The God Game. Jeffrey Round
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with the scant facts of Tony Moran’s life. Maybe the answer lay there, but it wasn’t much to go on.
He picked up his Day-Timer and wrote Hansen’s name along with the time of his visit. Beside it he wrote $10,000 CASH, underlining the entry.
In the space below he wrote: Find another caterer.
Two
Sweet Domesticity
Dan was comforted by the smell of roast chicken on arriving home. Apart from being a great companion, Nick was also an excellent chef. It was just one more thing that made him an outstanding partner.
There was no dog at the front door, but that wasn’t unusual these days. Ralph the Geriatric had given up his duties as official greeter to anyone he knew returning home. Only strangers still merited that calling.
Ralph had been many things in his long life, including a rabble-rouser and back-porch broadcaster of neighbourhood news, but he was now enjoying his retirement. Dan had named him after the unmarried uncle of one of his exes, whom he’d met one Thanksgiving. Uncle Ralph had had bloodshot eyes and been wracked with a terrible croup. It turned out he’d also briefly been the secret lover of actor Rock Hudson back in the 1950s when the term “confirmed bachelor” covered a multitude of sins. After dinner, Dan jokingly declared to his ex that he wanted a dog like the uncle. Stopping by the pound on a whim a month later, he found a ginger retriever pup with bloodshot eyes, just recovering from kennel cough. He brought the dog home for Kedrick. While the boyfriend soon deserted and the namesake uncle died not long afterward, taking Rock’s secret to the grave, Ralph was still around fifteen years later. Of late, however, he spent much of his time lounging on a cushion, thumping his tail when called, and surveying his kingdom from this private throne.
In the kitchen, Ralph looked up with an approving glance before settling back down again. Dan gave him a pat on the head, then reached for a mug in the cupboard. He turned on the tap and heard a yelp from upstairs. Nick was in the shower. The touchy thermostat had no doubt given him a sharp reminder of its finicky nature.
When they met, Dan had been single so long he wasn’t sure he could let another man into his life while retaining his emotional balance, the outer signs of self control so important to him. Still, Nick had given him reason to try. Surprisingly, gratefully, Dan had concluded that domestic life agreed with him so long as the man at his side brought more happiness than grief. In the meantime, to his pleasant surprise, a recurring stress disorder retreated to the far shores of consciousness till it was a mere echo of the turmoil and anxiety he’d once lived with daily.
So far, with Nick, there’d been little to regret. Dan had worried about dating a cop for all the usual reasons, but for the most part they turned out to be unfounded. True, Nick had a peppery temper, but it was as sudden as it was brief. Here and gone, like a summer squall. He had emotional depth and he was patient. He was also refreshingly direct.
Dan liked that Nick could be funny and serious in equal measure but never hid his true feelings. He was his own man. “You’ll never have to guess with me,” he’d told Dan at the relationship’s outset. Not entirely true, Dan discovered, as Nick’s emotions and moods changed like quicksilver. But he was reliable, loyal, and loving.
Dan was still not entirely sure how Kedrick felt about Nick, however. Ked had been happiest when Dan was with a man named Trevor. But Trevor had been unnerved by Dan’s choice of profession, living in constant fear for Dan’s safety. The split had been amicable, but since then Dan was never entirely certain of Ked’s approval of any man in his life. The problem had been temporarily resolved when Ked moved to B.C. to pursue a degree in oceanographic and environmental studies and could only vet his father’s boyfriends at a distance. Still, Dan would have preferred to know that Ked approved of his choice of mate.
Officially, Nick and Dan did not live together, though that was set to change with the marriage. Till then they were owners of two residences, one a spacious condo on Toronto’s coveted waterfront and the other a modest-size home in newly chic Leslieville. When Dan bought the house, it had been advertised as “two bedrooms plus den with basic backyard,” though in reality the latter turned out to be a veritable wilderness. At the time, Leslieville had been anything but fashionable, scorned by both hipsters and yuppies alike as an unremarkable lower-class pocket sandwiched between the Beach and genteel Riverdale. The yard reflected the city’s neglect. It consisted of a tottering wire fence enclosing a plot of weeds nearly four feet high. Dan cut the grass, built a deck, and erected a winding rock wall to shore up the flower beds before adding a pond in the far corner. High hopes. The pond’s goldfish supply was repeatedly plundered by marauding raccoons. An exploratory pair of turtles suffered the same fate, as did the half-dozen piranha Dan bought to nip some sense into the pesky thieves. While rats and cockroaches ruled the rest of the world, Toronto was lorded over by its well-fed Procyons.
A few indigenous plants made a strong showing the first season: rhubarb and wild roses, even garlic sprang seemingly out of nowhere. Later, Dan introduced cultivated roses and miniature lilacs. Tulips, daffodils, crocuses, and trillium soon reared their heads alongside everything else. Before long, he’d established a backyard sanctuary that was frequented by a variety of birds and insects, as well as the occasional skunk and fox.
The house, too, had been in a questionable state when he moved in, but it soon sported new doors and windows and a new roof. Dilapidated hardwood floors walked on by the house’s original inhabitants a hundred years earlier were soon refinished, while the fireplace, sealed for decades but now newly refurbished, took pride of place in the living room where he now stood.
Dan stroked the lid of a decorative box perched on the mantel, sliding it open to a trove of snapshots. His cousin Leyla at ten, tomboy bangs and a grin, lay on top. She’d been like a sister to him. Next came Aunt Marge, his substitute mother, jolly and robust like the good wife from a fairy tale. From her he’d learned love and compassion. Dan’s real mother, Christine, had died when he was four. Her image lay further down. He knew where to find it if he wanted to. Those were the older photos. There were newer additions, many recent: shots of Dan and Nick together, of Ked right before he left for university, and of Ked’s mother, Kendra, a Syrian-born immigrant who had crossed Dan’s romantic horizon briefly, though neither had been contemplating parenthood at the time.
Some of the pictures were pleasant reminders, others bittersweet. His long-time friend Domingo, who’d died of a recurring cancer, smiled up alongside Dan’s best friend, Donny, and Donny’s own bit of domestic bliss, the charming Prabin. They were his Found Family, though sometimes they felt more like a Lost and Found, these disparate bits and pieces of his life. Dan wasn’t given to sentiment, but all of them held meaning. His wedding photos would one day find a place alongside the others.
There were no photographs of his father. Stuart Sharp had been a brutal man given to harsh words, black moods, and, when his son displeased him, a quick swing of the hand. The latter hadn’t happened often, if only because Dan learned early to stay out of his way, but on at least one occasion the drunken Stuart had slammed his son into a doorframe, giving Dan a lasting scar on his temple, a lightning bolt that was a permanent reminder of his father. Dan didn’t need photos for that.
In truth, he felt he’d long since made peace with his father’s memory, coming to understand him as a frustrated and bitter man constrained by a lifetime of crushing labour in the mines, with few joys outside. He’d had little to give to others once his wife died and left him to raise a son who felt more fear for his father than any other emotion he could readily name.
It had been a hard life in a city of rock. Sudbury: the nickel capital of the world. A rough place for rough people. Dan remembered a classmate, Pelka, whose father had drunk battery acid in a failed attempt to kill himself, and a shy, fatherless boy named Rex whom Dan had claimed hopefully as his best friend for a single semester before Rex and his itinerant mother moved on again for parts unknown. Another girl, Shirley, always had a boy’s haircut and wore blue jeans. She came to school looking alternately frightened and angry. No one spoke about these things. Dan had made the best of things while he lived there, knowing nothing else, then put it behind him when he moved away and somehow, inexplicably, wound