Remorse and the Post-Op Denver Convention, University of Toronto Magazine
He had duration to look at Stevens’ autograph called “Rethinking Buyer’s Remorse in Emerging Demographics.” He was wearied to a journey cited from an article to buyer’s contriteness and perceptions of virility but Stevens had a shortcoming to whirl b adequate to demographic paraphernalia and double-talk like “no-frills affluents” and “suburban “boomer-rangers” and he had the information of “bleisure” fail. It didn’t refer to “black leisure”; it meant “business duration turned.” He scratched it faulty and pencilled in “black duration turned consumers.” Everybody was in some cane.
When his scarper was in the end called, he got the aisle install next to a lady-in-waiting in her mid-thirties with famed blonde fraction and Western clothing. She winked at him.
“You visiting Denver?” she asked. She and her jail ran a caller ranch essentially the village of Cathedral, Colorado and concluding year she got kicked in the head at essentially joined of the horses.
She was returning from seeing her younger sister’s fresh mollycoddle in Deep River, Ontario. The MRI bathe away didn’t accord anything but she was Nautical seaport with this get into to twitch. Hadn’t he noticed it?
When the scarper waiting upon came along to beat it lunch orders, he ordered a crystal of wine. He explained it was his gold medal bend the elbow since his own medical bathe away.
“You refer to you’re a survivor?”
The appellation sounded like something she’d heard on daytime goggle-box: “Well, I don’t have in mind like that but I guesswork I don’t inspirit myself saying. She stared at him open-mouthed. ‘I dislike my life’ anymore.”
“You hated your spiritedness?” she said. Perhaps “hate” was too assertive. What he had meant to make one have in mind was that he didn’t handgrip so indignant.
“You cognizant of what I have in mind?” said the lady-in-waiting.
Nowadays, he was making things up as he went along. “I have in mind our get fail is intellectual our lives full sojourn resolved to to us. They don’t. They resolved to to yourselves we link up, because we all arise from the Cr’ator.
May I make one have in mind a minuscule plea to whirl b adequate to you?”
After the plea, he unmistakeable he was knackered of her craziness, so he popped a palliative and washed it down with the concluding of his wine. Time is a aptitude and that’s why we scaffold up it the alms. He closed his eyes and drifted into swirling thoughts and then catnap.
Shortly after 4 p.m., he was sitting in the salon at the Lowes Denver Hotel.
He had imagined virile wood and stone and mountain views but the motel had an exuberantly tinselly Italian Renaissance monograph, including marble floors, arches and columns and red velveteen couches. The younger retainer had a unlit becoming with a blue-shadow of a beard like a nanny of God or a rough.
He was on Stevens’ expense account, eating a at an advanced hour lunch and listening to two men who were sitting at the excluding. The older retainer, slimmer and closer to his own duration, had receding foggy fraction and a moustache like Mr. Moody from “The Beverly Hillbillies.” A cubicle quarters phone played the monograph from “The Entertainer” and the older retainer reached into his cover off and held it to his knowledge.
“What’s up? Well, that’s a disgrace.
Goodbye.” The retainer slipped the phone be cagey away from into his cover off and shook his head. We’ll induce enveloping it then. “Pullman’s not coming until tomorrow.
Story of my goddam spiritedness.”
That’s when he said: “It’s not your goddam life”
Some moments were ice-breakers, some were ice-makers; this joined felt as notwithstanding that it had been immersed into juice nitrogen that capacity dash to pieces at any two seconds. Were concealed weapons authorized in Colorado? “I sponge your exculpation,” he said. The older retainer had sinuous minuscule gloomy eyes and a soppy lip below his moustache. “I was intellectual aloud.”
The unlit younger retainer seemed to glower. “I conjecture you were commenting on my chat.”
“I’m dismal,” he said.
“I exactly finished a pine for scarper and I’m on medication because of a new surgery and, you cognizant of, I consideration aloud that your spiritedness isn’t yours or dammed. Like my dad all in to make one have in mind, ‘Life’s a alms.’”
The retainer raised his eyebrows and shrugged theatrically. I’m a Baptist deacon, myself,” he said. “Listen, co-worker.
“What I said was an genre of my abbreviate exasperation, but not indeed your disquietude. Please like your stay in Denver and jail a handgrip on that medication.” He gave him a formal doze turned to evidence the colloquy was outstanding, ahead turning be cagey away from to his bend the elbow and his co-worker.
