Sawyer Paul's Blog, page 47

Spring 2016 Novel Progress and Publishing Plan

Throughout this winter, I’ve been compiling a first draft to a novel I’m calling Skypunch. This novel has gone by a number of titles in the past few years, and has in fact *been* entirely other books/stories in that time. As of April 2016, my first draft is around 80% complete. It’s a tough thing to measure, so by that I mean I want it to be a 70,000 word story and I’ve got 56,000 words I’d like to include (the total word count with deleted content is around the 80,000 mark). I’m shooting loosely for a June first draft. At that point, I’ll be handing the draft off to an editor, and we’ll go from there.

Unlike with No Chinook (2008) and A Record Year for Rainfall (2011), I’m going to try to publish Skypunch with a traditional publisher. It may not work, and if it doesn’t the book will eventually live here and be available to everyone. But I’d like to give traditional publishing a try. I want to go through the submission/rejection process. I want to speak to agents and editors and have help developing this story.

But I have another reason to try out traditional publishing. Over the years, I’ve amassed a good deal of stories and information from other authors, and I’d like to know how much of it is true. Hopefully, very little will check out. I’d like a lot of my misconceptions to get refuted.

For many years, I wrestled with the idea of working with publishers. It could just be some leftover punk idealism, but I believe the literary world would be a little better off if authors controlled more steps in the chain of production. I think it’s better if the final product closely resembles what *you* wanted it to be. And maybe I’m wrong about this, but from what I’ve heard, a lot of things about your work gets altered on the way to a customer.

In the literary production line, the major steps are writing, editing, publishing, distribution, and marketing. The self-publishing market that’s been propped up by Amazon, Createspace, Lulu, and others, have allowed authors to try to do every step on their own. I’ve gone this route with every book I’ve published so far. It has had the benefit of the final product looking pretty close to the object I want, but that’s mostly about the specific layout of words in the book. I’ve never thought highly of their printed products. Cheap glue, thick bright white paper and glossy covers, and rigid size options can limit the potential of the product.

It’s not like there aren’t great printers out there, but they cost a lot and they won’t print your books one at a time. They’ll print it in the hundreds or thousands, which places a lot of pressure on your book to move units. It also places pressure on you to think of your book as a unit.

On top of that, self-publishing isn’t as rewarding as you might think at the beginning. Not to say anything of the almost invisible sales, it simply isn’t a rewarding artistic experience. If you’re looking to control every aspect of the publishing chain, going with these template services can make your process feel cookie cutter. You still have to write a pithy description and put a singular price point on your page. And it has to sit next to more professional and popular works, which can’t help but make your product seem sad in comparison. This method has never caught on past new authors and it’s easy to see why. It’s lousy.

Of course, trying to publish with a reputable house has its drawbacks as well. For one thing, they don’t have to publish you. There is a gate and you have to be let in. And this hurts the ego, because as you see it they’re rejecting this thing that you *love*. You spent years writing this story, and all you get is a polite no (if you’re lucky). Also, it’s not just *a* gate but *gates*. Your book will get painfully rejected by a team of very qualified editors and agents before it’ll ever get rejected by a publisher. And it will, because this is how the process is designed.

And if your book does somehow impress an editor enough for them to work on it, your book will change. Your editor will forever alter it. Your agent will get *you* to alter it. And your publisher will alter it further. They’ll put a cover on it you won’t like. They’ll write a byline that betrays all the themes. They’ll smooth out the rough parts. And this is if everything works out as designed. This is the *best* case scenario.

This is how the donuts are made, with collaboration and letting the people who know better and have earned a say have that say. Your editor or agent or publisher may not know or care about how *you* feel about all this, but it isn’t their job to care. You wrote a story that you love, but that doesn’t mean anyone else will give a damn. It’s the job of editors, agents, and publishers to help a total stranger across the world care about your book. And this is what makes them amazing. I can’t do that. I don’t even know where to start.

I wonder if the problem is that it has to become a team sport. It’s one thing if a project starts out as a team effort, but that’s almost never how a book starts out. Writing a book is a hugely personal and intimate experience and there’s a lot of trepidation handing it over to a team of people who will turn it into something that they believe they can sell.

If this is actually how things are, then I imagine I won’t spend a lot of time in that world. I’d love to be proven wrong. I’d love for it to work.

All you can hope for at the end of the process is that the essence of your story is strong enough to survive the transition. That’s the true test of a great story anyway. How well does it fare in someone else’s hands?

I know a lot of this isn’t right, or based on old ideas with poor context. I want to know better.

But if it does work, and I go through this process and it all works out, I’d still like to see a change in publishing for the sake of the author’s original intent. I’d like to see “author’s cuts” of novels where the story as published is 100% author intention, much like how there are directors cuts of certain films. Maybe it would be cleaned up in some copy edited sense, but just without any alterations to story or theme. I’d like to see that text live next to the finished version, the one built out of the original to cater to the widest possible audience.

Spring 2016 Novel Progress and Publishing Plan

Throughout this winter, I’ve been compiling a first draft to a novel I’m calling Skypunch. This novel has gone by a number of titles in the past few years, and has in fact been entirely other books/stories in that time. As of April 2016, my first draft is around 80% complete. It’s a tough thing to measure, so by that I mean I want it to be a 70,000 word story and I’ve got 56,000 words I’d like to include (the total word count with deleted content is around the 80,000 mark). I’m shooting loosely for a June first draft. At that point, I’ll be handing the draft off to an editor, and we’ll go from there.

Unlike with No Chinook (2008) and A Record Year for Rainfall (2011), I’m going to try to publish Skypunch with a traditional publisher. It may not work, and if it doesn’t the book will eventually live here and be available to everyone. But I’d like to give traditional publishing a try. I want to go through the submission/rejection process. I want to speak to agents and editors and have help developing this story.

But I have another reason to try out traditional publishing. Over the years, I’ve amassed a good deal of stories and information from other authors, and I’d like to know how much of it is true. Hopefully, very little will check out. I’d like a lot of my misconceptions to get refuted.

For many years, I wrestled with the idea of working with publishers. It could just be some leftover punk idealism, but I believe the literary world would be a little better off if authors controlled more steps in the chain of production. I think it’s better if the final product closely resembles what you wanted it to be. And maybe I’m wrong about this, but from what I’ve heard, a lot of things about your work gets altered on the way to a customer.

In the literary production line, the major steps are writing, editing, publishing, distribution, and marketing. The self-publishing market that’s been propped up by Amazon, Createspace, Lulu, and others, have allowed authors to try to do every step on their own. I’ve gone this route with every book I’ve published so far. It has had the benefit of the final product looking pretty close to the object I want, but that’s mostly about the specific layout of words in the book. I’ve never thought highly of their printed products. Cheap glue, thick bright white paper and glossy covers, and rigid size options can limit the potential of the product.

It’s not like there aren’t great printers out there, but they cost a lot and they won’t print your books one at a time. They’ll print it in the hundreds or thousands, which places a lot of pressure on your book to move units. It also places pressure on you to think of your book as a unit.

On top of that, self-publishing isn’t as rewarding as you might think at the beginning. Not to say anything of the almost invisible sales, it simply isn’t a rewarding artistic experience. If you’re looking to control every aspect of the publishing chain, going with these template services can make your process feel cookie cutter. You still have to write a pithy description and put a singular price point on your page. And it has to sit next to more professional and popular works, which can’t help but make your product seem sad in comparison. This method has never caught on past new authors and it’s easy to see why. It’s lousy.

Of course, trying to publish with a reputable house has its drawbacks as well. For one thing, they don’t have to publish you. There is a gate and you have to be let in. And this hurts the ego, because as you see it they’re rejecting this thing that you love. You spent years writing this story, and all you get is a polite no (if you’re lucky). Also, it’s not just a gate but gates. Your book will get painfully rejected by a team of very qualified editors and agents before it’ll ever get rejected by a publisher. And it will, because this is how the process is designed.

And if your book does somehow impress an editor enough for them to work on it, your book will change. Your editor will forever alter it. Your agent will get you to alter it. And your publisher will alter it further. They’ll put a cover on it you won’t like. They’ll write a byline that betrays all the themes. They’ll smooth out the rough parts. And this is if everything works out as designed. This is the best case scenario.

This is how the donuts are made, with collaboration and letting the people who know better and have earned a say have that say. Your editor or agent or publisher may not know or care about how you feel about all this, but it isn’t their job to care. You wrote a story that you love, but that doesn’t mean anyone else will give a damn. It’s the job of editors, agents, and publishers to help a total stranger across the world care about your book. And this is what makes them amazing. I can’t do that. I don’t even know where to start.

I wonder if the problem is that it has to become a team sport. It’s one thing if a project starts out as a team effort, but that’s almost never how a book starts out. Writing a book is a hugely personal and intimate experience and there’s a lot of trepidation handing it over to a team of people who will turn it into something that they believe they can sell.

If this is actually how things are, then I imagine I won’t spend a lot of time in that world. I’d love to be proven wrong. I’d love for it to work.

All you can hope for at the end of the process is that the essence of your story is strong enough to survive the transition. That’s the true test of a great story anyway. How well does it fare in someone else’s hands?

I know a lot of this isn’t right, or based on old ideas with poor context. I want to know better.

But if it does work, and I go through this process and it all works out, I’d still like to see a change in publishing for the sake of the author’s original intent. I’d like to see “author’s cuts” of novels where the story as published is 100% author intention, much like how there are directors cuts of certain films. Maybe it would be cleaned up in some copy edited sense, but just without any alterations to story or theme. I’d like to see that text live next to the finished version, the one built out of the original to cater to the widest possible audience.

Spring 2016 Novel Progress and Publishing Plan

Throughout this winter, I’ve been compiling a first draft to a novel I’m calling Skypunch. This novel has gone by a number of titles in the past few years, and has in fact been entirely other books/stories in that time. As of April 2016, my first draft is around 80% complete. It’s a tough thing to measure, so by that I mean I want it to be a 70,000 word story and I’ve got 56,000 words I’d like to include (the total word count with deleted content is around the 80,000 mark). I’m shooting loosely for a June first draft. At that point, I’ll be handing the draft off to an editor, and we’ll go from there.

Unlike with No Chinook (2008) and A Record Year for Rainfall (2011), I’m going to try to publish Skypunch with a traditional publisher. It may not work, and if it doesn’t the book will eventually live here and be available to everyone. But I’d like to give traditional publishing a try. I want to go through the submission/rejection process. I want to speak to agents and editors and have help developing this story.

