2. Liam’s Soccer Game, April 2011 #2
“You can make it,” Paul said. “And I should get showered… They want me to come in tonight. It’s a callback for a movie!”
“Go, go, go,” Sarah replied, and Paul started running towards the nearest subway stop.
She saw Ren pulling a towel out of a bag and rubbing it over his hair.
Then he turned and walked toward her, his expression filled with something she couldn’t place.
Affection? Puzzlement? After a few steps, he made a beeline to the container of coffee that his teammates had set up on the sidelines.
That made sense, Sarah thought. There was no reason she should get priority over coffee. She shivered in the brisk wind.
A moment later, he was standing in front of her, a paper cup in hand.
“Hey. What are you doing here?” he asked, a little breathless from the cold and exercise.
“Oh,” she said, her voice sounding equally weightless, “I’m here to watch Liam.” She waved one soggy mitten in her boyfriend’s direction.
Ren’s eyes flickered to Liam with a dubious look. “You’re not cold?”
“Only from sitting still so long.”
“Here.” Ren handed her the cup. Of course it was meant for her; never underestimate Ren’s ability to surprise you with kindness.
“So Rene Durand,” she said, “playing sports. I thought I was hallucinating.”
He laughed. “You may have been. I’m new to the team, and I guess they play inside in winter, which sounds a lot better.” Ren grinned and gestured at the drifting flurries. “But it’s good to be doing something active. I spend too much time at a computer these days.”
“So what are you up to that keeps you chained to a desk?”
“Journalist. Toronto Star. I go out in the field for stories, but I’m at my desk more often than not. Right now I’m on the city beat, which means lots of waiting around for something interesting to happen and exaggerating the boring stuff to fill the page.”
“Sorry that our criminal underworld is so disappointing.”
He grinned. “Yeah. I thought being a reporter would be more like traveling the world by camel or interviewing biker gangs…”
“Like Hunter S. Thompson with fewer drugs.”
“That’s just what I put in my job application.”
They smiled at each other. It felt like their old university banter: the nerdy references and dry teasing.
“And you? What are you up to?” he asked.
Sarah inwardly sighed at how boring her life was. “I do art direction at a magazine and take headshots. I haven’t launched the dazzling career as a photographer that I envisioned for myself.”
“And Liam is your boyfriend…?”
Again, a hint of doubt in her taste. She felt defensive, as she always had with Ren. “He’s nice, actually. He’s a doctor.”
Ren nodded once, unsmiling.
“He’s a good guy,” she insisted. “Remember that time when you talked to me about Ivan not giving me his coat? You probably don’t remember that.”
“I remember.” Ren’s gaze was intense.
“What you said actually had an effect on me. I stopped dating jerks. Liam isn’t the kind of person who wouldn’t notice if I was cold.
” It occurred to her that Liam was literally keeping her out in the cold right then, but that was different; he never kept her awake crying all night.
He was pleasant and affectionate when he was available, which wasn’t always. “He works in emergency medicine.”
“Are you going to marry him?”
The question surprised her. “It’s still pretty new. We’ve only been together a couple of years.”
Sarah could hear how that sounded as soon as the words left her lips.
Liam had been very insistent that they not rush things.
He was very busy, much too busy to discuss getting married, let alone planning for a wedding.
Maybe his schedule would clear up some point.
Just not this year. Probably not next year, either.
“I got married, actually,” Ren said.
She tried to keep too much shock from her face. “Are you kidding? That’s great!”
“Yeah.” He looked abashed, one hand rubbing at the back of his neck. “She’s an intellectual property lawyer. Grew up in Nevada. She does music licensing.”
“She sounds brilliant.”
Ren’s smile widened. “Yeah. She has complete and total disdain for me.”
“Well…smart woman,” Sarah joked.
His eyes were warm. “You haven’t changed.”
“I’m more pessimistic than I used to be.”
“You were always pretty pessimistic.”
Sarah glanced over to see Liam approaching. “Well, I should…” Sarah started gathering her things. “It’s great to see you! I’ll come watch you guys again.”
