It was half past nine. How had to gotten so late? Where had the evening gone he wondered. Though he’d known exactly where it had gone. Where it always goes. A day of work shoveling out basements. Hours of jackhammering through foot depth concrete. Lifting 20 pound chunks of concrete onto the conveyer belt which carries the concrete chunks out the window and deposits them in the industrial dump bin outside. Once the last of the concrete has been loaded it time to shovel dirt. Sour smelling, fungal dirt, shovelful after shovel with sweat rivers flowing down your brow, torrenting down your back, your arms growing moister and moist, attracting the dirt which is impossible to get off. And you don’t worry about that, about dirtiness, about the sweat and the spiders and sore lower back and left knee that licks every so often, and the charley hirsd that on occasion seizes every last muscle in your right leg, and you gotta somehow find room to stretch it out straight anddeep breath and dine very thing in your power not to scream as you desperately pray for it to go back LI to normal. Then, when the last shovel full of dirt has ridden the the conveyer, the pics, and the Joe’s, and the shovels and the crowbars are neatly pled in the dirt which is 6!inches lower it still needs to be dug another foot; the last smoke of the us struck as you stand hincjed in the middle of the room with the dirt floor,

Yeah, funny, you should ask that. No,?we weren’t always that close. I think maybe that came with time. I mean, yeah, we were close in age, only two years apart, but he always had his friends and I had mine, you know. I guess we spent some time together n high school. We lived a block away from the school. Leave for class at the first bell kind of thing. So most days we would go home for lunch. A five minute walk, good food, and since our parents were gone we could play the stereo as loud as we wAnted. And we would play it loud. Till our phone starting ringing and Ms. Ivetdon who lived across the lane and weirdly was always home for lunch too, would very politely ask if we could be so kind as to turn our FUCKING stereo. Down. Which we did. Some days. He was a crazy beast if a man before he died. I mean you see him in the gym and he’s throwing around these hernia inducing amount of weights like he’s the rfuckung terminator or something, barely breaking a sweat. And Urmi fast. Just so crazy fast between the diagnosis and when he died. Like it had been hurdling aling through his blood at 100!miles an hour for years and years and then picks this time,this year for what ever reason to crash, and burst into flaming fireball that travelled through his whole body, inextinguishable, ever/present, turning his bones to soot. I held his hand. All the tubes pumping into him and pumping out of him. The rhythmic thrush, thrush, thrush of the machine thathelped him breath.

Am I crazy? No. I don’t think your crazy. You say that, but you don’t believe it. I..I do believe it. No you don’t! What are you talking about? You hesitated. I did not hesitate. Yes, you did. No I didn’t. You did. I didn’t. I just heard you. Ok, alright already, maybe I did hesitate. I knew it! Yeah, but wouldn’t you? If the shoes were on the other feet? No. You wouldn’t hesitate if I was acting bizarrely, almost unrecognizable for months nd then if you pressed me on it I told you that I see my dead siblings ghost? No, still no. Why? Because I love you. I live you too. What does love even have to do with it? Nothing. You are seeing ghosts. Do you know how fuckin bonkers this sounds? Have you heard yourself lately? What am I suppose to do? I see him all the time and I can’t talk to nobody about it.