But I have another reason to try out traditional publishing. Over the years, I’ve amassed a good deal of stories and information from other authors, and I’d like to know how much of it is true. Hopefully, very little will check out. I’d like a lot of my misconceptions to get refuted.

For many years, I wrestled with the idea of working with publishers. It could just be some leftover punk idealism, but I believe the literary world would be a little better off if authors controlled more steps in the chain of production. I think it’s better if the final product closely resembles what you wanted it to be. And maybe I’m wrong about this, but from what I’ve heard, a lot of things about your work gets altered on the way to a customer.

In the literary production line, the major steps are writing, editing, publishing, distribution, and marketing. The self-publishing market that’s been propped up by Amazon, Createspace, Lulu, and others, have allowed authors to try to do every step on their own. I’ve gone this route with every book I’ve published so far. It has had the benefit of the final product looking pretty close to the object I want, but that’s mostly about the specific layout of words in the book. I’ve never thought highly of their printed products. Cheap glue, thick bright white paper and glossy covers, and rigid size options can limit the potential of the product.

It’s not like there aren’t great printers out there, but they cost a lot and they won’t print your books one at a time. They’ll print it in the hundreds or thousands, which places a lot of pressure on your book to move units. It also places pressure on you to think of your book as a unit.

On top of that, self-publishing isn’t as rewarding as you might think at the beginning. Not to say anything of the almost invisible sales, it simply isn’t a rewarding artistic experience. If you’re looking to control every aspect of the publishing chain, going with these template services can make your process feel cookie cutter. You still have to write a pithy description and put a singular price point on your page. And it has to sit next to more professional and popular works, which can’t help but make your product seem sad in comparison. This method has never caught on past new authors and it’s easy to see why. It’s lousy.

Of course, trying to publish with a reputable house has its drawbacks as well. For one thing, they don’t have to publish you. There is a gate and you have to be let in. And this hurts the ego, because as you see it they’re rejecting this thing that you love. You spent years writing this story, and all you get is a polite no (if you’re lucky). Also, it’s not just a gate but gates. Your book will get painfully rejected by a team of very qualified editors and agents before it’ll ever get rejected by a publisher. And it will, because this is how the process is designed.

And if your book does somehow impress an editor enough for them to work on it, your book will change. Your editor will forever alter it. Your agent will get you to alter it. And your publisher will alter it further. They’ll put a cover on it you won’t like. They’ll write a byline that betrays all the themes. They’ll smooth out the rough parts. And this is if everything works out as designed. This is the best case scenario.

This is how the donuts are made, with collaboration and letting the people who know better and have earned a say have that say. Your editor or agent or publisher may not know or care about how you feel about all this, but it isn’t their job to care. You wrote a story that you love, but that doesn’t mean anyone else will give a damn. It’s the job of editors, agents, and publishers to help a total stranger across the world care about your book. And this is what makes them amazing. I can’t do that. I don’t even know where to start.

I wonder if the problem is that it has to become a team sport. It’s one thing if a project starts out as a team effort, but that’s almost never how a book starts out. Writing a book is a hugely personal and intimate experience and there’s a lot of trepidation handing it over to a team of people who will turn it into something that they believe they can sell.

If this is actually how things are, then I imagine I won’t spend a lot of time in that world. I’d love to be proven wrong. I’d love for it to work.

All you can hope for at the end of the process is that the essence of your story is strong enough to survive the transition. That’s the true test of a great story anyway. How well does it fare in someone else’s hands?

I know a lot of this isn’t right, or based on old ideas with poor context. I want to know better.

But if it does work, and I go through this process and it all works out, I’d still like to see a change in publishing for the sake of the author’s original intent. I’d like to see “author’s cuts” of novels where the story as published is 100% author intention, much like how there are directors cuts of certain films. Maybe it would be cleaned up in some copy edited sense, but just without any alterations to story or theme. I’d like to see that text live next to the finished version, the one built out of the original to cater to the widest possible audience.

Brief thought

Are my characters horrible? That's not my intention. I only want them to be interesting, to do interesting things and have interesting things happen. I do need to work on my upsides. I don't know if the rewards are there for my characters, at least enough to compensate for their hardships. Maybe that's the pro wrestling fan in me. I'm used to seeing characters I feel so much for go through so much, for years, only to get a moment or two of glory, and even then only if they're very lucky. But that's true enough in most fiction. The general mandate of a rising action towards a singular moment of growth, pain, reflection, etc., more or less dictates that the protagonists are going to have to go through some mud. In No Chinook, I put in that series of a few days in the middle there where everything was fine (during the Chinook, actually) in order to give the characters a respite from their self-imposed drama. In Rainfall, I wanted Bret and Tess to be happy any time they were together, and for their drama to happen whenever they were apart. In Corona Gale, Sprites, Moonbow, and My Lover's Phone, I'm a little meaner. As I put it all together, I'm trying very hard to keep from being a sadist to my characters. I want them to have an adventure, and to gamble and lose at times, and be human ultimately. But I actually do just want the best for them. I want to put them in their best place by the end. 

Blog reorganization

Over the next little while, I'm going to be doing some reshuffling here. It took me a long time to get all of International Object in one place, and I've realized that what I want to do with that blog going forward is to be a place where my ideas slowly form through commentary on culture. That means I can use this, my main blog, to be only for my own work. That's mostly how it will play. This blog: me. IO: my thoughts on other things. 

I'll be merging the two Twitter accounts. The new IO twitter never really gained traction anyways.

Corona Gale, nightly build 3.2.2

This is how she fights.

Dusted violins in the rain, their instrumentalists stomping, invincible, vesuviating[To erupt; explode; fulminate.], blind and immortal, sienna leather coats with hoods, the violin chinrests jutted into these hoods in a way that caused a crink in their necks, all of them with the same gait, who knows how many, a dark alley full at least, all playing the same dreamy azure note. They provide the soundtrack. They existed in the old quarter of Kate Foley’s reverie[an idle daydream; a thought of idle desire; a surrendering to imagination], and came out when she needed dramatic focus. Their notes played over her worrying subconscious. Each thrum on the strings played over doubt, double-speak, concerns, and nonsense thoughts that would have slowed Kate down.

These make believe instrumentalists were part of a system Kate learned a long time ago. It’s an easy enough one to remember, but difficult to implement correctly over long periods of time. The problem most people who try to use this system have is they can’t get them to appear at the right moment. The band should start playing just before the doubt. This is difficult. Anticipating your own mind’s duologue and countering it with imaginary distractions takes practice, but anyone can try. There’s no special skill required. Make up a band of some kind. Make up a setting for them. Make up a reason for them to play. Give the band a set of instruments you can’t ignore, that can be played violently, to play over the beats of your own mind. And then, don’t let them stop until after your focus has become a weapon, and after that weapon has struck.

Kate’s inner duologue[Is this the right word for this?] was trying to tell her not to run after Ollie. 

The violins thrummed. Did Ollie have a soundtrack for moments like this? Or would he have thought it unnecessary artiface? If she had told him about the violinists in the rain and dust, their purpose, creation, and how she was taught to think of this as a logical step 1, which part would he judge first?

Kate ran into the storm. It hadn't started yet, but was on its way. She couldn't feel it, but she could see the storm clouds off in the distance, beside hills, on their way to drown an hour. Ollie was half a block away. She saw his truck parked just past him. If he made it, and didn't wait for her, there wasn't anything to say tonight. She might drive back to his apartment and yell at the windows. She might throw a rock. She could get in if she wanted to. She didn't have a key but had also never needed a key.

But when she got in, what words would undo the damage Shawn caused with the pilfered text? He had told the truth.

Kate yelled out.

That was step two. Know exactly what to say. First, the violins. Then, the speech.

Kate had counted on having a whole week with Ollie. She was going to make so much more than the most of it. Tonight, when she found her way home from a night of great advice from a reliable mentor and friend, Kate would have snuggled on the couch with Ollie as they watched the Flames win in an upset. They would have drank the bottle of wine she'd chilled and he remembered to take out before it totally froze. They would have drank another. And they would have rode one another on the couch afterward, and then he would have picked her up and carried her, her hand slapping his ass in the hallway on the way to bed, where he'd drop her and let her jump back up into him, dropping him to the damned floor where the rest of the clothes would end up. She'd take care of him in the way he liked and told her about. He'd do what she told him to. It was a fantasy anyway, so everything would work and nobody would get tired or pull anything. They'd fall asleep while listening to the classic rock station. It was a fantasy anyway, so they'd actually play something good for a goddamned change.

They wouldn't do exactly that for the next six days, but that evening would somehow last all six days. As if watching the best television and having the best sex and falling asleep next to the best person was an action that could take up a week, or a life, as if it could get any better than that, week after week finding out that you'd chosen right, that you'd gotten to choose at all.

And at the end of the week she would call it.

They were parked in opposite directions from the house. If she didn't catch him, he'd have an awful head start. But he knew she was behind him. She called out. She knew every word she was going to say. She had counters. She would win this. She would get what she wanted.

When Ollie reached his truck, he stopped and turned around. He waited for her to catch up. He wasn't going to leave without her. They were going to talk here in the street as clouds formed above them, moving across the horizon at such speeds.

Ollie asked, "How true is this?"

Kate tried to hug him but he shoved her off. "Answer me," he repeated. "How true is this? You're leaving me in a week. What is that? And who was that at the house? Are you leaving me for him? What the hell is going on?"

It was as if standing next to his truck gave Ollie the confidence to go on the offensive.

But Kate still heard the violins. Nothing about his questions stopped her plan. She played her first card. She told him it was hard to explain, and that it was about to downpour, that they should go get a drink somehwere quiet where they can work on this.

"No, fuck that, you're giving me a yes or no on this."

"Ollie," she said. "It's so much more complicated than that."

"Maybe I need to ask you differently. In seven days, are we a couple? Next Saturday, are you gone?"

A drop of rain landed on Kate. If she ran now, she might get back to her car before it really hit. So she told him that instead of answering. He didn't care about the rain, which was a convenient stance when leaning against your own vehicle. 

Sonder

Sonder
"the realization that each random passerby is living a life
as vivid and complex as your own."

After about three years of being without an iOS device, I purchased an iPod Touch last month. Primarily, I bought the thing so that I could have an Rdio app that worked (the one on Windows Phone is really sad) and access to Overcast, the great podcast app by Marco Arment. And there were apps I missed using, none more so than Instapaper, the offline reading app. I got by with Pocket, and enjoyed its integration with my Kobo and Windows Phone (Poki is an example of a truly excellent WP app), but Instapaper has a polish Pocket never had. I've been reading with it a lot more, and by doing so remembered that I used to have a category on my blog called Sonder that I use to share interesting links. 