“Please don’t,” Ren said. “Don’t sit out here in the cold. We should get coffee, catch up.”
Sarah was certain that he didn’t mean a word of it. “Yeah. My number is the same, if you still have it.”
That strange expression was back in his eyes. “I still have it,” he said.
“We should go to a museum or something. Let me know.”
It seemed best to leave the planning in his court. He was married; she didn’t want him to think she was hitting on him.
He nodded, watching her with the same unreadable expression. Friendliness? Pity?
“Hey,” Liam said, breathing hard as he landed next to them. “What’s going on?” He glanced between them.
“We were catching up,” she explained. “We knew each other at McGill.”
“Oh, okay,” Liam said flatly. “Want to get going? It’s freezing.”
“Yeah.” She met Ren’s eyes, feeling a wave of genuine affection. “Good to see you.”
Ren’s eyes flicked between her and Liam as if he were deliberately hiding his thoughts. “Yes, definitely.”
As they walked away, Liam slung an arm around her neck and kissed her on the side of her woolen hat. “I hope you weren’t cold,” he said. “I told you not to come.”
“It was fun,” she insisted.
“So you’re going to hang out with Durand?”
“I think he was just being polite,” she said quietly.
Liam nodded, glancing at her cup of coffee. “Is that warm?”
“Pretty warm. You should have it.” She tried to hand him the cup, but he shook her off.
“I hate lukewarm coffee. Can we stop for an espresso or something? I’m freezing.”
Liam left her in the coffee shop to head home for his early shift in the E.R.
, so she found herself curled up alone on her sofa by nine at night, her knees still chilly from the hours in the cold even now that they were tucked safely under a fleece blanket.
She had decided to track down some of Ren’s articles for the Toronto Star and had spent the last half hour reading his work on her laptop, using the heat from her aging laptop battery as an electric blanket.
Ren’s voice in his writing had the same biting perspective she remembered from school, even if his subjects were fairly mundane: bike theft, political grandstanding, new trends in cybercrime.
One article read, ‘Even people unfamiliar with Mr. Sitka’s politics are likely familiar with his eponymous restaurant chain, renowned for both its twenty-page menu and its even longer history of labor disputes.’
Or from another article: ‘The compost bin serves as an apt metaphor for the fate of the community garden itself: it’s hard to tell what will turn up next, but it may not be pretty.’
His photos were even better, sharp, and well-composed.
Not all reporters took their own pictures, but Ren had an eye for framing and wasn’t afraid to pick an angle and commit to it.
She wondered why she’d never spotted his name in the paper and realized it was because she never read the local news.
It was hard enough to think about the fate of the world, let alone restaurant fires and housing policies that she could do nothing about.
Now the articles charmed her, full of his sharp perspective and dry wit.
She thought of all the times he used to love making big, blanket statements back at school:
‘All Polaroid photography looks pornographic. That’s its entire appeal.’
‘People who like Nietzsche are intelligent, but people who love him are bitter male virgins.’
‘Dubbing films instead of subtitling them is an artistic crime.’
Some people found Ren’s pronouncements annoying, but Sarah had always found his decisiveness amusing. And he never seemed to mind when she laughed at him, which was why they had gotten along.
She hadn’t realized how much she missed him until he reappeared in her life again, but now she felt the loss of him as a pang.
It would have been fun to have stayed in touch, in spite of everything that had passed between them.
It would have been fun to have heard his takes on movies and books and society at large during the last few years.
She always felt smarter after talking to him, especially when it was because she had proven him wrong.
A key turned in the lock. Paul entered, peeled off his coat, and walked into their tiny kitchen. He was wearing the nice black button-down that he considered his lucky charm at auditions.
“How’d it go?” she called.
“Booked it,” he said.
“Yes!” She felt a rush of joy as she slid off her blanket to hug him. “That’s great.”
“No, no, I was kidding,” he said, throwing open the refrigerator and grabbing a beer. “Their eyes glazed over in the middle of my first line. Usually people wait at least three lines before they start looking disappointed, but I guess this casting director was quicker than average.”