​The Uncanny Ex Man

By ​Jeff Dupuis

The club closed and I drove Reese and “Ann-Marie” back to the bungalow near the train tracks where she rented the ground floor. Reese asked me to stick around, which I hated doing, but I was riding that line of being too drunk to drive, so resting up on her couch while they fucked made sense. Ann-Marie’s bedroom was at the back of the house, so with the TV on in the living room, it’s not like I had to listen to bedsprings creaking or a woman moaning or that odd grunt I’ve heard Reese make before under similar circumstances.
           
Reese was a regular ladies’ man, always had been, all the way back to high school. We used to tease him about his good looks, calling him Gorgeous, especially when he did some modelling as a teen. We had other names for him—Sister Act, because he dated a few of our friends’ sisters, which later changed to The Uncanny Ex Man when he moved in on some of the guys’ exes. He left my exes and my sister alone, so it was all a big laugh to me.
           
The TV cast a blue glow over the living room. The only thing on were infomercials. I picked the one with the hottest host, a woman with short brown hair and large breasts that pressed against her pastel blue silk blouse. She raved to her sidekick off camera about the benefits of some electric food chopping gizmo.
           
Sinking my body against the cushions lining the back of the couch, I took a throw pillow and set it on my face. It was like I was inside a burrow and I could finally relax and go to sleep. It reminded me of the eight years when I was married, sleeping on a queen-sized bed with a warm body that always fit perfectly into mine, my dreams pleasant and my mornings gentle.
           
Shutting the TV off, I started to hear the sounds of the house, floorboards creaking, the faucet in the kitchen dripping, snoring from the bedroom. I pressed the throw pillow harder against my ear to block out the noise. Drifting, I thought about Megan, my ex-wife, and how exciting things were between us when we were first getting to know each other.
           
I awoke to someone knocking on the screen door. My erection pressed hard against the crotch of my jeans. Weak first beams of the rising sun streamed in. It took a minute for me to remember where I was. I sat up and looked down the hall toward the bedroom, hoping the door would open and Ann-Marie would come out and see to the knocking.
           
The knocking kept on. I got up, adjusted myself and walked over to the front door, opening it wide. A big woman in her fifties, wearing tight jeans and a pink t-shirt tucked into them stood on the concrete step. On the lawn beside the step was a little boy who looked down at his shoes.
           
“Is Jane back?”
           
Clearly Ann-Marie was a stage name. None of the girls danced using their real names, but I hadn’t figured her for a Jane.
           
“Uh yeah,” I said. “I think she’s sleeping.”
           
“Look, I got called into work, it’s an emergency, I can’t watch Tyler anymore,” she said.
           
I had noticed a C-section scar during Ann-Marie’s last dance, once her cowboy hat, sleeveless black T-shirt and cut-off jean shorts were all strewn across the stage and she’d hooked her thumbs into her black, lace panties and made circles with her hips. I didn’t think about the kid at the time.
           
The woman stepped back, then ushered the boy through the door. “Tell her I’m sorry,” she yelled, hurrying down the walk and across the street to a similar bungalow with yellow siding and three decorative butterflies, each larger than the last, fixed diagonally over the mailbox beside the front door.
           
An unseen freight train rumbled somewhere in the distance. A screen door squealed opened and slammed shut a few houses over. The sky was a fiery red and hulking grey clouds were getting darker in its glow.
           
Tyler came in slowly, almost nervously, dropping his little backpack by the door knowing that someone else would pick it up. There was a plastic stool beside the door that I hadn’t noticed before. He sat on it and looked around absently. It took me a second to realize he was waiting for a grown-up to take his shoes off for him, which I knelt down to do. The boy didn’t make eye contact. He hummed a tune and looked around, rocking gently side-to-side.
           
He was five at the oldest, with red-brown hair and pale blue eyes. He wandered in as though through a dream. It made me think that maybe, as we got older, we got drunk or high just to get back to that place. He sat down like it was perfectly normal for some strange dude to be in his house first thing in the morning.
“My name’s Derek, what’s yours?” I asked, already knowing it but not knowing where else to start.
           
“Ty-lo,” he said.
           
