The Silver Age (8 page)

“Interesting event the other night at the Balfour,” he
said.

“Yeah, crazy.”

“I missed you later on in the evening. I guess you and
your friend Angela had somewhere else you needed to be.”

“She’s great, isn’t she?”

“You seemed to think so – great enough to ditch my ass
for, at least.”

“Aw, Steph, I’m sorry. We looked for you before we headed
out. But you’d wandered off.”

“Actually, I was mostly just standing at the bar, and
then looking around for you. I mean, you were the one who’d invited me out.”

“You’re right, Steph – I am sorry. That wasn’t nice.
Unintentionally of course, but still. I guess I got a little distracted after
setting you up with those contacts from
Grampus
. I should have been more
attentive.”

He nodded in acknowledgement of the apology, if that was
what it in fact was.

“Was that what you wanted to speak with me about?” she
asked, as if the subject were now closed.

“Yes… or no,” he stammered. “I mean, there was more to
discuss.” An eloquent and nuanced description of his feelings on the matter
formed briefly in his mind and instantly disintegrated, the individual words
scattering in the light gust of wind that had just come up. The wind ruffled the
folds of her brown dress, snapping them around like sails.

“Listen, Jen. About you and Angela...” She’d left him no
choice but to come out and say it. “I mean, is there something going on there?”

She stared back at him, her eyes lidded, then let out a
quiet chuckle. “You just called me Jen for the first time, like, ever,” she
said. “I’m guessing that’s means I’m in trouble.”

“As if that’s any surprise to you.”

She shrugged. “Honestly, it is, a little.”

“I’m serious about this, Jen,” he said, pressing. He was
determined to get an answer out of her.

“Stephan, please. There’s nothing going on between Angela
Song and me, I promise.”

“Nothing? I saw you kissing her after the event, in a
taxi. And groping too – I distinctly saw groping.”

“You did, did you? Well, you’ve always had an active
visual imagination, Stephan. And if I remember correctly you were putting away
the drinks rather enthusiastically that evening – maybe you weren’t seeing
straight.”

He took a sip of water, placed his glass back down on its
coaster, and looked her hard in the eye.

“So... did you sleep with her?” he asked, in a low,
steady voice.

She threw her head back and laughed with what sounded
like genuine amusement. “No we did not – although I bet you would have liked
that. Pervert.”

“You didn’t fool around?”

“No, Stephan – not that it’s any of your business,
anyway. Last time I checked you and I hadn’t actually been joined in holy
matrimony.”

He was certain that she was lying, deflecting him from
the truth about her hook-up by going on the offensive. She could sell a story
with the best of them (it was her profession, after all) but he had seen a
subtle curl around the corners of her mouth.

“And I’m fond of you too, Stephan, I am,” she was saying.
“But to be honest, I’m a bit surprised. Your meeting me here to ask me about
someone I was hanging out with. I mean, why bother?”

She behaved as if she was puzzled in a genuine and
good-natured way.

“I just... I like you,” he admitted with a sigh. “I’m
sorry if that’s embarrassing. For both of us.”

She smiled, not unkindly. “Not embarrassing, just a
little old fashioned,” she said. “I mean, we’re these young people, with so
much going on in our lives and our careers, so much in front of us. There’s no
way I’m ready to settle down at this point. Live in the suburbs with the kids
and the dog and the clichéd picket fence. Not now, and probably not ever.”

“Well, and I’m not either...”

“That’s exactly my point! Of course you aren’t,” she
said. “This place, our milieu, has so much to offer us right now. There are so
many opportunities, so many possibilities. Why would we want to be in a rush to
put it all behind us?”

“But Jenny, I never said that we should move out to the
suburbs, you know, or that it was time to call in a priest to witness our vows.
I just thought we were turning into, you know, a real couple.”

“Why the need for labels, though, Stephan? Why the need
for a stamp of ownership? I care for you too, you know that. I don’t want to
lose what we have. But I think you need to step back a bit on this one, see the
bigger picture.”

Anger welled up inside him. “Maybe I just find your way
of looking at things depressing – like it’s all some meaningless game.”

“But this isn’t all there is if we don’t want it to be.
There will be time for the other things, if and when we decide we really want
them. All in due course.”

