Free The Book of Stanley by Todd Babiak Page A

instance.
    Before his father died of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, when he was in grade three at St. Thomas Aquinas in Thunder Bay and his family was most like a family, Kal attended Sunday school. He had one outfit: a pair of black pants, a beige dress shirt, and a black vest. Each week Kal would wear one of his dad’s clip-on ties and stand before the sliding glass mirrors in his parents’ bedroom, amidst the musty sleeping smells of his mother and father, and he would be so handsome . Every Sunday, so handsome. His father would declare, from time to time, that Kal would grow up to be a lady-killer.
    At Kal’s father’s funeral, the preacher declared that God had taken him. Sunday school was all about the majesty of God and Jesus, who seemed to be the same thing, yet when God and Jesus took someone–his father, for instance–it was terrible news. When Kal’s mother wasn’t around, hisfather had called the preacher a Big Gay and mocked the Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Reyes, for her backfat. None of it made sense then, and almost twenty years later, on an eastbound bus, it still didn’t make sense.
    In Yorkton, Dale Loont and some of the players went inside to use the toilet and buy coffee. Kal took his backpack and left Gordon sleeping. The bus driver, Stu, stood at the pump. “I hate Yorkton,” he said. “You have to stand here and hold the nozzle. It doesn’t have that thing on it.”
    â€œStu, where’s the bus station?”
    â€œDowntown on First Avenue. Why?”
    â€œI’m changing my life, Stu.”
    The bus driver looked up. “There were a couple times I figured on changing my life but I never did ’er.”
    â€œI lost the magic.”
    â€œYou think so?”
    Kal nodded.
    â€œYou’re finished? Really?”
    â€œReally.”
    Stu reached up and placed his non-pumping left hand on Kal’s shoulder. “That’s a damn good thing to learn now, before you get old and mean. What should I tell Loont?”
    â€œTell him I went off to find my fortune.”
    â€œIs that what you’re doing?”
    â€œI don’t know. First, I’m gonna be a dishwasher.”
    Stu stopped pumping and offered his old, lumpy hand for a shake. Kal took it. “Kid, good luck. I hope you find that fortune.”
    â€œI probably won’t.”
    â€œNo one ever does.” Stu shook his head. “Except sons of bitches. And, unfortunately, you ain’t one of those.”

 
    THIRTEEN
    W hen Tanya Gervais researched and bought the urban assault vehicle, she knew it wouldn’t be popular with all of her friends and acquaintances. But Tanya also knew the most unique and maligned automobile on the road today had a lot in common with the woman who sat behind the wheel. Durable and a bit intimidating on the outside, refined and complex inside, and utterly dominant in its sphere.
    The Hummer H2 was still relatively new, with less than a thousand kilometres on the odometer. The cabin was still shiny with the unmistakable fragrance of leather and freshly moulded plastic. Ownership had a retroactive effect. She now could not imagine herself driving anything but a bright-yellow Hummer. When Tanya put it in gear, the sound of her black coat squeaking against the leather seat verged on erotic.
    At dinner parties, after a few glasses of wine, when the West Coast crunchies felt empowered to blame her consumer preferences for the war in Iraq, farmed salmon, Hollywood movies adapted from comic books, climate change, deforestation and desertification in Africa, that funny taste in the tap water, religious fundamentalism, and Vancouver house prices, she answered the way her Hummer might answer, if only it had the capacity to speak.
    You don’t like it, move to Cuba.
    A lot had changed recently. Though it had taken almost twenty years in the business, the most miserable of them in dread Toronto, Tanya was finally being