It made me smile. Parents who give their kids names with the letter R in it are basically guaranteeing that the kid and their friends will be unable to pronounce the name for the first six years of their lives, at least. I used to say my own name as “Deh-wek” and my big sister mockingly referred to me as that for years afterwards. That’s not the reason that she and I don’t talk anymore, but it may as well be.
           
“Let’s see what’s on TV,” I said, picking up the remote I’d left on the floor beside the couch.
           
The public television station had kids programming on. I knew it would, so I left the boy on the couch mesmerized by the screen, the volume turned low. Walking down the hall, past the bathroom and the boy’s room, I stood at the door to the master bedroom. I couldn’t hear anything on the other side. I tapped gently with one knuckle.
           
No one answered.
           
Back in the living room, there was a little kid interacting with a puppet dog on the TV screen. Tyler didn’t look at me. I walked into the kitchen and looked through the cupboards before I found glasses. I filled one with water and pounded it back in one gulp. There was a bright orange plastic cup in the same cupboard, so I filled it up and brought it out to the boy.
           
“Here’s some water,” I said and set it down on the table beside the couch.
           
He didn’t acknowledge me or the water. I was about to sit in the chair on the other side of the couch when I heard the door to the master bedroom open. Then came the sound of footsteps, a toilet lid and seat clinking hard against the porcelain tank and a long stream of piss hitting water.
           
The bathroom door was open and I looked in to see Reese’s bare ass. He stood completely naked, his body tanned a caramel brown all over except for the area usually covered by boxers. The skin there was so pale it looked almost sickly in contrast.
           
“Dude,” I said quietly.
           
“Oh hey,” he said, flushing the toilet and turning to the sink.
           
Reese’s body was completely hairless, save for a patch on his chest.
           
“Yo, Ann-Marie’s kid is here.”
           
“Oh, shit, yeah. I saw his picture in the bedroom.”
           
“He’s watching TV for now,” I said. “I don’t know if he needs food or whatever.”
           
Reese wandered past me, scratching his sides, dick swinging. He went back into the bedroom and closed the door behind himself. I heard a little click, which I assumed was made by the lock.
           
The TV program was explaining how hydro-electric power stations worked in a kid-friendly way, the young host saying things like “oh wow” and “golly.” I sat down in the chair and Tyler looked over covertly, his eyes darting back to the screen when he saw that I saw him. Taking my phone out, I scrolled through my social media and saw pictures of Megan, with her new husband, David, and their newborn baby, Ollie, everything looking like a storybook ending. She’d told me she wasn’t ready to have a baby, and that she might never be ready.
           
I thought maybe I heard whispering, then the creaking of bedsprings. Traffic picked up on the street outside and with the TV on, I couldn’t be sure. Then I heard moaning, which rose in volume and pitch. Reaching for the remote, I turned the volume up as the segment about hydro-electric power ended. The boy looked at me curiously.
           
“Are you hungry? You must be hungry.”
           
He nodded and I got up and went into the kitchen. I wasn’t about to scramble the kid some eggs or make pancakes, but I figured I could pour some milk and cereal in a bowl and that would be that. It didn’t take long to find the box of Fruit Loops (on top of the fridge) and the milk. I grabbed a plastic bowl that was ribbed on the sides, set the table and called Tyler into the kitchen.
           
There were two bottles of white wine on the table, one empty, one two-thirds full. We’d passed the first one around when we got there, taking pulls straight from the bottle. We cracked the second bottle, handing it back-and-forth before Reese and Jane disappeared into the back bedroom. I couldn’t see the cap (it was a screw top), so I left it open by the sink, away from the kid, who toddled into the kitchen slowly.
           
The coffeemaker in the corner called to me, but I couldn’t find the filters or the coffee itself and I cursed under my breath to vent my frustration. One chair had a Paw Patrol placemat on the table in front of it, so I lifted Tyler into it and put the bowl of cereal in front of him. Handing him a plastic spoon with a Minion on the end from the dish rack, I left him to his breakfast.
           
Tyler spooned cereal into his mouth with an overhand grip. He stared through the glass tabletop at the tile floor beneath. He was fine so I started looking for the coffee again.
           