Instapaper is different from reading fiction, as I mostly find myself saving "longform" articles. I'm as guilty as anyone of "saving" an article that I "should" read in my que forever, only to flush it after it's perhaps lost some relevance. But when I do read them, I often want to share them. 

I noticed other people doing similar things: collecting a week or two's worth of their favourite links (these are still my favourite). Through their links, I don't necessarily feel like I've learned about them as people, but I have a great sense of their taste. And there's something nice in appreciating someone's taste, while stopping short of being a creepy lurky person that I honestly try to be as not as often as possible.

Anyways.

The Secret of the Apple’s New San Francisco Fonts

What have impressed me about San Francisco fonts is the way colons (:) are displayed. Basically, a colon will be placed right above the baseline, so it’s not vertically centered if it is placed between numbers. San Francisco fonts, on the other hand, will make it vertically centered automatically.

How a Literary Magazine Editor Finds New Writers

That’s all editors do sometimes. Read the slush. Tell the ones we meet to try. Listen to a writer’s supporters.

super mario bros. 3 (****) 

I want beautiful friction, I want it to never end until I die, either in the game or in real life. I want to feel good when I’m in control. That’s basically all it comes down to. And at its best, Super Mario Bros. 3, steeped in lore, big and bulky and bubbling and never lumbering, offers pure kinetic motion of a more psychologically thrilling level than any game before or since. 

The Plot Twist: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far From Dead





























Nom De Vie: Literary Social Media in the Age of Ferrante

The cause of the “unlikable character” has been popular to champion in recent years but as of this writing, there is no room for the “unlikable author.” Perhaps until now. Because Elena Ferrante does not care if you want to be her friend.

Hannibal Redefined How We Tell Stories on Television

 No series, Twin Peaks included, has quite managed to be as deadly serious but also as winkingly ludicrous, so that you can’t easily separate one mode of presentation from the other. The show is an outrageous joke that’s not funny at all, and a horror show that’s very funny, at the same time, without contradiction.

Corona Gale, nightly build 3.2.1

This is how she fights.

Dusted violins in the rain, their instrumentalists stomping, invincible, vesuviating, blind and immortal, sienna leather coats with hoods, the violin chinrests jutted into these hoods in a way that caused a crink in their necks, all of them with the same gait, who knows how many, a dark alley full at least, all playing the same dreamy azure note. They provide the soundtrack. They existed in the old quarter of Kate Foley’s reverie, and came out when she needed dramatic focus. Their notes played over her worrying subconscious. Each thrum on the strings played over doubt, double-speak, concerns, and nonsense thoughts that would have slowed Kate down.

These make believe instrumentalists were part of a system Kate learned a long time ago. It’s an easy enough one to remember, but difficult to implement correctly over long periods of time. The problem most people who try to use this system have is they can’t get them to appear at the right moment. The band should start playing just before the doubt. This is difficult. Anticipating your own mind’s duologue and countering it with imaginary distractions takes practice, but anyone can try. There’s no special skill required. Make up a band of some kind. Make up a setting for them. Make up a reason for them to play. Give the band a set of instruments you can’t ignore, that can be played violently, to play over the beats of your own mind. And then, don’t let them stop until after your focus has become a weapon, and after that weapon has struck.

Kate’s inner duologue was trying to tell her not to run after Ollie.  

Corona Gale, nightly build 2.2.8

Kate didn’t take Ollie to the party. She considered inviting him, debated if it was a good idea to introduce Ollie to Shawn, but gambled against it. First, there was the chance that Shawn would bring up some past. It generally wasn’t like Shawn to be overly dramatic, but she also hadn’t seen him in a few weeks (months?). Perhaps he’d grown the skill, or found someone to teach him. Shawn was one of her best friends, someone she could honestly say have her back in dark times, had known her all her adult life, and could be counted on. She had these things down, but questioned if they were ever actually true. She had reason to doubt some of them, but mostly because she had reason to doubt herself.

But from time to time, Kate swayed on this doubt. Were any of the friendships she allocated in life actually mean the same things to them as they did to her? When she would go a year or more without speaking to someone, she wondered if that friendship was in abeyance—resting, or forgotten. Someone like Alice, she figured, must’ve felt the same way earlier this afternoon. Alice might have had in her head an idea of Kate as a friend, and found a certain crushing in the realization that she’d been forgotten. But what would’ve been crushed? Was it a delusionary feeling that Kate both remembered her and fondly remembered her, had wanted to get in touch but had found no way to, even though they probably knew some of the same people, and were almost certainly two clicks away on social media? Or was it an acceptance of an assumption? The same two clicks applied to Alice. She could’ve made some effort, and chose not to. Alice remembered Kate, but maybe didn’t need her in her life. Kate hoped Alice felt the same way Kate felt about many of her friends. To see them in the surprises delightful, but to see their faces on her phone every day was depressing.

Kate found herself in a suburb. It was geographically uninteresting, and could’ve been set in any town in North America. That she was in a Calgarian suburb didn’t seem to matter much except for preparation, which is why hugging her right side sat a messenger bag holding a raincoat and a pair of gloves. These were in case it hailed later. She did not like getting caught in hail with nothing. The weather report had no hail in it, but that did not matter. Neither did the weather report most days. She, along with most of the city, had no idea why they even hire weatherman in Calgary. It would save a lot of money and be equally useful to simply have a shruggie gif on repeat. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It is somewhat easy to find Shawn’s house. Like all decent suburban parties, his was the house with all the cars in front. There were four cars, all different colors shapes and sizes in his driveway. There were three more flanking on the street, and three more on the other side of the street flanking another driveway. One of the cars in the driveway was a seven seater but most others were coups, most fairly new looking, only two with cracked windows. As Kate approached, she noticed two guys sitting on the porch step, each holding a beer.

One of them said to her, “Hey, you’re incredibly late, and you weren’t even supposed to be here. I’m going to have to take your number down.”

Kate blinked. She said, “Is that, like, a line you’ve been practicing?”

The guy smiled. He nodded.

“How’s it been working out?” She asked.

He held up his phone. “I got one so far.”

Kate looked at the phone. “This is the number for Una. It’s good though. I didn’t think pizza went with wine, but, you know what? I was super wrong.”

The other guy laughed.

“Yo,” he said to the sad guy with the fake number. “Maybe she wants to get pizza with you.”

Kate shrugged in agreement. “Good luck,” she said, going inside.

The other reason they didn’t invite Ollie to this party was because Ollie wouldn’t be in her life for very much longer. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to confuse her friends; they’d seen her with different guys and knew that she was particularly one for commitment. She want to confuse Ollie. She didn’t want introductions to weigh on anything. Because they would like him, and there was a danger of him liking them. It would make things tougher. In truth, she was going to zip in, talk to Shawn, zip out, go back to Ollie and spend the night with them. She was going to spend every night left with him. But she wasn’t going to share him. And she wasn’t going to give him hope.

Instead of joining her, Ollie was out with his friend Chambers. Chambers was a normal guy who preferred his last name, probably because he spent some time in military school, or played a little too much high school sports, or just hated his first name, Kate didn’t know for sure. But in a very male friendship sort of way, Ollie and Chambers had set things they liked to do. Chambers came over to watch Flames and Stampeders games, and occasionally they would go to a bar, Ollie doing his best to help Chambers find a suitable girl.tonight was a bar night, and Kate was sure she would receive a text or two about how the affair was going. In any case, all he wasn’t left alone, left to wonder why Katie wouldn’t want him around her friends.

Besides, what friends were even in this house? Shawn, obviously. Alice, she supposed. But who else would even be there? Had she forgotten more people? Had she actually cared about little? Would she, upon entering the kitchen or the back deck, be inundated with how are you’s and it’s been so long’s? Would it be a high school reunion? It could be. Shawn knew her in high school. But, no. That wouldn’t make sense. Shawn knew her, but didn’t go to her school. He was older than her, halfway through college when they met in her senior year. But then again, Shawn knew everybody. He was the guy who knew everybody.

Through the foyer, she could see a lot of house. To the right, fairly open room with half a dozen people inside all standing in a circle, and drink in one hand and a plate of finger food in the other. Dressed well, three of them turned to look at her, all with the same unrecognizing leer. She would not have to reintroduce herself to these people. She kept her shoes on and proceeded.

“Hello?” a woman asked Kate from behind her. Kate turned around and slightly bent her knees and elbows out of instinct. She braced, which put the girl on a bit of an edge.

“Well why didn’t you say you were security? Could have used you an hour ago.” 

The girl was wearing white runners, a cargo vest, and a button-up blouse. It was like she’d searched for “boat wear from the 70s” and bought the lot. Kate said, “Sorry, you startled me.”

“Well, we’re even,” she said. “I saw you come in while I was in the dining room, so I thought I’d introduce myself. I’m Madelina. Welcome to my party.”

Kate heard the name and did her best not to snicker. She hadn’t heard a name like that since she read fantasy novels as a junior. She instead focused on the fact that this wasn’t Shawn’s party. Did she have the wrong house?

“Kate,” she said, introducing herself with a handshake. Madelina’s palm was sweaty. Talcum’d.

“I hope you don’t mind me just coming up like this. If I can ask, though, were you invited?”

“Sure,” Kate said. “Alice told me there was a party.”

A look Kate saw coming appeared on Madelina. She didn’t know who Alice was.

Kate’s phone buzzed in her messenger bag.

“Shawn,” Kate said quickly enough. “I’m an old friend of Shawn’s.”

Madelina motioned with her drink-holding hand to a couch, but nothing from her martini glass hit air. It wasn’t clear if saying Shawn’s name was enough, but Kate did as suggested and took a seat on the farthest end of a long brown-leather sofa that felt like it had been delivered an hour ago.

“Are you divorced?” Madelina asked.

Kate’s bag, now sitting at his feet, buzzed again. “Excuse me,” she deferred, and reached in. It was a message from Ollie.

—Chambers thinks the drawer thing was cheesy.

Looking back at Madelina, Kate said, “not yet.”

Kate shook her head. “Also, isn’t that kind of a personal question?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I can be too forward sometimes. But, it’s just that, this is…well, you know what this is. It’s strange that you’re here alone is all. Shawn said there wouldn’t be any actual single people here tonight. So that’s why I asked, since she must have thought you were with a partner. I’m sorry again, but are you sure you’re not with anyone?”

—I don’t know. I thought it was sweet.

