In an effort to extricate herself from pandemic paralysis, Ella decides on an outing to Trinity Bellwoods Park. Rattan tote packed with tartan blanket, notebook, Kobo, and three other actual books, just to give herself options, she sets off.
The vast lawn is polka-dotted with freshly painted social distancing circles. She seems to be stepping onto a colossal game board where she becomes one of the white stones in a giant game of Go in which the existential challenge is to protect your liberty or die, and where black has the advantage.
She finds a strategic location with only one adjacent circle occupied. At ten foot intervals, others are far enough away to preserve her liberty. She sets out her blanket and lies down for a dose of vitamin D. Above her, a flawless blue sky is uninterrupted except for five white clouds trailing one after the other like fluffy baby ducks following their mother. She closes her eyes and through her lids she watches an x-ray version of the duck family.
Before getting lost in her book, her focus extends outward to survey her surroundings. Her covid circle neighbour sits cross-legged bent over a book. His long hair flops over his face like a tent, rendering him incognito. But even with face hidden and in this bent over posture, the contours of his upper body show him to be a young man, and when he glances up at her, his clean-shaven face confirms that he is at least ten years her junior. He wears a pristine white tee shirt with the message FEAR NOT in bold black letters across his chest. The glance becomes a look, the look impertinently holds her gaze and thus having established eye contact, he smiles and adds a disarming little wave.
“Hello,” he says, then deftly honing in on her favorite topic, he asks “What’re you reading?” She holds up her copy of Desperate Characters and tells him it is a novel by Paula Fox. He entreats her to give him a synopsis and as she describes the novel, her own desperation seems to be tumbling from her lips, hinting at the gnawing emptiness at her core. He senses her anguish, recognizes her vulnerability, and proceeds to probe her sensitivity. “Do you find you are feeling more desperate in covid times than pre-pandemic?” She feels she is on a dangerous precipice and quickly locks her misery back in its cage lest she reveal more than she wants to and put herself at risk of being hurt.
He seems to have an older man’s power of perception and he continues in what seems like a kind of code in which there lies an undercurrent of something intriguing. Although she no longer trusts her impulse for pleasure, his presence makes her skin feel as though it’s being licked by cool breezes. Instead of having a chilling effect, it makes her burn with a long-ungratified need.
Deflecting his personal probing she reverts back to a safer topic and asks, “What are you reading?”
He holds up his book and although she can’t read the title from this distance she can make out the name John Cheever, printed in large white letters against a dark blue background.
“It’s called Falconer,” he says. As he outlines the story she is surprised that instead of a Tom Clancy novel, as she would expect, he is reading something so dark and deep, and she is impressed by his mature taste. It occurs to her that the tone of Cheever’s book is, in some ways, similar to the mood of her own Desperate Characters. Both are rooted in social realism and are presented with a similar sincerity. They are even written in the same era. It makes her wonder whether he is sophisticated beyond his years or whether she is naïve for hers. In any case, they appear to be on the same page, at least as far as literature is concerned. As they exchange their favorite characters from novels they discover that the name Sophie is another common thread. He identifies with the narrator Stingo, in William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice ‒ Stingo’s struggle with the unrequited love of Sophie that hobbles his progress as a writer. Ella in turn, reveals her affinity for Paula Fox’s Sophie ‒ the ennui of her middle-class existence, her dispassionate marriage, her life of quiet desperation.
Having established their viewpoints, their conversation settles into an easy banter, as if they were good friends and she relaxes. He smiles readily, revealing perfectly even teeth, except for the incisors which are slightly longer, suitable for ripping meat off bones. He habitually sweeps his hair from his face revealing a smooth high forehead. The only lines on his face are ones of concentration between his brows and those around his eyes when he smiles.
Several circles away, a family begins opening containers of food from a nearby Indian restaurant and the pungent aromas drift their way.
“I’ll go out on a limb and guess that you like spicy foods,” he says.
“I do enjoy a kick in my Vindaloo.” Her rejoinder, in keeping with their coded talk, surprizes her and immediately her face flushes as if she had just partaken of that piquant dish. His laugh lines now appear and there is a hint of mischief in his eyes. He is titillated, as is she, by their clever bantering. She indicates the message on his tee shirt and says, “I’ll go out on limb and guess that you are fearless.”
He lowers his head and looks up through his lashes, “I had hoped that your take on it would be that I’m harmless.” This is followed by intense and prolonged eye contact that conveys some deeper meanings for her to decipher. His gaze penetrates, arousing a desire to be closer to him, to make prohibited physical contact. He isn’t harmless. She’s stepped onto a gameboard of seduction and is locked in the battle, her liberty at stake. The competition is unevenly matched, he is by far the more alluring. As the contest weakens her, she gives way to a yearning that embarrasses her and she feels a sudden urgency to flee. She is easy prey. She hastily packs her things.
“I’ve got to go.”
“Will you come back tomorrow?” he calls after her. “I’ll save a circle for you.” But she is already speeding away as if from some grave danger, her heart pounding.
The next day it rains. Her disappointment is so pervasive that she’s at a loss for what to do. She picks up Desperate Characters, but even Sophie’s pathetic phone call to Ruth can’t hold her attention ‒ “Let’s have lunch one day”… did she say “Just go away”? She prepares lunch but it isn’t what she craves. She listens to music but it only makes her imagine his singing voice, surely it is deep and mellow. She feels wicked and more alive than she has for months.
The following day is overcast but regardless of that, she sets off with her paraphernalia and arrives on the gameboard to find the park deserted except for him standing in the middle of his circle and a lone backpack in the adjacent one.
“I knew you’d come,” he grins as she approaches. He holds his arms away from his sides, palms out and she thinks for a moment that it’s an invitation for a forbidden hug, but the gesture is just to indicate that the ground is wet. “We can’t sit but we could go to a patio nearby. Please say yes,” he says. And then he cajoles “I’ll do anything you ask me to, I’ll even wear a mask for you.” And with that allusion to Leonard Cohen he had her ‒ game over.
The patio at the back of Soufi’s is deserted. They sit diagonally opposite each other at two tables butted together. They are appropriately distanced but close enough for her to see that his eyes, which looked dark from a distance, are actually a deep ultramarine blue, rimmed with thick dark lashes. In a beam of sunlight they look transparent. The light doesn’t bother him or even make him blink, he looks through it intently at her. He puts his left hand casually on his table and leaves it there like an offering. And she, in a small defiance of distancing protocol lays her own left hand on her table within easy reach. The magnetic pull is so powerful that her pinky twitches and she quickly pulls it back to her lap.
For the first time since they met, they have nothing to say. Masks hiding the lower half of their faces, they must rely on their eyes to communicate. The laugh lines around his have disappeared and his look is intense. The space between them is fecund with physical desire, it overpowers the literary repartee they have developed. She wants to break the spell but words are elusive. Finally, taking control, he is the one to break the silence.
“Let’s go and get tested.”