyone looked deathly pale under the fluorescent lights, especially Norm, the Assistant Manager, a humourless goof who did not appreciate Cyril turning all the labels to the left or to the right, but what else could you do to entertain yourself in such a boring job, a job that Norm seemed to regard as a calling? The pressure in his groin began to ease.
    â€œYou’re burning.”
    His eyes opened and he looked up to find Connie leaning over him, smelling sweet and creamy with lotion. “I’m okay,” he said.
    â€œYour back’s going to get blisters.”
    â€œI’m fine.”
    â€œCyril, turn!”
    When he did her eyes widened.
    â€œWhat did you expect?” he said, sullen, defiant, embarrassed.
    She drew her finger down the middle of his chest and stopped at his belly button. “Anything less and I’d be insulted.” For a long moment they remained that way, looking at each other, her finger circling his navel. He reached up and put his hand on her breast. Her nipple hardened under his touch and she put her hand on his and held it there—then she pushed it away. “I’m sorry, Cyril,” she whispered, “but I’m saving myself for my leading man.”

THREE
    THE NEXT DAY was the start of Grade 12 and Connie didn’t show, nor was she there the following day or the day after. She missed the entire week. Each afternoon Cyril detoured past her house but saw no sign of her. Friday he went up the steps and knocked but there was no answer. Cupping his hands around his eyes he peered through the stained glass yet saw nothing.
    When he got home he went into the basement. It faced south and the windows were large so it had made a good workshop for his dad. Cyril was ten when his father had died, and he had become obsessed with everything his father had used: razor, brush, hacksaws, screwdrivers, level, chisels, a wood drill with its various bits. Studying each item, weighing them in his hands, smelling them, he was convinced they were imbued with something of his father’s essence. He put his father’s welding mask on and looked at the world through a grey tint. Was it possible that the mask, having spent so much time on his dad’s head, held his dad’s thoughts? He began drawing all these things, as if by recreating them he recreated him, or so it seemed, so it felt, and over the years he filled sketch pads with drawings of hammers, saws, torches, boots, subject matter to which he continued to return. Now Cyril had an easel in the basement, his sketch pads and boxes of pencils and charcoal sticks, as well as a mirror and some lights.
    He scuffed around the basement wondering what was up with Connie. Wasn’t he her leading man? The night she’d come over for supper she’d wanted to see where he worked. That had sounded so mature, so committed: “Where do you work?” As if art was his job. She had looked at everything with great care. When she saw the welding mask she’d put it on and went all stiff like Gort, the robot in The Day the Earth Stood Still .
    He looked at the jam jars suspended from a plank shelf by a screw through each lid. The jars contained nails and screws and washers and hinges and nuts and bolts. The September sun angling in ignited the hardware in each jar like a row of light bulbs. The basement smelled of metal and concrete. His father’s welding equipment stood darkly in a corner: canisters, tubes, torches, even his overalls hung on a nail, all of it as it had been, untouched, as though to interfere with it would be a form of desecration, an unholy attempt to erase his memory. Cyril knew his mother still came down and put her face to his overalls. He’d seen her through the window, leaning there, face to