Free Easy to Like by Edward Riche Page B

turned around to a stack of filing cabinets; on
the top of these was a levered press into which he slid Elliot’s passport. He
grabbed the lever and pulled it down with swift force. The passport was
Swiss-cheesed. He put the punctured booklet in a small plastic bag and then into
his desk drawer.
    â€œThe French would turn you back.”
    â€œBut —”
    â€œWhere will you be staying?”
    Staying? Jesus, this could not be
happening.
    â€œI’ll wait at the airport.”
    â€œMr. Jonson, this is going to take
days, if not weeks.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYes. This is your fault. All you had
to do was read the expiry date.”
    â€œI’ve gotten a new passport from the
consulate in Los Angeles. It didn’t take more than a week, and that was in
another country.”
    â€œYou’ve obviously been away a
while.”
    Elliot put his head in his hands. The
tile floor was speckled with something that Elliot’s shuffling feet had
streaked.
    â€œIf it’s going to take that long I
might as well go back to Los Angeles.”
    â€œMr. Jonson, you’re not grasping what’s
happening. You aren’t going anywhere.”
    Elliot sat up.
    â€œNo?”
    â€œYou can travel within Canada. That’s
it. You could go back to the Rock for a visit. Back to Newfie?”
    Elliot grasped it now.
    â€œFuck that. I’ll stay here. I’ll stay
here in . . .” Elliot had to think for a moment.
“. . . Toronto.”
    â€œHave you been in Toronto before?”
    â€œOf course. Years ago.”
    â€œSo. Where do you think you will be
staying?”
    â€œIn a hotel. Downtown, I guess.”
    â€œOkay. There’s a passport office on
Victoria Street. You won’t make it today.”
    Elliot looked at his watch. It was
true.

    A Sikh chauffeur took him from
Pearson Airport to his hotel, the Four Seasons in Yorkville, via the Gardiner
Expressway, a downtown feeder. Everywhere repairs were being undertaken. The
asphalt was like a rope binding the city and coming unbraided under strain. This
eight-lane strip was as clogged with smoking vehicles as anything in Los
Angeles. It conveyed Elliot alongside the shore of an Ovaltine lake and
presented, from its elevation, a vista of the city’s downtown. The place had
surely doubled in size since Elliot last saw it: the spire of the CN Tower now
seemed to rise out of an actual metropolis and its exhalations, rather than look
down upon a little city north of Cleveland. When the landmark came into view,
his driver sighed loudly. When Elliot said nothing, he did it again, more
theatrically.
    â€œWhat is it?” Elliot asked.
    â€œThe Tower is no longer the tallest
free-standing structure in the world.”
    â€œI didn’t know.”
    â€œNow what do we have? Ontario was
capable of greatness, sir. But with the manufacturing jobs going to China, we
have become a have-not province. Imagine our shame at this. We are like Newfies
now. How many are needed to pick peaches? I will end up back in the Punjab.”
    To signal his disinterest Elliot opened
his window. He sniffed. He was possessed of a natural gift for smell that he had
refined in the cellars of Locura Canyon: making wine required, more than
anything, olfactory acuity. When he travelled he could place himself with his
nose. He guessed he could identify blindfolded Aix’s telltale lavender and
Gauloises or Firenze’s distinctive diesel and cooked fungi. The town of his
birth, St. John’s, was easily known by the brackish and fecal hum of its
harbour. Eucalyptus and ominous woodsmoke told him Los Angeles’s ground-level
ozone was about to be cut by the Red Winds.
    Could he, similarly, recognize Toronto
by its tang? The atmosphere outside the airport terminal had been indistinct,
the fumes and hurried breath of transit everywhere. He’d hoped that, once en
route, he’d be able to sense something familiar from