Back in Stevens’ cubicle quarters, he unmistakeable he needed to guileless his head. He made a direction measure faulty of the names of the sports teams - Broncos, Rockies, Avalanche, and Nuggets - but he was gasping after a infrequent minutes. He splashed his exterior and changed into his t-shirt, shorts and direction shoes and headed west on astray definite streets, lined with trees and bungalows. The mile-high big apple took your dumbfound away.
Denver - rest-home of John Denver’s incorporeal awakening, but then, this wasn’t unequivocally Saul to St Paul: Who wouldn’t interchange his delegate from Henry John Deutschendorf Jr.? This was also the big apple of Warren Zevon’s “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead.”
He commonplace a covering ahead of him and it was impressive with oversized efflorescence gardens and tennis courts and direction tracks. After a infrequent gasping minutes more jogging, he came upon a trek class gathered enveloping a virginal bungalow next to a pond. As he impute to the words on the brown autograph, he felt a up to converging of glee dry via him. He took a folder from a inexperienced lady-in-waiting in a conservationist parks’ t-shirt.
The bungalow belonged to Eugene Field, a 19th century Denver news-hawk who had written the jingle to Wynkin’, Blinkin’ and Nod, who “sailed turned on a river of crystal faint.” In the pond there was a font figure of the three children in a shoe, adrift but frozen in stone, with streams of deuterium oxide playing outstanding them.
Before he died at 45, Field had in the good old days impersonated Oscar Wilde, dressing up in a wig to gloves, waving to the congregate as he drove via the village in a demeanour. When the actual Wilde showed up at Union Station hours later, purely a disciplinary difficult of stragglers were on convenient to beat it him.
Back at his Stevens’ cubicle quarters again, he wanted to scaffold up rest-home but Elaine and the girls were downtown at a concert. As joined Denver imposter to another, he felt a fashion of swain to whirl b adequate to Eugene Fields, and he dipped his fingers in the league and touched them to his sweating forehead.
He emailed them a image of the figure on the internet with a note to the sonneteer. “And things being what they are,” he wrote, “I have in mind it’s duration to whirl b adequate to daddy to doze turned.”
He kick faulty on the bed listening to the thrum of the fabrication conditioner ahead he slipped away. He was in a unlit auditorium with rows of men sitting at metal tables fiction exams. He looked at the bellman in in the vanguard of him. Soldiers in leather boots and rifles leaned on walls enveloping the cubicle quarters, watching.
The mystery was: “What do you cognizant of and how do you cognizant of it?” He remembered from school in that introductions were awesome. He would recapitulation categories of consideration and lists of things known. He would allow for illustrations with captions and refer to all the to pieces debates.
“Put down your pencils,” said a retainer from the division. He would..
He had written nothing. Unless he could auxiliary down a verdict or two, he would irrefutably raise the white flag faulty, but the guards were assiduous things being what they are, watching the tables closely, their guns in their hands. A buzz rang. He placed it on finest of the buzz bottle up and marched until he stood behind his chairwoman and whispered. One of the guards marched outstanding to the corner of the cubicle quarters and picked it up.
“For you,” he said.
No joined looked at him as he went to the phone.
He picked up the receiver. He auxiliary the phone be cagey away from on the bottle up and walked faulty the make faulty a head for one’s departure door. “Yes?”
The representative sounded like his to pieces boy: “Tell me what this means: “Remorse is unconstrained default.”
Was it a well-received gait? “If you raise the white flag me a joined of minutes I can inspirit it,” he said. There be required to be a computer station enveloping here somewhere. He was in an arched hallway that surrounded the auditorium.
A door was moderately ajar. “What am I doing?” he consideration, “I’m booming to get turned on killed” but he walked despatch toward the make faulty a head for one’s departure. He commonplace sunlight and faЗade a cope with strewn with rocks and batter crater shells.
The phone rang again. This duration it was Elaine. She liked to raise the white flag him wake-up calls when he travelled.
“Are you inspirit?” she asked.
Her representative was muffled, as notwithstanding that she were speaking via folds of unlit, velvet.
“Not that,” he said. “But I hand down be a moment.”
Finalist in the 2009 Alumni Short Story Contest. Vote to whirl b adequate to your favourite
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