“Are you going to make a fuss?” Mimi crosses her arms and looks at me sternly. “How much did the airline tickets cost us to come to Prague?”

“Is this one of your irrelevant analogies that tries to compare the high cost of international air travel with the trivial cost of European bathrooms?”

“Yes.”

“The plane had free bathrooms.”

“People make their living looking after the bathrooms. It’s probably a traditional activity.”

“And they never give you enough toilet paper.”

Mimi shrugs. “We can always buy a roll and carry it around with us.”

There are no washrooms in Golden Lane, but we find one near the Supreme Burgrave’s house.

“Any idea what a supreme burgrave is?”

Mimi consults the guidebook. “Evidently, he looked after things when the king was away.”

“Like the bathrooms.”

“Bird, it’s only ten Czech crowns. About fifty cents Canadian. I think we can afford that.”

The bathroom is not very large, and it’s on the filthy side. There’s toilet paper, but it’s thin. I arrange strips of it on the seat.

Are you crazy? says Kitty. You’re going to sit down on that?

I try not to move or rock back and forth.

Home, sweet home, says Eugene.

Chip and the twins are waiting for me when I come out of the stall. Chip is not happy.

What a rip-off, he says as I wash my hands. You call that stuff toilet paper? They saw you coming.

I ignore him.

Kitty tries to look sympathetic. Now your fingers are going to stink for the rest of the day.

I CAN UNDERSTAND MIMI’S reluctance to move to the coast. No sunshine. No friends. Having to start over again without the ignorance and enthusiasm of youth. Moves, in the abstract, might look to be wonderful adventures, but they’re really more akin to a life-threatening disease or the death of a spouse. Most people recover. But it takes at least two years to get back on your feet.

Some of us have that kind of time. Some of us don’t.

“I can write anywhere,” I tell her. “You can paint anywhere.”

Whenever I bring up the possibility of moving to the coast, Mimi reminds me that when we built our house in Guelph, we were making a commitment to stay there until we died.

I don’t remember agreeing to this, and Mimi has nothing in writing.

The most telling argument that Mimi employs against such a move is, what happens if we move, and then I die? I have nothing to counter this, because she’s right. With my health situation, I could die. And then she would be stuck where she did not want to be, in a house that was not as nice as the one we had before we went chasing after my dream.

You try to move to the coast, says Kitty, and she’s going to leave you.