Come See About Me Read Free

my
irritation up another notch, “You know what, why don’t you take some time to cool
down and I’ll catch up with you later.” He stepped away from me and I let him.
    My heart was
beating fast from being angry with him and I stomped off in the opposite
direction, wondering which of us was supposed to buy Armstrong’s supplies and
deciding Bastien should be the one, since he’d ditched me. Then I’d prowled the
mall and ended up with my arms full of T-shirts I didn’t need, one of which I’m
wearing today—emblazoned with the phrase “One Tough Cookie” under a cartoonish
image of an outraged cookie (minus a single bite), shaking its two tiny cookie
fists in the air.
    The guy ahead of
me in line follows the blond woman’s gaze to ogle my T-shirt and then looks
swiftly back at the menu as he realizes my chest probably isn’t the most
politically correct place for his eyes to settle.
    “Thanks,” I tell
her after what I realize has been an uncomfortably long pause following her
compliment. Like I said, I think about Bastien and us constantly. Part of my
brain still exists in a reality in which he’s alive and we’re living in a
basement apartment together in Toronto.
    “Better make it
the corn beef and cheese on Italian bread,” the man says, returning us all to
the matter at hand.
    The blond woman
nods. “Toasted?”
    “Toasted,” he
confirms, flashing the briefest of smiles.
    The woman slices
into a loaf of Italian bread. “I love your accent,” she says. “What part of
Ireland are you from?”
    “Dublin.” The
man’s smile reappears, seeming more genuine this time, and their conversation
ambles forward. With nothing further required from me, I drift back behind a
curtain of fog until it’s time to place my order. Once I have my egg salad
sandwich I take a seat near the back door. There aren’t many tables left; I’d
forgotten that it was the weekend.
    Chew. Swallow.
Sip lime soda. Think .
    Neither Bastien
nor I really knew how to cook. We lived on frozen/packaged food and cheap
takeout. I had this idea we could learn to cook together and bought a book of
basic recipes. We tackled chicken quesadillas, teriyaki pork, sweet potatoes,
sticky buns and cabbage rolls and then got bored and rotated the homemade
quesadillas and buns into our diet of otherwise packaged food and takeout.
Bastien was more of a natural in the kitchen than I was and I began to lose
interest first, but the sticky buns were delicious. I can taste the memory of
cinnamon and walnuts even as I swallow bits of egg salad.
    The sandwich
itself is fine. Good even. But I can’t finish it. Two-thirds of the way through
digesting another bite becomes impossible so, having cooled off like I’d
intended, I wander down to the lake and sit on a shaded bench. Supervised
children play in the park behind me, shrieking and laughing, but no one’s
bothering the geese. In fact, the geese themselves seem almost militant—not at
all like creatures in need of human protection—as they march out of the lake
and spread strategically out along the grass for a midday snack.
    Even in the
shade, the heat begins to get to me again after about an hour and I stroll back
up to Lakeshore Road to visit the fruit market and buy bananas and berries for
Armstrong and milk for myself. On the way to the market an old woman in a
medical scooter whizzes by me on the sidewalk, stopping abruptly a few feet in
front of me. She tugs gently at the long gold pashmina draped around her
shoulders. It’s too warm for a shawl—I don’t know how she can stand it—but as I
catch up to her I spy the reason she’s come to a halt. One end of her pashmina
is wedged under the scooter’s rear left wheel.
    I stop next to
the woman and attempt to soften my expression as I glance down into her eyes.
“Do you need some help?”
    She smiles
ruefully up at me. “I don’t want to roll forward in case I tear it. Do you
think you could try to slip it out?”
    I crouch to
examine