—Okay, maybe a little corny.

—Anyways, just wanted to say hi.

—How’s your evening going? We’re losing. Chambers struck out twice.

Kate said, “I’m with someone.”

Before Madelina could go on, a woman came by with a tray. She was dressed in all black, and carried a demure attitude that gave away that she was on the clock. On the tray were glasses of champagne and martinis. Kate and Madelina took one of each, and the woman took Madelina’s now-empty martini glass. Everyone said thank you.

Madelina bit her lower lip. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just that my husband, well, him and I are not on the best of terms right now. Jack is, that’s my husband, Jack, he’s a recovering addict, and I thought something like this, where we, together, well, might help. Of sorts.”

Kate peered at this girl. She was like a TV show, something there for Kate’s popcorn-chewing entertainment, something she didn’t really have anything to do with but couldn’t help but poke at a little, to see if there was more meat on the bone.

Kate said, “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. If I can ask, what was he addicted to? Alcohol? Gambling?”

“Women!” She exclaimed. “That son of a you know what is probably flirting with someone at the dang basement bar right now. Anyways, I wanted to introduce myself just in case, thinking maybe if you met me first you wouldn’t want to go to bed with him. I was hoping everyone around us would be married, but if you’re not, can you at least be on my side? I’m really trying with this marriage.”

Kate crossed her heart and hoped to die that she would not sleep with this Madelina’s husband.

“Oh, that’s not what I meant, sweet thing,” Madelina said. “I’m thinking you might actually be the one I’m looking for.”

Kate was beginning to put this together. 

“How long have you two been married?” Kate asked.

“Oh,” Madelina responded, counting on her fingers. “Four months.”

“And he’s constantly cheating on you?”

“Not if I can help it! I’ve stopped him as best I could. This is my last resort, Kate. I’ve got to reform my man. I don’t want to lose this one, too.”

“Wait, too?” Kate asked. “You lost another husband to infidelity?”

Madelina kept playing with her khaki shorts, specifically the pleat in the front. They were brand new by the looks of them, as were everything she wore. To answer Kate’s question, she just nodded sheepishly.

There were more texts from Ollie. Kate responded to the last set with “there, there” but her sarcasm didn’t go unnoticed.

—Hey, he’s a good guy, okay? He just doesn’t have our luck.

—He just struck out again. I’m trying here but it just isn’t his night.

—How’s the party? Chambers is asking if we can crash it. Are there girls there?

—blink twice if there are girls there.

Three clean martinis later, Kate couldn’t feel her toes. Madelina had told her about the entire marriage, all her problems. It seemed an unbelievably thick and detailed account. When her husband wasn’t running around with other women, he was out hatching get rich quick schemes, even though he was already wealthy and owned a rather large house in a good neighbourhood. Calgary was expensive to live in. The only people she felt could afford it well enough were people in oil or software, or people like herself, who were paid in wads of cash stuffed in envelopes.

Kate was only now wondering why Madelina didn’t seem to ask her about much, but instead just went on and on and on about her own problems. Didn’t she want some kind of conversation? Or was she like this with everyone, dispelling half-truths and high drama about her life to anyone who would listen? Kate didn’t feel like she had any sort of special connection to this girl, several years younger than herself but so filled with the kind of high school mindset that she wondered if she’d ever grown out of it.

Kate then remembered that she’d thought there was a chance she was going to meet some people from high school at this party, and found herself slightly less judgmental. 

“I think I’m drunk,” Kate said. Madelina laughed.

“Yeah, but I could use another one,” she replied. Kate nodded, as if it was the wise decision.

“So, can I ask you a question?” Kate asked

“Of course,” Madelina said. “I feel like we’re becoming really good friends.”

“Yeah yeah, me too,” Kate said. “But, I have to ask. Where am I?”

“You’re in my house, sweetheart.”

“You own this place? It’s like a five million dollar house.”

Madelina nodded. “You’re close.”

“I guess what I’m trying to ask is, am I at the right party?”

“That’s a very good question dear,” Madelina said. “I’ve asked myself that one a few times.”

“Don’t call me dear. I’m thirty. You’re like eighteen.”

“Twenty-three!” Madelina said, straightening her back and posing. “But thank you.”

Kate didn’t ask any more questions, and soon Madelina excused herself, saying she needed to go find her husband. They hugged awkwardly, Madelina’s palms digging into Kate’s back, the nail markings staying well into the night.

At three drinks, Kate could slink through rooms. The house was people’d up, making hallways thin and the air wet. She’d forgotten about the mosquito bite on her bottom right pinky toe. It didn’t itch anymore. She wanted a cigarette that wasn’t hers.

She texted Ollie back, told him there weren’t any girls here. That was a pretty big lie, but Kate had a feeling that there weren’t actually any single girls here. Everyone looked coupled, even when standing alone. And they all looked somewhat unhappy about being coupled. This was not a party where friends got loose and half-blind. This was a party with a particular purpose. This is what Shawn did. All her life, Katie had known Shawn as a man who threw parties. She wasn’t sure how exactly he got paid for that.

Kate have learned a lot from these parties. She’d been going to them on and off for 15 years. She learned how to stand beside men without them even knowing. She learned how to whisper so that someone across the room could hear. She learned how to spread a rumor. She learned how to properly meet a stranger.

Kate exited the house from the side door and found a group smoking in the suburban-sized crevice between the house and the fence. A handful of polite words to the chinless man to her right netted some handrolled tobacco and a lighter. She said thank you by saying “luminous beings are we,” and making him laugh. This kind of reference could be tantamount to currency between complete strangers. She was about to say a second thing, perhaps to start conversation, but he turned slightly away from her, towards the group of smokers, as one fairly tall man with a vaperizer began proselytizing.

“Who here has ever use a line to pick up a woman?” He said, skillfully embracing the tone of the self-help man. Everyone’s hands went up, even Kate’s.

He continued, knowing the answer ahead of time. “And who has been successful, and by successful I mean the pickup line led to a real conversation, which led to an actual connection, which led to actual relationship? I don’t just mean successful like she went back to your place for a night.” All the hands went down.

He was good-looking guy. His chin-length hair was pulled up into a bun to the back of his head. He had a boulder set of shoulders, and held the confidence of the man who could lift and throw just about anyone. This was the result of some excellent diet, workout planning, a lucky set of genetics, and years of training and dedication. His ease and demeanor came through in every word, and it was as if his whole body said that if you listen to him, you too could turn out this way.

The man introduced himself. “I’m Leon, in case you were wondering. Thanks for being here tonight. I’m here if you need to talk, and especially if you want to share a story.”

Kate was beginning to wonder just what kind of party she was at.

He continued, “Now, I have a secret I want to share with you. It’s something you probably haven’t realized, or, even if you have, it’s probably something that hasn’t sunk in. Women, it turns out, don’t actually like being hit on.”

Kate heard scoffing. She heard herself scoffing.

“Sure,” Leon responded to everyone. “It seems crazy. They’ll tell you, if you ask them, straight up, that they not only like it, they appreciate it from time to time. I’m not talking about catcalling or being rude or anything like that. We can all pretty much agree we should cut that shit out. But what I’m talking about is the classic introduction at a bar, with the offer of a drink, followed by a compliment and maybe a clever line. Every woman you ask about this will tell you they like it. But guys? Don’t listen to them.”

There were half a dozen men in this smokers pit, and two women. The other woman, who stood right next to Leon, stood about a foot shorter than him, but equally in peak condition. She held a daiquiri and nodded along. Kate just smoked.

“The fact of the matter is this,” Leon explained. He was the only person not smoking. “If you hit on a woman, you’re creating an artificial situation. It may be one you’ve both agreed to participate in, but it’s not real, and in the back of your head you’ll always know this. It’ll always feel a little cheap to you. You’ll never quite feel like it was meant to be.”

A few questions were thrown at this point. Disagreements. More scoffing. Few were convinced. Whoever populated this party, not all of them came with open minds. Perhaps, Kate thought, only one person in a couple here knew what was up. Perhaps a few significant others got dragged along. But after some time, Leon got back on track with his script.

“See, what women really want—and truly, I want you to trust me on this because it will lead to the promised land—is getting as close as possible to absolute spontaneous kismet. We all know deep down that there’s no real such thing as ‘the one’ or ‘true love’. We’re all adults here. We all broke up with our high school sweethearts. We all broke up with our college sweethearts. We’ve all broken hearts, and had our hearts broken. We know this is a struggle. But we still believe in it. We believe that one day we’ll get there. And you know what? You will.”

Kate was surprised nobody was being asked to pay for each paragraph from this guy. Her cigarette was half done. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t just walk away, but the guy she’d bummed the smoke from was still standing there, still rapt in attention to this huckster.

Leon turned towards Kate. “You, how did you meet the guy you’re with?”

Kate remembered Madelina’s quizzacle look when she said she was here alone. She didn’t want it repeated and magnified in a huge group. This was clearly some kind of couples thing, so she went along with it, pretending that Ollie was in the other room or something.

“You’re going to laugh,” she said. Everyone did anyway.

“Come on,” Leon said. “Tell us.”

“Well,” she wound up. “I ran him over with my car.”

The small crowd took turns snickering, gasping, and being quiet with drunken disbelief.

Leon shushed them. “There’s potential with this. I hope you see that. You didn’t know him before. You’d never seen one another. And through a horrible accident which must have caused some pain and suffering, you found one another. I just have one question. Are you happy?”

Kate pursed her lips into a W for a quick moment and nodded. What else was there to do? The douchey magic trick was working on her.

“Okay, I lied,” Leon said. “I have one more question. Is this relationship working out better than the ones that came before?”

This one took more time to answer, but everyone in the semi-circle expected that. Kate eventually answered, and though she’d answered honestly, the answer surprised her. She had never put her and Ollie in those terms before.

“See, this is my point, and thank you young lady for helping me get there.  Instead of just hitting on a girl, or going out with your buddies on the prowl, you should be looking for that spontaneous moment where you could argue that the fates are bringing you together.”

This was met with the easiest response ever, from the guy beside Kate. He said, “How are we supposed to make that happen?”

Leon took a deep breath. “The answer is different for everyone. And the situation will be different. And I have no idea how to fake it. If there are people out there faking this, then they’ve got the key to everything. They’ve go the whole world in their hands. But I know that it’s the only way to a genuine connection. I know everyone here is taken, currently, but this advice works even in a relationship. You want these spontaneous moments to keep happening. You want to find her through magic everyday.”

