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out
, says Norbert.
    “Why?” I ask.
    –
Just let her out
. “Oh.”
    I open the door for the dog, get out myself, then reach back in to help Frieda. She pushes my hand away. I stand on the sidewalk and watch as she levers herself out of the cab with her arms, and leans awkwardly against the door.
    An elderly man almost knocks me over. “Sorry,” I say to him, but he’s already out of earshot. The whole city seems to be in a hurry. Pedestrians whiz by like racing cars. Traffic whizzes by at the speed of light. And, on the subject of whizzing….
    “Norbert?” I look around for him. “Where did you – oh, there you are.” Sally comes frisking up, her tail wagging, her big ears cocked alertly.
    “Don’t just stand there,” Frieda says to me. “If you want to help, get my chair out of the trunk. I hope you like walking. It’s going to take us hours to get to my place from here.”
    “Walking?” I say.
    “Good thing you left the luggage behind,” she says.
    “Can’t we phone someone,” I say, “or take a cab?”
    “What’s the matter? Embarrassed?”
    “Why?” I blush easily. It’s the only thing I have in common with my dad. “Why should I be embarrassed?”
    I pop the trunk and fetch her wheelchair. She won’t let me help her into it.
    “I could phone home, I suppose, but no one will answer. And with $1.96, we sure aren’t taking any cabs.”
    “Let me phone,” I say. She hands me the phone without a word.
    I dial from memory. Someone picks up after only one ring. “Hello? Who wants pizza?”
    “Dad?”
    There’s a long pause. “I sure hope not,” he says.
    “Dad, it’s me, Alan.”
    “Who? Talk louder. I can’t hear you.”
    I tell him my name again.
    “Who gave you that name? Alan? What kind of name is
Alan?
Sounds like a violin player’s name. You play the violin, Alan?” Is he making a joke? It doesn’t sound like his voice, exactly. He pronounces my name
Yell-an
. Is Dad pretending to have a New York accent?
    “You know I don’t, Dad.”
    “I don’t know anything about you,” he says. “Except your name, which I don’t like. Listen, you want a pizza or don’t you?”
    “Pizza?”
    “You dial Mike’s Pizza, you want pizza. Am I right? Course I’m right.”
    “I want my father,” I say.
    “Then try the adoption agency. And while you’re there, see if they’ll give you a new name. Ask for something a bit spicier. Jake, maybe. That’s a good name.” His voice is growing really faint now. “And put down the violin.”
    I hold the phone away from my ear.
    “Wrong number?” asks Frieda.
    “I hope so,” I say.
    I get out my piece of paper and punch the correct numbers. And SEND.
    My dad says hello. His voice sounds far away and faint, but it’s
his
voice. I almost cry.
    “Dad! Am I ever glad to –”
    He interrupts me to say that it’s Monday, July 10th, and he is away from his desk right now. If I care to leave a message, I can do so at the sound of the tone. I wait and wait, but there’s no tone. I can’t tell if he’s hung up. “Hello? Hello?”
    “Well?” Frieda says.
    “I don’t know.” I hand her the phone.
    “There’s the problem.” She points to a flickering signal light. “Out of power.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The phone needs recharging. I meant to do it in Toronto, but I forgot.”
    I grab the phone from her hands and try the number again. I can’t hear anything.
    “What now?” I say. “Are we really going to walk all the way to your place?”
    She smiles bitterly.
“You’re
going to walk,” she says.

–
So there we were on the couch, talking to the doctor, k.d. lang was lying down. I was in a chair in the front room with a mug of cocoa. The doctor was very curious about me, kept wanting to know more about my childhood on Jupiter. And when I finally ran out of gossip, the doctor said, “Ms. lang, I really think you should go ahead with the procedure.”
    We’ve walked a few blocks along 50th Street, and now we’re