Free Heroes by Ray Robertson

doubted if whether or not she liked the Brunswick House would be a determining factor in where she spent the next four years of her academic life, he’d always been fairly hopeless in the face of his sister’s rare but powerful pretty-pleases so they got off at the Spadina stop instead of St. George and had their hands stamped and beer spilt on them by a rowdy table of Cheezy-throwing Commerce students before they had a chance to exchange a word.
    And when Patty ordered four more glasses of draft when Bayle was in the washroom, saying, when he returned to the table with a disapproving frown, “Have I told you I’ve had a less-than-wonderful summer? Sometimes a girl just has to let down her hair and relax, you know” (pulling away the piece of blue cloth that held her ponytail in place, bushels of greasy, blond hair falling and falling down as she did so, a mischievous smile peeking through the mass of unkempt hair covering her eyes), they were off and running. Where to, exactly, Bayle had no idea; and, what was worse, a strong suspicion his sister didn’t either. Both of them running, though, this without question.
    He tried to be patient. When Patty didn’t immediately follow up her mini-confession with anything else about her summer-long gloom, Bayle kept ordering more beer while watching along with her with a kind of repulsed fascination the furious attempts everywhere they looked of four hundred increasingly fuzzy faces giving it everything they had toward making sure they didn’t end up going home without an intoxicated stranger in tow or, at the very least, a hangover worth bragging about over breakfast. As the beer Bayle and his sister consumed and the hours they sat there began to add up, the room itself seemed to buzz louder and louder, to transform itself into a swarming drone of pure riotous sound.They drank on, Bayle drinking and waiting, Patty drinking and saying nothing.
    When they were finally spit out of the Brunswick House at two a.m. onto bar-emptying, suddenly-swarming Bloor Street, the cool night air produced entirely different effects in brother and sister. More than a little drowsy from all the alcohol, Bayle bought two veggie dogs for Patty and himself from a busy vendor strategically camped outside the Brunswick House doors to scoop up the hungry post-drinking crowd (Patty still swearing off all meat but for occasionally a little fish on Friday — Ecology Thing leftover fusing with recent Catholic Thing remnant). Bayle walked over to Patty talking to a group of frat boys milling around in front of the bar and handed her her veggie dog. He’d prepared it for her just the way she liked it: plain but for a deep double swipe of mustard squirted right down the middle.
    Patty said thanks without even looking at him and carried right on with her spirited conversation, letting the weiner and bun hang limply by her side as if Bayle had handed her an old shoe he’d just found on the street. A cab crept its afterhours crawl in front of the bar and the frat boys quickly hailed it and piled in, waving and calling out Patty’s name as they jammed in, promising to see her there.
    Before Bayle could even ask:
    â€œGuess where we’re off to, bro?” Patty said, putting her arm in his, other hand still holding on to the now almost vertical, dribbling veggie dog.
    His already-eaten own having only made him even sleepier, Bayle didn’t want to go anywhere. Especially with three drunken brothers of Phi Beta Whatever with obvious lecherous designs on his kid sister. “Let’s go home, Patty,” Bayle said. “If we hustle you can still make the subway back to Etobicoke. Let me carry your bag. I’ll return your books for you tomorrow. You can check out those other books you wanted some other time.”
    â€œOh, Peter, it’s a speakeasy and I’ve never been. Nothing special to a big college man like you, I’m sure, but think ofyour