Rays of the morning sun began to shine through the kitchen window as it rose over the corner of the roof next door, the thin white curtains that hung on a brass rod unable to hold them back. A menagerie of plastic animals lined the sill. The coffee can and filters were kept in a cupboard not directly under the sink, but the one next to it, beside paper towels and a box of plastic garbage bags.
           
The coffeemaker was like the one I had in my childhood home, a simple, black, plastic Mr. Coffee apparatus, probably used. Looking around, I noticed most of the appliances were dated. They probably came with the place. Setting the machine to brew four cups’ worth, I went back into the fridge for the bottle of almond milk I had noticed earlier. Usually, I took my coffee black, but that morning, on an empty stomach that had had nothing but booze in it the night before, a little bit extra would sooth the gut rot.
           
“How’re the Fruit Loops?” I asked the boy.
           
Tyler stopped eating and sat very still. He didn’t turn to look at me or say anything. His tiny, thin spine seemed to curve inward. I walked over and looked at him, noticing pink patches around his mouth and on his cheek.
           
“Are you okay, little buddy?”
           
He looked at me as though he might cry, as though he was afraid or maybe ashamed. Then he threw up, on the table, on himself, on the floor. It was milky, with a greenish tint and pieces of Fruit Loops in it. About a second later, I felt my stomach turn and I puked a little in my mouth, the stomach acid burning the back of my throat.
           
“What the fuck?” Jane said from the doorway.
           
She ran over to her son and put a hand on his back.
           
“Give me the paper towels,” she said.
           
Jane picked up the boy and took him away from the mess. She held him close, wiping his face and chest. I cleaned up as much vomit from the table and floor as I could without vomiting anymore myself. She told him “it’s okay, baby” over and over.
           
“What happened?” Reese said from the threshold.
           
“Your friend gave my son cow’s milk, which he’s allergic to,” Jane said. “You should have told me my kid was home, instead of acting like this was your damn house. What’s the matter with you?”
           
At once she looked both older and younger than she had in the low lights of the club. She gave me a hard look with wide, deep brown eyes, and I felt myself buckle beneath the weight of their gaze.
           
“I told him to tell you,” I said, pointing at Reese.
           
Jane looked at Reese, who shrugged his shoulders giving her a helpless, puppy-dog look, leaning Paul-Newman-like on the opposite side of the doorframe. Reese could get away with shit like that. I gave it a fifty-fifty chance of working. The comforting aroma of coffee began to fill the room.
           
“You guys should go,” she said, cuddling her son.
           
Reese leaned in for a kiss and was given cheek, Jane’s mouth tight while she glanced off coldly toward the wall. Reese looked over at me and shrugged his shoulders again. It was over and they both knew it. Jane took Tyler to the bathroom to get him cleaned up. Reese and I gathered our things.
           
“Is he going to be okay?” I asked from the mouth of the hallway.
           
Water ran and Jane spoke softly to her child. I didn’t linger. Reese walked behind me and pushed open the front door.
           
The look in Jane’s eyes stuck with me as we walked down her concrete front steps and out onto the gravel driveway. I had no intention of being anyone’s dad, I knew I wasn’t cut out for it, but failing at feeding one kid one time felt like something major. It felt like a character defect.
           
Reese walked around the passenger side of my Nissan and took hold of the door handle, looking out across the street as if searching for something over the pitched roofs and power lines. I unlocked the door and Reese got in. Whatever thought had captured him was gone. He had his leather jacket folded in a bundle in his arms.
           
“You ratted me out, dude, not cool,” he said, as we crunched backward down the driveway until transitioning to the smooth concrete.
           
“What the fuck, man. When it comes to a mom and her kid, all bets are off,” I said.
           
It took me a few minutes to get my bearings, but I didn’t mind driving aimlessly and in the wrong direction. The side streets were quiet and cars were sparse until we turned onto Montrave Avenue and passed the Halibut House that advertised, through a colorful sticker that ran the length of the window, that it now served breakfast. Given the five or six cars parked outside, and the one pulling in the driveway, it looked like the sticker had worked.
           
“Yo, why did you feed the kid?”
           
