THE cold continued through to the end of January and grew worse as February began. The temperatures kept Kevvin indoors except to go to work in the morning and return home at night, and even that was done by subway now, even though his office was only two stops from the station nearest his apartment. Whatever he needed, he bought on his way home as often as possible, and took to picking up extra cigarettes on Friday evenings in order to avoid having to go out on the weekend. He had not even gone out to buy the New York Times for two weeks.
He had spent his time in writing as much as possible, but the results were unsatisfactory. He had continued working from ideas in his leather-bound notebook until he found he had assembled enough from the disparate ideas there for several stories. Then he went ahead and planned each one in turn until he had detailed notes for four stories in all, yet he had not written a single paragraph for any of them. He had not worked on the draft of any story for almost two months. It was not that he lacked focus; planning a story required just as much concentration and effort as sitting down and writing one.
It finally came to him in the middle of February what his problem really was. None of the outlines he had in hand interested him. He knew they were all potentially good, even great stories, but not a single one moved him sufficiently to sit down and begin telling it. He felt no passion for any of them.
Rather than force himself to work, he made himself another cup of coffee. He was not going out for his Times that day, but he had only read one of his newspapers that morning. The local paper still sat on his coffee table. He set the cup down beside the remaining newspaper and picked up the first section.
As always, he worked his way through the paper methodically, section by section and page by page. He read every headline and many whole articles. Most were almost the same as he had read in the national paper earlier over his breakfast. He set the first section to one side and took the next one, local news. Most of the first few pages held articles of little interest to him. They concerned debates in the city council and ongoing battles over development plans.
He read the headline of one short article, but did not go on to read the article itself. He knew from the headline it was a plea from local charities for donations of warm clothing to distribute to the indigent. Kevvin had intended to purchase two or three sets of knitted hats, scarves and gloves to drop into a collection box while doing his Christmas shopping, but it had completely slipped his mind. He made a mental note to look through his old things to see if there was anything suitable he could drop off on his way home from work on Monday.
He turned the page and was surprised to see a photograph of his department head. The caption indicated that she had been appointed the provincial liaison to a municipal committee on transportation infrastructure. Kevvin thought it was certainly good news; if she was positioning herself for a move out of the department, then Kevvin would certainly be interested in interviewing for the vacancy she left. He read the article through, but was disappointed to find there was no hint of her leaving the provincial bureaucracy.
He continued to flip through the local news, reading headlines and skimming through articles. He was far enough through the section that the pages were given over mostly to advertisements with only a few short pieces on traffic accidents, petty crimes, and all the minor news of a big city. He closed the section and turned it over to read the back. What caught his eye was a pencil sketch over an article relegated to the bottom of the page. The picture was not unlike what a police artist might make from the description given by a witness to some crime.
He looked at the short headline over the picture: "Unidentified Body Found." He looked back at the accompanying drawing. It could be anyone, there was so little detail. He read the article, barely two inches in one column.
The body of an unidentified young man in his early to mid-twenties had been found in the lane behind a downtown hotel early the previous Thursday morning. Preliminary results of the coroner's investigation indicated that death may have been the result of exposure. The toxicology report showed high levels of barbiturates in the blood of the victim, and suggested he had succumbed to the cold after falling unconscious out of doors the night before. He had been carrying no identification in his wallet and had no identifying marks. The article concluded with the man's approximate height and weight, the fact that he had dark blond hair and light blue eyes, a description of his clothing, and a request from the police for any information about the deceased.
Kevvin looked at the picture once more. Again he thought that it could be anyone. It did not look like Mike. Kevvin found it rather grotesque to think that the portrait had been made from a corpse. Perhaps that accounted for the lack of expression. He wondered why the eyes were open and staring. He wondered if they had had to open the body's eyes to ascertain their colour or to make the sketch.
In any event, it was a tragic affair. There was nothing Kevvin could do to help the police. He was certain that in a few days another even shorter article would appear, buried in the back of the paper, stating that someone had come forward to claim the body. He would have to keep an eye out for it. He looked up at the picture one last time before folding the section and putting it aside. No, he definitely did not know the man in the picture.
