Which is just what you deserve, says Eugene.

I don’t like packing, says Didi.

We’re packing? says Desi.

Just go, says Chip. You don’t need her.

Moving from one place to another would be easier if you could just go to your new location, pick out an apartment or a house, hit an app on your cellphone, and presto, the next day all your belongings were somehow transported and arranged without your ever having to unpack a box or go searching for the toaster.

In that perfect world, your bank accounts would all have been transferred, your new health card and driver’s licence waiting for you on the kitchen table. Along with the name of a good doctor and a dentist. All the utilities hooked up, cable television and Netflix ready and waiting.

Your mail properly forwarded.

But what if you don’t like the new location as much as you thought you would? What if the one neighbour restores motorcycles and the other is a musician? What if there are no good coffee shops or bookstores in the area? What if after all the anguish and trouble of a move, you discover that you have made a mistake?

To her credit, Mimi always tries to find the compromise.

“How about we go to the coast every other year or so and rent a place. You could walk the beach, get all cold and clammy, commune with the fog. I could manage without sun for a few weeks.”

“Every year or so?”

“Okay, every year.”

“A few weeks?”

“We don’t need to be prescriptive.”

I appreciate that Mimi tries to come up with a compromise, but visiting the coast isn’t the same as living there. Sure, it can be cool and damp and grey. And, yes, some people might find it depressing. But there is also a cumulative effect that comes about over time, a calming, a slowing, a feeling of being in a soft bed with a warm lover, of being hidden away, safe from the glare and the clank of modern life.

MIMI IS WAITING for me when I come out of the bathroom. She gestures to the line that has formed at the entrance to Golden Lane.

“Good thing we got here when we did.”

“Sure,” I say. “We might have missed the nail chair.”

The castle grounds have filled up. I retreat to the shadows of St. George’s Basilica and watch the tourists flow past us like a river in flood. Mimi stays in the sun.

“Of the places we’ve been,” she says, “which one did you like best?”

“They all run together.” I lean against the stone of the church. It’s surprisingly cool. “They’re sort of like malls.”

“Amsterdam and Venice had lovely canals,” says Mimi.

“So does Ottawa.”

“Barcelona and Cologne had great churches.”

“Saint Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal in Montreal is pretty impressive.”