were temporary. It took him a few months of drunken sex to stumble into the realization that middle-aged white women with smoke in their hair can’t erase memories. He gave them up, and instead, found Daphne.
— 5 —
Affairs
It was shortly after Ismail’s return to the Merry Pint that Daphne became his favourite drinking buddy. Almost every day, she’d arrive just after her shift at a nearby women’s drop-in centre. She told Ismail once that she had a different personality during her workday, optimistic and helpful while she completed housing applications and distributed TTC tickets. By the time 5:00 p.m. rolled around, most of her cheer had run out.
Ismail found it surprising that Daphne had these two personas, on and off the job. But then, his work was in maintaining structures, not people. His almost singular focus was Toronto’s bridges and tunnels; the city’s great connectors. Ismail tested them for their soundness, inspected them to ensure they wouldn’t fall down on people, applying himself to his job in the same tedious and consistent manner in which he approached the rest of his life.
It was obvious that Daphne was worn down by her work. She arrived at the bar in baggy sweatshirts and jeans, only in the most sombre of colours. Her attire cloaked her slender figure, hiding ribs and hipbones that jutted out against her skin. Her face rarely saw the sunshine and her fair complexion was the kind that blushed tomato red when she was livid or embarrassed. By the end of the night, her long hair, usually pulled back in a messy braid, would be in further disarray. Later, Ismail would learn that it always carried a faint, but heady scent of lavender.
She was caustically cynical, and could find a way to flood anyone at the bar, not already depressed, with her hopelessness and despair. Ismail thought she was just his type. Besides her ability to bring people down, Daphne held great powers of suggestion. Mostly, she was a bad influence on Ismail, peer-pressuring him into drinking one, two, five too many shots of whiskey with her. When she was beyond drunk, her mood lifted and she could entertain Ismail with jokes and tales he found hilarious in the moment, but could never recall the following morning. She introduced him to several drinking games involving cards, dice, and whatever TV show was playing on the bar’s ceiling-mounted television. This held Ismail’s attention, amusing him for almost three years.
Two weeks after The Simpsons game that left Ismail questioning the wisdom of his ways, Daphne shocked him by joining Alcoholics Anonymous. They were in their usual spot at the bar, but she seemed more alert than usual, while he was already feeling a buzz.
“Wait. Really? You always called them a cult.”
“I was wrong,” she said with a shrug. “But there are some weirdos there. But most of them, they’re nice people.” Although she’d been to the Merry Pint since joining up, Ismail could tell AA was helping her. That night, he saw her order a ginger ale between beers, a sobering soda pop intermission. Her previous negativity about the program even seemed to be replaced with some hopefulness and a tentative loyalty to its teachings. Without a hint of sarcasm in her voice, she told him about the previous night’s meeting, using phrases like “one day at a time” and “higher power.”
“Well, isn’t it a contradiction to be here while joining AA?” he challenged.
“I’m going to go back tomorrow. I’m taking things slow. I’ve never been able to dive into things all at once.” Then she smiled, “Plus, if they really are a cult, it’s a good idea to do this gradually, right?”
“I guess it’s better to go sometimes than not at all,” he conceded.
“Come with me tomorrow, Ismail. It’ll be fun.” He raised a skeptical eyebrow, but she continued, her tone growing serious, “I don’t know a lot of people there yet. It would be good to have a friend with me.”
Ismail didn’t answer just then, and she changed the subject. But while she talked about a new policy at work that was annoying her, he considered her invitation. The pains in his side had returned, and he was embarrassed to go back to see the doctor after his three-year relapse. Besides, Nabil was on a new campaign of nagging, scolding him for his excesses during his weekly fraternal phone calls. By the end of the night, he and Daphne had made a pact to leave the Merry Pint together.
— * —
The day before José’s funeral, the young teller closed her counter and guided Celia away, touching her gently on her elbow. They went to the manager’s office, a glass box that faced out to the rest of the bank. She’d never been in an office like that; José had always been the one to do the banking. She was offered a cup of coffee and a seat in a plush leather chair. The teller spoke softly to her, in Portuguese.
Celia settled into the comfortable seat, approving of the special treatment she was being given as a widow. She looked out the glass walls of the office, sipped her coffee, and watched the tellers’ line-up snaking along velveteen barrier ropes.
There were hushed voices in the corridor. She strained her neck to see the teller speaking to the manager just outside the door, their faces just a few inches apart. Although their blazered backs faced her, she could make out a few words that sounded like overdraft, unaware, withdrawal. Celia watched the teller return to her counter, and within a few moments the manager appeared, a short balding man with a grim expression. He sat down, cleared his throat, clutched at his desk with tight hands. He showed her all her banking records on the computer, pointing to rows and columns of light blue numbers that made no sense to her.
The manager looked away from her and back to his screen. She wished that his office hadn’t been made of glass walls, an aquarium that barely contained her tears.
After the funeral, she hadn’t much time for crying. She sold the house, José’s old truck, most of the furniture, all the things that had marked them as successful people. Most of her possessions, anything of value, were signed away, auctioned off, bargained down. She kept for herself only a little furniture, her clothing, and a few keepsakes. All José left her was a small pension that she’d have to wait to collect on her sixty-fifth birthday. At least the government was more generous than he, delivering her a small survivor’s benefit once a month.
Her children assured her she’d never want for anything, but she knew Lydia and Filipe were just managing on what they earned. She had food and shelter and family, and she knew she should be grateful. But still, she longed for so much more.
— * —
Ismail and Daphne attended the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 6:30 p.m. Hope for Today meetings at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health on Queen Street West, becoming regular, if somewhat ambivalent, converts. After meetings, they went for coffee and shared a new, sober intimacy that Ismail found almost as intoxicating as a shot of fine whisky.
He told her about Zubi’s death and Rehana’s rejection and she didn’t judge him for it. Soon, she started to share her own terrible past: her abusive parents, feuds with four siblings, and her early teenage troubles with cocaine. They developed a closeness that had been impossible while they were drinking buddies. To him, she was like a good therapist, inviting him to talk about Zubi, spurring on angry rants about Rehana, and offering hugs. Ismail’s memories became less ubiquitous and more manageable now that he wasn’t alone with them.
It was no surprise that the pair soon began sleeping together on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Their therapeutic routine was AA at 6:30, coffee and confession at 8:00, and sex at 10:00, always at her place. Ismail never slept over and was home by 11:30. They carried on like this for many weeks, the AA and their deep talks a kind of heady, dry-drunk foreplay. He started to think they might make a go of a relationship until she finally worked up the nerve to tell him that they had to stop sleeping together because she was gay.
“No, you’re pulling my leg!”
“It’s true, Ismail. It’s something I’ve known for a long time but never admitted to myself. I guess not drinking all this time has made me finally come to terms with it.”
Ismail stared at her, dumbfounded.
She laughed and said, “Isn’t