It got to be too much for her, so she’d asked Anthony and Pete to take her back to the hotel. They had done so, though she can’t remember what they talked about as they walked. She was thinking mostly about how, back when they were young, Pete and Anthony gave her lessons in men. This is how they liked to be stroked, this is how they thought about certain situations. She recalled that their basic principle for relations with men, regardless of sexual orientation, was that they had fragile egos. Decent men knew they had fragile egos, so when someone trod on their toes, they’d take a step back before reacting. In that way, decent men kept themselves under surveillance for any misplaced aggression. But bad men were men who reacted immediately whenever they felt insecure or something offended their vanity. They were men who felt 70they had the right to lash out at anyone and anything. Some of them verbally, others physically. No matter what, just stay away from category number two, they explained to her. A man only has his pride, they said, and at the time she thought that sounded nice. If her body hadn’t felt so heavy on the walk back to the hotel, she would have asked about it again, but it was all she could manage to tuck her arm under Pete’s and declare herself tired. So that was that, and now she’s lying here and longing for Canada. In California, and maybe all of the us, people think of Canada as somewhere nondramatic. Hollywood movies often have jokes about Canada. The jokes concern Canadians’ unflappability. Their policemen wear red coats and ride horses. The English speakers have a distinctive way of saying their o’s. You can especially hear it in the word sorrow. sore-oh, they say, as if the word itself wanted to wrap its arms around you. More than anything else, the two Canadian hockey brothers had been well mannered. They were good-looking, with that longish dark hair, and they carried their plates out to the kitchen sink. They thanked her mother for their dinner and made their own beds. Boring kids, she thinks, seen from today’s vantage, and she stretches her legs underneath the sheets so that her socks poke out the bottom. The one boy had stood in the doorway to her room the evening he asked about the socks. And she understood what he was asking for and got a pair of woolen ones from her mother’s room. “Thank you,” he said when she gave them to him. “We get cold feet in Canada,” he said, and then she nodded, he smiled, they went into their respective rooms and slept, and now she’s lying here looking at the tower with the Christmas ornament. That ornament can’t ring, and the​ 71lights go on in the square below. A woman is walking around down there with top hat and umbrella, and a thin black figure passes through it all like a straight razor. She places a hand on her chest, something’s pressing inside, and there is ice on the lakes in Canada. 72