Free The Amazing Absorbing Boy by Rabindranath Maharaj Page A

coffee.
    “You by yourself now?”
    I jumped and managed to say, “Nobody else is here today.”
    “The little one, he …” I saw her lips moving as if she was searching for a word. “Roy, you know?”
    “Yes?’
    “He feel very … how to say it … very dizzy. So they take him?”
    “Where?”
    “To ambulance.” She sat at the nearby table and began refilling the silver napkin holder. “He was nice man. Very friendly.”
    “To you?”
    “Yes, yes. He smile always.” She smiled herself and I wanted her to sit right there for the rest of the evening. “I go now.” She got up. “I have long-long shift. You work?”
    A boldfaced lie formed in my head but I told her, “Nothing so far.”
    “Yes, but you keep looking.”
    I couldn’t tell from her accent whether she was asking a question or consoling me. “Yes, I keep looking.” As she was walking away, I said, “Mum-moon,” but softly because I could not remember its meaning.
    I was sorry when Norbert walked in a couple minutes later because now I would have to listen to him instead. Straightaway, he asked if I had heard about Roy and before I could reply, said that he had a stroke and was in the Downsview Hospital. I noticed the grey bristles on his face and the coffee stains on one of his cuffs as he gazed aroundat the customers ordering coffee and doughnuts. Jim the truck driver came in a few minutes later and both of them talked about Roy and his smoking and his unruly grandson and his wife who had died of cancer ten years earlier. Jim said that Roy was never the same after his wife’s death, and things only got worse when he moved to his daughter’s place. He lived for a while in an old persons’ home and, according to Jim, his daughter wasn’t happy when he left there to return to her place because he was forever quarrelling with her boys.
    As they talked about Roy’s younger days—when he owned a cottage near Peterborough and would go drinking and fishing with his friends, could repair all types of engines, and was a smart dresser (which was hard to imagine)—I got the idea they were feeling shaky because they were just a couple years younger than Roy. Then Jim said those days were gone forever and got up.
    After Jim left, Norbert’s gloomy mood didn’t change much. He began to talk about his own young days when he played the piano with an old-time band. He gave performances at fancy clubs where one night he met his wife, who had just come from England. I thought he was talking about the lady who had gone to the States, but he described his wife as tall with red hair and a “loud bubbly laugh.” He smiled a bit as if he was remembering something about his wife, and brightened up, even while mentioning how he lost all his money during some real estate crash and how his wife left him to return to England with their son. “What’s gone is gone,” hetold me, using the same stiff voice like Jim a few minutes earlier. “At least we have the memories to sift through.”
    I couldn’t understand if this was a lament because he had been talking for the last twenty minutes about his bad luck with his wife and his money and moving from job to job. And then it hit me that he was really talking about the small smiling lady. Even when he picked up some of Roy’s favourite topics about welfare and immigrants, I felt his mind was on this lady. It seemed strange but I believed he was somehow blaming these immigrants for his woman-problem. Because we were alone that day, I felt I should console him but he got up and put on his coat like if he was real tired. Then he left.
    “Any luck?” I looked up and saw the orangeish girl. I felt she was referring to a job so I shook my head. She sat and I asked her what her name was. “I don’t like to give out name. I am sorry.” I said I understood and she smiled as if she knew I was lying. “Okay, I tell you. It is Dilara. Just for you.”
    “Why just for me?”
    I hoped she would say because she knew I