Reese rested his elbow on the door and ran his fingers through his hair while staring through the windshield.
           
“I dunno, I felt like I had to do something. The kid was hungry and you were fucking his mom, which wasn’t helping the situation. I told you to tell her that the kid was there.”
           
“Don’t go playing papa,” Reese said.
           
“Don’t be a dickhead, dude,” I said. “I gave the kid milk and cereal. I didn’t think he’d go Exorcist on me.”
           
I had wanted Jane to like me. I thought she had when she came to our table and sat in Reese’s chair that was left empty while he blew a hundred dollars on lap dances. We talked about TV, books and movies and I bought her a glass of white wine. We both liked Cary Grant movies, something uncommon to have in common today. Only once Reese returned and Jane stood up and I introduced them, did I know that she’d been there for him from the start. Then she unfolded her little towel, laid it across his lap, sat down and made herself comfortable, leaning in so close when she spoke that her lips brushed against his ear.
           
Traffic was backed up on the highway visible in the distance as we neared the on-ramp, which was also backed up. I turned on the radio and switched to the AM band to listen to the news channel for traffic updates.
           
“The liberal media will rot your brain,” Reese said.
           
“I just want to find out if there’s an accident,” I said. “I don’t think George Soros is manipulating local traffic reports.”
           
“Soros is bad news,” Reese said. “Seriously.”
           
“Fuck’s sake,” I muttered.
           
“A tractor trailer has jackknifed on the 401 at Bayly,” Reese said, looking down at his phone.
           
“You don’t have anywhere to be, right?”
           
He shook his head without looking up from the screen.

“Mind if we take the scenic route?”

“You’re driving,” he said.

I pulled out of the line and joined the procession of cars heading west along Bloor. All traffic westward was destined for congestion, all the cars were headed to Toronto. I had a different idea. I would make a right at the first opportunity to go north, perpendicular to the flow of traffic.
             
The smaller towns east of the city were unfamiliar, but I knew somewhere north and west of where we were was the town of Whitevale, where my Uncle Bruce had a cattle farm before he died of cancer three years ago. I had spent four or five summers on that farm when I was a kid. Once I was strong enough, I was recruited to help with the haying. My dad had his heart attack when haying for Uncle Bruce, which tells you that it wasn’t easy work. None of my other friends knew their way around a square baler, so I guess I’d earned some experience points or something.
           
We drove on for a while, passing two trailer rental places, the Comfort Inn and slipping beneath three underpasses. It started to seem as though we’d never find a northbound road, only Jeep dealerships, a train station and the MacDonald-Cartier Freeway to our right, separated by a chain-link fence with two strips of grass on either side. Reese reached down between his legs and pulled out the partially-drank wine bottle that he’d concealed in his jacket.  He looked around before taking a pull.
           
“Dude, seriously?” I said, looking around for cop cars.
           
“Can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning,” he said.
           
There were two men at the club last night, one with long, black hair and the other with a buzz cut, who looked about the same age as Reese and I. The guy with the long hair wore a long-sleeve, waffle mesh shirt with a dragon on it. He also had a fanny pack, which, as we learned, was filled with twenties, fifties and drugs in little baggies, probably cocaine. They bought drinks for all the girls and probably did lines with them in the VIP area. They were nice guys, they even bought us a round. There was nothing wrong with them whatsoever, they were party boys. But in the light of day, I looked back on them as a cautionary tale.
           
Oshawa had turned into Whitby and still no roads led north, only into plazas with Petsmarts and Home Depots. Finally, we came to Thickson Road, which was backed up as far as the onramp to the 401. I thought, fuck it, made the turn and we sat it traffic for a short while, then drove north, the road growing emptier and emptier the further we got from the highway.
           
Driving as far as Taunton Road, I turned left. That name, “Taunton” stood somewhere in my memory, though I wasn’t sure where. It was impressive how few memories I had for the days, months and years of my childhood. The drugs and the booze must have been responsible for some of that, maybe all. Or maybe I didn’t want to remember.
           
Brock Road also sounded familiar as we approached it. It was a country road like any other, but it was still a novelty to drive in a direction with no skyscrapers in the distance, no housing developments or billboards with renderings of housing developments standing on empty lots that said “Coming Soon.” A gravel road intersected with the paved one and a weeping willow stood beside it like a hitchhiker.
           
