A winter's tale

Well, that was another tortuous karaoke session. When I wasn't listening to April and Duncan plan set lists, or work out guitar/bass lines, I was explaining to drunk Swedes why they didn't want to pat the bunny. At least at the end of the evening Wilco gave me a paws-up. Sometimes he seems like better boyfriend material than anyone else I know, except for the major problem of his being a rabbit. I don't really like telenovelas much anyway. I holed up in the women's washroom for a while to text Enid to see if she had any advice on what to do with monomaniac boyfriends (hers likes to obsess over old vinyl and shellac records and antique turntables). Enid's advice boiled down to, "maybe you should move on." I don't know. Maybe things will be different when we go into Toronto this afternoon. There's a really good photography exhibit on at the AGO, at least.

Measure for measure

I hate January. The exams are both dull and annoying, and whenever there aren't any exams classes are really stupid and boring. Tutoring is really dull since Zenobia and I have had the same questions over and over again from the grade 9s. Duncan practices the same air bass patterns every day when he waits for me to finish up with the Learning Resources Centre. I took a break today to use the washroom, and ran into him walking away sheepishly from the library.
"What happened?"
"Zenobia threw me out. She said I was a distraction, and that I just kept playing the same thing," Duncan said.
"Well, I'll meet you at Tim Hortons once I finish with this. Are you going to karaoke tonight?" He said yes. "Bring April, if you want--she might need to escape from whatever's infested her house. My mother said April's father's brought the trains over to the medical building."
"Man, that's not good," Duncan said.
"The tiny train station and snack bar is right outside my mother's office. She's getting really mad and the train whistles are starting to make her think her autoclave is broken." I had to go back in and explain The Diviners to a grade 10 student right then.
Duncan just seems so distracted lately. I guess I have been too, with exams and the wait until university acceptances in March, and Arne's new search for a large vehicle with a negligent owner that he can make vanish (the vehicle, not the owner).

Titanic days

We've been busy at the Learning Resources Centre table this week. Exams tend to do that. I gave Duncan some of my old notes, and he thanked me, but looked a bit abstracted, which may have been due to him playing air bass right then.
"Sorry, Zed, just working out the rhythm bridge for a new song we're doing," he said. He said he'd be over to help out with karaoke at the Three Kronen later.
It was busy at the bar. Arne and I were hard pressed to keep up with the requests; I think it was because no-one had any access to the projection television and couldn't watch the hockey game. Wilco was on the bar and was sitting on the remote. He was facing the big television screen and watching Labyrinto de los novios. Whenever anyone tried to take the remote away from him he'd get upset.
"Hey, that rabbit punched me," Ole Svensen said at one point.
"Well, don't make him mad. Go watch the game up front. The Leafs are going to lose anyway," Arne said.
Duncan stuck to critiquing everyone's performance.
"Why'd he pick that song? It's out of his range," he said more than once.
"They're amateurs, Duncan, and they're singing whatever makes them happy. If you wanted decent singing, karaoke at a Swedish bar is not the place to find it." Ivar's girlfriend Brigit was attempting to belt out "Gimme Gimme Gimme a Man After Midnight" right then. She was awful, but that wasn't the point. Duncan was getting on my nerves with his musician stuff. He made up for it by doing a song and dedicating it to me around the end of the night.
This afternoon my mother asked me to run some SPRI over to the Andersons. She said that Duncan's mother had called and said she was running low on it, and wanted to make sure Duncan didn't do anything stupid over Liz Patterson again. I drove over to the Andersons and gave Mrs. Anderson the SPRI. Duncan wasn't in, she said; he was studying math and science with April. Before I could phone over to the Pattersons my cell phone rang. It was Arne claiming he needed a helicopter.

