“That sounds good, Toe-mas.”

Allam headed for the door.

“And by the way,” Tom said, “take the second key with you.”

A Normal Life

ADDIE

Before leaving for work, Addie sipped at her coffee while listening to Haydn’s First Symphony. She was thinking about what she had walked into at Cassie’s over the past several weeks. And willingly. She enjoyed talking to the people who turned up at the meetings. Each person so different. She just wasn’t convinced that she belonged. She liked Hazzley, the organizer. Capable, experienced, someone who’d been through ups and downs across a span of decades. She liked Chiyo, in whom she detected wry humour, an alertness that appealed. A woman unafraid of her own feelings; someone older than her years, who could take action when action was called for. She’d probably had to assume family responsibilities at an early age.

Haydn’s tempo was too quick so early in the morning, and Addie’s ears objected to the overabundance, the surfeit of intent. In her mind’s eye, she saw courtiers flinging themselves in circles, violinists racing on tiptoes, horns blaring, the entire Haydn assemblage making unexpected stops and starts. An assault on her revved-up brain. She switched off the radio. Felt the sudden collapse into silence. Good.

Peace was good.

She would make a quick omelette for breakfast, no toast. She liked breakfast, needed to eat before starting her hospital day. But she had to lose weight, too. One egg or two? She began to bargain, accustomed to inner debate. “I’m not the kind of person who eats whites only or yolks only,” she said aloud. “That seems extreme, even bizarre. Eat the egg or don’t. No, this is a question of quantity: one egg or two. Fat content? Eggs are a wonder food, aren’t they? Like blueberries, wild sockeye salmon. Don’t forget the vitamins in one egg. Oh, give it up. Whisk two eggs and be done with it.” She pushed away the idea of diet, but only for the moment. She had made a promise to herself and would honour the promise. Maybe.

She checked the time, turned up the heat under the pan, looked through her kitchen window. The smoker was on her balcony, puffing away in her blue-black pyjamas, a fixed bruise on the side of the building opposite. Exhaled smoke was spirited away by errant gusts of wind. One balcony below the smoker, a pair of armchair rockers made of cocoa-coloured cane tipped back and forth in tandem, an empty-chair dance. At ground level, a bright-yellow crosswalk, painted across pavement, resembled a ladder laid out horizontally, tapered at one end. A vanishing point perceived from above.

Addie looked off in the distance toward a silhouette of undulating hills. Clouds had gathered in a moody, broody sky. September and October could be unpredictable: windy, sunny, sometimes cool, sometimes sweltering. Tom, at the most recent Tuesday meeting, had lamented the humid days of summer they’d all endured, and then he’d quoted Keats. Addie had learned the same poem, “To Autumn,” at school in Quebec, long ago.