“We’re coming up on my Uncle Bruce’s old farm,” I said.
           
“Sometimes I think I’d like a farm,” Reese said, “a nice old house, a wife and two kids. Just living off the land, the way we’re supposed to.”
           
“Didn’t think you were the type to go for country living,” I said.
           
“I contain multitudes, bro.”
           
We were on the cusp of summer, but the lonely country road conjured images of autumn, the harvest festival, pumpkins and apple cider.
           
I slowed down as we approached my uncle’s old farm, turning the Nissan into the mouth of the gravel driveway. Uncle Bruce’s house was an old Victorian made up of rust-coloured bricks and set back from the road, a small patch of dirt in front where he used to grow corn. We’d run among the stalks, then pick the corn when it was time, harvestmen standing on the leaves or near the base of each plant.
           
Behind the house was a garage for his car, then another garage for tractors and the baler. Across the driveway from that was the barn where he kept chickens and stored hay. On the lawn between the house and the garage was a coop where he kept geese at one time. The outbuildings were surrounded by pastures on two sides, one large where the cattle grazed and one small that was the exclusive territory of the bull. The east side of the property was the field where Uncle Bruce grew hay.
           
“What are we doing?” Reese asked.
           
The hay field was gone and a housing development was in its infant stages. The pasture behind the farm was being bulldozed and flattened, the one barn toward the back of the property was already demolished. The house was still intact, but for how long? No corn grew in front of it. The soil had grown over with prickly lettuce, horse-nettle and pigweed.
           
“I don’t miss doing chores,” I said, “but I also miss doing chores.”
           
To the left of the driveway was a line of oak trees. Beneath them was a wild and bushy patch of land that divided the driveway from the hayfield. Soon it too would have to go.
           
“One Sunday evening we had dinner here, and I really, really didn’t want to go to school the next day. So I walked into that patch of weeds and rubbed poison ivy on my arms.”
           
“Are you serious?”
           
“Yeah man, I had serious anxiety about school. I didn’t just dab it on, I fucking rubbed the leaves up and down my arms. Anyway, no one called me out on it, but I’m sure my mom suspected that I’d done it on purpose.”
           
“That’s definitely fucked up.”
           
“Yep,” I said, “That’s me.”
           
Peering through the windshield, I could see my past, my mother’s Caprice Classic parked up ahead, dogs running freely, my ten-year-old self wondering the yard with my cousins. Then I saw the ambulance that came for Dad. It was the old kind, an enlarged and elongated panel van with the star of life on the side.

​Ghosts crossed the lawn. It wouldn’t be long before the house and the outbuildings would be ghosts too, made up of distant memories instead of wood, brick and concrete. Before the ghosts could peer back at me, I decided I’d seen enough.
           
Backing out, I pointed the nose of the car toward Whitevale and stepped on the gas. The town itself was the portrait of a CBC Family Hour pioneer fantasy; Victorian houses with decorative trims, gables and shutters. Stone paths led up to front porches with ornate wooden doors. We came upon the old united church, which had a large rose window above its entrance, the glass textured and stained a syrupy orange. Beside the church was a small cemetery with aging gravestones so weather-worn that the names and dates of the old, ivory white stones had begun to fade.  
           
I don’t know where the town officially started or stopped, but it seemed to me to end after crossing the bridge over the small river that led down from Whitevale Pond, just after what used to be the feed store. Beyond the bridge, scattered farmhouses appeared through the breaks in the trees or far back behind fields and pastures, at the ends of long driveways shaded by rows of trees.  Not much further beyond them, the subdivisions started.
           
The feed store building was still there, though the store itself was gone and the silo that dispensed the feed had long been disassembled. Raking through my brain, I tried to remember the name of the co-op that ran the store, but I could only picture the logo, a rounded pentagram with “CO-OP” in the centre. As a kid, it reminded me of a homeplate.
           
The structure had become home to some kind of alternative health collective. That earthy, spiritual, there’s-no-evidence-this-works-but-we’ll-take-your-money-anyway kind of healing. I wonder what Uncle Bruce would have thought as one of the last farmers in the area before he died.

