guitar?"
"Krishna," Link said. "I noodle a bit, but he's really good."
"He sure is," Alan said. "He was in fine form last night, about threea.m.!" He chuckled pointedly.
There was an awkward silence. Alan slurped down his secondcoffee. "Whoops!" he said. "I believe I need to impose on you for theuse of your facilities?"
"What?" Natalie and Link said simultaneously.
"He wants the toilet," Mimi said. "Up the stairs, second door on theright. Jiggle the handle after you flush."
The bathroom was crowded with too many towels and too manytoothbrushes. The sink was powdered with blusher and marked withlipstick and mascara residue. It made Alan feel at home. He liked youngpeople. Liked their energy, their resentment, and theirenthusiasm. Didn't like their guitar-playing at three a.m.; but he'dsort that out soon enough.
He washed his hands and carefully rinsed the long curly hairs from thebar before replacing it in its dish, then returned to the living room.
"Abel," Mimi said, "sorry if the guitar kept you up last night."
"No sweat," Alan said. "It must be hard to find time to practice whenyou work nights."
"Exactly," Natalie said. "Exactly right! Krishna always practices whenhe comes back from work. He blows off some steam so he can get tobed. We just all learned to sleep through it."
"Well," Alan said, "to be honest, I'm hoping I won't have to learn to dothat. But I think that maybe I have a solution we can both live with."
"What's that?" Mimi said, jutting her chin forward.
"It's easy, really. I can put up a resilient channel and a baffle alongthat wall there, soundproofing. I'll paint it over white and you won'teven notice the difference. Shouldn't take me more than a week. Happy todo it. Thick walls make good neighbors."
"We don't really have any money to pay for renovations," Mimi said.
Alan waved his hand. "Who said anything about money? I just want tosolve the problem. I'd do it on my side of the wall, but I've justfinished renovating."
Mimi shook her head. "I don't think the landlord would go for it."
"You worry too much," he said. "Give me your landlord's number and I'llsort it out with him, all right?"
"All right!" Link said. "That's terrific, Albert, really!"
"All right, Mimi? Natalie?"
Natalie nodded enthusiastically, her shaved head whipping up and down onher thin neck precariously. Mimi glared at Natalie and Link. "I'll askKrishna," she said.
"All right, then!" Alan said. "Let me measure up the wall and I'll startshopping for supplies." He produced a matte black, egg-shaped digitaltape measure and started shining pinpoints of laser light on the wall,clicking the egg's buttons when he had the corners tight. The Portugueseclerks at his favorite store had dissolved into hysterics when he'dproudly shown them the $300 gadget, but they were consistently impressed
by the exacting CAD drawings of his projects that he generated with itsoutput. Natalie and Link stared in fascination as he did his thing withmore showmanship than was technically necessary, though Mimi made apoint of rolling her eyes.
"Don't go spending any money yet, cowboy," she said. "I've still got totalk to Krishna, and *you've* still got to talk with the landlord."
He fished in the breast pocket of his jean jacket and found a stub ofpencil and a little steno pad, scribbled his cell phone number, and toreoff the sheet. He passed the sheet, pad, and pencil to Mimi, who wroteout the landlord's number and passed it back to him.
"Okay!" Alan said. "There you go. It's been a real pleasure meeting youfolks. I know we're going to get along great. I'll call your landlordright away and you call me once Krishna's up, and I'll see you tomorrowat ten a.m. to start construction, God willin' and the crick don'trise."
Link stood and extended his hand. "Nice to meet you, Albert," hesaid. "Really. Thanks for the muds, too." Natalie gave him a bony hug,and Mimi gave him a limp handshake, and then he was out in the sunshine,head full of designs and logistics and plans.
#
The sun set at nine p.m. in a long summertime blaze. Alan sat down onthe twig-chair on his front porch, pulled up the matching twig table,and set down a wine glass and the bottle of Niagara Chardonnay he'dbrought up from the cellar. He poured out a glass and held it up to thelight, admiring the new blister he'd gotten on his pinky finger whilehauling two-by-fours and gyprock from his truck to his neighbors' frontroom. Kids rode by on bikes and punks rode by on skateboards. Coupleswandered through the park across the street, their murmurousconversations clear on the whispering breeze that rattled the leaves.
