Lost Between Houses by David Gilmour Page A

amazing thing, when you come right down to it, that girls aren’t grossed out by guys, all the disgusting things we want to do to them.
    I got into the Hunstville train station near midnight; not much there, just a little shack on the edge of town, down by the planing mill, and a guy in a taxi with the lights off. I went over and he wound down the window.
    “You going out to Grassmere?” the guy said.
    “Yeah.”
    “Charge it to your father?”
    “Yeah,” I said sort of amazed. “How’d you know?”
    “Taken you boys out there a hundred times before. Don’t you recognize me?”
    “Oh yeah. Now I do.”
    I’m very superstitious and this seemed like a good omen. I hopped in the car. It was like being a foreign prince returning home. Everybody knew me.
    Everything was shut up in town, the lights in the movie theatre marquee off. We crossed over the bridge, the wheels making that funny sound on the grid underneath and headed out into the countryside.
    “Do you think I could have a cigarette?” I said to the guy. It looked so good him smoking one, it smelt so warm and cosy in the car.
    “You don’t smoke, do you?”
    “Not usually,” I said. “But I’m sort of celebrating. I’ve been away for awhile.”
    “Oh yeah? Long time?”
    “Well, not really. But it seems like a long time. I was in Toronto. Seeing my girlfriend.”
    “Really?”
    “She’s a model.”
    “No kidding. She must be good-looking.”
    “She is,” I said. And then, so it didn’t look like I was tryingto hog all the glory, I said, “Do you know Toronto?”
    “I took my aunt down to the hospital a few years ago. Couldn’t get out of there fast enough. If you don’t mind me saying.”
    “I love it.” I said. “I’m just made for the place. Like I can’t imagine how anybody lives up here.”
    Once I get talking, Christ only knows what’s going to come out of my mouth. “I mean maybe it’s an acquired taste,” I added. “Maybe I haven’t lived up here long enough.”
    “Well the winters sure are long. That’s for sure. Ran Whipper Billy Watson out to his place the other day.”
    “The wrestler? What’s he doing up here?”
    “Lives here. Ever since he retired. He grew up around here.”
    “And he came back?”
    “Where would you want him to go?”
    “I don’t know. I just would have thought being famous and all, he could live anywhere. New York. France, something like that.”
    “Nope. Told me all he wanted was to get back home.”
    “Son of a gun,” I said. “Whipper Billy Watson. Up here. What’s he like?”
    “You couldn’t ask for a nicer guy. Down to earth. Just like you and me.”
    “No kidding.”
    “Like I’m talking to you now.”
    “Well, I’ll be. Whipper Billy Watson.”
    The lighter popped on the dashboard. I love the smell of a cigarette right after you light it from one of those things. The smoke all blue and moody. You can feel it go right to your head, like a balloon sailing up and bouncing gently off the ceiling, theguy pointing stuff out as we drive, who owns this, who used to own that, who went broke over the winter on account of his drinking, the two of us just shooting the breeze all the way out to the house. It was cool. The whole thing.
    You don’t want to start behaving like a goof the minute you get a new girlfriend. Nothing drives them away faster than calling them up all the time, putting your mitts all over them, carrying on like a leech. It’s like that Sandy Hunter thing. Everything was cool till she turned those lovey-dovey eyes on me, and then I just wanted to jump out the window.
    Which is a long way of saying I didn’t call Scarlet when I got back to the cottage. I thought about her a lot though, and sometimes in the next couple of days, I really, really wanted to call her, especially at night when I’d been in bed for twenty minutes and started thinking about her sitting in front of the mirror. That was some picture, I’ll tell you. I just couldn’t get it out of