---

On a late-spring day, very much like that one, Megan and I got dolled up and went to a swanky bistro in Leslieville. Some friends of ours were having their engagement party. It was a beautiful little place, a picturesque setup and the beginning of the end.
           
The streetcars grinded along the tracks behind us as we entered, passing through a heavy, maroon curtain. The dining room was empty, dark compared to the outside. Little glass cups on each table held candles but no flames. I told the young brunette who greeted us why we were there and she guided us to a back room, following the low rumble of conversation then the high peaks of laughter.
           
“Look who decided to show up,” Des, the groom-to-be, said as we entered.
           
Two long tables covered in finger foods lined the far wall. Des and his parents, as well as Amy and hers, sat at small tables near the windows that faced a laneway that ran behind the bistro. Reese and some of the other boys, Mike, Ryan, CJ and Jonny O, stood in a semi-circle with pints or bottles in their hands, halfway between the food and the families.
           
“Wait, I thought this was open bar?” I said.
           
The boys laughed. We hugged Des and Amy and greeted their parents, who we’d met a number of times in the years they’d been together. A few minutes later Jack and Min came in, he pushing a stroller, she carrying a bag with diapers, a bottle and a number of toys that jingled when dangled over Baby Jess.
           
“I need a fresh one,” Des said, looking down at his empty pint glass.
           
“Allow me,” I said.
           
We turned back toward the doorway and the bar on the other side.
           
“We’ll be opening the champagne soon,” Amy said.
           
“Go easy,” Megan whispered as we moved apart.
           
The brunette smiled at us as she passed from the kitchen back toward her post behind a lectern near the door. Des put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. A man with short brown hair and a beard entered the restaurant. He was about our age, but his beard and haircut made him look older.
           
“David,” Des called out, “parties in the back.”
           
He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. David gave a shy wave and smiled without showing any teeth before heading into the other room.
           
“He works with Amy.”
           
I nodded as David passed and didn’t give him another thought. Des and I leaned against the burnished wood bar. The bartender was probably a model between gigs, tall and thin, pale blue-green eyes and sharp cheekbones. Her Malibu blonde hair fell straight then curved inward above the top of her breasts, which were mostly concealed by her black blouse tucked into her black pleated pants.
           
“You again,” she said in accented English.
           
“I can’t stay away,” Des said.
           
The bartender flashed a smile.
           
“I’ve got to get my friend caught up.”
           
Des put his arm around my neck. I glanced passed the bartender, at the two of us, our reflections in the mirror on the wall behind the bar. Two men at the beginning of two marriages.
           
“I’m thinking tequila,” Des said.
           
“I just want a pint,” I said, then turning to the bartender, “what kind of wheat beers do you have on tap?”
           
“Two shots of tequila, and two pints of Belgian moon,” Des said.
           
The bartender smiled at Des again, setting up our shots before pouring the pints.
           
“You have to do one shot with me,” he said, “it’s my engagement, for fuck’s sake.”
           
“Just the one,” I said.
           
“The coast is clear,” Des said, looking over my shoulder toward the doorway leading to the rest of the party. We both took our shots quickly, then grabbed our pints and walked back. Megan stood with Min, their backs to Jack, who stared down at his phone while rocking the stroller back and forth.
           
“My first piece of advice on marriage,” I said, “don’t let your wife catch you flirting with Swedish supermodel bartenders,” I said.
           
“Latvian,” Des said quietly.
           
“What was that?” I asked, leaning in closer to him.
           
“She’s Latvian, not Swedish. Her name is Madara and she recently came over from Riga, which is the capital,” he said in that tone of educating someone.
           
“How many drinks have you had?” I asked.
           
Des and I separated as we rejoined the party. He returned to his bride-to-be and to his mother who seemed a little tipsy. His father whispered conspiratorially to Amy’s father, who stood with his arms crossed and looked out over the room like a football coach standing on the sidelines. I approached Megan, the tequila already warming my chest.
           
“Make sure you get something to eat,” Megan said, nodding over toward the food laid out on the long tables topped with white sheets.
           