“All in due course,” he repeated.

“Because, really, Stephan, what’s the alternative? Some
sort of neo-1950s thing? Married at 21, father knows best, wife in the kitchen
baking cookies while dreaming up lascivious narratives about the pool guy?”

“Jenny, it’s not that black and white.”

“Of course it’s not, but what I’m trying to say is that
you’re looking at things through this weird, sentimental lens. If you really
want the kind of life you’re saying you want, you’re looking for it in the
wrong place, aren’t you? Surely you’re not that naïve?”

He was on the verge of telling her off. He could leave
Jenny Wynne and her callous, shallow world behind right now. He could leave it
behind for good, never looking back. For a few moments, he imagined what his
life would be like without her. Returning to a peaceful, monkish existence, he
would live and breathe photography for its own sake, giving his nights over
entirely to the cozy pleasures of the darkroom. He would move forward again, as
both an artist and a person – it was due time. But something was holding him
back, some obscure feeling that it was not the time to let go just yet. And
then there was this: she had bothered to lie to him about Angela Song, which
meant that she cared enough to bother with a lie. She wasn’t finished with him.

Their waiter approached, ducking down beneath a leafy
branch.

“Everything okay here?” he asked.

“Yes, wonderful,” said Jenny Wynne, with a shake of her
blonde mane.

“Can I get you guys another round?”

“I should be going,” Stephan said, uncertain.

“No, please don’t, Steph. Stay with me for a little
while. We can have a glass of wine, gaze out on the passing scene.”

“I really shouldn’t,” he said. “Work to do.”

He began to rise.

“But it’s still early. We shouldn’t let this sun go to
waste. The summer won’t be here forever.”

The waiter, her trusty wingman, smiled down at him. “The
lady speaks truth,” he said.

Stephan hesitated.

Wake up and smell the guano

by Jenny Wynne

Bock, bock.

Yes, I’m referring to you, my fine, feathered friends, to
all of us in fact. To wit: people in this pleasant city on a lake, we like to
think of ourselves as hip and cutting edge, cool and canny. But the fact is, we
can be a bunch of chickens, sometimes. Latte-sipping, Gucci-wearing,
Vespa-riding cluckers.

Brawk!

In my darker moments, I sometimes think that all people
around here care about is fitting in and being safely on trend – provided of
course that the trend isn’t too radical or scary. Which is all well and good, I
suppose, but it’s also the opposite of how you make great culture. Let the
record show that you make great culture by taking real chances, by putting
yourself out there, by cutting against the grain. Just ask Kerouac or Picasso,
Nico or Gertrude Stein. (Okay, they’re all dead, but if they ever come back as
zombies they will totally back me up on this one.)

Ask Steve Jobs, then, or those two Australian dudes who
put on puppet shows with their wieners.

It’s worth noting that this sorry state of affairs isn’t
solely the creation of the current generation. We’ve always had a culture of
fear – or should I say a fear of culture – round these parts. I suppose it
started with the first European settlers. The cool ones, the ones with the
cash, connections and confidence, either stayed at home in the mother country
with their frock coats and port wine, or they went to the good ole USA, the
promised land, and became railway millionaires and swaggering Texas oilmen.

The poor cousins, meanwhile, came up here, north of the
49th parallel. And when they did, they had to play it safe – the woods were
dark and deep, after all, and if somebody was acting “different,” or thinking
outside the box, it was probably just an early symptom of a nasty case of
rickets.

And so our predecessors played it safe. They named their
cities London and York, their rivers Don and Humber. They looked to London –
the real, original London – for their marching orders, and when the Empire went
all wobbly, they turned for a fresh source of cues to our neighbours to the
south.

I suppose some of you will think I’m being contrary.
After all, there are plenty of oddballs round these parts. Many of you have no
doubt spotted that fellow in the Santa hat who of late has been showing up at
events, jumping on stage and shouting “tada!” in a loud voice, as if he were
the main act everyone had been waiting for. (Zanta, I believe he goes by.) And
of course I’m as fond of cultural trends from abroad as the next gal.

