Read Stones for Free Online

Morrison Cafe, but of another kind entirely: run by homosexuals and catering exclusively to gays. The clientele that hung about their doorstep was a trial at times. The very young were very beautiful and Bragg would turn away and walk around the block, attempting to gain control of himself.
    For the most part, however, their life above the restaurant was centred on themselves—their love for one another and their work. While Bragg was busy writing in their dreadful little kitchen, Minna spent hours with her notebook, leaning along the window-sill, staring down at all the people walking in the street. Always, these people seemed to be inadequately dressed. Always, there seemed to be an inadequate number of umbrellas; was everyone, as always, mistaking April for spring?
    Minna was not a waitress, now. That phase was over and the married phase had begun. Demon Number Two was hard at work in her and she was writing every day in her cloth-bound notebook. Bragg of the blizzard and the long, black coat had turned out to be a budding writer, whose stories had already garnered him a name and a reputation for excellence. They were living on Queen Street not because Bragg had chosen it or even approved of the locale—but only because it seemed to be where Minna Joyce belonged.
    Sometimes, early of a morning, the man across the street would come to his window and fling it up—and stand there shaking his fist and shouting obscenities every time a streetcar passed. One day, Minna had brought her notebook and her coffee to the window-sill, when she saw this man take off his clothes and fling them, item by item, onto the top of a streetcar stalled below him. What he wanted, so it seemed, was to get the streetcar’s attention—but even now, with it stopped defenceless at his doorstep, the streetcar and its occupants remained oblivious.
    Minna had not known what to do about this man. Certainly, she understood his desperation. There was nothing offensive about his nakedness—all its sexuality was masked in rage—and he himself made nothing of it. His clothing had simply become his arsenal—all he had of missiles in the moment. When the streetcar had at last departed, the man had retreated into his darkened room, and in the lulls between the passing traffic, Minna could hear him wailing like a child.
    Two days later, Minna had taken up her post, prepared with pen in hand to continue the saga of the Man Who Hated Streetcars. His story already filled a dozen pages of her notebook.
    The sky, that morning, was blue and full of promise. May Day was only a weekend away and the owner of the produce shop across the street had set out buckets of daffodils and tulips, paperwhites and carnations on the sidewalk. Women going to work in the office buildings on Bay Street wore their spring coats and colours. The students making their way towards Bathurst Street and Spadina Avenue wore an array of overalls and sweaters and rode an army of ten-speed bikes. Someone above her was playing a recording very loud of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” The sound of Elton John’s voice had ridden through the whole of Bragg and Minna’s winter, and there it was again, to get them into spring:

    When are you gonna come down?
    When are you going to land?
    I should have stayed on the farm,
    I should have listened to my old man.

    Minna began to tap out the rhythms with her pen against her coffee mug.

    You know you can’t hold me forever,
    I didn’t sign up with you.
    I’m not a present for your friends to open,
    This boy’s too young to be singing the blues…

    The man across the street appeared to be singing, too. Except that Minna knew better. The expression on his face was not quite right for singing a song, unless the song was La Marseillaise. His mouth was opening far too wide and his eyes were closed too tight. His neck and the muscles in his chest were scarlet and distended: alarming. All the while he sang or shouted, the poor man seemed to be fighting