I told her I would but didn’t. Instead, I looked around the room, at the exposed wooden beams, the sconces meant to look like Victorian gaslights. Delftware plates with blue windmills were fastened to the deep yellow walls. Whereas the main dining area was meant to look like an upscale bistro, this room seemed cozier somehow. A shelf  just wide enough to rest a beer on ran the length of one wall. It wasn’t a space for quiet conversation, holding hands over a tablecloth and candles. It was for laughter, for speeches, for clinking glasses and booze spilt on the floorboards.
           
I began to feel very at home there, surrounded by friends who were like family. Megan and Min walked around the stroller and looked in on Jess, who was still asleep and must have looked adorable based on the expression on their two faces. Reese stood near the doorway, his hand planted against the wall, one of Amy’s sisters between him and it. The sister, Caitlyn, smiled up at him, her hands behind her back, her posture both strong and upright, yet submissive.
           
Mr. Gambino, Des’s father, came over and tapped Reese on the shoulder then waved me over. Along with Des, we went outside to the sunlit sidewalk, then around the side of the building, beneath the shade of a maple tree. Mr. Gambino always seemeds to like us more than the other guys. He passed around Cuban cigars he’d bought for the occasion.
           
It all felt very old school, very manly, like a John Cassavettes film. We smoked cigars while a lady walked her dog around the parkette across the street. Mr. Gambino took a flask out of his jacket pocket and we passed it around, taking covert swigs of bourbon before handing it back. The longer it went on, the less covert it became, then the flask was empty.
           
I’m not sure how long we stayed out there. A herd of clouds crossed the sky and blocked out the sun. Our voices, our laughter, grew louder and we expanded our circle, forcing pedestrians to go around us. Then Mr. Gambino led our group back inside.
           
“Stay away from the sister,” he said to Reese, slapping his back. “At least until Des seals the deal.”
           
We all laughed.
           
“And you, Des, you stay away from that zoccola behind the bar.”
           
Only Des and his dad laughed at that one. We ordered fresh pints at the bar, then went back to the party.
           
Megan was holding Baby Jess, carefully cradling her head, gently rocking her. As I came closer I could see the baby’s tiny eyes, dark and glossy, seemingly not registering anything around her. She was only a couple months old.
           
“Have you eaten anything?” Megan asked as I approached.
           
“Not yet.”
           
She gave me a quick glare. I doubted that Min, Jack or anyone else could have seen it. Setting my pint on the shelf, I walked over to the table with the food on it, I picked up one of the small, thick pitas and stuffed the whole thing in my mouth. I made sure that she saw me do it. Then I picked up a celery stick and walked back over, chewing on it the moment I swallowed down the pita.
           
“There,” I said between bites.
           
Megan’s pale cheeks began to redden. She turned away from me, the baby still in her arms, like I might try to snatch the infant from her. Nobody else seemed to notice. Jack and Min took the opportunity to go get food from the buffet. Des and Amy were back together, and Reese stood with Ryan while making eyes at Caitlyn.
           
Mr. Gambino made a speech about love, commitment and the importance of family. Amy’s dad, feeling the spotlight was now on him, spoke about his love for his daughter, his desire to see her happy, and his welcoming Des into the family. He spoke of Des’s character, his upright and virtuous nature. The boys and I exchanged looks.
           
“I want to hold the baby,” I said after the speeches ended.
           
Megan looked at me like I was an extraterrestrial.
           
“Come on, my turn,” I said, the room falling silent at just that moment.
           
Megan looked from me to Min. Min looked at Jack. Jack looked toward me.           
           
“Just be careful with her head,” Jack said.
           
“I know how to hold a fucking baby, dude.”
           
Megan turned at the waist, pointing her shoulder toward me, but I reached out and pulled Baby Jess from her arms, causing her to stagger. My elbow knocked my pint off the shelf. It hit the floor and shattered. The eyes of the entire party were on us, on me.

---

In the bright sunlight, standing beside a country road, Reese looked like the frontman of a nineties alt-rock band. It was easy to picture him screaming behind a mic flanked by guitar and bass players, a drummer in back, black denim and chain wallets everywhere. We stood at the edge of the ravine, the leaves on the trees looked almost neon green.
           