It wasn’t clear what Leon wanted, but Kate took something from this anyway. She texted Ollie to come meet her. She then followed up.

—Don’t bring Chambers.

The smoking crowd dispersed. Just Leon and Kate remained.

He asked, “Is that true? Did you run over your partner?”

Kate nodded.

He asked, “Do you think it was an accident, or fate?”

She said, “I know there’s no such thing as fate. There are accidents, and there are plans.”

Leon smiled. “So was it an accident, or a plan?”

“I don’t know,” Kate replied. “Maybe it was his plan to get hit by me. Maybe he saw someone like you give a speech like that and cycled into traffic looking for violent love. You never know the whole plan.”

A moment passed between them. In that time, Kate had rolled over her choices and options with Ollie. She tumbled it all while also thinking about dinner, about what kind of laundry she’d have to do over the next few days, if her passport was renewed properly (always a panic), if she could get someone to water her plants, if she should cancel everything and quit and be with him forever and be happy, how impossible that would be, how many promises and vows she’d have to break, what it would take to actually quit, if anyone had ever really done it, what it would be like to walk around the world with this knowledge (the knowledge she’d just given out freely to Leon, but more, so, so, so much more than she could tell he realized), how Tony was, what he was doing, what was he thinking, and was he thinking of her? She then realized she was just remembering a Kids in the Hall bit, and didn’t actually know a Tony, and maybe she should just find either some drugs or Shawn, already.

Leon, Kate noticed, was staring at the undone button on her top that made her cleavage pop just enough. But maybe he had other stuff going on, too. She wasn’t a mind reader.

“I have to find my friend,” Kate said, heading to the backyard. Leon said goodbye, and Kate heard him holler at nobody inside.

Kate made her way through to the backyard, where she saw two seperate groups congregate. The barbeque area near the door had a full semicircle of people holding paper plates, and another congregated further off down near the end of the fence, closer to the dark. The backyard went back further than you’d think, and Kate saw the back fence door open out onto the alleyway, where she saw more smokers. There were two couples making out on either side of the fence door, and they framed it perfectly. They were thirty, maybe older. These were not young people. These were people who might not have known each other before this party. These were people who might be married, but not to the mouths they were tonguing. Kate didn’t know. Kate didn’t particularly care. Kate just wanted to find Shawn.

Kate slowly stepped passed the barbeque area to the sliding kitchen door. Finally, she saw him. Shawn was entertaining a small pack of people with finger food on the kitchen island. Most of them were women. Most of them looked like they’d been crying just moments before. He was helping. He was bringing them back from wherever they were. He was, from what she could see from behind the glass, exactly the kind of entertainer and bullshitter host she’d always known. Nothing had changed. She hadn’t changed. Everything was fine. And this would work out exactly like she’d hoped.

Kate slid the door open, and nine women turned to see who it was. She was not recognized. They all turned back quickly enough, and all looked at Shawn, who had a face you wouldn’t call caught, but perhaps imposed. His party had been crashed. He chewed.

“I want to know more about all of this,” Shawn said to the group. “But I have to have a quick word with this one. Your food should be ready outside by now, if you’d like something meatier.”

Stools emptied. Air thickened. Shawn did not hug and kiss her and call her George.

“Kate. Sweet, sweet Kate,” Shawn said, raising his arms up and motioning to the whole house. “What do you think?”

Kate stood across from Shawn in this kitchen, an island between them made of some kind of cherry wood, Maple? She didn’t know for wood, only seen the brochures and pamphlets these kinds of things came from, extensions and installations of customizable dream homes, the hands holding them, excited people with plans. Kate had not yet been seduced by the suburban dream home complex, which consisted entirely of people who had already done it and only had wonderful things to say. She was not sure if Shawn was going to say any of these things. She didn’t know what he might remark about his own choices, and if those choices panned out to a happiness. The entire seduction community surrounding pseudo-customizable suburban houses started well before Kate moved to Calgary and would likely continue long after she left. It was true for other cities, but perhaps no more true than on the perimeter of her adopted home town, which was so much larger and so much more unrecognizable that was even 10 years before, and would probably swallow her hometown before she was forty. This is where Kate stood, across from Shawn, out where there used to be a farm, in the house he handpicked, purchased with money, and would likely sell within three years.

“This is your place?” Kate asked. “I just talked to a girl who asked if I was enjoying her party.”

 But if there was a sort of suburban sting on a person, where living out there with so much more space and more commute time presumably actually changed a person’s personality, Kate couldn’t really tell with her old friend. Then again, Kate’s idea of Shawn was put together less by knowing him well and more interrupted his life every few years with her life, her problems, her disasters. In this new room they had no privacy. The kitchen bustled with people getting drinks and food from Shawn’s comically oversized fridge, which was the type could only fit through comically oversized suburban doors, likely requiring three men with back braces. Shawn would have tipped a man to get that fridge in.

This was a party of sorts, one that Kate likely would not have been invited to under the normal circumstances, as she came without a partner, which was technically against the rules.

Shawn was frowning. “Everyone here thinks it’s their party.”

A hundred years passed.

 “She looks great,” Kate said. She said this of the house, quickly, to break the air. It did not make things less awkward. The fact was, Kate shouldn’t have been at this party. Alice was nowhere to be found, in person or via text. She had not told Shawn, not spoken to him in months (years?), and had not informed Kate of the particulars of this party. Earlier in the afternoon, when Kate realized Alice either gave her a fake number or couldn’t be bothered to check her phone, had to call another old friend who updated her phone with Shawn’s new and alarmingly suburban new address.

 Her compliment did not break the silence for long. Shawn looked as if he was going to take the beer in his hand to another room. He looked it if he looked as if he was going to blink at her a few more times, turned into his pantry, which had the door that should have belonged to an old wardrobe, and disappear. His face was not one that seemed happy to see her.

 “You look great,” she said, hoping that might help.

 “You’re not funny,” he told her. “And you shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be in my life. We shouldn’t know each other. I don’t know why we know each other.”

Exhalation. The air in the room was designed for drama.

“We know each other because, well, you remember when we met,” She said.

“I know why we met,” he said. “but that’s not the same thing as knowing why we know one another. Why you keep popping up in my life. Am I one of your projects? Am I someone you have to keep tabs on? Is there something about my life that’s interesting to you or your employers?”

Kate regretted coming. She should have planned her week. She should have spent the time with Ollie. Why wasn’t she with him now? Why wasn’t she spending every waking moment with him until.

 “You don’t know anything about my employers,” she said.

 Music played. Kate couldn’t see speakers but she heard music. Maybe all that stuff was just in the walls now, some easy up-charge from the house builders that put the stereo in one room and the speakers everywhere. The stereo equipment might have been mysterious, but the music was pedantic. Fleetwood Mac or something bleatingly like it blared from nowhere.

“Isn’t it enough that I think you’re worth keeping in touch with every now and then?”

“I don’t even know what the appropriate response is to this situation. People who have done the kinds of things you’ve done generally don’t keep showing up. Am I an idiot? I must be an idiot. You, Kate middle-name-redacted last-name-redacted, have screwed up my life on two occasions, and I let you do it both times, invited both events in. You’re like a vampire person. You’re of no danger to me until I invite you in, then you make me eat garlic and I explode.”

Kate said, “I don’t think you know how vampires work. But that’s okay. I don’t care. And I apologized for Scott. Scott was my fault. It was so, so my fault.”

Kate had a feeling this might happen. She didn’t think it would take place in such a sterile and tall kitchen, or that Shawn wouldn’t at least show a few niceties before getting into their past. But she knew she’d have to talk about Scott. She’d have to talk about Sabin. She’d have to talk about Drumheller.

“Give me some credit,” Shawn said. “We’ve been over our past. But when you show up and ruin my life, disappear for a few years, show up again looking for advice about your awful situation in 2012 with Sabin, and then disappear again for three years, you are stretching the notion of ‘old friends’ just a little. We are not friends. If anything, I’m your victim.”

It had been years. That’s a fun feeling. That one pops up nerves in new places.

She said, “I’m not what happened to you. I did a bad thing that moved your life forward when it wasn’t going to move forward on its own. We’re the same. What’s happening here? Isn’t that what you’re doing here? Who are these people? All your close, personal friends, right?”

Kate popped a bacon-wrapped scallop just like that.

“No,” she continued. “They’re here because you’re going to do something to their lives. You’re going to change them. You’re going to hit them with a Moonbow Easy or a Tuscon Typhoon. You’re on the job right now. This is clocked time. That’s why you’re not happy to see me. You don’t like to show your work.”

Kate’s phone buzzed. She picked it up and checked it.

“That’s not,” Shawn stammered. “You still don’t know everything, kid. You don’t know how all this works yet.”

Kate put her phone down on the table. “I just wanted to see you. It had been a long time and I thought it’d be nice.”

“Everyone who’s here tonight asked to be here. They all paid to be here. They know what’s going on,” Shawn said. “They ask me, and they pay me with their money. What I do is honest. What you do is terrorism.”

Kate took it badly. “I shouldn’t have come. Whatever friendship we had.”

“Friendship!” Shawn rebounded. “With friends like you, my god.”

The room began to fill with people who didn’t notice what was going on. It was just the momentum of a house party, with bodies shifting aimlessly from room to room. Kate looked around. Was Alice even at this party? People hit the fridge. They hit cupboards. If this was Shawn’s house, other people certainly felt right at home.

Shawn said, “Let’s go outside for a second. Follow me.” Kate followed behind Shawn to the front, where they sat down on the porch. They took the place of the two guys who were there when she arrived. In less than thirty seconds, some new girl hopped over them.

The porch was smoky. The lighting had a chill aura,  ghosts of light floated out of three blue lanterns above a lone wooden lounge chair, occupied by no one. They say a few feet from it. They couldn't see stars. They could hear air conditioning and trap.

Shawn's tone shifted friendlier, as if he'd finally remembered his old friend. They talked for a few moments about life. He asked here where she was living now, where she last vacationed, if she'd found a good pho place (she had six). The tension between them, which Kate didn't expect but kicked herself for not, seemed to ease. She figured she might as well ask him what she'd planned on.

"I got a letter," she said. "They need me to do a job that's going to take a few months."

Shawn said, "So you really haven't changed."

"What do you mean?" She asked.

Shawn yawned. He took a phone out of his pocket.

"You left this on the table."

Kate reached for it, and he pulled away.

"You're really going? I need to know before I give this back."

Kate spoke quickly, without putting it together. She nodded, then winced. She grabbed for it one last time.

Shawn flicked open the home screen. He tapped once, then handed it over. She didn’t have time to see what had happened, but something had happened. 