Everything's gone green

I went out to have coffee with Zenobia and Zapata this afternoon, and we compared notes on boyfriends.
"Duncan's been off having way too much fun in Barbados, while I've had to sit through my parents fighting and my uncle getting cautioned by the government," I said. "But we've got tickets for Evanescence, so I guess if we break up it'll have to be after the concert." Zapata agreed.
"I always break up with Eldritch after major events, especially if he bought the tickets," she said. We went outside while Zenobia and Zapata lit up. Zenobia was using her new cigarette holder. Zapata asked her where she got it.
"Jeremy Jones gave it to me, for tutoring and for believing that he wasn't on drugs when that concert thing happened," Zenobia replied. Zapata got annoyed.
"Jeremy is my shoulder to complain on, you bitch! Get your own!"
I pointed out that Jeremy gave me a Christmas present, too. "You, too? Damn it, leave him alone--he's mine." I felt a little annoyed that she was being so possessive of Jeremy. Zenobia just said, "whatever," and changed the subject.

When I got home, Arne was wandering around the kitchen holding several pieces of the blender.
"How the hell does this thing work?" he asked.
"What the hell are you doing with a broken blender?"
"Wilco's favourite show is on, and he insisted on carrot juice. I had to come over," Arne said. Wilco was on the sofa watching Telelatino.
"Wilco understands Spanish?"
"Of course. All SAS-trained rabbits understand Spanish. Wilco's just a little different in that he's a big fan of telenovelas." The title credits for something that looked like "Labyrinto de los novios" came on.
"And he's watching what?" I asked.
"I'm not sure, except that it's got a hot babe who answers the door in a towel, and firemen. And planes. And cops--lots of cops. They all seem to really like this babe, which is understandable since she's got huge.."
"Lips, it looks like. And answers the door in a towel," I said.
"Exactly--what's not to love?"

Lazy line painter

I cut off the story again, my brother says. I guess he's learning how to copy edit properly, so I should be happy.
The television was on CP24 constantly during the holidays, since they ran sports scores and highway updates. On Boxing Day, when my mother and grandmother were out shopping and my father was out shopping somewhere else, Charles Wallace was watching the news on CP24 and started trying to get my attention. I was reading the mystery my mother left, Death Takes a Time Share in the Cariboo, and it was really easy to drop it.
"A fire? Are you sure this isn't the Buffalo news?" Charles Wallace nodded.
"It's in Toronto. They must have had cameras around for the whole thing." He was right. It was an apartment building, converted from a 1950s house, and first the downstairs flared up, then the upstairs. Some toddlers in full snow gear (why? wasn't the house on fire? Toronto had been warm for weeks by then, too) got pulled down the wooden fire escape by their parents, then for some reason the father ran back into the fire and came down gasping.
"Is that a really small, flat child?" Charles Wallace asked.
"No, looks like a laptop. Maybe the guy's in CSIS and he had to save the data or lose his job. That's the only reason to run back towards the danger." Then a fireman went up the stairs and picked up another small, quilty, child. "Why are they running this? The fire was two days ago."
"The announcer said it was part of Toronto Fire Services holiday awareness campaign, and that this family was lucky to be alive, considering that they did everything wrong and lived in a firetrap waiting to go off."
"So it's a public service tragedy," I said. My mother and grandmother came back around then. My mother had been to Chapters and was settling down to read Death Makes a Contribution To An RRSP. I had a look on Charles Wallace's Blackberry to see if Duncan had written anything recently. All his messages to me so far had been either incoherent or cut short. I sent Jeremy Jones a postcard since he seemed to be the only one who'd sympathize with me right now (Duncan having made it clear he was doing what he liked best all the time, and was extremely happy and mostly busy or drunk).
Things between my parents were still a bit strained when we drove back to Milborough. I went with my mother, and Arne took my father and Charles Wallace and Wilco. I made plans to go out New Year's Eve with Enid in Toronto, and then my mother made arrangements for my aunt, uncle and Enid to spend New Year's Day with us in Milborough. My father must have done something uncharacteristically over the top and romantic for New Year's Eve, since my mother was in a great mood when I got back from Toronto and Charles Wallace was disgusted. He cheered up when I took him outside to light some fireworks at dark.

