The Guardians by Andrew Pyper Page B

joined Randy at our table, a fresh pitcher already between them. I suppose it’s all the beer that helps in creating the sense that the four of us still have so much in common, when really all we talk about is how lousy the hockey got on TV after they started giving “these Russian pretty boys five million to fake a concussion every time the wind blows” (as Vince puts it), our women troubles, the body’s first betrayals that attend the lapsing of its forty-year warranty.
    Or maybe I’m wrong in that. Maybe we
are
still friends, and I’ve just forgotten what they are.
    Eventually, Todd and Vince announce they have to go home and get some sleep. Todd has his mail rounds in the morning and Vince has to replace the brakes on a minivan at the garage he co-owns before they have to put on Sunday clothes for Ben’s funeral in the afternoon. Yet even then we stay on for one more pitcher to add to the previous half-dozen or so, all served by Tracey Flanagan, Todd’s baby girl.
    When we finally head out into the night, the air has cooled several degrees. I stand with Randy on the sidewalk, deciding which way to go. Around us, the town has been sharpened by the cold, the old storefronts grey and looming.
    The two of us shake off a chill. It’s the shared notion that for all the time we were inside Jake’s Pool ’n’ Sports, in the deceptive warmth of light and company, Grimshaw was waiting for us.
    I think we were hoping to find it gone. Torn down to make way for a triplex, or finally razed for safety reasons, leaving only an empty lot behind. We don’t entertain these possibilities aloud, in any case. Once we’d paid our tab at Jake’s, it was still only nine, and Randy wanted a cigarette, so I joined him on a tipsy wander through the streets, taking the long way back to the Queen’s.
    Neither of us acknowledged it when we turned the corner onto Caledonia Street. We started up the long slope toward the hospital, noting how remarkably little had changed about the houses, the modest gardens, even the mailboxes lashed to the streetlight poles to thwart kids from tipping them over. When the McAuliffe house comes into view we automatically cross the street to be on the same side it’s on. We pause in front for a moment, gazing up at Ben’s window.
    And then, unstoppably, we turn to follow what was his line of sight for most of his waking adult life.
    It’s still unoccupied, judging from the black, uncurtained windows, the wood trim bristled with mildew, the knee-high seedlings dotting the yard. Nevertheless, given the little care paid to it over the last thirty or more years, the Thurman house looks reasonably solid, testimony to the stone foundation andbrick work of its builders over a century ago. Even the headless rooster still tops the attic gable.
    “Why don’t they just tear it down?” I ask.
    “Can’t. It’s privately owned.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Mrs. McAuliffe told me. It’s been handed down and handed down. The owners are out-of-towners. Never even visit.”
    “Why not sell?”
    “Maybe they’re waiting for an upturn in the market.”
    “In the
Grimshaw
market?”
    “I wonder if it misses him,” Randy says, stubbing his cigarette out under the heel of his shoe. “Ben must have been its only friend.”
    “He wasn’t its friend,” I say, sharper than I expected to.
    We stay there a minute longer. Staring at the Thurman house from the far side of Caledonia Street, a perspective we had returned to countless times in sleep-spoiling dreams. Watching for what Ben had been watching for. A white flash of motion. Opened eyes. A glint of teeth.
    I’m first to start back to the hotel. The moon leading us on, peeping through the branches.
    Randy laughs. “Guess it knows we’re here now.”
    I do my best to join him in it, if only to prevent the sound of his forced humour from drifting unconvincingly in the night air. And to push away the thought that we had already made mistakes. Coming back to