Olimpico patio, Waverly and St. Viateur — Montreal, QC

Male, late 20s, wearing grey zip-up sweatshirt with white stripes on sleeves. Shaved head, dark stubble, Aquiline nose.

Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (Vintage)

Page 68:

At Fifth Avenue you cross and walk up to Saks. You stop in front of a window. Inside the window is a mannequin which is a replica of Amanda — your wife, the model. To form the cast for the mannequin, Amanda lay face down in a vat of latex batter for ninety minutes, breathing through a straw. You haven’t seen her in the flesh since she left for the last trip to Paris, a few days after she did the cast. You stand in front of the window and try to remember if this was how she really looked.

Porch-swing. Sound of wind chimes.
Noveline: I love a cocaine culture novel. It’s like reading a particularly thrilling ethnography. All those dollar bills. All that euphoria.
Romana: It’s because you’re still hung up on Sherlock Holmes.
Noveline: (blushing) Rubbish. Now do you remember those mannequins they used to use in nuclear tests in Nevada? What on earth was that all about?
Romana: Rather like crash test dummies, I expect. Or just to make the whole thing more ghastly.
Noveline: I used to leave a mannequin in the window when I went out in the evening, to make it seem like someone was still at home.
Romana: (amused) Yes, it had a deerstalker, didn’t it?

Saleema Nawaz

Just Us Cafe — Wolfville, NS

Caucasian male, mid 20s, with blonde dreads, wearing jeans, long-sleeved button up shirt with T-shirt peeking out underneath: blue on blue on blue. His TIMEX wristwatch is circa 1972.

Consilience, Edward O. Wilson (Vintage)

Pg. 71:

I think we will know if we come close to the goal of our predecessors, even if unattainable. Its glow will be caught in the elegance and beauty and power of our shared ideas and, in the best spirit of philosophical pragmatism, the wisdom of our conduct.

His grampy had died more than three years ago. Just this morning he’d noticed it — that same physical habit of shaking his watch down on his wrist, turning it until the face of it was where it was supposed to be. How long had he been doing it? How long did he have before he started turning open tins of sardines while grousing at Rex Murphy’s voice on the radio? How long before he was smacking Old Spice onto his razor burned neck?

- Ami McKay

80 Avenue du Parc bus, Southbound

Caucasian male, late 50s, with long, wild, white hair and thick black eyebrows, wearing red and blue polo shirt, khaki jacket, jeans, and sturdy, brown hiking boots.

The Russia House, John le Carré (Viking)

Page 339:

Ninety seconds later, as they were preparing to leave, Cy and Paddy saw a silhouette at Igor’s window and took it to be Barley’s. The right hand was adjusting the top of the curtain, which was the agreed signal to say “All’s well.”

Noonish. Shadows of two figures below an oversized striped umbrella.
Romana: Do you remember the system I used to have with the potted plant? When I put it out on the balcony and you weren’t to ring up to the flat no matter what?
Noveline: (sighing) How could I forget? You and your dalliances. And that infuriating African violet.
Romana: (wistfully) I would have made a tremendous lady spy. Those ideas just came to me so naturally.
Noveline: I think you can just say spy, dear.

Saleema Nawaz

9:00 a.m. Al’s Deli — Canning, Nova Scotia

Caucasian male, mid 30s, short dirty blonde hair, ripped jeans, and T-shirt with the number “42.”

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon (Vintage)

Page 351:

“You look fabulous.”

“Ah, you’re lying, you liar.”

“You look like thirty-five hundred dollars to me, Shpilman,” the landsman said, not unkindly. “How about we leave it at that?”

Sometimes he wished he could be sitting at Dunn’s or some other crowded 2:00 a.m. deli in the city of his youth, listening to half a dozen conversations from as many different parts of the world. To walk through the door of this place and have it be a portal to the other — that would be ideal. When he was finished, he’d leave, his belly full of smoked meat and black cherry soda. Then he’d walk out the door, back to the rural bliss of home.

Ami McKay

Empire Theatres parking lot — New Minas, Nova Scotia

Caucasian male, early 40s, with shaggy brown hair, slouching in driver’s seat of car parked under a light.

Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman (Vintage)

Page 7:

This is so you know, I haven’t lost any of what I am, my intrinsic menace, just because they took away my devices, my tricks, and my utility belt. I’m still brilliant, the apalling, the diabolical Doctor Impossible, damn it. And yes, I am invincible.