Where were you? I didn’t know where you went. I was outside? Outside? Now? Yeah, I was just. You were just…? Outside. Yeah, I think we already established that. Are you ok? Yeah, good, why. You seem a little, I don’t know, discombobulated. I was just shoveling the driveway. Okay? It was the strangest thing. Hmm. Are you listening? Are we still having a conversation? Yes, yes, strangest thing – got it! What was? I finished shoveling. Pushed the last shovel full out into the street. I was tired. So I was leaning on my shovel, catching my breath. Facing out into the street. Ugh huh. And this car drives up the road real slow. Maybe it was a courier? Yeah, exactly, I thought the same thing at first. Thought maybe he’s just stop in the road, throw on the hazards and deliver a package, But it didn’t stop. Okay. It kept driving, creeping along, just so slow. Weird. Yeah totally weird. And you know what’s weirder. When it drove by I could see you was driving, clear as day I could see. Was it the old lady who lives at the end of the block? No. Was it the guy with the three kids, he always drives slow. No. I think Teresa, you know down the block, just got her license, saw her mom at ValueMart, she told me, was it her? No. Please tell me. This is starting to bore me. I saw P. P from across the street. No, not from across the street. P like my brother P. Can you stop with this? With what? We talked about this? What did we talk about. Oh, I don’t know. The fact the P. Is dead. He’s dead. It’s been three years. You need to accept this. I thought you and the counselor talked about this. We did. Many times. Many many times. And what did she say. Same as you, really. Why do you continue to tease me like this? Because it’s true. No it isn’t. I saw him. He looked right at me. Someone who looks like P looked at you. It was him. Please stop. Why? Your worrying me. I’m worrying you? Yes. How about I’m worrying myself. How you think it feels to go crazy. To see him everywhere, everywhere I look and he never says anything. Never acknowledges me. How do think that fees. Wait, ean you backup. What do you mean you see him everywhere?

It wasn’t just the public places. Oh no, it was many of the private ones as well. Sometimes at night, brushing his teeth in the upstairs bathroom? He would look out, down into his neigjbours, well manicured back lawn, some trees and flowers , a big round cobblestone patio, in the middle of the patio a round table with four chairs. He would sit there. Not ever looking up. Mostly just sitting, left leg crossed over right, the dull orange glue from the cigarette, brightening and fading in the dark as he sucked the nicotine into his system that no longer pumped blood, that no longer breathed sir. Every once in a while he would brush away a fly or bug from his face full of dead nerves. Sometimes when he would walk the dog at night, he would see him, from the corner of his eye, staring at him from the front window of one apartment or another. Only to disappear, when he would glance up at the window, unsure what would draw his gaze there, in able to define the magnitude of those directions that were delivered so swiftly and so pointedly, racing to the surface of his self consciousness, announcing themselves with a scream.

He him across the parking lot.walking to his car. In his arms, sheathed in th brown paper bags of the liquor store. He him out of the corner of his eye, selecting a snow shovel from the shovel rack as he walked past the aisle in his search for LED lightbulbs. He saw hi at the supermarket, picking up and squeezing the oranges before deciding which one to buy. He saw him everywhere, the dry lean ore, the subway, the coffee shop in the lobby if his office building. He saw him here and he saw him everywhere and he knew that he shouldn’t be seeing him anywhere. That that is not how life works. Once you stop. Once you leave. Once you die. You are no longer. He saw it with his own eyes. He was there the minute it happened. He held his hand and told him he loved him and having a brother was the best thing that ever happened to him. He watched his chest rise one last time watched a smile bend his lips and ccimkle the corner of his eyes. Watched the light drain from his eyes, dimming the blue till nothing was left to shine. He was there at the cemetery when they buried the casket, and was there several days later when the newly engraved headstone looking entirely too new was placed on his grave.

What do you have against camping? When you said it before I wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement? I said it cause I wanted to see if you would soften your stance? Ok. I don’t get it, you live doing stuff with the kids and you live new experiences, so what do you have against camping? The kids would love to go. How do you know the kids would love to go? All kids like camping, I camped as a kid and I loved it. Sleeping in the tent with my sister on C island. You camped a ton as a kid. Yeah I did and I didn’t like it anymore than anymore than I do now. So, seriously what do you have against it? It’s a lot of work, you gotta cook all your meals, you more tired when your finished than when you started, there’s no showers, you have to use an outhouse. You sleep in uncomfortable tents. Okay, you should have said so! I am saying so! I can just take them camping myself. Do we have to decide tonight? No, no we can think in it. What do you have against camping? You liked it when we did it as groups, you know we do those getaways with everybody. Yeah, but. But what? Nothing. C’mon say it. It’s nothing, forget it.

