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processed microwave dinners, violently sugared cereal, violently salted snacks … all the things little Brooklyn used to love. For myself, I grabbed six middling merlots (from the French for “blackbird”) and arranged them gently in the cart. With shaking hands I then put two bottles back, rolled my cart a few feet, then put back the other four.
    I left the cart where it was and went to get another. Pushed it to the children’s clothes department and tossed in flannel pyjamas, little wool socks (doll socks!), cotton underwear, cotton T-shirts with reinforced necks, three for $10, made in Bangladesh. I knew all the sizes because my little-girl-lost was only a hair taller than Brooklyn. Albeit more than a hair broader. On my way back to the pharmacy I impulsively threw in items: a 17-inch flat screen and shocking-pink DVD player of Chinese manufacture, a half-dozen DVDs, a half-dozen CDs, including Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible and The Stills’ Ocean Will Rise , a stuffed bear that I changed my mind about, and a thousand-piece jigsaw of a snowy owl in a snowstorm for which only a convalescent would have the patience.
    Back toward my other cart, then a U-turn to sporting goods to see if I could find a two-way hand-held radio. Known in the vernacular as a walkie-talkie. Known in French as a talkie-walkie . A middle-aged clerk with a Beatle cut, distracting me with the thickest glasses I have ever seen, led me to one. A good one, he assured me, static-free, on sale. With a distress button. Range: 8 to 10 miles.
    « How about a cellphone? » I suggested. « That’d probably be better, right? More practical? »
    He looked at me over the top of his heavy black plastic glasses, like the ones American soldiers get for free. « In the mountains? More practical? With all the dead spots around here, smoke signals might be more practical. »
    Back toward the pharmacy with my talkie-walkie , mouthing the words of a carol, then to the hardware department for one last item. Propane.
    … though the frost was cruel,
    When a poor man came in sight,
    Gathering winter fuel …
    « Ça va bien? » the cashier asked when I arrived with my two-cart convoy. She had pigtails and looked almost as young as my patient. Perhaps a classmate.
    « As good as can be expected under the circumstances, » I replied in French, « which could be better and could be worse. » Answering idle questions, making small talk, has always been beyond me. I don’t think she heard me, in any case, because the jigsaw’s barcode wouldn’t beep. This flustered her to no end. Red-faced, she looked around for help before entering the numbers manually.
    « Those things would fit you, right? » I pointed to the stack of clothes she was now scanning. She went a deeper red, and I wondered why. Did she think I was offering them to her?
    « Je … je pense que oui. »
    I paid from a sheaf of American twenties bigger than a wad of socks and she didn’t bat an eye. « Bonne fin de journée , » she said, handing me some Canadian bills, purple and green and blue, along with a handful of colourful coins.
    « Pareillement , » I replied while examining the bronze birds, nickel beavers, silver mooseheads. « Et joyeux Noël . » I handed her a mint American twenty, which she scrutinized as if it were fake. Which, in a way, it was.
    On my way out, the old man who looked like Santa asked me if I’d bought a turkey. Before I could answer he said that when he was young he could kill, pluck, cook and eat a turkey in twenty-two minutes. Which was a record in these parts.
    I loaded my cargo into the van, rolled back the two carts and looked around for a payphone. There was one inside the adjoining McDonalds. (Mikes, Moores, Wendys, Tim Hortons—were apostrophes banned in this province?) The dangling directory, in a black vinyl case, had chunks of yellow pages ripped out, but not the V ’s. Véhicules, Vêtements … Vétérinaires . I inserted two quarters and punched in the number of the