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enough to gauge his waistline. It wasn’t really a paunch any more. And he had decent shoulders, and an appropriate haircut, and the new beard coming in oddly darker than his hair. He’d never had a beard before, had no clue if he should keep it, and he didn’t know who to ask. Drew kept walking. He didn’t appear to look back, but with the clairvoyance of best friends he knew what Andy was doing at the window. Not turning around, he said, “Be weird, eh? Laura back here?”
    To this understatement Andy said, “I guess.” He was grateful Drew had said anything at all. It was the closest his friend would come to saying, I’m on your side, Be careful, or What the hell are you thinking?
    Yes, it would be weird with Laura back. How weird, he had no clue. He did know that, in the largest sense, it was really up to him. How seriously he took it. How worked up he got. Not that he’d be able to find the handle for either of those.
    As per Tuesday’s post-movie routine, Drew turned into the Legion and Andy followed. Two pints, tops. They both started morning shift tomorrow, rise and shine by five. Though with Drew these days, you never knew. Drew was capable of closing down a bar even when faced with a morning shift. Andy didn’twant to think his friend had a problem, despite what Pauline had to say, despite her ever more frequent jabs in public. But Drew didn’t usually miss work because of it. He generally got himself to the parking lot and in the door and punched in, sleep or no sleep. Though once he did leave his Jeep running, all day. Eight hours later there it was still purring, waiting faithfully, overheating only a little. A year’s worth of jokes came from that one, as in, Drew was secretly married to a Qatar oil sheik. As in, Drew was Prince Rupert’s gift to global warming, and they’d have him to thank when they were suntanning in March.
    Drew aimed himself at a table full of regulars, which was loud already. That was fine, Andy wouldn’t have to talk. The pub air felt no drier than the drizzly November night outside, the yeasty pong of spilled beer as familiar as his own armpit. He sat, edged the chair out from the circle a bit, not liking this corner of the bar, where you got the waft of urinal discs each time the door flew open. They’d changed those old-school camphor ones to something smelling like a really strong vanilla, which, now that he thought of it, and as long as you could ignore its raison d’être, wasn’t half bad.
    HER LETTER HAD been a thing of beauty, five pages long. He read it over and over and then put it away for a few days hoping he would forget it enough to enjoy anew. Because here, after so many years, was her voice again, her letter voice, a voice in which they’d found an intimacy unlike any other, even face to face. This intimacy had surprised them both. Until she left for Toronto they’d never written letters to each other before, there being no need. Then one letter led to another and it became their way of speaking for an entire year.
    Andy remembered discovering his own letter-writing voice and what it could do, and they had discussed it, in letters, and agreed that it was good. There was something about being able to edit to clarify, and clarify again, and so speak the deepest truths and find the fiercest intimacy one was capable of, something the speed and lurch of face-to-face encounters often ironically prevented. It let them both talk about love. And her absence. And what it would be like when he finally joined her there in Toronto. It let her describe Toronto after a life in Prince Rupert. It let them both be funny. Then, when the time came, it let her articulate the reasons why Andy should not come after all, should no longer join her in Toronto. In this she took great care and many, many pages, as if by spreading pain’s endless angles and edges over so much paper this could help ease it. And