The Garneau Block Read Online Free PDF Page A

caps and rugby jerseys smoked on the sly. They cupped their hands over their cigarettes, and the smoke sneaked up between theirfingers. Jonas interrupted his theorizing about the Let’s Fix It signs to flag down the server.
    â€œThose three assholes back there are smoking.”
    The server took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment, and exhaled slowly. “Jonas, please. Don’t do this to me.”
    â€œI’ll call bylaw enforcement tomorrow morning if I must. What if a pregnant woman came in here? What about your own fragile lungs, and the cancer that runs in your family?”
    â€œHow did you know cancer runs in my family?”
    Jonas pointed to his temple. Then he made a phone out of his hand.
    â€œYou’re a dirty narc.”
    Jonas lifted his nearly empty pint glass and smiled. “And another one of these?”
    â€œI’m gonna spit in it,” said the server, and started over to the men in the corner.
    Madison pushed her glass of club soda and cranberry juice around the table. “Remember, it’s still a secret that I’m pregnant.”
    â€œI didn’t say anything specific about you.”
    â€œYou haven’t told anyone?”
    â€œNo and I never would. Not until you’re ready or it becomes obvious, fat-wise, and I can’t bear to hear people gossiping about how you’ve let yourself go.”
    In the darkness of her basement bedroom, during episodes of insomnia, Madison often found herself thinking about Jonas. He drank too much beer and he was about three times more sarcastic than he had to be, but she felt he would make a terrific father. Plus, he was smart and handsome, and sportedvisible stomach muscles. Out of selfishness, Madison found herself wishing Jonas could set his homosexuality aside for seventeen or eighteen years so they could raise her child together. Once or twice a week, with the bedroom curtain open, the moonlight hitting his body, they could…no.
    Jonas had been wondering aloud about 10 Garneau, whether Mr. or Mrs. Let’s Fix It was a literalist. Did the mystery person intend to erase Benjamin Perlitz from history? To repair the bullet holes and bloodstains, and make the house pretty again for Jeanne and Katie to move back in? If so, the mystery person was a jackass. The men in ball caps extinguished and surrendered their cigarettes. Jonas mimed applause and returned to his thought. He had started backstage with half a bottle of champagne, so a slur was easing into his voice. “In a couple of months, someone new will be in 10 Garneau. Your mom and Shirley can make dips, throw a welcome barbecue, a bottle of red and a bottle of white, some microbrew, the Barenaked Ladies on the hi-fi…”
    â€œJonas, it’s not that easy.”
    â€œI’m not going to any meeting. No way. I’m ideologically opposed.” He lifted his glass, to remind the server. The server squinted with mock-malevolence. Jonas winked at her. “Our waitress covets me.”
    â€œWe all do, Jonas.”
    â€œI know, I know. Yet I’m so old.”
    â€œYou’re not.”
    â€œFor the last twenty years, I’ve been waiting for this special thing to happen to me. Do you know what that thing is?”
    â€œYes, Jonas.”
    â€œI have been waiting patiently and tragically for Lorne Michaels to fly up here and whisk me to New York.”
    Madison played an invisible violin.
    Jonas slapped at the instrument. “All these cute young Edmonton boys have made it down there in the last few years, inferior performers. But I’ve been good about it. Haven’t I been good about it, supportive and gracious?”
    Madison had been through this many times before. For people like Jonas, to live in Edmonton was to live in a state of perpetual failure. His successful friends in Vancouver and Toronto begged him to leave, to live in a place where the same-sex marriage debate hadn’t been so mean. And what