“Kate!” She heard her name from the driveway. It was Ollie. He’d finally shown up.

Shawn turned and looked him over. He made that face pitchers made when they chewed tobacco.

It might have been completely imaginary, but to Kate, everyone heard the beep that came from Ollie’s phone. Ollie noticed, anyway, and being a good citizen of the modern day, stopped in his tracks to check the message before saying hello proper to the people in front of him. 

If he had not, it’s possible Kate could have slipped his phone away for a moment and deleted the message. It’s possible she could have prevented this. It wasn’t imperceivable.  She’d stolen so many phones. She’d planted and deleted so much information. But to do any of that, Ollie would have had to be just a little bit older. “I’ll just check that beeping thing later” just wasn’t a suitable thought for people younger than Kate.

But he did check. And he did read it. And when he looked back up at Kate, he could see that it was true. It was all over her face. It was all over the face of the guy she was sitting with. And so he turned around and walked away.

Kate stood up. Did he leave so Kate could follow him? Or so she wouldn’t? Was there going to be a fight right now, on some strange suburban cal-de-sac?

Kate turned her phone on, and saw what Shawn had sent.

While Kate read the screen, Shawn sipped his drink. He explained himself. “You’re shipping out soon. You don’t know what to do, but you’ve done this before. You actually like the guy and you don’t want to crush him. Or you want to know if there’s a way to keep him and still do what you do. You wanted my advice. You thought you had a friend in this house.”

Kate turned the screen off. The text was sent. It was over.

Surrounded by blue, the words “I’m leaving you in seven days” transmitted from Kate’s phone to Ollie’s.

Shawn must have written the text, but waited to send it until he was sure of something. Sure of what? That she was going to do her job?

“I can’t believe you did that,” Kate said.

“Come on,” Shawn said. “All I did was a bad thing that will move your life forward.”

She leered at Shawn. She began to shake.

“This is what you were going to do. You were going to string this guy along for a few days, and then break up with him, and then disappear. Actually, you might not have even broken up with him. You didn’t actually break up with Scott before disappearing, did you? Did you say goodbye to Sabin? God, I hope so.”

Ollie was half a block away but Kate could still see him. She decided to run. She decided Shawn could wait. She could put him in a box and deal with him later. She had to run now. She had to either put it back together, or blow it all up tonight. 

Corona Gale, nightly build 2.2.7

Kate didn’t take Ollie to the party. She considered inviting him, debated if it was a good idea to introduce Ollie to Shawn, but gambled against it. First, there was the chance that Shawn would bring up some past. It generally wasn’t like Shawn to be overly dramatic, but she also hadn’t seen him in a few weeks (months?). Perhaps he’d grown the skill, or found someone to teach him. Shawn was one of her best friends, someone she could honestly say have her back in dark times, had known her all her adult life, and could be counted on. She had these things down, but questioned if they were ever actually true. She had reason to doubt some of them, but mostly because she had reason to doubt herself.

But from time to time, Kate swayed on this doubt. Were any of the friendships she allocated in life actually mean the same things to them as they did to her? When she would go a year or more without speaking to someone, she wondered if that friendship was in abeyance—resting, or forgotten. Someone like Alice, she figured, must’ve felt the same way earlier this afternoon. Alice might have had in her head an idea of Kate as a friend, and found a certain crushing in the realization that she’d been forgotten. But what would’ve been crushed? Was it a delusionary feeling that Kate both remembered her and fondly remembered her, had wanted to get in touch but had found no way to, even though they probably knew some of the same people, and were almost certainly two clicks away on social media? Or was it an acceptance of an assumption? The same two clicks applied to Alice. She could’ve made some effort, and chose not to. Alice remembered Kate, but maybe didn’t need her in her life. Kate hoped Alice felt the same way Kate felt about many of her friends. To see them in the surprises delightful, but to see their faces on her phone every day was depressing.

Kate found herself in a suburb. It was geographically uninteresting, and could’ve been set in any town in North America. That she was in a Calgarian suburb didn’t seem to matter much except for preparation, which is why hugging her right side sat a messenger bag holding a raincoat and a pair of gloves. These were in case it hailed later. She did not like getting caught in hail with nothing. The weather report had no hail in it, but that did not matter. Neither did the weather report most days. She, along with most of the city, had no idea why they even hire weatherman in Calgary. It would save a lot of money and be equally useful to simply have a shruggie gif on repeat. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It is somewhat easy to find Shawn’s house. Like all decent suburban parties, his was the house with all the cars in front. There were four cars, all different colors shapes and sizes in his driveway. There were three more flanking on the street, and three more on the other side of the street flanking another driveway. One of the cars in the driveway was a seven seater but most others were coups, most fairly new looking, only two with cracked windows. As Kate approached, she noticed two guys sitting on the porch step, each holding a beer.

One of them said to her, “Hey, you’re incredibly late, and you weren’t even supposed to be here. I’m going to have to take your number down.”

Kate blinked. She said, “Is that, like, a line you’ve been practicing?”

The guy smiled. He nodded.

“How’s it been working out?” She asked.

He held up his phone. “I got one so far.”

Kate looked at the phone. “This is the number for Una. It’s good though. I didn’t think pizza went with wine, but, you know what? I was super wrong.”

The other guy laughed.

“Yo,” he said to the sad guy with the fake number. “Maybe she wants to get pizza with you.”

Kate shrugged in agreement. “Good luck,” she said, going inside.

The other reason they didn’t invite Ollie to this party was because Ollie wouldn’t be in her life for very much longer. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to confuse her friends; they’d seen her with different guys and knew that she was particularly one for commitment. She want to confuse Ollie. She didn’t want introductions to weigh on anything. Because they would like him, and there was a danger of him liking them. It would make things tougher. In truth, she was going to zip in, talk to Shawn, zip out, go back to Ollie and spend the night with them. She was going to spend every night left with him. But she wasn’t going to share him. And she wasn’t going to give him hope.

Instead of joining her, Ollie was out with his friend Chambers. Chambers was a normal guy who preferred his last name, probably because he spent some time in military school, or played a little too much high school sports, or just hated his first name, Kate didn’t know for sure. But in a very male friendship sort of way, Ollie and Chambers had set things they liked to do. Chambers came over to watch Flames and Stampeders games, and occasionally they would go to a bar, Ollie doing his best to help Chambers find a suitable girl.tonight was a bar night, and Kate was sure she would receive a text or two about how the affair was going. In any case, all he wasn’t left alone, left to wonder why Katie wouldn’t want him around her friends.

Besides, what friends were even in this house? Shawn, obviously. Alice, she supposed. But who else would even be there? Had she forgotten more people? Had she actually cared about little? Would she, upon entering the kitchen or the back deck, be inundated with how are you’s and it’s been so long’s? Would it be a high school reunion? It could be. Shawn knew her in high school. But, no. That wouldn’t make sense. Shawn knew her, but didn’t go to her school. He was older than her, halfway through college when they met in her senior year. But then again, Shawn knew everybody. He was the guy who knew everybody.

Through the foyer, she could see a lot of house. To the right, fairly open room with half a dozen people inside all standing in a circle, and drink in one hand and a plate of finger food in the other. Dressed well, three of them turned to look at her, all with the same unrecognizing leer. She would not have to reintroduce herself to these people. She kept her shoes on and proceeded.

“Hello?” a woman asked Kate from behind her. Kate turned around and slightly bent her knees and elbows out of instinct. She braced, which put the girl on a bit of an edge.

“Well why didn’t you say you were security? Could have used you an hour ago.” 

The girl was wearing white runners, a cargo vest, and a button-up blouse. It was like she’d searched for “boat wear from the 70s” and bought the lot. Kate said, “Sorry, you startled me.”

“Well, we’re even,” she said. “I saw you come in while I was in the dining room, so I thought I’d introduce myself. I’m Madelina. Welcome to my party.”

Kate heard the name and did her best not to snicker. She hadn’t heard a name like that since she read fantasy novels as a junior. She instead focused on the fact that this wasn’t Shawn’s party. Did she have the wrong house?

“Kate,” she said, introducing herself with a handshake. Madelina’s palm was sweaty. Talcum’d.

“I hope you don’t mind me just coming up like this. If I can ask, though, were you invited?”

“Sure,” Kate said. “Alice told me there was a party.”

A look Kate saw coming appeared on Madelina. She didn’t know who Alice was.

Kate’s phone buzzed in her messenger bag.

“Shawn,” Kate said quickly enough. “I’m an old friend of Shawn’s.”

Madelina motioned with her drink-holding hand to a couch, but nothing from her martini glass hit air. It wasn’t clear if saying Shawn’s name was enough, but Kate did as suggested and took a seat on the farthest end of a long brown-leather sofa that felt like it had been delivered an hour ago.

“Are you divorced?” Madelina asked.

Kate’s bag, now sitting at his feet, buzzed again. “Excuse me,” she deferred, and reached in. It was a message from Ollie.

—Chambers thinks the drawer thing was cheesy.

Looking back at Madelina, Kate said, “not yet.”

Kate shook her head. “Also, isn’t that kind of a personal question?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I can be too forward sometimes. But, it’s just that, this is…well, you know what this is. It’s strange that you’re here alone is all. Shawn said there wouldn’t be any actual single people here tonight. So that’s why I asked, since she must have thought you were with a partner. I’m sorry again, but are you sure you’re not with anyone?”

—I don’t know. I thought it was sweet.

—Okay, maybe a little corny.

—Anyways, just wanted to say hi.

—How’s your evening going? We’re losing. Chambers struck out twice.

Kate said, “I’m with someone.”

Before Madelina could go on, a woman came by with a tray. She was dressed in all black, and carried a demure attitude that gave away that she was on the clock. On the tray were glasses of champagne and martinis. Kate and Madelina took one of each, and the woman took Madelina’s now-empty martini glass. Everyone said thank you.

Madelina bit her lower lip. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just that my husband, well, him and I are not on the best of terms right now. Jack is, that’s my husband, Jack, he’s a recovering addict, and I thought something like this, where we, together, well, might help. Of sorts.”

Kate peered at this girl. She was like a TV show, something there for Kate’s popcorn-chewing entertainment, something she didn’t really have anything to do with but couldn’t help but poke at a little, to see if there was more meat on the bone.

Kate said, “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. If I can ask, what was he addicted to? Alcohol? Gambling?”