Kevvin finished the last of his coffee and set the empty cup to one side. He picked up the next section of the newspaper and held in in his lap without looking at it. He was staring ahead at the fireplace trying to call to mind Mike's face. He could not do it. Mike seemed to have had so many faces. Kevvin had seen him happy, angry, belligerent and drugged. He had even seen him asleep. Over the handful of times that he had met Mike, he had had long hair or short, or something in the middle, combed, messy, or even styled. The picture had shown somewhat longish hair. Surely Mike's hair could not have grown out that much in six or seven weeks.
The face in the sketch had not been tough or angry. Neither had it held the soft sweetness Kevvin had seen when Mike was asleep. Mike's looks had been average, that was all Kevvin could say. The artist's rendering was not of an average face; it was of a nondescript one. Mike had not been nondescript. His character was written all over his face.
Kevvin suddenly remembered that the body of the man had had no identifying marks. Mike had a broken tooth. That would certainly count as an identifying mark. The authorities used dental records to identify bodies as a matter of routine. Even if Mike had no dental records to identify him, the report would surely have mentioned a broken tooth, particularly since it would have been visible when Mike had spoken.
Kevvin began to wonder if Mike might have gone through with his plans to go to Montreal or Vancouver. He would have been able to come up with the money for a bus ticket to Montreal in a week or two. For all he knew, Mike had been in Montreal for a month or more. He tried to picture Mike walking down St. Catherine Street on his way to a job, a regular job. He spoke French, after all. The weather in Montreal was even worse; he didn't want to think of Mike living on the street there.
He doubted that Mike could have made it to Vancouver. It was a shame, really. He had seen in the paper that the forecast high for that day was almost 20˚ more than the temperature in Toronto. It was not springlike there yet, but it held a lot of promise. How many weeks would it have taken Mike to save up enough money to make it to Vancouver? Kevvin had no idea. Even then, what would have stopped Mike from spending his savings on a party before he even bought a ticket?
Mike might even still be there in the city. Maybe he had been able to move back in with his friend Joe. Maybe he had even asked Joe about getting him a job at the hotel where he worked. Mike had said Joe was a busboy. Mike would be able to hold down that sort of job, Kevvin was sure.
Kevvin did not want to know where Mike actually was. He did not miss him, but he did not wish him any ill either. He only wanted Mike to... No, he corrected himself. He only wanted to get on with his own life without the periodic disruptions and upset caused by Mike's appearances.
He had long since accepted that he could not have done anything to help Mike. Mike had not wanted help. Mike had wanted support. He wanted food, money, clothes and a place to sleep. From Kevvin he had gotten a meal here and there for almost a year, and he had been given a place to sleep for one night.
It had taken Kevvin longer to learn to live with the fact that he had not been able to help Mike. Mike had said it himself once. He didn't want help. He could take care of himself, he had said, even though he couldn't. All that Mike could do was survive and be unhappy. He could barely manage to survive. His battered face and broken tooth had shown that, but the real proof lay in the fact that Mike was utterly dependent on other people for everything he wanted in a way that was quite different from people who worked for a living. Mike received without paying; he gave nothing back. That meant that people like Kevvin had to pay and pay so Mike could survive.
Kevvin stopped to think if that was right. Did Mike give anything back to society? No, even in prostituting himself, he did not give anything in return. However much he might be the victim of exploitation by others, and Kevvin never doubted that, Mike still exploited his own victims, and received money in exchange for the satisfaction of a basic urge.
Proust's metaphor of the flowers came back to him. It seemed to him to apply more to Mike than to its original target. Mike was like a flower, entirely dependent on those around him to flourish. The thought saddened Kevvin, but he now found it harder and harder to pity Mike.
Instead, Kevvin was saddened because he did not have any answers. He could not think of any way to change society so that Mike would not have to live-or die, he brutally admitted-the way he did. If people like Mike chose not to accept the opportunities available to support themselves, who was to blame? Did that mean that society was obligated to support them? The alternative was too frightening: Offer no support and they would either do whatever work they could when they were hungry enough, or die. That was perilously close to the way things really were, despite all the programmes and social insurance available.
Kevvin felt himself growing angrier at his own impotence. He was no longer thinking of Mike. He tossed the paper in his lap back onto the coffee table and went into the kitchen to put on the kettle. While he waited to make another cup of coffee, he went to his writing table and picked up his leather-bound notebook. Anger was a passion, and he had not felt passion of any kind for months.