Some among you will say I’m just grumpy because my recent
collection of columns ($22.95, from Stoddard and Quork) received a handful of
negative reviews. That I was stung by the fact that a scribe in this very
newspaper said the only good thing about it was the author photo on the inside
back cover. Ouch.

But this isn’t about me, not this time. I know I’m not a
great artiste, and never will be. There, I said it. Wouldn’t it be nice,
though, if a few more of our local creative types – besides Zanta, god bless
him – went out on a limb from time to time? Wouldn’t it be nice if a few more
of us followed our batshit crazy, kinky, bizarre, nerdy, freakish obsessions to
their logical, or illogical, conclusions? I for one think that it would, and
that it just might help us to become the kind of city we’ve always wished we
were, but have known deep down we weren’t, not yet.

Cockadoodledoo!

Chapter 7

They saw each other off and on. They were not a couple in
any robust sense of the word: she had continued to make it clear she wasn’t
interested in an actual relationship. But he liked to think that he meant
something to her, and every time she provided him with some small piece of
evidence to support the notion that he did – a smile, a languid hand caressing
his back – he savoured it. Even so, it seemed unlikely that Jenny Wynne’s
dalliance with Angela Song was an isolated case. Presumably, there were others,
perhaps many others. He preferred not to think about it too much.

She had made him genuinely happy in the beginning, he was
certain of it. But the rush he felt when he was with her now was that of an
addict getting a fix. Rather than pleasure, let alone happiness, he felt only
dull relief in her presence. From time to time, Pete would ask him how it was
going with his new lady friend. It was “great,” then “pretty well,” then merely
a shake of his head. There was nothing to tell, nothing of substance, anyway,
and after a while Pete took the hint and stopped asking.

Time passed: days, weeks, months. The summer shaded into
fall, which was normally his favourite time of the year  – the low-key beauty
of yellow leaves leaking oil in streetside puddles – but that fall the details
of her dating life began to flutter down all around him. The local media
community was small, and the gossip of the day reached all ears. In addition to
Ms. Song, she had been linked (for starters) to a corporate securities lawyer of
east-Indian descent; an advertising executive known for his custom shirts and
dove-grey Porsche Boxster; a bearded furniture designer originally hailing from
Newfoundland who specialized in building high-end furniture out of reclaimed
driftwood; and the daughter of a well-known plastic surgeon whose looks, and
breasts, were far too perfect to be genuine.

Jenny Wynne’s system was as follows. On a rotating
schedule, each of her acolytes would be granted his or her five minutes in the
spotlight. Whenever a newcomer was added to the harem the others would be cast
aside, languishing for weeks in purgatory. But eventually rehabilitation would
arrive – in some cases, at least. They were like members of an exclusive
(although not actually all that exclusive) club. Maybe one day they’d make it
official. They could have their own platinum rewards cards, redeemable for spa
treatments, complementary magazine subscriptions, or sample packets of
fair-trade coffee.

Then, in the winter of 2003, the world shifted. The talk
of a new war in the Middle East, which had been a steady background hum in the
media throughout the fall, reached a new pitch. Returning to the city after a
Christmas holiday spent with his family in the suburbs, Stephan hunkered down
in front of the television in his apartment to watch the drama unfold.
Yellowcake uranium, weapons of mass destruction, UN debates. George W. Bush,
Saddam Hussein, Donald Rumsfeld, Hans Blix. It all felt like a charade, a
fantasy constructed of lies and propaganda, and literally everyone Stephan
spoke to about it thought the same thing. Nobody he knew believed a word, and
yet on it went. Theirs weren’t the opinions that mattered.

On February 15th, he went downtown to photograph the
day’s protest for one of the local alternative weeklies, alongside a young
female reporter he hadn’t worked with before. The local turnout was modest by
international standards, but to Stephan it was an impressive spectacle. The
crowd was peaceful and low-key, with senior citizens, mothers pushing strollers,
and people from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds in the mix, everyone bundled
up in colourful parkas, thick scarves, woollen hats. When they passed in front
of the U.S. consulate, he was struck by the bulk of the barriers and blast
walls, which had fully colonized the public sidewalks around the building. A
handful of counter-protestors stood at the edge of the security perimeter,
holding in their mittened hands tiny American flags that sagged in the freezing
February air.

