Andrew Pyper - The Guardians

"I'm sorry," Tracey says, with genuine sympathy. "Mr. McAuliffe was a friend of al yours, right? On the Guardians?"

"He was a hockey friend of your dad's," I answer. "But to us, he was a brother. Maybe even closer than that."

Tracey purses her lips, correctly reading that I'm not puling her leg. I've just told her something intimate, and she acknowledges the honour with an eyes-closed nod.

"I'l get those whiskeys," she says.

After we toast Ben, the conversation moves to the topic of Sarah.

"She looked good," Randy observes. "Then again, she always looked good. You see a ring on her finger?"

"Like a wedding ring? As if that would stop you."

"We're not talking about me."

"I don't remember."

"Bulshit."

"Okay, she wasn't."

"It's open season, then."

"She's not an elk, Randy."

"I'm just saying you're here, she's here. Old times' sake and al that. It's sweet."

"I'm here because Ben died, not for some shag at the class- reunion weekend."

"What? You can't walk and chew gum at the same time?"

The bar is even busier tonight. A Leafs game on the flat- screens, an excuse to get out of the house in the middle of the week for some draft and half-price Burn Your Tongue Off! wings advertised on the paper pyramids on the tables.

Among the customers is Tracey's boyfriend. A good-looking, dark-haired kid who comes in wearing a Domino's Pizza jacket to give her a ful kiss on the lips.

Here's what you can see right away, as surely as you could see it when I kissed Sarah Mulgrave outside the Grimshaw Arena on game nights: these two are in love. And you can see that the Domino's kid knows how special a young woman Tracey Flanagan is. That he is trying to figure a way to not blow it with her and go al the way, out of Grimshaw and beyond. A whole life with Tracey. That's what this kid wants, and is right to want.

"That yer fela?" Randy asks after the Domino's kid has left and Tracey returns to our table. He's decided to use his Irish accent again.

"Sure is," she says. "You better watch yourself."

"No need to be warned about those pizza-delivery guys. They don't mess about."

"Gary played for the Guardians too."

This declaration changes things. And it makes Randy drop the dumb accent.

"What position?"

"Right wing."

Randy slaps me on the back. "That's where Trev played! Though that was many moons ago."

"So my dad tels me."

"Your Gary, does he have a last name?"

"Pulinger."

"Rings a bel," I say.

"Bowl-More Lanes," Randy says, clicking his fingers. "Didn't the Pulingers own that place?"

"Gary's dad. But it burned down about ten years ago."

"The Bowl-More burned down?" Randy slams his fist onto the table in real outrage. "Had many a birthday party there as a youngster. You remember, Trev?"

"I remember."

Randy raises his mug. "Here's to Tracey and Gary. May you find love and happiness."

"Already have," she says.

The night goes on to gain a comfortable momentum, buoyed by Bushmils and the Leafs going into the third period with an unlikely two-goal lead over the Red Wings. They wil ultimately lose, of course. But for now, Jake's is a place of hope and mild excitement and we are part of it.

I decide to quit while I'm ahead. I'm feeling pretty good, considering the grim business of the day—not to mention the strange encounter with the boy, and an observer I guessed to be Carl (though now, on the firmer ground of Jake's, I doubt either was who I thought he was). But much more of what's making me feel this way wil only be pressing my luck. I'm tired. From the long day, from burying a friend, from fighting to keep the Parkinson's hidden from the world. And tomorrow I have to assume my duties as Ben's executor. A first-class hangover would make that unpleasant task only doubly so.

I head up to the bar to give Tracey my credit card.

"Wrapping up?"

"Just me," I say. "I wanted to pick up the tab before my friend and I wrestled over it. Though Randy is usualy wiling to lose that particular fight."

She swipes my card and taps the terminal with a pen, waiting for the printed receipt. It gives me a handful of seconds to study her profile up close. No doubt about it: something of Heather Langham lives in this girl.

She looks up at me.

"Sorry," I say. "It's rude to stare."

"Were you staring?"

"Honestly? I was thinking of someone else. Someone you remind me of."

"A girlfriend?"

"No. Just a person I looked up to."

"Are you flirting with me?" she says.

"Is that what this sounds like?"

"A little. But then, I don't realy know you. And you're—"

"An old man. Old as your dad, anyway."

"So I don't know how guys like you go about things."

"Wel, let me tel you. I'm not flirting. I'm confessing. A man who thinks he can see someone in someone else, but is only dreaming."

"Memory lane."

"That's it. That's where I live these days." My right hand fidgets at this, impatient at being stil for the length of this exchange. "Trust me, I'm harmless."

"Trust you?"

"Or don't. Just know that a felow doesn't get to meet a true lady too often anymore."

She considers me another moment. Then, out of nowhere, she punches me in the shoulder. Hard enough that it takes some effort on my part not to let my hand fly to the point of impact to soothe the hurt.

"Dad said you were pretty good. Back in the day." She laughs.

"Oh yeah? Good at what?"

She laughs some more before ripping the receipt from the machine and sticking her pen between my trembling fingers.

MEMORY DIARY

Entry No. 8

Over the days that folowed the night we found Heather Langham in the Thurman house we repeatedly reminded each other to act normal, a direction that raised questions in each of our minds as to what our normal might be. However I ended up resolving this, I considered my act a fairly accomplished performance. It certainly convinced my parents, classmates and, for stretches as long as a couple of hours at a time, even me.

Sarah, on the other hand, was a more skeptical audience. Right off she noticed something had changed. I assumed her main concern was that my feelings for her had waned, in the way Carl's did for the girls he cast aside. With the benefit of honesty, I assured her that I loved her, that I was aware of how lucky I was to have her, that nothing had come between us.

"This isn't an 'us' thing," she said. "Something's wrong with you. "

I recal one lunch period when we drove out to Harmony with plans for what Sarah caled, in a singing voice, an "afternoon delight." But to my astonishment, my normaly enthusiastic teenage manhood offered no response to her attentions in the Buick's folded-down back seat. There were now two secrets I had to keep: I couldn't tel Sarah about finding Miss Langham, and I couldn't tel my friends about failing to get it up with a naked Sarah Mulgrave.

I don't remember us talking about it, huddled under a blanket of parkas, studying the patterns of frost our breath made over the windows. The significance of our skin against skin, dry and cool, was clear enough. Something had turned. And even though I was the one who knew what she couldn't know, I couldn't say how this knowledge had found power over us here, in our place, in Harmony.

"You guys ready?"

Her question, the first words spoken since I roled onto my back in defeat, so clearly matched the current of my thoughts I worried I might have been speaking them aloud.

"Ready?"

"The playoffs. First game's on Friday, right?"

"Seaforth. Sure."

"Seaforth sucks."

"Shouldn't be a problem."

"I said hi to the coach today at school. It was strange."

I propped myself up on an elbow. "How do you mean?"