The Placebo Effect by David Rotenberg Page A

by.”
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œFive o’clock at Rancho Relaxo on College by Spadina—evil mojitos.”
    â€œI teach tonight.”
    â€œOh, be that way. My place in two hours. You okay, Decker?”
    Decker didn’t answer her question. He didn’t know the answer to her question.
    Decker ducked under the police tape and stood in what remained of the front hall of his home.
    The sleet had turned to snow. The first snow of the year drifted through the charred roof beams.
    After a divorce or a death—or a fire—you get to see everything anew. As if a light that had always been off was suddenly turned on. It removes the shadows, throwing a sodium-harsh light on the emptiness.
    Fire doesn’t annihilate a house—it eviscerates it. It leaves the biggest of the bones while immolating the vital organs within. It reminded Decker of all the apartments in New York City he had left—how after he had moved out all the furniture but had to stay the last night to return the phone to Ma Bell. How sleeping on an air mattress those final nights he always was amazed how small the apartment felt without the furniture—and its occupants.
    How small a house is after a fire.
    Something glinted in the fading light, and Decker knelt to get a better look. A silver picture frame—charred and twisted. Despite his best efforts he couldn’t remember what photograph had filled the now empty frame.
    He stood, brushed the ashes from his knees, and left the property. It was surprisingly easy to do. It shocked him. Like a three-legged dog, he thought. When a dog loses a leg it doesn’t pine for its missing limb. It simply becomes a three-legged dog. Decker knew he should move forward—out of his old burnt house—into whatever future awaited him. But unlike a three-legged dog, Decker knew that he could never really free himself from his past—a past that had two failed Broadway shows, the awful death of his wife and a fourteen-month memory gap in it.
    He crossed the street to where his ’99 Passat was parked. Hewas lucky that he’d had no garage and that his three-year battle with city hall to allow him to park on his own property had failed. Otherwise his car would have gone the way of his house.
    He opened the trunk and the CD changer there. In 1999, CD player theft was evidently quite popular, so Volkswagen had installed a CD changer in the trunk. Ever so convenient if you’re driving and you want to change to a selection you didn’t happen to load into the changer. He scanned the numerous disks he had borrowed from the city’s fabulous—truly fabulous—library system.
    Decker flipped through the jewel cases. T. S. Eliot reading his own poems, sounding a wee bit like Monty Python’s impersonation of an Etonian snot-nosed silly walker—too bad. Decker loved the words—just not, in this case, the speaker. Besides, ol’ T.S. was from St. Louis, Missouri—what was he doing talking like that? There were also CDs of Elliott Gould reading Raymond Chandler’s Lady in the Lake and Tim Robbins reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby. He popped in the latter, got back in the car and as Fitzgerald’s revolutionary cadences began he allowed the car to dictate his course.
    Much to his surprise he ended up less than a mile away at George Bell Arena, where he had taught Seth how to skate, and where he had watched his talented son play dozens and dozens of hockey games. For a moment he remembered Seth’s open face and huge smile after scoring a winning goal.
    He entered the cold arena.
    Like all cinder-block buildings, it echoed. In this case, with the thud of pucks smashing against wooden rink boards. Decker pulled his coat tightly around himself to fend off the dank cold of the place and climbed the steps to the seating area.
    On the rink a pickup game was in progress. Most of the players were men in their mid to late thirties. One of