Free A by Andre Alexis

There was once a book reviewer named Alexander Baddeley. Though he thought, as reviewers often do, that reviews were meant to be “corrosive” in order to be true, he was too much the lover of words to be cruel or condescending, dismissive or unkind.
    To make up for his “failings,” Baddeley sometimes flaunted his own (wilfully acquired) quirks as if they were the marks of deep feeling. For instance, he inevitably ate a single Brussels sprout and vanilla yoghurt for lunch, and he refused to take the subway because he was “afraid of snakes.” (He was afraid of neither snakes nor subways.) None of this helped his reputation, though. Among the very few who cared about book reviews, Baddeley was known for his bland diction and his so-so mind. In a word, he was unsuccessful.
    Still, at the heart of the man, there was a longing to be better — to be more acute, deeper, more understanding — and this almost palpable longing made his company desirable to others. It inspired sympathy and a certain amount of pity as well. Among those who pitied him was the book editor of the Globe and Mail , Leo Martinson, a man who, once a month, assigned Baddeley a book to review, thus assuring him of the $300 that were the basis of his income. To earn the money he needed for food — because his rent in Cabbagetown was $300 a month — Baddeley reviewed other books elsewhere and sold his review copies to second-hand book shops as soon as he had done with them. In this way, he made a miniscule living, eating little, and going nowhere that cost money.
    As concerns Baddeley’s sensibility, there is one more thing to say, but it is the most important thing. Alexander Baddeley would not sell the books of Avery Andrews. These he kept in a squat, glass-fronted, bookcase in his room at the boarding house. The seven books of poetry Avery Andrews had written shared space with a King James Bible , a complete Shakespeare, a Strunk & White , a Roget’s, and a concise Oxford Dictionary. These books were Baddeley’s valuables, held behind shatterproof glass, secured to his desk, locked against the vagrants who, from time to time, wandered in off the street and ransacked the rooms of the house where Baddeley lived.
    The books of Avery Andrews — First, After First, More, Again More, Still More, More Two and More Three — were, despite their bewilderingly mundane titles, treasured in those circles where poetry had any standing at all. Even among Andrews’ most fervent admirers, however, Baddeley was exceptional. He had memorized every one of the 500 poems Andrews had published. He knew those that were considered “canonical” as well as those that were merely brilliant. Baddeley’s love for Andrews’ verse was an un-dimmable light in his soul and he would have done anything to meet the poet.
    In his desire to meet Avery Andrews, Baddeley was not alone. No one had seen Andrews in a long time. Few could remember him, save for one of his high school classmates who did not so much remember Andrews as he did the blank in his memory where, at some point, Andrews must have been: Avery sitting beside him in class; Avery drinking from a water fountain; Avery winning an award for physics. Whatever the reason for his withdrawal from society, Avery Andrews had not allowed a photograph of himself to be taken in decades, had not granted an interview, had not collected any of the awards his poetry had won.
    Andrews’ “hauteur” appealed to most of his readers. To them, it seemed fitting that the writer of almost glacially perfect work should live beyond the world, inaccessible. Andrews’ attitude was particularly appealing to Baddeley. It was “superb” in a way Baddeley imagined himself emulating if he had half of Andrews’ talent. He revered Andrews’ silence but, like all fervent admirers, there was something behind the reverence. There was the conviction that, should