“Do you ever think about how all of these leaves are new?” Reese asked.
           
It was an odd thing for Reese, who never seemed to look back or forward, to say.
           
“I’m glad we don’t have to lose everything and start over every single year,” I said.
           
“I don’t know, there’s something free about that,” he said, “shedding our pasts and starting fresh.”
           
It sounded like something a Buddhist might say. Or maybe something he read in that Lao Tze book that he lent me years ago and that I never gave back. It was easy to forget that Reese was just as complex as anyone else. Beneath the good looks, the easy smile, the confidence, he was just another primate on a ball spinning through the vast and empty cosmos.
           
We started down a trail made by runoff from the parking lot, gravel turning to dirt. Cigarette butts and bottle caps were visible among the wild grass and weeds.
           
How many joints had been smoked under that bridge? How many bottles of beers had been drank? How many first kisses had taken place there? Any last kisses? Spray paint on the concrete and an empty bag of chips were the only signs of human life that I saw that day.
           
When I was a boy, there had been crayfish in that river. I remember hopping from rock to rock with the intention of crossing, then pausing somewhere in the middle, and seeing a crayfish laying there in the sun, its tiny feet buried in the silt of the river bottom. When I stooped over, my hands on by bare knees exposed by shorts, the crayfish became aware of me. It drew in its pincers, like a boxer raising his fists and tucking his chin to protect himself.  
           
“Have you talked to Megan lately?” Reese asked, handing me the wine bottle.
           
I took a long swig until it was almost empty. Handing the bottle back, I started through the tall grass on the riverbank. Rocks stuck out of the water like armour plates on the back of some dinosaur. Taking a long step, I planted my foot on the nearest one, balancing myself over the flowing water. Reese stood on the bank, his left thumb hooked into the front pocket of his jeans while he swilled the last of the wine.
           
“Nah,” I said. “We’re on good terms, but we don’t need to talk anymore. It’s not good for either of us. She has a new life.”
           
“A lot happened in a couple years.”
           
“Four years,” I said. “It’s been four years since the divorce.”
           
What I didn’t tell Reese was that I’d visited Megan, David and Baby Oliver. My mom (of all people) bought them some baby stuff (incredibly kind though it struck me as disloyal) and insisted I bring it over and say it was from me. David put the baby down for a nap and left Megan and I alone on the little slab of concrete they called a porch. We talked about how exhausted she was, then we talked about the old days. She asked about my mom, the guys, then Reese in particular. Apparently they’d run into each other at a brew pub downtown, and Reese, drunk as a skunk, ask her to go home with him.
           
“You know who I am right? Derek’s ex-wife,” she’d said, all the while Reese stared at her with glazed-over eyes.
           
She didn’t understand that that did not matter in the slightest to Reese. He was the Uncanny Ex Man, a nickname he disapproved of though he never changed his behavior so that we might let it go. When she told me, all I could do was smile and shake my head.
           
Thinking about Megan always bummed me out, like a memory of being on a winning streak at a casino only to lose it all on one hand. It was a feeling that would follow me around the rest of the day. Doubts lingered, but regrets dogged your heels like a bloodhound.
           
The river, in that moment, was like what life should be, a flow in one direction toward something greater. I was above that flow, just as I was above that river, and I wasn’t being drawn anywhere, but stayed still on that rock, going no place.
           
​The sand on the riverbank was bright in the sunlight and made me think of that dry, hot stretch of late August, when the cicadas droned in the trees and dragonflies hovered for the length of heartbeats then darted off suddenly. I felt a shiver of panic for a millisecond, like the first months of summer had already slipped by and I was face-to-face with its end. A pickup crossed the bridge and the sun projected its shadow onto the bank opposite of where I stood and I realized it was only May. I still had plenty of time to get into the flow and see where it would take me. 

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Jeff Dupuis is a writer and editor living in Toronto. He is the author of The Creature X Mystery novels and numerous short stories. Jeff is the editor, alongside A.G. Pasquella, of the anthology Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction from the Future of Food, which will be published in 2025 by Dundurn Press.