In the wake of the assignment, he began hanging out with
the reporter. He’d felt something at the protest, some new sense of emotional
connection, and he wondered if he hadn’t caught a glimpse of a path forward.
The reporter was openly political and, of course, resolutely anti-war, an
activist who’d been pepper sprayed at the Battle of Seattle while still a
student, and Stephan was attracted by her passion. They found themselves
talking through their views on the war over late-night dinners at Vietnamese
restaurants on Spadina, speculating between spoonfuls of pho on whether they
might be able to find their way to the Middle East as journalists.

At the beginning of the invasion, which commenced with a
literal bang right on prime-time schedule, she came over to to his apartment to
watch the “shock and awe” display on TV. Several times in the course of the
following weeks, she stayed the night, much to Gamblor’s annoyance and
Stephan’s surprised gratitude. But as the ground war unfolded, something went
slack. The American forces were making relentless, clockwork progress towards
Baghdad, greeted along the way by cheering Iraqis. It was to be a quick, clean
war after all – all of the experts were now saying so – and in any case the
Canadian Prime Minister had elected to keep the country out of the conflict,
more or less. The winter’s protests now seemed to have been an end in
themselves; they’d helped keep the country out of the war, sure, but it was
just all a side-show. The Americans would depose Saddam Hussein and install a
quasi-democratic government. Life in the Middle East would go on, better than
before, or at least no worse.

By the time George W. Bush gave his Mission Accomplished
speech – on May Day, which the reporter took as an intentional snub to the
left, as it surely was – she had grown jaded. The half-serious discussions
they’d had about teaming up to cover the conflict had long since petered out,
and their brief romance, sparked by the emotions unleashed in the lead-up to
the war, died a natural death amid the denouement of those emotions.

*  *  *  *  *

One day near the end of June, Stephan travelled out to
the city’s west end to pick up a new lens from a professional photography
outlet he frequented. The place was known for its extensive inventory and
reasonable prices, but it was located in a hard-to-reach area far from
downtown. For the carless, it was only accessible via a long subway and
multi-transfer bus ride. On the way out he’d passed the time reading and hadn’t
paid much attention to the landscape, but on the return trip he found himself
taking an interest as the bus passed through a nameless, run-down district of
ramshackle houses, abandoned storefronts and rusted railway spurs. It was a
sad, forlorn place, and new territory for him.

The bus lurched over a railway crossing and moved into an
industrial zone of abandoned factories and dilapidated warehouses. It was
obvious that no new development had taken place here in a long time, in stark
contrast to downtown. There, all the major industrial areas were already being
transformed – turned into trendy condo developments and office suites catering
to production companies, design studios and internet pornography start-ups. No
doubt some developer, a new round of studio lofts a gleam in her eye, would
soon happen on this place. Perhaps she already had, and was in the process of
lining up permits and financing, while her team of architects determined the
optimal ratio of exposed brick to stainless steel in each condo unit. You never
knew.

An elderly man in dusty blue canvas coveralls pulled the
chime and stood up to get off. (God only knew what business he, or anyone else,
for that matter, had in this place.) In response to his signal, the bus pulled
up to the cracked curb, brakes hissing, and Stephan – on a sudden hunch – at
the last moment jumped to his feet and darted out the door behind him.

As the bus pulled away, the man saw him and gave him a
little salute.

“Beautiful day,” he said, all smiles. “Reminds me somehow
of when I was a boy.”

Stephan wanted to ask him what he was up to out here in
the middle of nowhere, but he didn’t quite know how to raise the subject, so
instead he just nodded and gestured vaguely at the sky.

“Gorgeous,” he offered.

The man took a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket.
“Fancy a smoke?”

For some reason Stephan wanted to say yes, even though he
hadn’t had a cigarette since the day he first set eyes on Jenny Wynne, at
Helmut’s studio.

“I guess I’m okay for now,” he said.

“Well, suit yourself,” the man said, not seeming to mind.
He placed a cigarette between his lips and lit up, taking a couple of deep
drags to get it going, beaming the whole time. “Hope your business out here
goes well,” he said.