New Year's Day

My mother must be in a good mood. She's blasting her old U2 records on the stereo. I got in earlier this afternoon with my aunt, uncle, and Enid. The family left Ottawa on Saturday, and I went into Toronto yesterday to spend New Year's Eve with Enid. We started out at the Reindeer Restaurant, and then went to the Neutral Zone for the rest of the evening. She's broken up with her boyfriend, although I don't know how long that's going to last.
Christmas was a mess. Once we all got to Ottawa, things started to get bad. My parents had a fight over Duncan. Actually, it was a fight over Duncan's present. My mother asked about what Duncan gave me, and I said he'd had Charles Wallace put stuff he'd written on my iPod (Charles Wallace overdid it, and I had to delete all the stuff he'd duplicated and put my backup files on). My father decided at that point to mention that he'd done something like that once, too.
"Like what? I don't remember you doing anything like that," my mother said.
"Oh, it was earlier. I wrote a song for my girlfriend in first year. I think I still remember it..." He started to hum, but then noticed that my mother looked like she wanted to club him with my iPod. Luckily at that point Arne came in from taking Charles Wallace to the Byward Market for some freelance illusioning or whatever it was he said he was doing.
Things continued on like that all weekend, then it got worse. It started snowing lightly on Christmas Eve. My grandparents had taken Charles Wallace out to Parliament Hill, and Arne was out doing something near the National Mint. My father was trying to find hockey scores on the television, and I was reading parts of the Globe and Mail as my mother finished them. She looked out the window, saw the snow, and had a memory fit of her own.
"The first snow of the year. Sandra, did I ever tell you about the boy I knew who got pneumonia during the first snow one year in Whitby?" This didn't sound good, but the pneumonia could have been a lead-in for a cautionary medical story, so I fell for it.
"No, you never told me that. What happened? Inadequate clothing for the season?"
"No. He was leaving for Saskatoon the next day, and wanted to see me. My father kept him out waiting on the front porch, but he didn't leave. We walked through the park for what seemed to be hours, then he went home. Then I heard he had pneumonia as soon as he arrived in Saskatchewan. No one's ever sat through a blizzard for me since." She looked wistful at that point, and I glanced over at my father. He was watching the sports channel with a slightly apologetic look. The rest of the family came back around that point. Charles Wallace changed the television channel and started reading the weather report for the country aloud.
"There's snow falling in Winnipeg. Snow has covered the Trans-Canada Highway at the Ontario border. There's snow in Halifax. There's a light snow cover in..." At that point Arne told him to shut up.
After dinner that night Charles Wallace sat on my bed and asked why I had to make our parents fight.
"It wasn't my idea, you know. Duncan's Christmas present just set the two of them off about whatever it was years ago that the other didn't do. Mom's loved Dad all this time for being sensible and then she gets upset when she finds out he did something stupid and romantic once and it wasn't for her." Charles Wallace then settled down with a book and I started to read Heart of Darkness (since we're doing it next term in English).
The snow didn't last the next day. We opened presents, had dinner, and my parents managed to speak to each other. Arne went off somewhere after dinner and wouldn't take Charles Wallace with him, which made Charles Wallace even more eager to find out where he went. He pestered me until I gave in and said I'd borrow a car to follow Arne. My mother seemed relieved, or preoccupied, or something--she gave me the keys to the Honda.
We found Arne parked next to the Mint on the banks of the Ottawa River. He had a metal detector and pieces of a diving suit.
"What the hell are you doing?" I asked.
"What does it look like? I'm trying to pull gold out of the river. There's loads of shavings down here from the Mint." He sounded sort of plausible. Too plausible, in fact--some security guards were coming down the hill. "Quick, into the car!"
"I'm taking Mom's car," I yelled as Charles Wallace beat me to the car.
"Try to head them off! I'll go to Hull!" Arne yelled. He really needed to take lessons on making a quick getaway. The National Capital Commission security guards were following him over to Quebec as I drove back to my grandparents.
"You know, Sandra, hanging around Arne when he's about to get arrested is more fun than watching Mom and Dad right now." I agreed.