we chose to avoid the upstairs dining room and headed to the café at ground level, where it’s always noisy with witty rendezvous chatter, people sitting around the low tables with their food and drinks. Here you might see a former cabinet minister or senator, or a retired CEO who prefers the ease and anonymity to unctuous, liveried deference. You will not find actors, sportspeople, or the media. Joanie calls it the geriatric club, but she likes it, it has class, she says.
We ordered chicken tikka, naan, and beer. Over coffee we were joined by Rubin and Gul, neighbours, he a physicist at the U of T, she an executive at a pharmaceutical corporation that supplied our drugs at the Sunflower. It was she who recommended me for club membership. At a nearby table, a politician held forth on the South Asia Alliance, explaining how a cricket tournament in progress there threatened to alter the local balance of power, which would be good for us. At another table, someone mentioned the reporter Holly Chu, but I missed the substance. Rubin confided in a surreptitious tone to our table that it was possible that another universe might be discovered soon, not in the skies but through an experiment here on earth. I told him that sounded logically impossible, for as soon as you made a connection you were in the same universe. He attempted to explain, but no one understood him.
—The news is sure to hit the headlines, he declared, glancing around, unwilling to give up the floor.
—Oh, I doubt it, Gul cut in sharply, immediately segueing into a favourite topic:—What’s this media obsessionwith Region 6, can anyone tell me? Haven’t we enough problems here? Let them go and report on Walnut Street for once, for heaven’s sake—it’s as bad there!
Gul, we all knew, was obsessed with the idea of charity beginning at home. I confessed to my own obsession with the region that is collectively referred to as Region 6, which includes Maskinia.
—Oh Frank, come out of your fictions, she said and we laughed, though I didn’t miss her quick glance towards Joanie. We repaired to the bar, the two of us, and emerged an hour later, holding hands, sufficiently glazed, having convinced ourselves that Rubin and Gul couldn’t last long together, they existed in separate universes that did not connect, and she was far too abrasive. Nothing was wrong with us and it had been a good night overall.
Back home, plumped on the sofa, we found ourselves in the audience section of a talk show in the midst of a joke about a politician who tripped her husband while alighting from a plane. The next thing I knew I’d jolted myself awake; the tube was off and the room was dark. Joanie had gone off to bed.
Making myself a cup of tea in the kitchen I spiked it with Shango’s hangover helper, sipped it slowly, felt the sweet bitter infusion clear the brain like a breeze does a fog. Minutes later, refreshed, I padded over to my study, sat down at the Tom interface, opened Presley’s Profile. I stared hard at his pictures. The small head, the puffed cheeks, the Afro hair.
Presley is ours
…Yes he’s yours, Dauda. This mild-mannered unlikely man who plays athunting barbarians—presumably stand-ins for the terrorists of Maskinia; who claims to love both the African Touré and the German Wagner but not his American namesake; for whom the Indian monkey-god Hanuman is a hero. There’s no mistaking he’s yours.
I was desperate to send Presley a message: What’s going on, do you need me? I dared not, and turned him off. And I knew I dared not call him. Presley was forbidden territory to me.
The familiar green glow in the room.
TOM:
Hello, Frank. Another sleepless night, I see. How can I help you?
FRANK:
Hi, Tom. Actually I’m not sure you can help me. Just going over some patient files.
TOM:
Stuck, are we, on this same character Presley Smith?
FRANK:
He’s just one of them. I try to know my patients thoroughly. But here’s something—What do you make of
We ordered chicken tikka, naan, and beer. Over coffee we were joined by Rubin and Gul, neighbours, he a physicist at the U of T, she an executive at a pharmaceutical corporation that supplied our drugs at the Sunflower. It was she who recommended me for club membership. At a nearby table, a politician held forth on the South Asia Alliance, explaining how a cricket tournament in progress there threatened to alter the local balance of power, which would be good for us. At another table, someone mentioned the reporter Holly Chu, but I missed the substance. Rubin confided in a surreptitious tone to our table that it was possible that another universe might be discovered soon, not in the skies but through an experiment here on earth. I told him that sounded logically impossible, for as soon as you made a connection you were in the same universe. He attempted to explain, but no one understood him.
—The news is sure to hit the headlines, he declared, glancing around, unwilling to give up the floor.
—Oh, I doubt it, Gul cut in sharply, immediately segueing into a favourite topic:—What’s this media obsessionwith Region 6, can anyone tell me? Haven’t we enough problems here? Let them go and report on Walnut Street for once, for heaven’s sake—it’s as bad there!
Gul, we all knew, was obsessed with the idea of charity beginning at home. I confessed to my own obsession with the region that is collectively referred to as Region 6, which includes Maskinia.
—Oh Frank, come out of your fictions, she said and we laughed, though I didn’t miss her quick glance towards Joanie. We repaired to the bar, the two of us, and emerged an hour later, holding hands, sufficiently glazed, having convinced ourselves that Rubin and Gul couldn’t last long together, they existed in separate universes that did not connect, and she was far too abrasive. Nothing was wrong with us and it had been a good night overall.
Back home, plumped on the sofa, we found ourselves in the audience section of a talk show in the midst of a joke about a politician who tripped her husband while alighting from a plane. The next thing I knew I’d jolted myself awake; the tube was off and the room was dark. Joanie had gone off to bed.
Making myself a cup of tea in the kitchen I spiked it with Shango’s hangover helper, sipped it slowly, felt the sweet bitter infusion clear the brain like a breeze does a fog. Minutes later, refreshed, I padded over to my study, sat down at the Tom interface, opened Presley’s Profile. I stared hard at his pictures. The small head, the puffed cheeks, the Afro hair.
Presley is ours
…Yes he’s yours, Dauda. This mild-mannered unlikely man who plays athunting barbarians—presumably stand-ins for the terrorists of Maskinia; who claims to love both the African Touré and the German Wagner but not his American namesake; for whom the Indian monkey-god Hanuman is a hero. There’s no mistaking he’s yours.
I was desperate to send Presley a message: What’s going on, do you need me? I dared not, and turned him off. And I knew I dared not call him. Presley was forbidden territory to me.
The familiar green glow in the room.
TOM:
Hello, Frank. Another sleepless night, I see. How can I help you?
FRANK:
Hi, Tom. Actually I’m not sure you can help me. Just going over some patient files.
TOM:
Stuck, are we, on this same character Presley Smith?
FRANK:
He’s just one of them. I try to know my patients thoroughly. But here’s something—What do you make of
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