“Women!” She exclaimed. “That son of a you know what is probably flirting with someone at the dang basement bar right now. Anyways, I wanted to introduce myself just in case, thinking maybe if you met me first you wouldn’t want to go to bed with him. I was hoping everyone around us would be married, but if you’re not, can you at least be on my side? I’m really trying with this marriage.”

Kate crossed her heart and hoped to die that she would not sleep with this Madelina’s husband.

“Oh, that’s not what I meant, sweet thing,” Madelina said. “I’m thinking you might actually be the one I’m looking for.”

Kate was beginning to put this together. 

“How long have you two been married?” Kate asked.

“Oh,” Madelina responded, counting on her fingers. “Four months.”

“And he’s constantly cheating on you?”

“Not if I can help it! I’ve stopped him as best I could. This is my last resort, Kate. I’ve got to reform my man. I don’t want to lose this one, too.”

“Wait, too?” Kate asked. “You lost another husband to infidelity?”

Madelina kept playing with her khaki shorts, specifically the pleat in the front. They were brand new by the looks of them, as were everything she wore. To answer Kate’s question, she just nodded sheepishly.

There were more texts from Ollie. Kate responded to the last set with “there, there” but her sarcasm didn’t go unnoticed.

—Hey, he’s a good guy, okay? He just doesn’t have our luck.

—He just struck out again. I’m trying here but it just isn’t his night.

—How’s the party? Chambers is asking if we can crash it. Are there girls there?

—blink twice if there are girls there.

Three clean martinis later, Kate couldn’t feel her toes. Madelina had told her about the entire marriage, all her problems. It seemed an unbelievably thick and detailed account. When her husband wasn’t running around with other women, he was out hatching get rich quick schemes, even though he was already wealthy and owned a rather large house in a good neighbourhood. Calgary was expensive to live in. The only people she felt could afford it well enough were people in oil or software, or people like herself, who were paid in wads of cash stuffed in envelopes.

Kate was only now wondering why Madelina didn’t seem to ask her about much, but instead just went on and on and on about her own problems. Didn’t she want some kind of conversation? Or was she like this with everyone, dispelling half-truths and high drama about her life to anyone who would listen? Kate didn’t feel like she had any sort of special connection to this girl, several years younger than herself but so filled with the kind of high school mindset that she wondered if she’d ever grown out of it.

Kate then remembered that she’d thought there was a chance she was going to meet some people from high school at this party, and found herself slightly less judgmental. 

“I think I’m drunk,” Kate said. Madelina laughed.

“Yeah, but I could use another one,” she replied. Kate nodded, as if it was the wise decision.

“So, can I ask you a question?” Kate asked

“Of course,” Madelina said. “I feel like we’re becoming really good friends.”

“Yeah yeah, me too,” Kate said. “But, I have to ask. Where am I?”

“You’re in my house, sweetheart.”

“You own this place? It’s like a five million dollar house.”

Madelina nodded. “You’re close.”

“I guess what I’m trying to ask is, am I at the right party?”

“That’s a very good question dear,” Madelina said. “I’ve asked myself that one a few times.”

“Don’t call me dear. I’m thirty. You’re like eighteen.”

“Twenty-three!” Madelina said, straightening her back and posing. “But thank you.”

Kate didn’t ask any more questions, and soon Madelina excused herself, saying she needed to go find her husband. They hugged awkwardly, Madelina’s palms digging into Kate’s back, the nail markings staying well into the night.

At three drinks, Kate could slink through rooms. The house was people’d up, making hallways thin and the air wet. She’d forgotten about the mosquito bite on her bottom right pinky toe. It didn’t itch anymore. She wanted a cigarette that wasn’t hers.

She texted Ollie back, told him there weren’t any girls here. That was a pretty big lie, but Kate had a feeling that there weren’t actually any single girls here. Everyone looked coupled, even when standing alone. And they all looked somewhat unhappy about being coupled. This was not a party where friends got loose and half-blind. This was a party with a particular purpose. This is what Shawn did. All her life, Katie had known Shawn as a man who threw parties. She wasn’t sure how exactly he got paid for that.

Kate have learned a lot from these parties. She’d been going to them on and off for 15 years. She learned how to stand beside men without them even knowing. She learned how to whisper so that someone across the room could hear. She learned how to spread a rumor. She learned how to properly meet a stranger.

Kate exited the house from the side door and found a group smoking in the suburban-sized crevice between the house and the fence. A handful of polite words to the chinless man to her right netted some handrolled tobacco and a lighter. She said thank you by saying “luminous beings are we,” and making him laugh. This kind of reference could be tantamount to currency between complete strangers. She was about to say a second thing, perhaps to start conversation, but he turned slightly away from her, towards the group of smokers, as one fairly tall man with a vaperizer began proselytizing.

“Who here has ever use a line to pick up a woman?” He said, skillfully embracing the tone of the self-help man. Everyone’s hands went up, even Kate’s.

He continued, knowing the answer ahead of time. “And who has been successful, and by successful I mean the pickup line led to a real conversation, which led to an actual connection, which led to actual relationship? I don’t just mean successful like she went back to your place for a night.” All the hands went down.

He was good-looking guy. His chin-length hair was pulled up into a bun to the back of his head. He had a boulder set of shoulders, and held the confidence of the man who could lift and throw just about anyone. This was the result of some excellent diet, workout planning, a lucky set of genetics, and years of training and dedication. His ease and demeanor came through in every word, and it was as if his whole body said that if you listen to him, you too could turn out this way.

The man introduced himself. “I’m Leon, in case you were wondering. Thanks for being here tonight. I’m here if you need to talk, and especially if you want to share a story.”

Kate was beginning to wonder just what kind of party she was at.

He continued, “Now, I have a secret I want to share with you. It’s something you probably haven’t realized, or, even if you have, it’s probably something that hasn’t sunk in. Women, it turns out, don’t actually like being hit on.”

Kate heard scoffing. She heard herself scoffing.

“Sure,” Leon responded to everyone. “It seems crazy. They’ll tell you, if you ask them, straight up, that they not only like it, they appreciate it from time to time. I’m not talking about catcalling or being rude or anything like that. We can all pretty much agree we should cut that shit out. But what I’m talking about is the classic introduction at a bar, with the offer of a drink, followed by a compliment and maybe a clever line. Every woman you ask about this will tell you they like it. But guys? Don’t listen to them.”

There were half a dozen men in this smokers pit, and two women. The other woman, who stood right next to Leon, stood about a foot shorter than him, but equally in peak condition. She held a daiquiri and nodded along. Kate just smoked.

“The fact of the matter is this,” Leon explained. He was the only person not smoking. “If you hit on a woman, you’re creating an artificial situation. It may be one you’ve both agreed to participate in, but it’s not real, and in the back of your head you’ll always know this. It’ll always feel a little cheap to you. You’ll never quite feel like it was meant to be.”

A few questions were thrown at this point. Disagreements. More scoffing. Few were convinced. Whoever populated this party, not all of them came with open minds. Perhaps, Kate thought, only one person in a couple here knew what was up. Perhaps a few significant others got dragged along. But after some time, Leon got back on track with his script.

“See, what women really want—and truly, I want you to trust me on this because it will lead to the promised land—is getting as close as possible to absolute spontaneous kismet. We all know deep down that there’s no real such thing as ‘the one’ or ‘true love’. We’re all adults here. We all broke up with our high school sweethearts. We all broke up with our college sweethearts. We’ve all broken hearts, and had our hearts broken. We know this is a struggle. But we still believe in it. We believe that one day we’ll get there. And you know what? You will.”

Kate was surprised nobody was being asked to pay for each paragraph from this guy. Her cigarette was half done. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t just walk away, but the guy she’d bummed the smoke from was still standing there, still rapt in attention to this huckster.

Leon turned towards Kate. “You, how did you meet the guy you’re with?”

Kate remembered Madelina’s quizzacle look when she said she was here alone. She didn’t want it repeated and magnified in a huge group. This was clearly some kind of couples thing, so she went along with it, pretending that Ollie was in the other room or something.

“You’re going to laugh,” she said. Everyone did anyway.

“Come on,” Leon said. “Tell us.”

“Well,” she wound up. “I ran him over with my car.”

The small crowd took turns snickering, gasping, and being quiet with drunken disbelief.

Leon shushed them. “There’s potential with this. I hope you see that. You didn’t know him before. You’d never seen one another. And through a horrible accident which must have caused some pain and suffering, you found one another. I just have one question. Are you happy?”

Kate pursed her lips into a W for a quick moment and nodded. What else was there to do? The douchey magic trick was working on her.

“Okay, I lied,” Leon said. “I have one more question. Is this relationship working out better than the ones that came before?”

This one took more time to answer, but everyone in the semi-circle expected that. Kate eventually answered, and though she’d answered honestly, the answer surprised her. She had never put her and Ollie in those terms before.

“See, this is my point, and thank you young lady for helping me get there.  Instead of just hitting on a girl, or going out with your buddies on the prowl, you should be looking for that spontaneous moment where you could argue that the fates are bringing you together.”

This was met with the easiest response ever, from the guy beside Kate. He said, “How are we supposed to make that happen?”

Leon took a deep breath. “The answer is different for everyone. And the situation will be different. And I have no idea how to fake it. If there are people out there faking this, then they’ve got the key to everything. They’ve go the whole world in their hands. But I know that it’s the only way to a genuine connection. I know everyone here is taken, currently, but this advice works even in a relationship. You want these spontaneous moments to keep happening. You want to find her through magic everyday.”

It wasn’t clear what Leon wanted, but Kate took something from this anyway. She texted Ollie to come meet her. She then followed up.

—Don’t bring Chambers.

The smoking crowd dispersed. Just Leon and Kate remained.

He asked, “Is that true? Did you run over your partner?”

Kate nodded.

He asked, “Do you think it was an accident, or fate?”

She said, “I know there’s no such thing as fate. There are accidents, and there are plans.”

Leon smiled. “So was it an accident, or a plan?”

“I don’t know,” Kate replied. “Maybe it was his plan to get hit by me. Maybe he saw someone like you give a speech like that and cycled into traffic looking for violent love. You never know the whole plan.”

A moment passed between them. In that time, Kate had rolled over her choices and options with Ollie. She tumbled it all while also thinking about dinner, about what kind of laundry she’d have to do over the next few days, if her passport was renewed properly (always a panic), if she could get someone to water her plants, if she should cancel everything and quit and be with him forever and be happy, how impossible that would be, how many promises and vows she’d have to break, what it would take to actually quit, if anyone had ever really done it, what it would be like to walk around the world with this knowledge (the knowledge she’d just given out freely to Leon, but more, so, so, so much more than she could tell he realized), how Tony was, what he was doing, what was he thinking, and was he thinking of her? She then realized she was just remembering a Kids in the Hall bit, and didn’t actually know a Tony, and maybe she should just find either some drugs or Shawn, already.

