Free The Silver Age by Nicholson Gunn Page A

honest with me up front. I’ve been crazy about all kinds
of guys. I don’t care if someone is obsessed with bad sitcoms – we all need our
junk food. But I do care if someone’s pretending to be something they aren’t.
An imposter.”
    She stared across the table at him, suddenly intent. He
met her gaze head on.
    “So is that what you’re asking me, then? Am I an
imposter?”
    “Not exactly,” she said, paused. Her face was thoughtful.
“I guess what I’m asking you is this: are you sincere about what you’re doing?”
    Her phrasing of the question gave him confidence in the
answer.
    “Yes,” he said. “I am. In fact, I think I might be one of
the most sincere people in the entire city, for whatever that’s worth. Maybe
not much.”
    There was a pause, as she took this in. Then she smiled
at him, almost sweetly, that smirking attitude of hers replaced in a heartbeat
by something that could almost be called innocent.

 
    Chapter 5
    On a Saturday morning in early August, Pete called
Stephan to ask a favour: he wanted his friend’s opinion on a house he and Sally
were thinking of buying, and was hoping to drive out together to have a look.
Stephan had been planning to spend the day in the darkroom, catching up on some
printing he’d let slide, but he wanted to help Pete out. His friend didn’t ask
him for much, after all. Plus, the forecast was for a gorgeous day, sunny and fresh.
The summer of 2002 was not long for the world, and it made sense to get outside
while he could. He had plans that evening, with Jenny Wynne as it happened, and
felt his usual twinge of guilt for not working when deadlines loomed – but so
be it. The lab would still be there tomorrow, and nobody would die if he missed
a deadline by a day or two.
    As they drove along Richmond Street in Pete’s black
Volkswagen Golf, Stephan reached his hand out the window and let it glide along
on the breeze, like a kite. Pete glanced over.
    “Watch it, there, sonny,” he said. “Or that thing’ll get
lopped off on a signpost.”
    “Come on, dad, get your head out of your ass.”
    “That’s it – one more outburst from you and I’m pulling
this car over.”
    They whizzed across the threshold of the Eastern Avenue
Bridge, giggling like children. As the car crested the structure, Stephan
turned to gaze down on the trusses of the Old Eastern Avenue Bridge, which had
been closed for decades but never demolished. Its entrances on either side of
the Don River were blocked off by chain link fences, but they looked as if they
could be scaled easily enough. He made a mental note to come back here some
time and shoot it, and then they were across the river and into a neighbourhood
of junk shops and ancient clothing stores, anchored by a strip club, Jilly’s,
that had been there so long it had acquired the status of a heritage site.
    Block by block, the passing street-scape grew tidier and
more prosperous. And somewhere along the way the car crossed the invisible
frontier of the true inner city. They hadn’t entered the suburbs yet, but they
weren’t downtown anymore, either. A couple of minutes later, Pete pulled onto a
narrow side street lined with brick- and siding-clad semi-detached houses.
There was a black Lexus sedan parked half-way down the block, next to which
stood a thirty-something black guy, trim and fit. Dressed in a light-grey suit
that fitted him liked a suit of armor, he was talking on an aluminum-coloured
cell phone that glinted in the sunlight like jewellery.
    “That’s my agent, Sherwin,” Pete said. “And that’s the
house!” He jabbed his finger towards a two-storey structure of white-painted
brick, its front yard a small rock garden.
    “Looks... great,” Stephan said, groping for a supportive
response. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the place – it looked quite nice,
actually – but he seemed to lack the vocabulary for this sort of occasion. It
was outside his sphere of experience.
    They parked and walked over to