Things Go Flying (29 page)

Harold was stubbornly silent, afraid that he would blurt out something that would compromise him in some way, like he had at Dr. Goldfarb's.

“How'd it go with the book?”

Harold just shook his head and stared at the floor. He wasn't going to say anything; he didn't have to. He knew Will would talk the whole time if he had to.

“Last time, if I remember correctly, we talked about context,” Will began, “about the big picture.”

Harold did not want to get into a discussion of the big picture with Will, not as it pertained to himself, anyway.

“Philosophers ask the big questions—the questions that we may be too busy or too confused to ask for ourselves,” Will said. “That's why, if we're wise, we turn to them for help. The philosopher asks: What is the good life? What is happiness? How can I find meaning in my life?”

There was something measured in Will's voice, something weighty in his tone and manner, that was almost soporific. His voice was hypnotic, the room dusty and still. Harold found himself beginning to relax. As he let down his guard, he could feel himself looking sadder and sadder.

“Socrates, Epicurus, Schopenhauer—these aren't dull old men, they're relevant! They speak to us!” Will exclaimed. Then, observing Harold closely, noting the escaping sadness that looked about to spill onto the floor, he stopped and said gently, “Harold—nothing is so bad that there is no consolation to be found for it in the writings of the great thinkers.”

Harold was skeptical. “Such terrible things happen to people,” he said gloomily. He was thinking of the man he'd met here the first time, and he was thinking also of himself.

“Yes.”

But Harold was going to stick to the general. “Wars, famine, the Holocaust . . . It's hard not to be depressed,” Harold said, “when you think of all that.”

The philosopher nodded sympathetically.

“The homeless.”

He nodded again, in agreement.

“Horrible diseases that have no cure.”

He nodded some more, pursing his lips.

“I could go on and on,” Harold said, warming up. “Pollution, violent crime, genetically modified food. Technology.”

“Technology—”

“The
dark
side of technology,” Harold explained. “Nuclear weapons. Excess functionality that almost no one can understand—foisted on us by greedy corporations—that only undermines our confidence, not to mention our usefulness. Perverts stealing signals out of thin air to make you look like a kiddie porn addict!” Harold stopped, aware that he was becoming a little excited.

“I know what you mean,” Will said, after a pause.

“You do?”

“Sure. I've got a story for you. A friend brought me a DVD from England, but a British DVD can't be played on a North American DVD player. See, British DVDS are in pal format, and North American DVDS are in NTSC format. However, the literature that came with my DVD said it was capable of playing both formats. But when I tried it, it didn't work. So I phoned the company that made the DVD player. They told me it was a problem with the TV. So I phoned the company that made the TV, and they said the problem was the DVD player.”

Now Harold was nodding. He certainly recognized the dilemma, if not the details.

“I kept fiddling with it, trying to set the DVD player to pal format. By this time, I'm totally fed up, so I find a website dedicated to hacking the programming of DVD players—and there's my solution! All I had to do was enter a four-digit code which I got from the website, get the ‘secret menu' to make the DVD player region-free, and enter the number code for ‘region-free.' It actually worked! Now I can play NTSC
and
PAL DVDS—just by loading them and pressing ‘play.'”

Harold was rendered momentarily speechless with admiration. His philosopher was even smarter than he thought.

“It was pretty frustrating though,” Will admitted, “not to mention time-consuming.”

“Are we really better off with all that?” Harold asked at last, rather philosophically.

“Good question.”

Harold leaned forward eagerly. It was so nice to talk to someone who understood him!

“Soon only a handful of people will be able to function in our society at all,” Harold complained, and the two of them shared a companionable silence.

Then, with no prodding whatsoever, Harold blundered heedlessly from the general to the specific, and once he began he couldn't stop. “I think I'm depressed. My best friend died recently, of a heart attack. I had a panic attack at the funeral and fainted. Knocked myself out on the casket!” Here, Harold looked up, to gauge the other man's reaction. Seeing none, he went on. “My older boy smashed my car and came home drunk—he's not even legal drinking age—and now I'm being sued for a million dollars. Someone stole my identity, ran up my credit card bills, and mortgaged my house. And the dead won't leave me alone! It's my mother's fault. They smash the china and bust up the furniture. They smashed the Lladró that I got my wife for an anniversary present!”

The philosopher's eyes widened at this point, but before he could interject, Harold charged on. “I've been accused of being a peeping Tom—taken away by the police!—just for looking at my childhood home. My boss is trying to force me off on stress leave so that he can put his brother-in-law in my place—so now I have the Harold Walker Action Plan! On top of all that, I just found out that my wife cheated on me with my best friend—and that I'm not my son's real father!”

Harold came to the end of his sad story on a tide of outrage.

“Ah,” Will said, after a long moment. “Voltaire.”

Harold looked up, surprised at the other man's equanimity. But the philosopher had his back turned to him and was rifling about looking for something in his bookshelves. He knocked against a stack of books on the floor, which slid over with a soft, hushing sound.

“Here,” he finally announced with satisfaction, blowing the dust off a slim volume. “Read this,” he advised, handing Harold a paperback copy of
Candide,
“and we'll talk about it next week.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A
udrey gulped her morning coffee and listlessly scanned the want ads. It was taking her longer to get going in the morning these days. She was still sore all over when she woke up, but it wasn't as bad as it used to be, before she'd hauled the air bed out of the basement. When she'd finally realized she was going to be on the floor for a while, she'd dug around in the furnace room and located the air bed, which puffed out little clouds of dust when she smacked it. It took her much longer to find the foot pump, and by the time she'd attached the hose of the pump to the bed on the basement floor and started stomping with her foot to inflate it, there were tears of frustration and sorrow spilling down her face. Then—too late—she'd realized it would have been better to inflate the damn thing in the bedroom rather than wrestle with it up two flights of stairs.