His son is fifteen-years-old and out with a girl. Old enough to date but not to drive. That’s fine, he thinks. Somehow he knows more than I did at that age. “Let me know if you have any questions.” “OK, Dad. I will.” “Good.” (Three seconds of awkward silence.) “Any question, anytime, OK?” “OK.”

Ami McKay

Westbound, Bloor and Pape — Toronto, ON

Caucasian male, mid 50s, with scruffy white hair and glasses, wearing tan pants, burgundy sweater, and brown leather boots.

Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy (Vintage)

Page 117:

It grew cold in the night and it blew stormy with wind and rain and soon all the wild menagerie of that country grew mute. A horse put its long wet face in at the door and Glanton looked up and spoke to it and it lifted its head and curled its lip and withdrew into the rain and the night.

In school he saw a film he didn’t understand. It was quiet and blue, and the girl who made it was shy and pretty. Everything was blue. From the bath water, to the kitchen kettle, to the drapes softly suckled by the slightly open mouth of a screenless window. When the horse appeared from the fog, it too was blue for a time until it lumbered closer to the camera where it was so clearly chestnut that the man began to cry.

Julie Wilson

Swan Restaurant

East Indian woman, late 20s, with long brown hair, and large silver hoops, wearing white tank top under open blue striped shirt under open blue cardigan.

The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje (Vintage)

Page 116:

Caravaggio sits there in silence, thoughts lost among the floating motes. War has unbalanced him and he can return to no other world as he is, wearing these false limbs that morphine promises. He is a man in middle age who has never become accustomed to families. All his life he has avoided permanent intimacy. Till this war he has been a better lover than husband. He has been a man who slips away, in the way lovers leave chaos, the way thieves leave reduced houses.

The man beside her ordered the club house with salad, but hasn’t touched the salad. He pivots away to take an awkward bite of sandwich. She offers a compensatory smile to the back of his head, recognizing him from the grocery store earlier that day. He filled his cart with sugary cereal and sale tuna, waiting ’til she rounded the corner before sliding a skid of ramen noodles onto the bottom carriage.

***

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Southbound, Spadina and Sullivan

Caucasian male, late 20s, with short black hair and beard, wearing black fleece, grey tuque, grey chords, and Sorels.

Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Vintage)

Page 306:

Olanna reached out often to squeeze her arm. The rawness of Edna’s grief made her helpless, brought the urge to stretch her hand into the past and reverse history. Finally, Edna fell asleep. Olanna gently placed a pillow beneath her head and sat thinking about how a single act could reverberate over time and space and leave stains that would never be washed off.

Divorced before thirty, he’s kept his job longer than he did his marriage. It wasn’t that big of a thing. He doesn’t even know if it was the point. But it was big to him. He’d asked her to leave the washroom. (He never liked to fight while he was naked.) The click of the lock, and her heels sinking in the shallow hall carpet. He rushed to the door, clinging the towel under his nose, her shape obscured by the lens of the peephole. Were they done talking? She looked down, adjusted her purse strap, and rubbed her forehead. Was she crying, he wondered? He wrapped the towel tight about his waist and straightened his hair, hand on the knob as the elevator chimed. He stepped out to see her smiling, laughing even, a hand reaching out to hold the door open as she stepped inside.

Westbound, Bloor and Broadview

Caucasian woman, early 50s, with short curly brown hair, wearing glasses, black hat, purple scarf, and indigo earrings.

The Road Home, Rose Tremain (Vintage Books)

Page 125:

Christmas. Lev saw how it advertised itself on every street and seemed to preoccupy every mind. He saw its daze and worry everywhere in people’s eyes. He understood how Christy, in particular, felt it as a coming ordeal in an armada of sufferings he felt unable to endure.

Her freezer door holds two meat patties, a brown banana, and a baggie of chocolates leftover from the holidays. She pulled from it daily for the first month, rewarding herself for taking the stairs at work, getting off the subway a stop early, or cleaning behind the toilet which, she has to say, places a phenomenal amount of focus on the core. Only the red foils are left, her least favourite. She holds the bag by the corner, swinging it back and forth toward the garbage, tossing it instead back into the freezer door. Company could come. And, if not, there’s always Valentine’s Day to make up for.

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