Leon, Kate noticed, was staring at the undone button on her top that made her cleavage pop just enough. But maybe he had other stuff going on, too. She wasn’t a mind reader.

“I have to find my friend,” Kate said, heading to the backyard. Leon said goodbye, and Kate heard him holler at nobody inside.

Kate made her way through to the backyard, where she saw two seperate groups congregate. The barbeque area near the door had a full semicircle of people holding paper plates, and another congregated further off down near the end of the fence, closer to the dark. The backyard went back further than you’d think, and Kate saw the back fence door open out onto the alleyway, where she saw more smokers. There were two couples making out on either side of the fence door, and they framed it perfectly. They were thirty, maybe older. These were not young people. These were people who might not have known each other before this party. These were people who might be married, but not to the mouths they were tonguing. Kate didn’t know. Kate didn’t particularly care. Kate just wanted to find Shawn.

Kate slowly stepped passed the barbeque area to the sliding kitchen door. Finally, she saw him. Shawn was entertaining a small pack of people with finger food on the kitchen island. Most of them were women. Most of them looked like they’d been crying just moments before. He was helping. He was bringing them back from wherever they were. He was, from what she could see from behind the glass, exactly the kind of entertainer and bullshitter host she’d always known. Nothing had changed. She hadn’t changed. Everything was fine. And this would work out exactly like she’d hoped.

Kate slid the door open, and nine women turned to see who it was. She was not recognized. They all turned back quickly enough, and all looked at Shawn, who had a face you wouldn’t call caught, but perhaps imposed. His party had been crashed. He chewed.

“I want to know more about all of this,” Shawn said to the group. “But I have to have a quick word with this one. Your food should be ready outside by now, if you’d like something meatier.”

Stools emptied. Air thickened. Shawn did not hug and kiss her and call her George.

“Kate. Sweet, sweet Kate,” Shawn said, raising his arms up and motioning to the whole house. “What do you think?”

Kate stood across from Shawn in this kitchen, an island between them made of some kind of cherry wood, Maple? She didn’t know for wood, only seen the brochures and pamphlets these kinds of things came from, extensions and installations of customizable dream homes, the hands holding them, excited people with plans. Kate had not yet been seduced by the suburban dream home complex, which consisted entirely of people who had already done it and only had wonderful things to say. She was not sure if Shawn was going to say any of these things. She didn’t know what he might remark about his own choices, and if those choices panned out to a happiness. The entire seduction community surrounding pseudo-customizable suburban houses started well before Kate moved to Calgary and would likely continue long after she left. It was true for other cities, but perhaps no more true than on the perimeter of her adopted home town, which was so much larger and so much more unrecognizable that was even 10 years before, and would probably swallow her hometown before she was forty. This is where Kate stood, across from Shawn, out where there used to be a farm, in the house he handpicked, purchased with money, and would likely sell within three years.

“This is your place?” Kate asked. “I just talked to a girl who asked if I was enjoying her party.”

 But if there was a sort of suburban sting on a person, where living out there with so much more space and more commute time presumably actually changed a person’s personality, Kate couldn’t really tell with her old friend. Then again, Kate’s idea of Shawn was put together less by knowing him well and more interrupted his life every few years with her life, her problems, her disasters. In this new room they had no privacy. The kitchen bustled with people getting drinks and food from Shawn’s comically oversized fridge, which was the type could only fit through comically oversized suburban doors, likely requiring three men with back braces. Shawn would have tipped a man to get that fridge in.

This was a party of sorts, one that Kate likely would not have been invited to under the normal circumstances, as she came without a partner, which was technically against the rules.

Shawn was frowning. “Everyone here thinks it’s their party.”

A hundred years passed.

 “She looks great,” Kate said. She said this of the house, quickly, to break the air. It did not make things less awkward. The fact was, Kate shouldn’t have been at this party. Alice was nowhere to be found, in person or via text. She had not told Shawn, not spoken to him in months (years?), and had not informed Kate of the particulars of this party. Earlier in the afternoon, when Kate realized Alice either gave her a fake number or couldn’t be bothered to check her phone, had to call another old friend who updated her phone with Shawn’s new and alarmingly suburban new address.

 Her compliment did not break the silence for long. Shawn looked as if he was going to take the beer in his hand to another room. He looked it if he looked as if he was going to blink at her a few more times, turned into his pantry, which had the door that should have belonged to an old wardrobe, and disappear. His face was not one that seemed happy to see her.

 “You look great,” she said, hoping that might help.

 “You’re not funny,” he told her. “And you shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be in my life. We shouldn’t know each other. I don’t know why we know each other.”

Exhalation. The air in the room was designed for drama.

“We know each other because, well, you remember when we met,” She said.

“I know why we met,” he said. “but that’s not the same thing as knowing why we know one another. Why you keep popping up in my life. Am I one of your projects? Am I someone you have to keep tabs on? Is there something about my life that’s interesting to you or your employers?”

Kate regretted coming. She should have planned her week. She should have spent the time with Ollie. Why wasn’t she with him now? Why wasn’t she spending every waking moment with him until.

 “You don’t know anything about my employers,” she said.

 Music played. Kate couldn’t see speakers but she heard music. Maybe all that stuff was just in the walls now, some easy up-charge from the house builders that put the stereo in one room and the speakers everywhere. The stereo equipment might have been mysterious, but the music was pedantic. Fleetwood Mac or something bleatingly like it blared from nowhere.

“Isn’t it enough that I think you’re worth keeping in touch with every now and then?”

“I don’t even know what the appropriate response is to this situation. People who have done the kinds of things you’ve done generally don’t keep showing up. Am I an idiot? I must be an idiot. You, Kate middle-name-redacted last-name-redacted, have screwed up my life on two occasions, and I let you do it both times, invited both events in. You’re like a vampire person. You’re of no danger to me until I invite you in, then you make me eat garlic and I explode.”

Kate said, “I don’t think you know how vampires work. But that’s okay. I don’t care. And I apologized for Scott. Scott was my fault. It was so, so my fault.”

Kate had a feeling this might happen. She didn’t think it would take place in such a sterile and tall kitchen, or that Shawn wouldn’t at least show a few niceties before getting into their past. But she knew she’d have to talk about Scott. She’d have to talk about Sabin. She’d have to talk about Drumheller.

“Give me some credit,” Shawn said. “We’ve been over our past. But when you show up and ruin my life, disappear for a few years, show up again looking for advice about your awful situation in 2012 with Sabin, and then disappear again for three years, you are stretching the notion of ‘old friends’ just a little. We are not friends. If anything, I’m your victim.”

It had been years. That’s a fun feeling. That one pops up nerves in new places.

She said, “I’m not what happened to you. I did a bad thing that moved your life forward when it wasn’t going to move forward on its own. We’re the same. What’s happening here? Isn’t that what you’re doing here? Who are these people? All your close, personal friends, right?”

Kate popped a bacon-wrapped scallop just like that.

“No,” she continued. “They’re here because you’re going to do something to their lives. You’re going to change them. You’re going to hit them with a Moonbow Easy or a Tuscon Typhoon. You’re on the job right now. This is clocked time. That’s why you’re not happy to see me. You don’t like to show your work.”

Kate’s phone buzzed. She picked it up and checked it.

“That’s not,” Shawn stammered. “You still don’t know everything, kid. You don’t know how all this works yet.”

Kate put her phone down on the table. “I just wanted to see you. It had been a long time and I thought it’d be nice.”

“Everyone who’s here tonight asked to be here. They all paid to be here. They know what’s going on,” Shawn said. “They ask me, and they pay me with their money. What I do is honest. What you do is terrorism.”

Kate took it badly. “I shouldn’t have come. Whatever friendship we had.”

“Friendship!” Shawn rebounded. “With friends like you, my god.”

The room began to fill with people who didn’t notice what was going on. It was just the momentum of a house party, with bodies shifting aimlessly from room to room. Kate looked around. Was Alice even at this party? People hit the fridge. They hit cupboards. If this was Shawn’s house, other people certainly felt right at home.

Shawn said, “Let’s go outside for a second. Follow me.” Kate followed behind Shawn to the front, where they sat down on the porch. They took the place of the two guys who were there when she arrived. In less than thirty seconds, some new girl hopped over them.

The porch was smoky. The lighting had a chill aura,  ghosts of light floated out of three blue lanterns above a lone wooden lounge chair, occupied by no one. They say a few feet from it. They couldn't see stars. They could hear air conditioning and trap.

Shawn's tone shifted friendlier, as if he'd finally remembered his old friend. They talked for a few moments about life. He asked here where she was living now, where she last vacationed, if she'd found a good pho place (she had six). The tension between them, which Kate didn't expect but kicked herself for not, seemed to ease. She figured she might as well ask him what she'd planned on.

"I got a letter," she said. "They need me to do a job that's going to take a few months."

Shawn said, "So you really haven't changed."

"What do you mean?" She asked.

Shawn yawned. He took a phone out of his pocket.

"You left this on the table."

Kate reached for it, and he pulled away.

"You're really going? I need to know before I give this back."

Kate spoke quickly, without putting it together. She said, "Yes. Of course I'm going. Now give that back."

Shawn flicked open the home screen. He tapped once on the screen, then handed it over. Kate turned the screen to face her, and saw what Shawn had sent.

While Kate read the screen, Shawn inched upwards. “You’re shipping out soon. You don’t know what to do. I’ve done this before. You want my advice. You actually like the guy and you don’t want to crush him. Or you want to know if there’s a way to keep him and still do what you do.”

Kate turned the screen off. The text was sent. It was over.

“What we do,” she said.

Shawn stabbed back. “Careful.”

Shawn must have written the text, but waited to send it until he was sure of something. Sure of what? That she was going to do her job?

“I can’t believe you did that,” Kate said.

“Come on,” Shawn said. “All I did was a bad thing that will move your life forward.”

Kate’s phone buzzed. She knew who it was. She knew what he wrote. It buzzed again, over and over. He was calling. She leered at Shawn. She began to shake.

“This is what you were going to do. You were going to string this guy along for a few days, and then break up with him, and then disappear. Actually, you might not have even broken up with him. You didn’t actually break up with Scott before disappearing, did you? Did you say goodbye to Sabin? God, I hope so.”

Ollie kept calling. Kate couldn’t hit the button.