She'd been out on Danforth Avenue and obtained each of the other morning papers, because the
Globe and Mail
wasn't likely to have any kind of job she could do. Maybe the
Star
would, or the
Post
, or the
Sun.

She skimmed through the freebie
Job News
first, but soon found that it was mostly ads for training courses at computer schools; the only actual jobs seemed to be for telephone solicitors. She half-heartedly considered taking a training course—at least it would get her out of the house, maybe get her some skills. But nothing she saw appealed to her. Why learn something you didn't want to do?

She had to be fit for something.

What she needed, she decided, was some good advice. She couldn't be the only woman who'd stayed home for almost twenty years raising children and wanted to re-enter the workforce. She'd go to the government employment office, maybe take some aptitude tests. Perhaps they would have something to suggest.

• • •

J
OHN HAD BEEN
stringing Nicole along for days about the car, but she was on to him, and losing interest fast. Sex wasn't enough for her— there always had to be more. And it wasn't love she was looking for.

“You're all talk,” she said to him now, in the movie line, with more than a hint of contempt.

He said nothing, as if to underscore how wrong she was. But inwardly, John was in despair. Should he or shouldn't he? What a ridiculous question. He couldn't possibly steal a car. He didn't know how. He didn't have the nerve. And frankly, he wasn't that stupid.

She turned away, and he watched her check out the other guys in the movie lineup—she was punishing him. And standing there, waiting to purchase their tickets, he feared it was all over. He was who he was, and he was terrified that he'd never again look into Nicole's eyes and see someone else reflected back at him.

He watched her flick her hair over her shoulder and smile at a good-looking guy in the line ahead of them. In a fierce burst of resentment and a last, desperate show of power, John turned and headed back toward the subway, expecting her to come after him. But when he glanced back over his shoulder, she was pretending she hadn't even noticed that he was gone.

That's when he knew it was really over. He stopped and watched her from a distance in pained disbelief, smouldering with anger and injustice. He decided to go back and finish it properly.

“Nicole,” he said.

She turned to look at him, dismissively.

“I am not going to steal a car for you.”

“No kidding.”

They glared at one another in mutual contempt, as the people in the lineup around them watched curiously. For a fleeting moment, John considered kissing her to within an inch of her life, but, although the temptation was overwhelming, he knew that wouldn't really solve anything.

“You're so full of shit,” Nicole spat.

The moment was over. He turned on his heel and walked away.

• • •

H
AROLD WAS ENCOURAGED
that his latest bit of philosophy homework was pretty short. This was in keeping with his short attention span. Also, it was written in the form of a rather entertaining novel, which was an unexpected bonus.

He sat in his La-Z-Boy reading Voltaire. Really, compared to what had happened to Candide and the other characters in the novel, what had happened to him was nothing. He still had both buttocks! Of course, it was only a novel, not real life.

He enjoyed it, but the philosophy part escaped him altogether. What did it mean? He hadn't a clue.

Audrey was in the kitchen, puzzled about what Harold was doing, but happy that he was doing something constructive. Dylan was upstairs doing his homework, clearly thrilled that they'd finally given in about his acting—even if it did mean he had to do homework. She herself was rather quiet, penitent these days. Harold was warming up to her, albeit slowly. She was feeling cautiously optimistic—he'd be so lost without her! To help this along she was making another of his favourite meals tonight—her own special garlic feta chicken. The tantalizing smell of it filled up the house.

There was a knock at the front door, and Audrey put down her dish towel and hurried to answer it. She didn't want Harold's good mood disturbed by the Jehovah's Witnesses, who were always coming around on the weekend, or anyone else asking for a donation of some kind. He had so little patience for that kind of thing.

She opened the door. It wasn't a Jehovah's Witness, but it was someone canvassing for something; she knew this instantly at the sight of the earnest, smiling person that greeted her on her doorstep, clutching a clipboard.

“Who is it?” Harold called irritably from his chair.

Audrey didn't bother to find out. She smiled politely but firmly and said, “No thanks,” as the young woman hastened to blurt out her appeal. Audrey hated to be rude, and hoped her warm, genuine smile softened the fact that she'd just closed the door in the young woman's face.

“Nobody,” Audrey said, and went back to the kitchen.

She glanced out the window over the sink and saw someone sitting on Harold's bench. She did a double take, because Harold was in the living room.

It was John she realized, her heart convulsing within her—staring at his shoes.

• • •

H
AROLD'S SUPERVISOR'S SECRET
poll wasn't much of a secret. Employees gossip.
Did Stan ask you about Harold? What'd you say?
Everybody knew that he was trying to get Harold squeezed out on a long stress leave, which is what they really called it, and that he wanted to establish his brother-in-law temporarily in Harold's place. They placed bets on how they thought it would go. It kept things interesting.

The people at work were now pretty evenly divided about what they thought would happen. Half—the half who'd witnessed Harold yelling about the spider—thought he'd be forced off on stress leave, but the other half were betting that the brother-in-law was out of luck. Word had gotten around that Harold had been given an Action Plan. There was a certain degree of curiosity about what was in the Action Plan. Stan was saying nothing, but Harold had let it slip out around the coffee maker that he was seeing a philosopher. There had been an astonished silence in the lunchroom.