“Thanks,” Stephan replied, wanting to ask what that
business might consist of, but the man was already ambling off, puffing away
like mad on his cigarette. He coughed a couple of times, hawked up some phlegm,
spat, and forged on, receding into the distance.

Stephan took a minute to get his bearings. Checking his
camera, he was pleased to see that it held almost a full roll of film. He
figured that he could look around, take a few shots, and then hop on a bus back
to civilization, having satisfied the whim that had brought him here. He set
out walking. Following a concrete lane that led off the main road, he soon came
upon a cluster of old-looking warehouses and factory-type buildings. It was
hard to imagine what had once been made here: washing machines, whiskey
bottles, artillery shells – who knew? Whatever it had been, the buildings’
facades, with their carved window frames, concrete mock columns and stone front
steps, suggested that business had been good back in the day.

He started to shoot, in a casual way at first, not
thinking too much about what he was trying to accomplish. Moving deeper into
the complex, he recorded whatever caught his eye – broken windows, bits of
ancient garbage, weeds taller than he was. An old water tower stood on the edge
of an empty parking lot, its iron exterior livid with rust, its conical roof
beginning to crumple in on itself like a drooping dunce cap. It was a hot day.
He imagined that the brick chimneys and smoke stacks that rose here and there
above the rooftops were belching pure, invisible heat, although they probably
hadn’t been active in decades. His stomach growled, reminding him that he had
missed lunch, after a breakfast of buttered toast. He kept shooting.

He sensed that he was onto something, the way a
prospector might feel after stumbling onto a forest stream the bed of which was
studded with gold nuggets. Eventually, though, he began to tire. Sitting down
on a low stack of discarded packing skids, he took a few sips of bottled water
and ate the remnants of an energy bar he’d managed to dig up from the bottom of
his knapsack. He glanced up at the sky, which over the last half hour or so had
grown suddenly menacing. From a photography standpoint, that wasn’t such a bad
thing. There was still plenty of ambient light around, and the texture of the
clouds lent an eerie intensity to the landscape. But now it was starting to
rain, cool water droplets needling here and there into his skin. It was time to
leave – assuming he could find his way back to the bus stop.

He was packing his things into his knapsack when,
happening to glance up for a moment, he noticed a nearby alleyway formed by a
narrow gap between two of the buildings. It blended so seamlessly with the
surrounding brick that he had previously overlooked it, but now he was
intrigued. He strode over to have check it out, stepped through the initial
opening. The alley was narrow enough that he had to turn his upper body slighly
to avoid brushing his arms agains the walls on either side. Gravel crunched
beneath his feet as he walked. He had glimpsed something metallic beyond the
far end of the alleyway, and been drawn to it.

When the alley opened out again, after twenty feet or so,
he found himself in a large courtyard, at the centre of which stood a huge old
wheel, some sort of steam turbine, a massive piston still attached. It appeared
to be the last remnant of an old factory that had been dismantled around it.
Maybe it had once powered an entire enterprise, one that employed hundreds of
workers, generating thousands of geegaws and millions of dollars. But gradually
the operation had grown obsolete, and when its time had come the dynamo at the
heart of it was too heavy to be worth moving, and so had been left behind with
the weeds and parched grass. He snapped away furiously, not caring as a distant
rumble of thunder echoed the rumblings of his stomach.

That night, after a quick bite of dinner, he went down to
the lab to see what he had gotten. He was confident that he was onto something,
that the images would be special. The feeling manifested itself as a tingling
in his stomach, a little like the sensation he’d had as a teenager after
jumping off the bridge over Sixteen Mile Creek for the first time.

As soon as he arrived at the lab, he developed the film
of the day’s shooting. Out at the light table in the lounge, he reviewed it
under a magnifying glass, tense with anticipation. As he inspected the frames,
he could feel the little hairs on the back of his neck beginning to rise. The
shots were good. No, they were excellent. He had captured the feel of the
place, he sensed, its starkness and faded grandeur. Taking another look, he
found himself thinking of the great 20th century American photographer Walker
Evans’ famous black-and-white images of abandoned Louisiana plantation houses.
That was a good sign. True, it was only he, himself, making the comparison. But
he’d been doing photography long enough that he wasn’t promiscuous when it came
to enthusiasm.