Tucker Martin woke up at seven o’clock, troubled and serious. He found himself confronted with perhaps what he hated more than Sam Ledbury himself, his father. He dreaded each and every second of meeting his father, as well as every second of the week building up to it, and the several days afterwards of utter shame and resentment that lingered until he could bury it in his mind. He remembered every detail of the previous time and how he was left sullen and all but bedridden for a whole week afterwards. He shuddered. He often imagined that the meetings were merely nightmares; fits of paranoia, or as it were, a mental illness which plagued him twice a year; and he’d become so good at convincing himself of that fact, that he also convinced himself that nothing could be done to change it, since it was out of his control…just a dream.

He felt himself walking briskly. Chin tucked in his collar, hands tight in his pockets, for the air was nippy like a thousand puppies teething. He walked down this street and that. He walked across the Pattullo Bridge into New West and found himself rolling into the College Place Hotel and Bar for a drink. His mind was cluttered. Full of cobwebs. He struggled to even order a Rusty Nail. It came along with a girl.

“Hey handsome, need a friend?”

He shook his head. “Not now. Maybe later.”

“Just holler for Amy.”

He watched her hips sway from one side of the room to the other.

On February 14th we went to an Oscar Wilde play in Vancouver, “The Importance of being Earnest,” it was. The weather was chilly, to put it mildly, and we’d dressed the part, in big overcoats, gloves, and scarfs. He wore black Doc Martens (was there any other colour?) which was a good sounding shoe—by that I mean, when you walked, the shoe against the ground had a pleasant sound, very comforting. My shoes sounded rather tinny, but I could never bring myself to purchase the big clunky Doc Martens as I preferred more sleek-looking shoes. There’s always a trade off. When we arrived at the theatre, romantically lit, it had a wonderfully welcoming ambience in the otherwise cold and dark night. We were ushered in by a slender man with shimmering blue eyes that suggested he was happier than usual, perhaps he found out his wife was pregnant. He tore our tickets in half and off we went to the bar for a cocktail.

“Enjoy the show,” I heard him say behind us.

Corporal Theodore “Ted” Lyon was a trained land surveyor from the British Army. When I knew him he was just recently divorced from his wife and quite upset about it. He said, “You know, John, you always think she’ll come back, and then you call to see how she is and some guy answers the phone.”

Jesus Christ! What could I say? I was only nineteen at the time, and had only known him for a few months. He scared the shit out of me.

He was sitting in the dark with a downturned face and hunched shoulders, his usual look for the past week, when I came in one morning.

“You know she’s changed her look,” he said, startling me. “She used to always wear her hair down and now it’s always up. Felt like I didn’t even know her.”

Sharona had already slammed one beer, being the hostess and birthday girl, she got first dibs; and the edge it had taken off facilitated another level of volume. She turned to Jacob, who, engaged in conversation with his friend, seemed unaware of her existence.

"Hey. HEY!"

He looked over at her.

"What's going on? My friends haven't got any drinks and the food is coming out so slowly."

Her face showed a mixed expression of annoyance at the situation and embarrassment for her recommending this place to her friends. She also conveyed a hope that her husband would help her while she could entertain her friends. But he sloughed her off like dead skin and turned back to his conversation. It was painfully obvious ...

Tommy always wore his Carling jacket. It was a kind of charcoal colour, or maybe it was just faded black, with breast pockets and a name tag. His name was written in cursive and was pretty worn out. The letters actually looked like “Tammy” instead of “Tommy,” which I thought was quite funny. I asked him about it once and he told me to fuck off. I asked Dan about it and he didn’t say anything, but was more polite about it. After that I just let it go, and though I didn’t really care, the strange fact that they didn’t say anything about it made me curious.

Whenever I saw Dan and Tommy together, they each always had one eye on the other, as if at any moment one of them might combust and neither wanted to miss it. And for the short time I’d been at the brewery, the only conflict I saw was between those two. So I was rather surprised when an angry girl in her twenties stormed in looking for Tommy. Glen was helping me move bottles, and by helping I mean talking about cars, but I didn’t mind.