In a Mist by Devon Code-mcneil Page A

express his emotions. He was saddened by the fact that he had never thought to write anything about her while she was alive. This gave him an idea.
    Laura was the most important person in my life. We never talked about it openly, but we both assumed that we would spend the rest of our lives together. She was pragmatic, rational, systematic. But also compassionate, and optimistic. More so than I. We were very diff erent. But we seemed to complement one another. She was the perfect companion for someone like me. I knew this at one point but gradually I began to forget. I withdrew into myself. She realized what I was doing before I did and she reacted with anger. This only caused me to draw further away from her. The day she died we were more distant from one another than we had ever been before.
    He tore the page out of his notebook, crumpled it up and threw it in the wastebin. After staring at the notebook for some time he considered retrieving the page and continuing. But he thought better of it. He got up from his desk and walked out of the room. He could not bear the thought of staying in the apartment alone all afternoon, waiting for her to come home. He went to the hallway closet and took out a short sleeved shirt and put it on over his sleeveless undershirt. He sat down on the bench in the hallway and put on socks and shoes, pausing after he tied the lace of the right shoe, wondering where he would go. He considered the university library but he could not stand the presence of students and did not want to risk running into her. He locked the door, descended the stairs and decided to head north. The air was heavy with the odor of garbage at the curbs. At the end of the block he watched a mangy tabby retreat from a torn bag of trash toward the underside of a front step, something dark and limp hanging from its mouth.
    When he passed the convenience store at the end of the next block he left his neighbourhood behind. Victorian homes converted into student flats gave way to identical row houses, and then a stretch of squat brick tenements where there were no trees lining the street to provide shade. He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed the sweat from his forehead. In front of one of the tenements two young girls sat on overturned milk crates behind a folding table. They wore matching one-piece pink and yellow bathing suits and cotton baseball caps and their skin was tanned a dark brown. There was a clear plastic pitcher on the table, Styrofoam cups, and cans of soda glinting in the sun.
    â€œLemonade. Seventy five cents. Pop for a dollar,” said the older of the two girls, eyeing him. She fidgeted, twisted on her milk crate, the palms of her hands resting beside her slender thighs. Her fingers drummed the side of the milk crate, as if keeping time to a tune only she could hear. The younger girl looked up at him silently. Richard reached into his empty front pocket.
    â€œDo you have change for a five?” he asked.
    â€œUmm . . .” said the fidgeting girl, her smile vanishing.
    â€œThat’s alright,” he said. “You should put that soda in a cooler.”
    â€œThe lemonade’s cold,” said the older girl. He could see half-melted ice cubes floating in the pitcher of cloudy white liquid.
    â€œI’ll get change.” She jumped up and ran toward the building, her flip flops slapping against the asphalt. He looked down at the younger girl and smiled. She looked up at him with two fingers in her mouth. He did not want to stand in the sun and wait for her companion to return.
    â€œYou picked a good day for selling lemonade,” he said. “I wish you luck.”
    Soon after he passed between a series of car lots, the pristine vehicles reflecting heat and light off their polished glass and chrome. A balding salesman in a dark green suit shielded his eyes with a clipboard, making his way between a row of brightly coloured Korean compacts toward the air conditioned