Part 4 (1/2)

”Wee-aww, wee-aww, pull over.” David formed a mock loudspeaker around his mouth. ”Language police.”

Barry made like he was going to splash his coffee at David, and both men sat back in their chairs to watch the pedestrian traffic on the avenue: video-game programmers and cooks and sellers of marijuana paraphernalia preparing for another day of commerce.

The sun appeared, then hid behind a cloud, then appeared again. David pulled the Let's Fix It notice out of his jacket pocket and slid it over the silver, uneven table. ”What do you make of this?”

A couple of Harleys pa.s.sed while Barry examined the sheet. David plugged his ears. Albertans didn't need any more government interference in their lives, but there ought to be some restrictions on noise. He took out his notepad and jotted down ”Harley noise” as a resolution to be debated at next Tuesday's PC a.s.sociation meeting.

”This is amazing.” Barry nodded at the sheet of paper.

”It's about the shooting next door. Where Benjamin”

”Maybe sure, but it's really about the city, the province, the country, the continent. This is about effin' George W. Bush. It's about the humans, David, don't you get it?” Barry waved the sheet. ”Can I have this?”

”There's thirty of them on my block.”

Barry stuffed the paper into his duffel bag, with the street magazines. ”This changes everything.”

The street paper salesman started to his corner. David opened the magazine to Barry's essay, began to read, and felt anxious. He hugged Garith, who s.h.i.+vered in the cool morning air. It wasn't the prospect of declining oil supplies, of course. David just strongly felt the lack of a caramel mochaccino, and he knew his wife did too.

12.

understanding G.o.dlessness.

The weekly meeting of the philosophy department was held in an expansive room on the fourth floor of the Humanities Building, overlooking the jogging trails on Saskatchewan Drive and the river beyond. Thirty years ago, these meetings were populated by forty-five men, all of them wearing suits and smoking cigarettes. They never scheduled cla.s.ses on meeting days, so nearly everyone sipped Scotch out of coffee cups. As Raymond recalled these meetings, and his youth, he closed his eyes in wonder. How handsome he had been, how droll, and envied by his aging mentors.

In 2005, professors drank coffee, vegetable juice, or bottled water. Nearly half of the attendees wore jeans, shorts, or sweatpants. The men still outnumbered the women but not for long; nearly all the young a.s.sistant and a.s.sociate professors were female. The few men hired into the department were either gay or foreign. Once the tenured brontosauruses like Raymond Terletsky retired, the dominion of the white male would end, finally, and women could rule as the great pagan G.o.ds intended.

A Running Room group, in matching white T-s.h.i.+rts, pa.s.sed on the Drive below. In the bright late-morning sun, their black shorts and tights gleamed. Some were chubby, others not so chubby, and a few were in spectacular shape. Mothers, Raymond a.s.sumed, working off those pregnancy pounds. He wished, variously, that he was running behind the women and that he was alone in the meeting room with a pair of binoculars. How far could he run without stopping or suffering a ma.s.sive stroke? When was the last time he had actually gone for a jog? Either 1967 or '68.

”Raymond?”

”Yes.”

Half the room erupted in laughter. Obviously, Claudia had been calling his name for some time. ”Am I interrupting? Were you figuring out a new application for Tractatus Logicophilosophicus?”

More laughter. Even though he stopped seriously studying Wittgenstein in the early 1980s, Raymond's opponents in the department still brought up the now-unfas.h.i.+onable subject of his dissertation. ”I was looking at some joggers, actually, critiquing their b.u.ms.”

The other half of the room, a collection of Raymond's beleaguered and sickly peers in old blazers, fleece jackets, and Birkenstocks, broke out in laughter. Then a few of them trundled into coughing fits.

”It says here you now have only five students registered for your Death in Philosophy seminar.”

Claudia lifted her black thousand-dollar spectacles and looked at her watch. ”If you lose one more this week, we're going to have to cancel the cla.s.s.”

”Oh, come on.”

”We can split one of the surveys, and you can”

”This is hara.s.sment. I'm not teaching two greatest hits courses this semester, Claudia. I'm sorry.”