He hadn't gotten any writing done, but that was all right. He had plentyof time, and once the soundwall was in, he'd be able to get a goodnight's sleep and really focus down on the story.
A Chinese girl and a white boy walked down the sidewalk, talkingintensely. They were all of six, and the boy had a Russian accent. TheMarket's diversity always excited Alan. The boy looked a little likeAlan's brother Doug (Dan, David, Dearborne) had looked when he was thatage.
Doug was the one he'd helped murder. All the brothers had helped withthe murder, even Charlie (Clem, Carlos, Cory), the island, who'd openeda great fissure down his main fault line and closed it up over Doug'scorpse, ensuring that their parents would be none the wiser. Doug was astubborn son-of-a-bitch, though, and his corpse had tunneled up over thenext six years, built a raft from the bamboo and vines that grew inproliferation on Carlos's west coast. He sailed the raft throughtreacherous seas for a year and a day, beached it on their father'sgentle slope, and presented himself to their mother. By that time, thecorpse had decayed and frayed and worn away, so that he was little morethan a torso and stumps, his tongue withered and stiff, but he pled hiscase to their mother, and she was so upset that her load overbalancedand they had to restart her. Their father was so angry that he quakedand caved in Billy (Bob, Brad, Benny)'s room, crushing all his tools andall his trophies.
But a lot of time had gone by and the brothers weren't kidsanymore. Alan was nineteen, ready to move to Toronto and start scoutingfor real estate. Only Doug still looked like a little boy, albeit astumpy and desiccated one. He hollered and stamped until his fingerbonesrattled on the floor and his tongue flew across the room and cracked onthe wall. When his anger was spent, he crawled atop their mother and lether rock him into a long, long slumber.
Alan had left his father and his family the next morning, carrying arucksack heavy with gold from under the mountain and walked down to thetown, taking the same trail he'd walked every school day since he wasfive. He waved to the people that drove past him on the highway as hewaited at the bus stop. He was the first son to leave home under his ownpower, and he'd been full of butterflies, but he had a half-dozen goodbooks that he'd checked out of the Kapuskasing branch library to keephim occupied on the 14-hour journey, and before he knew it, the bus waspulling off the Gardiner Expressway by the SkyDome and into the midnightstreets of Toronto, where the buildings stretched to the sky, where theblinking lights of the Yonge Street sleaze-strip receded into thedistance like a landing strip for a horny UFO.
His liquid cash was tight, so he spent that night in the Rex Hotel, inthe worst room in the house, right over the cymbal tree that thejazz-drummer below hammered on until nearly two a.m.. The bed was smalland hard and smelled of bleach and must, the washbasin gurgledmysteriously and spat out moist sewage odors, and he'd read all hisbooks, so he sat in the window and watched the drunks and the hipstersstagger down Queen Street and inhaled the smoky air and before he knewit, he'd nodded off in the chair with his heavy coat around him like ablanket.
The Chinese girl abruptly thumped her fist into the Russian boy'sear. He clutched his head and howled, tears streaming down his face,while the Chinese girl ran off. Alan shook his head, got up off hischair, went inside for a cold washcloth and an ice pack, and came backout.
The Russian boy's face was screwed up and blotchy and streaked withtears, and it made him look even more like Doug, who'd always been acrybaby. Alan couldn't und
erstand him, but he took a guess and knelt athis side and wiped the boy's face, then put the ice pack in his littlehand and pressed it to the side of his little head.
"Come on," he said, taking the boy's other hand. "Where do your parentslive? I'll take you home."
#
Alan met Krishna the next morning at ten a.m., as Alan was running atable saw on the neighbors' front lawn, sawing studs up to fit thesecond wall. Krishna came out of the house in a dirty dressing gown, hisshort hair matted