After the worst, never-ending winter in recent history, it’s finally spring–or maybe even summer?–here in Toronto. In typical fashion, everyone is exaggerating a touch by bringing out their shorts and summer dresses the moment the temperature gets above 15 degrees.
I celebrated by getting my nails shellacked. Look how crazy long they’re getting…
At Lucy’s, there is a mirror on every wall. It’s awesome. I can see everyone, at all times, without ever moving my head. Also, I get the added pleasure of staring at myself and obsessing over my uneven eyebrows for a half hour.
Out the front window, I saw an old woman with a walker pass by. She stopped to stare at the sign for a minute before she checked the street parking meter for any forgotten change before walking away empty-handed. It made me wonder how someone gets to be like that. Where do you pick up that behaviour? It obviously wasn’t the first time she checked for change, so you’d think she must find treasure often enough that it’s still worth the effort. I imagine she’s been doing it for decades, that it’s a trait so well practiced that it’s just second nature at this point. Maybe she collects the change in a jar that she keeps by the front door.
For days now, Alistair has been saying that the house smells weird and joked that maybe our landlord had died. I said it’s probably all that fruit I’ve been dehydrating.
Well, turns out Alistair was right. He’s dead.
He was a very reclusive man that lived alone. We’ve lived here in his house for about 5 years and in that time I’ve only had a handful of encounters with him–very little beyond exchanging hellos, or asking him to flip the breakers when I blew a fuse.
His son showed up at my door today to tell me that his father passed away. I felt bad because I was all “what the fuck do you want” (I didn’t say that, but it was definitely the vibe I was sending out) when he opened my door, not knowing who he was or why he was there. I gather that they were not close because he said, “this is my first time here, and it’s for this”. He seemed truly shocked and lost. I really wanted to hug this stranger but I didn’t. Instead, I just kept saying how sorry I was.
It’s a strange thing. He was always home, and his T.V. was always on. There was something kind of comforting to it–even if I was alone in the apartment, I was rarely ever alone. Unlike most landlords, he didn’t mind that we have a dog because he felt that indicated we were responsible people and if we could care for an animal, we could care for an apartment. And even when our dog chewed apart the front door, he looked at it with cool indifference. He hated our dog-walker, though; he thought she walked too heavily up the stairs.
You know, I never really wondered if he was lonely because he seemed so private and aloof. But now I wonder.
I decided I would join the world, so I put on my shorts and left the house to head to the park (for lack of anything better to do). The son was on the front porch talking to the paramedics about sports or something.
I feel very weird about the whole thing. Like…that’s it, huh? You live a whole life and then you die alone in front of your television.
Is This the Way the World Ends? 