Andrew Pyper - The Guardians

A boy I'd guess to be around eleven years old.

"Is your mommy home?"

"You mean my mom ?"

"If they're the same person, then yes."

He stands there. Patiently absorbing my details, which at present include two fluttering hands at my sides that I attempt to subside by having one hold the other across my waist. If this trembly stranger at his door asking for his mother disturbs him in any way, he doesn't show it. In fact, he ends up standing aside and, with an introductory sweep of his arm, mumbles, "You want to come in?"

It smels good in here. It's the flowers in the window, but also recent baking and perfume.

"You're Trevor," the kid says, closing the door behind me.

"That's right."

"My mom's boyfriend."

"From a long, long time ago."

"That's just what she said. Except she had one more 'long.'"

A teenage girl wearing train-track braces emerges from the kitchen with a plate of oatmeal cookies.

"My babysitter," the kid says with a shrug, then takes a cookie. "These are good. You should try one, Trevor."

"Don't mind if I do."

"You want to see my room?"

"I think I'm supposed to take your mom—"

"She's stil getting ready. She said I was supposed to entertain you."

"Okay. Any suggestions?"

"I've got Transformers."

"Why didn't you say so?"

His name is Kieran. Sarah's only child. The father supposedly lives out east now, though nobody realy knows for sure. He doesn't show up even on the holidays he says he wil, and he never sends the money from the jobs he says he's going to get. I learn al of this on the walk up the half flight of stairs to the kid's room.

"Trevor?" Sarah cals out from behind the closed bathroom door. "I'l be out in three minutes."

"Take your time. Kieran's giving me the tour."

"Go easy on him, Kier."

"He ate a whole cookie almost as fast as I did!" Kieran shouts with the excitement that might accompany the witnessing of magic.

I sit on the edge of Kieran's bed and colect the toys and books he shows me, noting the cool sword of this warrior-mutant, the wicked bazooka of that marine. Our conversation is sprinkled with off-topic questions ("Did you have soldiers when you were a kid?" from him; "Do you have friends in the neighbourhood?" from me), through which we learn what we need to know of each other. He is nearly breathless with pleasure at showing me his stuff, which is of course not realy just stuff but entryways into a boy's world, his secret self.

The kid's hunger for this—the company of a grown-up man in the house, shooting the breeze—is so naked it shames me. Shames, because it is something I too wanted at his age, but only partly, occasionaly received. Though Kieran's case is worse than what I remember of my own. Companionship with a dad type has been missing so long in him he doesn't bother hiding it anymore. He isn't picky. Even I'l do.

He asks about my shaking only once. "What's wrong with you?" is how he phrases it.

"It's a disease."

"Does it get worse?"

"Yes."

"It's not so bad right now."

"No. It's bad. But what can you do?"

He nods just as Randy or Carl would have. Because al of us know it: What can you do? His unhandsome circle of a face confirms this. There are a good many things he can do nothing about too.

Sarah appears in the doorway. I am glad to see both colarbone and black-nyloned legs.

"You think I could borrow Trevor for a few hours?" she asks.

"Okay. But take this." Kieran drops a toy Ferrari, his favourite, into the palm of my hand. "You have to bring it back, though."

"I promise."

Kieran nods. Spins around to give his mother a kiss. As Sarah and I head downstairs and out the door he tels us to have a good time.

"What about dinner?" I ask Sarah as we slip into her car.

"They had pretty good hot dogs at the arena last time I was there," she says, pumping the gas until the Honda's engine coughs to life. "Mind you, that was over twenty years ago. Give or take."

"You just went for the hot dogs?"

"Course not. There was a cute boy who played right wing at the time."

"Bit of a hot dog himself, if I remember correctly."

"Nah. He was just a boy. And they're all hot dogs."

The Grimshaw Arena hasn't changed much since the days we charged around its sheet of ice, cheered on by parents and sweethearts and fans who saw good value in a night out that consisted of a four-dolar ticket and seventy-five-cent hot chocolates. The tickets are double that now, and the stands, when Sarah and I find our seats behind the penalty box, feel dinkier than in my day There is stil the cold of the place. A refrigerated air that huddles Sarah close to me for warmth.

For most of the first period we just watch the game—surprisingly exciting, though the players are smaler than I was expecting, just a bunch of cherry-cheeked kids trying to look tough behind their visors—and eat hot dogs that, as Sarah recaled, aren't half bad. It feels to me not just like an old- fashioned date but like an old-fashioned first date: no low lighting, no alcohol. The opposite kind of thing I'd do with the girlfriends I dated during my Retox days, if you could cal them dates. If you could cal them girlfriends.

At the intermission, we catch up on the last couple of decades of each other's lives in broad strokes. Sarah tels me about her "okay job" as assistant office manager of a contracting firm in town; the handful of women friends she goes out with once every other week to get hammered and "complain about our marriages, or how we wished we stil had one;" how she feels that while her life isn't necessarily great, she's not miserable either, like she's "floating on this black ocean without sinking into it, y'know?" I talk about the deals I hustled to rise from restaurant manager to hedge-fund pusher to owner of my very own nightclub, where I would hire and fire and in the evenings feel ten years younger (and in the headachey mornings feel ten years older). I speak of the Parkinson's indirectly, referring to it as "this disease thing of mine," as though it's a vaguely ridiculous side project I'd been asked to be a partner in and now can't get out of.

"Who's taking care of your nightclub while you're here?" Sarah asks.

"It's not mine anymore. I sold it."

"Why?"

"I figure I'l need the money later, when this disease thing of mine gets worse."

Sarah nods in precisely the same way that Kieran had earlier.

"Kieran strikes me as a fine young felow," I say.

"That he is."

"He tels me his dad hasn't realy been in the picture for a while."

"Kieran's father is a liar and third-rate criminal, among other things."

"It must be a drag. For both of you."

"Not for me. He's just gone. But Kieran doesn't fuly understand that yet. He doesn't get how some people are just rotten."

You mean me? I want to ask.

And then the image of Tracey Flanagan returns. Standing blind on the threshold of the Thurman house's front door.

"What about you?" Sarah asks.

"Me?"

"A family. Wife? Kids?"

"No wife. No kids, either. As far as I know."

"I suppose those were things you didn't want anyway."

"I was preoccupied. Wilfully preoccupied."

"Sounds kind of lonely," Sarah blurts, then rears back. "Oh my God. That came out wrong. I didn't mean to assume—"

"Yes. I think I've been lonely. And not terribly happy either, though I never let myself slow down long enough to realize I wasn't. Until recently, that is."

"Your ilness."

"That. And Ben. And coming back here. Seeing you."

This last bit isn't flirtatious, it just comes out in the uncrafted way of the truth.

The second period starts, and Grimshaw begins to pul away from the tough but unskiled Elmira boys, our forwards buzzing around their net but unable to put one away. It is the sort of game where things can go wrong: you're winning as far as the performance goes, but the scoreboard only shows the goals. It makes me think that this is what moving to the city from a smal town is al about. It's not about the quality of life you live, but about putting up the hard numbers for al to see.