Stanley Park Read Free Page A

lagoon. At the trail mouth he stood in the shelter of asalal bush, eyes on the path. It was just before five. Caruzo appeared when he promised, leading Jeremy over the arched stone bridge and towards him. The Professor watched, but did not step from the bushes immediately, and the boy did as he would. He grew exasperated. His eyes found a pay phone nearby, a distraction. He stabbed the keypad with a finger, his back to Caruzo. Wishing, no doubt, to be anywhere but here. When he hung up, the Professor stepped from his hiding place, and Caruzo disappeared into the trees as agreed. The Professor enjoyed noting how the densely overlapping branches did not move as he entered the green face of the forest. Caruzo was merely absorbed.
    “I can’t stay long.” These were the first words his son found.
    “I thought maybe dinner.”
    “It’s Thursday. I can’t leave Jules alone.”
    His restaurant did not come up without mention of this name. “Oh, I’ll bet you can,” the Professor said.
    They stood face to face in the falling light, the Professor’s head just a degree to one side. The boy wasn’t sleeping well, he thought. There were dark circles under his eyes. Black hair strawing this way and that. Was I wiry back then, like he is now? A little pale? They were still around the same six-foot height, the Professor observed, looking steadily into his son’s eyes and thinking: I have not yet begun to shrink.
    Jeremy thought only that his father looked better than he might under the circumstances. His eyes were bright, his brows pranced upward with good humour. True, his hair was dirty and his fingernails were black, and he was carrying an old wooden fly-fishing net pinched under one elbow for no evident reason.
    “Perhaps you’ll stay long enough to see me catch my dinner then,” the Professor said. One needed darkness, he went on to explain. And so they sat on the bench and talked, circling but not meeting the matter at hand. Demand nothing, theProfessor thought. And so they talked about the Stanley Park game-bird population instead. A point of mutual interest, the Professor imagined.
    “You eat duck?” Jeremy asked. A passer-by might have assumed he was about to provide cooking tips. Sear off the breast on a medium grill, skin side down. Render the fat. Finish skin side up, just a couple minutes. Sauce it and you’re good to go.
    But to which the Professor answered: “I’ve been here quite a few months and I didn’t bring groceries. Have you eaten starlings?” He was aware that it sounded like a challenge. “Delicious, although you’ll need two or three per person.”
    “I’ve eaten ortolan” Jeremy said, and then was irritable with himself for being drawn into the conversation on that level.
    “Now, the mallard is a fantastically light sleeper,” the Professor informed him.
    Jeremy looked away.
    “The canvasback even more so, fiendishly difficult to catch. The important thing is to learn a little each day here. Just a little. I spent a week trying to catch my first bird. A week. Do you know what I mean?”
    “I have no idea what you mean,” Jeremy answered. “I buy my ducks direct from a guy named Bertrand who lives on a farm up the valley.”
    “Although presumably someone catches them for Bertrand. Say though, I’ve been reading about you. Earlier this year. Anya Dickie’s review of The Monkey’s Foot. Brilliant job.”
    “The Monkey’s Paw Bistro.”
    “Purple prose but a nice conclusion. How did the Dickie woman say it again?”
    Jeremy sighed and looked out over the lagoon. The dynamic between them, he thought, didn’t change much with the years, the location, or their relative mental health.
    “ ‘Crosstown Celebrates Local Beverages and Bounty,’ ”Jeremy finally said, reciting the headline, which was also the lead line and the closing line of a typically enthusiastic Dickie restaurant review. She had been quite taken with the way Jules and he shared a passion for local meat,