Free My Present Age by Guy Vanderhaeghe

voices. Because of the arrangement of heating vents and ducts in the house, it was possible, from that particular spot, to hear clearly everything that was being said upstairs.
    I heard someone ask, “And where will you and Ed make your home, dear?”
    Victoria startled me by saying, “We intend to go to Greece.”
    I wasn’t the only one startled. Victoria’s mother squealed,
“Greece?”
    “Yes, Greece,” said Victoria firmly.
    “Isn’t that interesting – Greece,” said someone. “And what will your husband do there?”
    “He’s going to write.”
    I was beginning to feel very uncomfortable listening to what was going on upstairs. I didn’t like it one bit.
    “Write what?” demanded Victoria’s mother. “Will he write for magazines?”
    “No. He won’t write for magazines.”
    “How do you mean to say he’ll write? Do you mean to say he’ll write like Hemingway, or someone like that?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well,” said someone else, “he must be a very interesting and clever young man to be able to do that.”
    “Yes,” said Victoria, “he is. That’s why I’m marrying him.”
    No one can imagine how dreadful I felt hearing all that. I had never taken the business of going to Greece really seriously; I thought common sense would finish that idea off when the time was ripe. Until that moment, talk of Greece had been private talk, having no connection with reality. Now Victoria had made a public announcement committing us to something I didn’t want to do. Suddenly I knew I didn’t want anything to do with Greece. I now saw it in an entirely different light; the land of wine and song had become a harsh court of bright light in which I was to be measured and surely found wanting. I couldn’t write. If required to attempt it I would fail; I would reveal myself as neither clever nor interesting. It was an old story preparing to repeat itself; I was going to disappoint as I had disappointed all my life. If that pop pistol in my hand had been the real item, who knows what Jack might have found on his basement floor when he returned with more ammo? I felt pretty low at that moment and afraid of losing Victoria if my true self were to be exposed.
    My spirits, however, recovered over the next two days, although they took a dip during the actual wedding ceremony. It was the oddest thing. When the minister asked if I would keep my wife in “sickness and in health,” the image of the great-aunt with the white face and the terrible blue eyes sprang to mind, and I was gripped again with such a fear of losing Victoria that I could hardly answer. Later, jokes were made about the pallor of the groom.
    It’s that old bitch who got me worrying about cancer, and cancer is what I’m thinking about remembering Victoria in the Café Nice. But I’m going to stop all that right now, this very minute, and make an end of it.
    Creedence Clearwater has sung itself out. The black disc spins mute. I hear the wind rising and stop in my tracks with a groan. Peeling off my damp shirt and then letting it drop to the carpet I limp to the window and thrust my bare chest out to the cold pane of glass to cool myself.
    One of those unpredictable February blizzards has poured out of the night with a muffled roar. The two tall evergreens which front the building and give it its name, The Twin Spruce Apartments, lash their tops in a wind which the street lights reveal is streaked with a thin, flying snow. It spatters grittily against the window in fierce gusts, fine and hard as salt.
    I’m shivering. I decide I would be better off getting some sleep. In the bedroom I strip and crawl between the sheets, feeling lonely and hollow. I have never cared for these moments of darkness before sleep comes during which the mind is helpless. As a child I would watch the shirt hung on the chair back slowly fill with the horrible, solid flesh of an escaped madman; the criminally insane stalked the night.
    I had to light torches against the