”Hara.s.sment.” The chair of the department smiled and nodded. Her posture was impeccable, her control of the room complete. Raymond's peers, his teammates, one or two or five years from retirement, were already broken. The men who weren't still coughing slumped in their chairs and inspected the weave in their sleeves or the lines in the palms of their hands. Claudia Santino was beautiful and intelligent and, when she wanted to be, quite cutting. Unbeatable. She lifted her chin, took a breath in through her thin nose, and nodded. ”We'll discuss this in private.”

If Claudia did cancel his Death in Philosophy seminar, Raymond would press for extra time to work on his new idea for an article. There had been a record number of violent deaths in the Edmonton area in 2005, the most recent one across the street from his house. The Let's Fix It signs were clearly a cry for understanding in a G.o.dless universe. How do individuals or even communities seek to comprehend tragedy when religious answers no longer resonate in their hearts? The paper could ripple out from Edmonton to the avian flu scourge in Asia and the phenomenon of suicide terrorism.

According to social and political trends, these were difficult times for unbelievers in North America. In popular culture, the atheists had gone underground. Yet Raymond feltno, he knewthat millions of North Americans still sought philosophical answers to traditionally spiritual questions. Even if only five students showed up to his seminar on Thursday night, he still had faith in atheism. Just because something was old didn't mean it was powerless.

Claudia asked if there were any more questions or contributions. Of course, Raymond had a few obscene suggestions for Claudia and her acolytes, but articulating them wouldn't quite fall under the protection of academic freedom.

Both Claudia and Raymond stayed seated quietly while the philosophy professors filed out. Two of his withered a.s.sociates were brave enough to drop a hand on his shoulder as they pa.s.sed into the hallway. Claudia stood up. The chair of the philosophy department closed the door and smiled with artificial geniality. ”Coffee?”

”I shouldn't.”

She returned to her seat and folded her hands on the table. Long fingers, ringless. A pianist's fingers. Raymond glanced out the window again, searching for joggers, but there was only a man pus.h.i.+ng a baby carriage while speaking on a cellular phone. The only sound in the room now was water travelling through distant pipes, until he looked back at her.

”Are you a very troubled man, Raymond?”

13.

not a rotary meeting.

s.h.i.+rley Wong sat in a giant chanting circle in the yellow Universiade Pavilionbetter known as the b.u.t.terdomeclapping. Next to her, Abby sang along.

We got power.

We got faith.

We got John Kenneth...Galbraith.

A bearded and s.h.i.+rtless man played guitar and two others slapped drums. In front of them, twenty or thirty people danced like Hollywood witches. Thinking this activist fair would be semi-formal, like a theatre opening or box seats at an Oilers game, s.h.i.+rley had put on a black dress and tan cardigan.

More and more people were jumping up to dance, including Abby. She stood in front of s.h.i.+rley in her tie-dye T-s.h.i.+rt and loose jeans, her hands out. ”Come on, s.h.i.+rl. Let's shake our things.”

”I'm good, thanks.”

”Suit yourself.” Abby slipped off her sandals and joined the dancers in front of the musicians. She swayed her hips and moved her arms as though she were groping to find a door handle in a dark and turbulent airplane.

s.h.i.+rley stopped clapping and got up to explore the booths and small seminar groups along the edges of the b.u.t.terdome. The incense and patchouli could not overwhelm the rubber smell from the floor of the athletic complex, an odour that reminded s.h.i.+rley of the turmoil attending her children's winter track meets.

Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, and the David Suzuki Foundation had professional kiosks, with pamphlets and public relations specialists. Other local groups sold hemp products and recycled goods. In the back, fenced off, was a licensed area with organic beer and wine.

In the corner farthest from the entrance, a young man in dreadlocks stood before fifty or sixty people with a microphone attached to his Utne Reader T-s.h.i.+rt. He was giving a PowerPoint presentation about the latest, most radical methods to stop logging. On the white screen behind him, photos from Clayoquot Sound and northern California. The young man advocated treehouses, chaining strategies, playing dead in front of the machinery.