When he had made his coffee, Kevvin took his notebook over to the couch. He took a sip of the coffee then sat it down on the coffee table. He began to flip through the book until he came to the first page of what he had written down after meeting Mike.
He knew that almost every observation, reaction or idea that had come from his first several interviews with Mike were in the next few pages, no more than seven or eight. Despite his normal order and method, it had taken months for him to record anything connected to Mike at all. The delay had enabled Kevvin to record the material very accurately, and it was surprisingly free from his own editorial comments or opinions. It almost had an element of unbiased reportage to it. Information from subsequent meetings would not be that much further in the book, and each subsequent meeting had two or three pages of notes.
Kevvin tore a strip from the edge of one sheet of the newspaper, then ripped off shorter sections to mark the places in the notebook. He continued to flip through it and found every section that dealt with Mike. When he had finished, he was astounded to find almost 20 pages of notes. The first was the longest and covered their first four meetings. Four more sections followed. Kevvin was startled to find that there was no entry for the last time he had met Mike.
Kevvin went back and began to read through his notes. Almost half the space was about Mike and was very matter of fact. He had written a very detailed physical description, noted down several of his mannerisms, and even written down something about how frequently and casually Mike swore. There were repeated examples of what Kevvin had termed his hardness and coldness.
More practically useful, his notes also contained such facts as Mike had shared-the drop-in centre, how he picked up tricks, that he took drugs, and so on. What struck Kevvin as odd was that there was not a single quotation of anything Mike had said. Toward the end of the first entry, he saw the point "Said he could take care of himself several times." Even those words that were almost Mike's catch-phrase were not attributed directly to him.
The remainder of the entry consisted of Kevvin's reactions to Mike. He was relieved to find that reading them now did not revive any of the feelings they had originally provoked. He found almost nothing about his motivation to help Mike or feeling pity for him.
After he had finished the first section, Kevvin paused to reflect. He picked up his coffee and took another sip. It was very odd that he could clearly remember each of the events he had written down and could even hear Mike's voice, but he could not accurately quote anything the boy had said. He remembered something he was sure he had written down after a later meeting, something about never having met the real Mike.
Kevvin picked up his notes again and moved on to the next section. He was sure they were accurate, but they still dealt mostly with concrete details. They all bore a date and the place the meeting had occurred at the top of the entry, but below that there were only descriptions of how Mike looked followed by a few points outlining what they had talked about.
There were fewer and fewer references to Kevvin's own opinions and reactions in the entries. Even on an occasion that he remembered had left him furious with Mike, all that he had written was that Mike had left after making a childish comment verging on name-calling.
After reading the next three or four pages, Kevvin stopped again and put the notebook down. His coffee was cold now and he put the cup back down on the coffee table. As a source of information, the notes were of limited value. They provided ample facts, but they did not offer any clues to what Kevvin considered a basic requisite to writing, that is, character development.
He was initially pleased to find less and less of himself in each succeeding entry. Where the author still intruded with his own opinions or guesses, it was usually quite short and to the point. There were no emotionally laden words that could reflect either on Kevvin himself or even on Mike.
Even though Kevvin had retreated further back into the notes, Mike hadn't seemed to move to the fore. He moved mechanically on the pages. He talked about this or did that. Kevvin had rarely written down his own reflections on Mike's motivations. He remembered his attempt to keep his distance. Even the notes he had made after finding Mike in the park and trying to help him once more despite his resolution not to were strangely flat and off-hand. He remembered how worried he had been to find Mike like that and how much he had wanted to do something to help. He remembered how he had felt when Mike had rebuffed him. He had not written it down, but Kevvin had been hurt. Hurt grows into anger. That explained a lot about Mike's anger, as well as Kevvin's.
Kevvin picked up his notebook again and moved on to the next page. There were only a few more. The next entry was dated the past November. It was the shortest, consisting only of a few points. "Saw Mike in bar. Looked better than last time. Didn't talk." Under the entry, a line had been drawn across the page and an unrelated note added: "Metaphor of life seen only in reflection. Looking through someone else's eyes. Cannot touch the reality seen." He remembered making that note, but not the entry above it on the page.
