Sad Peninsula by Mark Sampson Page A

it feels like to be in love.
    And for a few years there, we got on with it. Graduated with good grades, got J-jobs right away, got engaged. You could find Cora traipsing the streets of Halifax on the hunt for the perfect sound bite, her jet-black hair pulled tight against her scalp. Meanwhile, I worked at the Daily News offices on the outskirts of town — researching topics, crafting sentences, interviewing people by phone when I had to. The Lifestyles section suited me because I could get away without asking tough questions if I didn’t want to. In the evenings, we’d reconvene in our small apartment on Shirley Street where we’d drink red wine and listen to Miles Davis, and Cora would lightly chide me about whatever risks I chose not to take that day. I believed, like a fool, that she not only tolerated my pathological shyness, but celebrated it as a part of who I was. Life was good. I felt like I had broken through a wall.
    But then Denis-never-Dennis arrived in our lives and shut the whole show down. What a vertiginous feeling it is to watch the woman you love fall in love with somebody else. Denis-never-Dennis started out as just The New Guy at Work, described one night to me while we were doing the dishes. Soon Cora began referring to him as My Friend Denis. I wasn’t all that suspicious at first: the fact that he was ten years her senior provided me with a false sense of security, rather than a harbinger of the Nick Hornby-esque angst that I would experience later. Then came days when she’d mention that the two of them had spent a sunny lunch hour eating French fries together from Bud the Spud on the ledge outside the public library. She’d do so in passing, a peripheral detail to whatever she was talking about — as if I wouldn’t notice her subliminal subterfuge and call her on it. Then came the Friday nights where I’d come home and wait several hours alone in the apartment until Cora eventually arrived, obviously tipsy, and she’d say “Oh sorry, Denis and I just grabbed a glass of wine or two after work at the Argyle.”
    Even when she started spending less and less time at home, she denied it. Even when the sex dried up, she denied it. I figure my relationship with Cora ended a full two months before I realized it. When she was ready to move out, she taped the small, pathetic engagement ring I had given her, all that I could afford, to a note left for me on the kitchen table. It read simply: I’m sorry, Michael. I truly am. But there is something in you that lacks .
    And then sent her girlfriends over to get her stuff.
    Was I enraged? Of course. Did that rage express itself through some vehicular vandalism in the CBC parking lot? Possibly. But more to the point: I was now ready to accept the labels I had been denying myself for years: orphan, rudderless, alone in the world.
    In fact, with Cora gone I was free to descend into the charlatanism that I knew rested at the heart of my character. It began manifesting itself through my job, with me growing less fastidious about capturing accurate quotes from the people I interviewed. It sounds close enough to what they said , I would tell myself. Then I was making up entire quotes from interviews: they still came off like something my sources should have said , and I convinced myself that it was okay, that I could get away with such behaviour, because after all this was the Lifestyle section, with so little at stake.
    I knew my negligence had taken a sharp turn when I found myself creating entire sources out of thin air. The topics of the stories were (at that point) still genuine, but when I couldn’t bother finding someone to say what I wanted, I made them up. By this point, I was addicted to the rush of not getting caught, day after day. And soon enough, I was in for a pound: I eventually fabricated entire stories — topic, news angle, sources, quotes, even the occasional post-publication letter to the