Free Extraordinary by David Gilmour Page B

of days, not years.
    â€œUnhappy. So unhappy. He’s quite categorical about it. He says, ‘I’m not going to be happy until I’m fifty.’”
    â€œWhy fifty?”
    â€œI don’t know. He just said it.”
    After a moment, I said, “What am
I
like?”
    â€œAt your best?”
    â€œLet’s start there.”
    â€œHere. You’re here. And all that that—implies.”
    â€œAt my worst?” I thought, Let’s get it over with.
    She shook her head. “You’re here. That’s what matters.”
    The elevator doors opened down the hall. Voices passed the door.
    â€œIt’s late,” she said. “I wonder who they are. I wonder where they’re coming from.”
    The candle sputtered.
    â€œAm I safe to ask you something?” she said.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou’re sure?”
    â€œYes, I’m sure.”
    â€œWill you regret this? Will you drive through this neighbourhood some night twenty years from now and regret this?”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter. Not tonight.”
    â€œIt’s hard to imagine you in twenty years,” she said. “It’s hard to imagine you a day older than tonight.”
    â€œWhy did you ask me if it was safe?” I said.
    â€œBecause I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”
    â€œPlease, Sally.” I could feel my eyes watering.
    â€œWhat?” she said suddenly.
    â€œPlease say whatever you want.”
    The phone rang again.
Purr, purr.
I raised my eyebrows at Sally. She shook her head. She knew who it was, I thought, but didn’t want to tell me. Finally, it went silent. And again the room seemed preternaturally quiet.
    She said, “I’ve got to go to the bathroom. Can you hang on?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œYou’ll be here when I get back?”
    â€œYes.”
    Sally got up on her crutches. I put my hand under her armpit—it was warm—and steadied her. “Okay?” I said.
    She stared down at the carpet. Or her slippers, I couldn’t tell which. “Yep,” she said, breathing in on the word the way people sometimes speak in the country, the way her grandmother spoke.
    Out the window, I could see the flickering red lights of a plane slowly descending into the city. “I didn’t think planes landed this late,” I said, but Sally was already in the bathroom.
    After a while, I found myself thinking about my older brother, Jake, how he had gotten off to such a promising start: a good student, a teacher’s favourite, a hit with girls, captain of the track and field team—even had his picture in the newspaper one spring day under the caption, j ake gillings champion prospect ! There he was in his whites with a trophy gleaming in the late afternoon sun.
    Champion prospect indeed. I had so admired him! Watching him on the football field—his hands on his hips, watching the players move and shift just before the snap, reading the play—or making his way down the school corridor with a cluster of A-list friends, their jackets open, ties loosened, I felt as though I was observing a more successful model of myself. Better-looking (he looked like Kris Kristofferson), a better soccer player, better at backgammon, better at water skiing, better at Ping-Pong, even a better dancer at parties. Just better, better, better. And believe it or not, I basked in it. It gave me a charge, as they used to say, to be connected to him, to have people say, “Oh, that’s Jake’s little brother.”
    But something happened to him in university. It was as though someone switched off the lights in the house and they never came back on: an unfinished degree, boarding houses, failed projects, disappointing travels, uneasy girlfriends, Eastern religions, a string of psychiatrists (who invariably, after three or four months’ treatment, turned into “assholes”). I saw him once in a restaurant. He was screaming