Free Street Symphony by Rachel Wyatt Page A

boys were back at school but you leave me no choice, Arvin. This is the absolute end.”
    Tuesday dawned. The sun rose. Glenda rose. Arvin had argued and shouted and cried. “She means nothing to me, darling.” “Then you’re a pig, Arvin.” She began to pack. By the time the boys came down to breakfast, she had the pancake mix ready, the blueberries, the maple syrup. Marty and Evan, her fine and loving sons, were six foot two and six foot one respectively. They had bulky shoulders from playing basketball and football respectively. Certainly they were fit to take on the responsibility of making their own meals for the next week, of doing laundry and, if necessary, of listening to their father whining.
    “I’ve something to tell you,” she said as she turned on the hotplate.
    “If it’s about his affair –” Marty said.
    “Hey,” Evan cried protectively.
    “It’s about me,” their mother replied.
    ~ • ~

    Sitting outside O’Brien’s office, waiting, Bart felt as though he’d been through a paper shredder. Bank detectives were examining the details of his daily life from some central computer-base. City cops wanted to talk to him about criminal damage. His mother had been through his emails again. And now, as he sat in this lowly chair, nodded to knowingly by colleagues who were going to their desks without guilt, shame or fear, he began to feel the return of his pre-fish-tank-smashing courage. He had done nothing wrong. “Brazen” was the word. I will brazen this out.
    The boss was walking down the corridor towards him as if he had weights on his feet. Maybe he’d had a heavy night with the “woman not his wife,” as they referred to her in whispers at the bank. He should have been smiling, leaping, happy that at his age he could have such sexual delight.
    “Oh, it’s you, Bart,” he said.
    “You asked me to be here, to be prepared for the guys from head office.”
    “Yes, well, head office. Come in.”
    They both sat down. Arvin O’Brien, tired, years older than yesterday, began to speak as though the words were coming from far back in his brain.
    “Never assume, Bart. Never believe that there are secrets. There’s always somebody who knows what you’re doing. Like a giant eye, or a big ear. A nose, a head.”
    “I don’t know anything about the money.”
    “Nothing is hidden. You might go into a dark place and whisper a few words and lock the door to keep those words trapped inside, but they will get out. Let me assure you, they will get out. They get out into the daylight. It’s not just the cameras in every doorway, like the ones we have here in the bank, it’s the way everything you key into your computer can be discovered…”
    “I know I shouldn’t have been looking at those sites –”
    “Every phone conversation can be retrieved. In Bangladesh, someone hears your replies to the telemarketer and writes them down and builds a profile and knows exactly what kind of person you are, your desires, your little perversions…”
    “They’re not –”
    “At Sunday school the old guy used to say, ‘Be ye sure your sins will find you out.’ How can sins find you out? They’re not living things with legs and brains. But my wife found out. She found out, all right. Who told her? Who in the world, or in this town, could have known? I’ve been so careful. And now she’s going to leave me. And besides, my sons…” He began to cry.
    Bart hesitated, and then he went to the man and put his arm round him. He gave him a Kleenex and said softly, “Go home, Arvin. You don’t want them to see you like this. I’ll tell them you’ve got flu.” As he watched the boss walk away, he understood the meaning of tragedy . The missing money was nothing. The ruined fish tank was nothing. Wars in the Far and Middle East were distant horrors. Right here at home, a man’s life had broken.
    When the dark-suited men from Toronto arrived, Bart led them to Arvin’s office.
    “Mr. O’Brien