It lasted the briefest of moments. The thought, that is. The thought that he hadn’t’ had forever. The thought that he couldn’t really remember the last time he had it. But tonight it came. Came from the depths, the bowls the cellar if his brain. It stepped, for the briefest of moments out of the shadows and into the light. For no good reason. But it had. It chose this moment to reveal itself. This moment to say, I know you been ignoring me forever but, you know what, I am still here. And you will acknowledge me. So standing in the dark bathroom, illuminated only by moonlight and the snow on the roof, he could not see his reflecting Nodded his head. Tilted every at so slightly downward. Amazed He hadn’t thought about her in years. If the light was on his reflection in the mirror would be smiling. It had been so long since he smiled like this.

I thought you asleep. No, didn’t hear you come up. What are you watching? The mission to Mars thing, Have they found the girl abducted by the alien. No yet. That’s not fun. Sometimes alien movies are like that – anticlimactic. Huh, guess so. Sounds like it’s raining. Did you see the big icycke on J’s power line? E and I were looking at it today. Yeah, crazy how big it was. Something minuet have gotten caught then built it up. Yeah, was looking at it through the bathroom window thinking how crazy large it is, trying to figure out how it even got there in the first place. Then it just fell off and the wire went crazy bouncing all over the place. Your hands feel dry, there terrible. They are horrible. When I phoned the school this afternoon to pick E up, E answered the phone. She says hi dad and I say hi sweetheart I am here ready to pick you up when you come down. Supposed to be five degrees tomorrow. It’s going to be slushyyyyy. You should go to sleep. You to. Goodnight. I love you.

There are many numbers that you have a hard time calculating. How many times gave you ordered pizza, how many bands have you seen play, how many episodes of law and order have you watched? There is one number that you have no problem calculating. That number is how many times have you gone running with the woman who is now your wife. The easy to calculate number is one. You have gone running with the woman who is now your wife exactly once. It was a grey Sunday morning in Vancouver. You spent the night at her place, where you have been spending more and more nights, both weekends and weekdays. This run has come about because you know that she runs. That she likes to run. And you have heard of this thing called running, so perfect! What could possibly go wrong? The other thing you know is that she likes to run with her friends, L and S. You have met both L and S. They are women, they are little, and you imagine that they must run like deers in meadow glen, smooth, their feet barely touching the ground, soundless as a gentle breeze. But you. You are not a woman. You an extra large individual. You run like a drunken moose, loud, snorting, sweating, drooling, occasionally spitting, every once in a shile clearing your nose by placing your forefinger against one nostril then blowing hard with the other. You finish your run. The rain holds off. You opt to go out to breakfast before returning to the apartment. The restaurant is warm. The coffee is hot. The eggs cooked perfectly over easy ooze all over your plate. Look I have something important to tell you, she says. Looking you straight in the eyes. fuck you think, she’s breaking up with me. How can she? We just went running. It was only your first one together. There were so any more to come. You were to see first light in Paris and London, New York and Milan, Moscow, Tokyo and Rome; the two of you, running the cobblestones streets, with just the shoes on our feet and our room key in our pocket; breezing past those starting their day in the dark and those who haven’t yet finished from the evening before. Look, she says, what I am about to say it’s not personal, okay. Shit you think, it’s really true. She’s really going to break up with me right here. And, you don’t know what to say. What’s left to say? It seems like she had already made up her mind. And you know what’s coming next, “your a great guy. There is a women out there who will be so lucky to have you. It’s not you. It’s me.” You hear yourself saying “okay” and fell yourself nodding your head slightly. “ I like being with you but I hate running with you. Let’s not do that anymore.” And you feel yourself smile. “What?” She asks. “Why are you smiling like that?” I don’t know you say. “Okay” she says, and gives you this weird look to indicate she’s confused but in a tone that riddled with invitation to say more. So you open your mouth but stuff it with a forkful of easy over eggs instead. “So we’re good she says. “ Better than good you say” . You drop your visa on the bill which always arrives early,before you ask for it, as the restaurant is known for turning tables at light speed. “Great “ she says. After the eggs are gone from her plate and yours, and the coffee cups are empty for a second time. I have something important to ask you, you say. She straightens a little. “Okay, fire away” she says . “Want to run home?”