I didn’t reply as the door closed behind me.
Stunned by her audacity, I stopped at a pub before heading across the bridge, but by the
time I ordered my third round I was feeling a bit foolish: Bonnie had invested all of her money,
friendships, and as far as I could tell every waking moment her kids didn't need her to writing. In
that context, her critically serious role-playing made some sense; some, because why she needed
to gauge a neophyte’s reaction to a teacher’s claim of talking to spirits should have been obvious.
I went home wondering why she tested this, and trying to imagine how she would convince her
audience that the universe was training people.
I arrived at her house the next morning with two chapters for her to assess. The first one, an
apology for my rude exit the day before, graphically demonstrated that my plot worked without
the influence of the great unseen. I left the second chapter, a polished effort that demonstrated
LeBlanc was not an idiot, stashed in my bike as a safeguard against her attacking the first one for
being too impersonal.
Knocking twice, I let myself in, and as I climbed the mid-house staircase said a jaunty,
“Good morning.”
“Coffee's ready,” Bonnie said, from the kitchen as if I had gone to the bathroom and not
home for the night. “If the undercurrent of a culture’s ideals is convoluted, it’s inevitable that
good people will integrate fear into their daily way of life and call it something else.”
“The stress of daily living,” I said, setting my envelope on the hallway table before walking
into the kitchen.
Standing by the sink, Bonnie nodded toward the nook table for me to take a seat, as she
said, “You can't live in between fact and fiction without confusing what you want with what you
think is necessary or eventually taking what you think you’re entitled to. For example,” she said,
to put us on the same page, “America's right to bear arms was about militias defending the
country at a time when they didn’t have a standing army. Two hundred years later, they've armed
themselves to the teeth without embracing the underlying responsibilities that go with
maintaining personal rights. Now they’re defending themselves from themselves, which is the
antithesis of living free.” Bonnie came to the table with two mugs and added a third of a cup of
milk to hers from a ceramic, jersey cow pitcher.
“Are we in an anti American mode this morning?”
“Not at all,” she said, surprised. “I’ve always been treated well there. I’m making
observations about a country we're both familiar with because it’s in a unique position to institute
positive global change.” She sipped her coffee. “Making them the goat also doesn't offend you
like it would if I used Canada.”
Cutting short a test sip with a chuckled slurp that trickled through my beard, I said, “You
know I don’t wave flags.”
“You are a soldier at heart,” she said, handing me a serviette. “You would rather kill our
relationship than risk evicting your convictions by taking the time to evaluate mine. Push that
behaviour to the extreme, and I’m an enemy of your state of mind. The fact is, you’re dangerous
to me,” she said casually.
