Free The Garneau Block by Todd Babiak Page B

conditioning was at a civilized level, and the baroque chamber music inspired him to sit with excellent posture. Somewhere, he knew, a chef was wrapping fancy bacon around a hunk of bison and drizzling blueberry sauce over it.
    David had spent his working life as a high-school math teacher, with a high-school math teacher’s salary and pension, so the Hardware Grill and its pleasures should have been at least two notches above him. How barren and middling would his retirement be today, David wondered, if he hadn’t joined the party? Why, at this very moment he would be slouching over a plate of grilled tofu at the Roots Organic Market with his wife and Maddy.
    This is what vexed him about Edmonton: the city’s tragic habit of voting against its interests, of settling for grilled tofu when it could have bison with fancy bacon and blueberry sauce. Calgary had a better airport and more head offices than Edmonton simply because its citizens voted as a Conservative block. In the nine years since he joined the party, David Weiss had come to see himself as a walking and talking Calgary. If he hadn’t joined, he would be a plain old Edmonton–needlessly complicated, unsure, artsy, and angry.
    David waved when his colleagues entered the restaurant. That morning, he had tipped them off about the premier ruse.He watched the manager of the Hardware Grill bow before them, and hoped his friends wouldn’t spoil the man’s day with the truth quite yet.
    All week, David had been eager to meet with his fellow riding association presidents. Though he would never admit it, David had grown somewhat concerned about the notion of oil running out. His research on the Internet had only inspired further anxiety, as Barry’s warnings and conspiracies were only heightened and expanded on American web sites. Since reading the street magazine, he had stared at the ceiling each night in the darkness, listening to his wife’s gentle breathing and thinking about a world without oil.
    David wanted his colleagues, especially Grant, a former executive with Suncor, to tell him this peak oil stuff was left-wing hocus pocus. The middle-class Canadian lifestyle was invincible. It would last forever.
    Right?
    They shook hands and sat around the table. David’s three colleagues each motioned to the empty chairs. Grant leaned forward. “You didn’t tell the manager yet?”
    â€œI didn’t have the heart.”
    The four men turned to the manager, who smiled and nodded enthusiastically from across the room. Grant offered a thumbs-up and turned back to the table. “It’s sort of sick, what we’re doing here.”
    â€œWho’s going to tell him?” said David.
    Grant and the others laughed. It was obviously David’s job to tell the manager, as he had fashioned the lie. The server passed and Grant ordered a bottle of Australian Cabernet.David borrowed a cellular phone from Al, president of the Mill Creek riding association, the only one among them to have a winner in the legislature.
    Then, for a minute or so, David had a pretend conversation with the premier’s chief of staff. “What?” he said, into the silent phone. “An emergency involving cattle? Well, yes, we understand completely. Godspeed, godspeed.”

 
    18
    jonas has a stalker
    F riday afternoon, only two customers came into Sparkle Vacations. They were first-year university students, girls, wondering about flying home to Kingston and Montreal during the Christmas break. Madison saw them every year, the shy kids in residence who haven’t made any pals by the end of the second week of classes. Missing the smell of their own beds, their parents’ cooking, and boyfriends who had stayed behind.
    Then, by December, all that is forgotten. They don’t want to leave their new beds or their new boyfriends.
    Madison browsed a few local classified Internet sites–men looking for women–but it only