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“Lemon,” a word I once used to describe an English professor we both had and both disliked and which always made Anna laugh.
    Anna laughed.
    Hugh turned back to her and stroked her cheek and said something in… French? Spanish? English? Polish? At the other end of the table Sadie was on the lap of the guy who had told me to move. He massaged her thigh while flirting with the brunette across from him. Someone tapped my shoulder. It was Hugh. He shouted something, and after shouting it two more times, Anna told me that Hugh was wondering if I could get them two margaritas. As she said this, she patted my arm and smiled. At the bar, there was a crowd. It took me twenty minutes to get the drinks. Hugh and Anna had gone when I got back. When I found them, they were in the corner. I approached, I stopped.
    Hugh’s tweed coat was over Anna’s lap, his hand was working under it. Anna’s face had an earnest expression, her eyes half-glazed, her mouth half-open.
    Back at the table, I drank the margaritas.
    â€œHaving fun?”
    Paula was Chilean, and once told me that if she didn’t shower everyday she got B.O.
    â€œUh—”
    â€œI’ll talk to you in a second,” she shouted, getting up. “—gotta go pee.”
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    The moment I got out to the parking lot, my mind cleared. The margaritas had done their job. The cold spring air felt good.
    The club’s sound system still thumping in my head, I drove up Keith Road, past the Catholic school I went to in junior high. A house beyond it had my aunt’s real estate sign on its lawn.
    On Lonsdale, I turned left. The highway led West, to Horseshoe Bay. I stamped the accelerator, lowered the front and back windows. All the stations that night were playing the Pet Shop Boys’ “Go West”—I finally turned the radio off and put on Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused….”
    I pressed repeat.
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    The last week in May, I didn’t do much. Each day I slept later and later, the thick blanket in the window stopping the sun from waking me. At first this had bothered me, my seeming purposelessness, but slowly I grew used to the rhythm of the days and the routine of killing time.
    After the night at the Avalon I hadn’t expected to hear from Sadie again—actually I didn’t want to hear from her again. But she called the night before I was to pick Cam up from the airport. I was sitting on the sofa watching Maniac when the phone rang, and without pausing the movie, I grabbed the portable. “Patterson Realty,” I said.
    Her voice, after a pause, said, “I’m sorry. I think I have the wrong number.”
    â€œSadie?”
    â€œTrace? Why’d you say Patterson’s Realty?”
    I explained that it was my aunt’s line and that was how she wanted me to answer it.
    We asked each other about our breaks; and after a long story by Sadie about how she had quit Earl’s and now worked at the Cactus Club and how her new manager was better than her old manager and how the new manager took her out for drinks, I asked, “So? Are you and—Brad—dating?”
    â€œYou mean Chad?”
    â€œI guess. The guy at the Avalon.”
    â€œNo—well, yeah. Yeah kinda.”
    â€œReally?” I said.
    The movie was coming to my favourite scene. I held the phone away and covered the mouthpiece.
    â€œWell, we’re just seeing right now. I don’t want to rush anything. I think that was the problem with Steve.”
    â€œSure,” I said.
    On screen, Frank Zito (the maniac) leaped onto the hood of the parked car in which a couple had been frolicking. He held a hunting rifle and, crouching, taking careful aim, squeezed the trigger. The head of the driver exploded in slow motion, flinging brain and blood all over the woman’s face.
    â€œWhat’s happening?” Sadie asked, sounding alarmed.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThe screaming? Is someone