Her bland assault kept my feet still as I momentarily struggled to make sense of what I had
done—what I was supposed to see, and quickly conclude that she was again dealing with
punctured expectations at my expense.
Bonnie was strides ahead before I realised that raising my voice to respond in any way would
make me sound like I was pleading; and the sounds of water lapping at the foot of the sea wall
marked off the next twenty yards as I tried to make up the distance without breaking into a trot of
apparent reconciliation.
Bonnie must have thought I had decided to go home in this staggered fashion because in a
preoccupied manner she contrived to wander in front of a jogging couple going in the opposite
direction, their near collision allowing me to make up the distance at a normal pace.
Finishing her apologies to them for having a wandering mind, in an adjusted cordial tone,
Bonnie began talking to me candidly about her adolescence as if it was a stranger’s life. She
maintained this air of cool reserve until we reached her home, where she scheduled our next
meeting as if it were a dental appointment.
Not until I was lying in bed that night did I put these events into perspective, ironically
courtesy of her showing me how to assess the nature of events. Bonnie was trying to convince me
that I should be afraid of the way things are in our world because, as she had stated, her characters
had to be wary of where they were at all times; their fantasy world of energy efficiency made ours
seem like there was danger lurking around every corner and bus stop. It followed that when I
wasn’t afraid of people simply having different opinions, I had created a run in the fabric of her
intricate plot by responding as her audience would—the student thing aside. Her subsequent walk
of disappointment, also her choice of topic, came from seeing the inevitability of having to
restructure a key aspect of her story.
I felt genuinely sorry for her. I knew what that was like.
On the morning of our fourth consecutive day together, we met outside a fashionable
bakery-cafe in West Vancouver, where a contagiously chipper Bonnie began telling me about her
night of lucid dreaming. Two steps through the broad glass doors, Brandi greeted us with an
orthodontist’s smile and expansively declared that we could sit anywhere before her youthful
charm collapsed at the sound of a soft chime. I looked for a remote spot in case Bonnie felt like
dancing.
Taking in the ambiance, two of the twenty-foot high walls were painted a light tan,
accented by slashes of green neon under which stood snowflake arrays of plastic tables
surrounded by petals of tub chairs flaunting red slashes down the centre post to a Mexican tile
floor. The impression of Christmas in Cabo San Lucas suggested that patrons should spend
freely in the name of Christ. The other walls of full-length glass provided excellent lighting for
customers to peruse the large print while wearing Ray Bans.
We headed toward a shaded spot in the back corner, ordered coffee, then to calm her I told
her about an innocuous dream I had when was twelve years old, and I still recalled for no reason
I could explain. I was standing on a dirt roadway that bisected two rolling fields of calf high
grass, through which masses of translucent people were slowly walking. I knew that the ones
coming toward me from my left were returning from a physical life, and the ones walking away
on my right were heading into one, not that I believed it, but it was a dream. Ten yards in front of
