Free The Garneau Block by Todd Babiak Page A

room. On her way out, she slammed the door.
    Raymond suspected this adventure was over.
    Dressed again, and with some time to absorb and appreciate his humiliation, he checked the window. Charlene was on the eleventh floor, far too high to jump. So Raymond sighed, and opened the door.
    â€œCharlene, I was just…”
    â€œOut.”
    â€œI was conducting an experiment.”
    â€œZero tolerance policy. Out.”
    Raymond opened his mouth twice more, but Charlene interrupted him sternly. She picked up her cordless phone and dialled three numbers. Nine-one-one? He hurried out of her apartment, down the hallway, and into the elevator. Four men in T-shirts and baseball caps were in the car, and they didn’t stop talking when Raymond entered. It seemed the young men were on their way to Whyte Avenue, where they hoped to meet like-mindedwomen, bring them back to Windsor Park Plaza, and do what comes naturally to drunk people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one.
    Perhaps Shirley and his neighbours were still at the Sugarbowl. Perhaps he could catch them there, take his wife’s hand and apologize in silence, secretly beg forgiveness. For the first time since 1967–or was it 1968?–Raymond ran.

 
    17
    bison with fancy bacon and blueberry sauce
    D owntown sidewalks were crowded with noon-hour joggers and their opposites, the grey-faced cigarette people banned from office complexes. Young men and women in shorts and wrinkled T-shirts wandered down the promenade of lofts, not long ago a ghost town of deserted warehouses. Pimply high-school dropouts in giant pants and crooked baseball caps stood in front of the old Bay building, now home to a television and radio station, and swayed to the dull rhythms pumped out of little speakers on Jasper Avenue.
    It was Friday and summer had returned in earnest. Edmontonians smiled and laughed into their cellular phones, adjusted their sunglasses, flipped through newspapers, sipped coffee on patios. The everywhere construction workers, puttingup yet another condominium, told each other blue jokes and stared at passing women.
    David Weiss wanted to kick every one of the idle workmen, with their hard hats covered in union stickers. If you love communism so much, why don’t you go to China, or Quebec? Get to work! The dominion of Alberta isn’t going to build itself.
    Every Friday, he dressed in a black suit and took lunch with three other riding association presidents. Instead of paying six or nine dollars to park in an underground garage downtown for a couple of hours, David nearly always left his Yukon Denali in a Save On Foods lot and walked twelve blocks to the restaurant.
    The previous evening had been difficult for his wife and daughter. Abby and Madison had hoped to discover the whereabouts of the remaining Perlitzes, Jeanne and Katie. But the cleaning crew that had been in 10 Garneau consisted of inarticulate dim-bulbs, working for someone else who may or may not have known anything.
    Of course, the resonance of his family’s disappointment explained David’s failure to phone in a lunch reservation the day before. He didn’t like to flaunt his power, but David had called the Hardware Grill as soon as it opened that morning and mentioned, casually, that he needed a table to discuss PC policy. The premier would likely join them this afternoon.
    David arrived at the Hardware Grill and the manager was summoned. He shook David’s hand and called him Mr. Weiss and asked if there was anything he could do to make the premier’s experience an enjoyable one. There was a line of sweat along the manager’s hairline, and a faint twitch in the skinbeneath his right eye. David realized it would be immoral to break the news to the poor man now.
    â€œWe’ll let you know. For the moment, just the table and a wine list.”
    â€œRight away, Mr. Weiss.”
    David felt he had made the best possible choice in restaurants. The air