The final entry was made in December, a few weeks before Christmas. It was almost four pages long. Almost a quarter of that was about Mike's surprisingly profound grasp of the opening lines of À la recherche du temps perdu. Even there, Mike's personality did not come out. All Kevvin had written concerned what Mike had said; there was no opinion expressed on what his words had said about the man. Kevvin felt a moment of disappointment in himself, for in spite of the puerile spectacle of Mike paying the bill, it had been one of their more enjoyable meetings. In fact, it might have been the only enjoyable one.
Kevvin closed the notebook and set it on the couch beside him. He needed to put the notes in order. Before he could do that, he needed to write down his last meeting with Mike as well. He should also make an entry for that day about the article in the newspaper. He hoped it was not Mike, he truly did, but it might have been.
He went over the entries again in his mind. He did a careful tally. Counting the newspaper article as a meeting-a possible meeting, he emended-with Mike, Mike had come into his life ten times. That was not even once a month for a year. It still seemed almost like an old-fashioned book of days, the sort where some event or other was recorded on every page, one for each day of the year, with space below to add significant events in one's own life-birthdays, wedding anniversaries and so on. Kevvin smiled at the conceit. Such books were always almost like diaries, but anonymous and without meaning to anyone but the owner.
Mike had given him something after all, his own book of days, in a manner of speaking. It was a record of a handful of days in the life of an anonymous young man. Already Kevvin felt the beginnings of an idea for a story, and more importantly, he felt that it was a story he had to tell. It would be very good, he knew. First, he must plan-no, first he had to get the notes completed and in order. He would transcribe them and supplement them with any further details that came back to him. He could already feel his excitement mounting.
After editing the notes, he could begin the planning proper. The nature of the information he had in his possession already gave it a structure, at least vaguely. He felt there was almost too much to include for a short story. He turned over the possibility of a novel in his mind. He remembered once half joking with Mike about putting him in a novel. It was funny; most people would either be flattered or embarrassed by such a notion, but Mike had just shrugged it off, as if it weren't important to him. He had said something too, but Kevvin could not remember what, try as he might.
Kevvin already knew that he would have to create a great deal of additional material to flesh a story out, especially if it were to be a novel. It would not simply be padding. Rather, he needed to come up with enough convincing detail about Mike to make him into a real human being. He simply knew too little about him. He knew nothing about Mike's background at all, at least from the time before he came to Toronto, other than references to where he came from and to high school. He remembered Mike's flat refusal to talk about his past in one of their early meetings.
Kevvin stopped short. He saw himself as a man of creative vision, but he also knew that he was a realist. He had never written a novel, and as attractive as the prospect looked, he needed to work with the skills he had now. He had no idea how long it would take him to complete a novel or even if he could, but he knew how to write a short story, or perhaps a novella. Either would be much easier to place with a publisher than a novel.
His professional knowledge also anchored him firmly in reality. He remembered a lecture he had heard on "The Hero in Western Literature." One element that defined a hero, the professor had said, was a mysterious origin and a mysterious end. Kevvin had the beginning and end of a story right there. Mike had given him both those things unwittingly. The other point Kevvin remembered about the hero was his mission. He must perform some task and emerge unscathed and victorious in the end. Sadly, that could not be said for Mike. The professor had also discussed the rise of the anti-hero and his popularity in contemporary writing. He had made the pithy observation that one difference between a hero and an anti-hero was that the anti-hero didn't win, but usually died trying anyway.
Kevvin was tempted to rewrite Mike and make him over into a hero, but then he would have to find a happy ending that just wasn't there. He tried to picture Mike riding off on a motorcycle, just like he had dreamed, but it hadn't happened that way. Mike would make a better anti-hero, except that he hadn't really tried to win. Mike had only tried to survive. Looking at it in that way, Kevvin could almost believe that survival in itself was noble, even if the means of survival were ignoble. Perhaps Mike had accomplished something remarkable after all.
It was almost ironic, Kevvin realised. He had known Mike for almost a year, but he actually didn't know that much about him at all. He was sure if he counted up the time they had spent together, it would amount to half a day at most. That wasn't much to go on. Mike's life would make a good short story, but nothing more.