Come See About Me Read Free Page A

the situation more closely and begin to work the delicate fabric out
from underneath the wheel, slowly and carefully. At first I suspect it won’t
all come free and that she’ll have to move forward and risk ruining her pretty
pashmina.
    “Is there
anything I can do?” a male voice says from above me.
    My fingers
reclaim the final section of trapped fabric. “Oh, thank you!” the woman
exclaims, beaming at me. Now that I’m really looking at her I notice she has
arresting green eyes; it’s like staring into the Caribbean ocean and having it
stare back.
    “You’re
welcome,” I say, returning her smile. As I stand, I switch my gaze to the man
who’d stopped to help, the very same one who wasn’t interested in a
medium-spicy chicken curry wrap at The Cunning Café earlier in the afternoon.
    “She’s got it,”
the woman announces gratefully, and for a fraction of a second I actually feel
something other than loss: a tiny seed of pride. “But thank you both.” She
knots the pashmina around her chest and I turn to continue my journey to the
fruit market. Three seconds later the woman’s speeding ahead of me again on the
sidewalk, waving as she passes.
    “Excuse me,” the
man says, sidling up to me. “Could you tell me if there’s a post office around
here?”
    I pause to
digest the question. Someone else could probably answer in a snap but it takes
me a moment to remember whether I’m in possession of the information he’s
looking for.
    “It won’t be
open today,” I tell him.
    “Right, Sunday,”
the guy says, mostly to himself. “I’ll have to go tomorrow then. Can you point
me in the right direction?”
    The street
name’s slipped my mind but I tell him about the shop with the post office
counter where I’ve purchased stamps from time to time. It’s only a couple
blocks west from where we’re currently standing—on the north side of one of the
little side streets running just off Lakeshore. “You’ll see a butcher’s on the
corner and there’s an ice cream place down the same street,” I add, pointing in
the general direction.
    “Thanks,” he
says, the same brief but polite smile on his lips that I spotted there earlier.
He sets off down the road as though he intends to locate the post office now,
despite me mentioning that it would be closed.
    Maybe he just
wants to scout out the location for tomorrow. Just to know. I used to be like
that; always checking Google Maps and the TTC schedule before going someplace
new.
    I’d never been
to Oakville before Bastien died. I was majoring in anthropology at the
University of Toronto’s downtown campus while Bastien’s design program was
split between classes at York University in Toronto and Oakville’s Sheridan
College. The only thing I remember him saying about the place is, “It looks
like a nice town—especially near to the lake. Kinda sleepy but with some
breathing room.”
    I would never
have thought to come here if it weren’t for Bastien’s aunt Abigail, but when
she offered me someplace to stay and I learned her house was in Oakville,
moving here, at least temporarily, made perfect sense. This was a place Bastien
knew, a place he’d walked and ate and painted and sketched. A place where I
could live inside a trance as much as was humanly possible while still having
to give directions to the local post office and consider necessities like
bananas, berries and milk.
    I feel for the
twenty dollar bill I hope is in my pocket (and not another thing that I’ve
failed to remember) and then step from the sticky air hovering over the
sidewalk into the relative coolness of the fruit market.

Two
     
    My best friend throughout most of
high school was IlianaLazaroy. She was the vice president of the
student council and passionate about politics. In one of the candid yearbook
photos of Iliana she’s sitting next to the mayor of Burnaby in our high school
auditorium, the two of them in mid-conversation and a magnanimous smile
plastered