Free Toby by Todd Babiak

Alicia, I’d be willing to give you another chance.”
    She blew a burst of air out her nose.
    “There’s enough money in my severance for a trip to Paris. First-class flight, a week at the Four Seasons. We could get married at the Hôtel de Ville. If one of us has to be there for a month before they’ll do it, I’m willing to make that sacrifice. I can plot the next stage in my career.”
    “Toby.”
    He went down on one knee, again.
    “Still no ring.”
    “We can go together, right now, to the Tiffany counter. Whatever you want.”
    “Say goodbye to your parents for me. My best wishes to poor Edward.”
    “No.”
    “Toby. You don’t even have a job.”
    “I’m not leaving.” He thought he detected a smile. Something. “Tractors couldn’t drag me away now, my darling.”
    “You have nothing.”
    “I have love.”
    “Not that.”
    His right knee began to hurt, so he switched to the left. “‘Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.’”
    “You really don’t understand.”
    “I do understand. I do. I know why you were with Dwayne. But if you stick with me, I can take you ten times farther. I can—”
    “No.”
    “I’ll do anything.”
    “This is a real spectacle.”
    Toby crawled across the floor to her chair.
    Alicia produced her iPhone. “You’re humiliating yourself, and I can’t watch it. What’s the number for Security?”
    “What can I do?” Toby stood up. “What can I do?”
    “Go.”
    “I’ll show you, Alicia. You’ll see.”
    She looked at him, but also past him, as though most of Toby had already left the room. “We try to hide it, but it shows in a moment like this. Where we come from.”
    He wiped the dust from his knees and tried to formulate a response. His father with the mitts on, his mother with her chocolate milk and her cigarillos, the pile of scrap wood in the backyard. “This isn’t finished.”
    Alicia followed him to the door and pushed it closed behind him.
    Half an hour later, he was in his own office, adding four new Toby a Gentleman segments to his demo reel. He phoned Anton Beauchemin, station manager of the CTV affiliate, and said he was available.
    “What? Have they gone shithouse rat over there? You’re still on billboards.”
    “Craziness is a pretty good summation, Anton.”
    “Well, of course, we’d love to have you. Not sure what’s available at the moment. We’re officially in a hiring freeze, like everyone else. But we’re retooling the morning show. How’d you like to wake up at four every day?”
    “I would like nothing better.”
    They exchanged numbers and addresses, made plans to meet for drinks at the end of the afternoon. Toby packeda wine box full of awards and books and photographs. He printed off several copies of his C.V. and burned ten discs of his updated demo reel. The studio was half full, with a meeting of the morning show host and producers. Sandra from Poland said, flatly but not quietly, “Nazi.”
    He drove north and west toward the Montreal General. His phone vibrated. At the next red light, at Sherbrooke and de la Montagne, Toby checked and discovered an e-mail from Anton Beauchemin.
Dear Toby, Heard about the thing. Can’t do it. No point meeting. Apologies, regrets. Anton
    For the past year, Mr. Demsky had lived and worked in a Victorian townhouse on Elm Avenue, two blocks west of the Forum, Montreal’s factory of half-remembered sepia dreams. He might have lived higher up the mountain, in the detached stone houses of multi-generational business-class travellers, but he had chosen to stay close to his audience, whom he both adored and despised. Elm Avenue was tranquil despite its proximity to a shopping mall, a synagogue, the college Toby had attended after high school, and the twenty-two-screen cinema complex that was once the Forum. It was a Wednesday, and therefore difficult to find a parking spot. Bits of dust blew up and settled on the lapels of Toby’s suit and on his violated