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shrugged.
    Gerald rose from his chair. “I think, Sandy –”
    She snatched up her pad and pen. “I’ll come back.”
    “I don’t want to interrupt anything,” Bishop said as his lean, six-two frame made its way into the office. Bishop’s was the kind of body that in 1958 would have made a high school kid abasketball star, though he’d stopped moving like one long ago. “It’s not that important.”
    “Not at all,” said Gerald. A soft, soapy breeze hit him as Sandy moved past with her yellow pad filled with crazy, world-changing ideas tucked snug against her ribs. “We’ll pick this up later, all right?”
    “Oh yes,” she said, with a glance back that promised, not trouble, but something that Gerald thought would probably feel like trouble.
    “I didn’t mean to barge in on you,” said Bishop, once Sandy was gone and Gerald had led him to the small round table.
    “Is it Susan?”
    Bishop was turned toward the window. Outside, one storey below, a twenty-foot cube truck was pulling away from the loading dock. Bishop watched, and Gerald watched too, as it swayed over the speed bumps and then rumbled off toward the South Service Road that would lead it to the highway which would take it east to Montreal, because according to the schedule in Gerald’s head this was the shipment of two hundred thousand square feet of .03 gauge screening bound for Deschamps Fenetres Inc. As Gerald turned back to Bishop, it was these schedule thoughts that made him seize on the image of Kyle, and the realization that he should probably be on the road at this very moment to pick him up.
    “I just got off the phone with her,” said Bishop. “They can’t seem to figure out what’s wrong.”
    Gerald nodded and sighed with a sympathy for Bishop that was heartfelt, though his mind was congested with images ofhis son waiting, alone and forgotten on a gritty, windswept tarmac because he, Gerald, had failed to leave when he should have. What time was it? How late was he? It was difficult to know. Other offices had clocks on the wall in full view. Not Gerald’s. He cursed the day, four years ago, when he’d moved into this office and, in the course of introducing a few decorative touches, such as the framed pictures of the Nova Scotia coastline that he found calming, had passed so blithely on the wall-clock option.
    Bishop was slowly shaking his head. “If those doctors in Cincinnati can’t solve the problem,” he was saying, “I don’t know who can.”
    Over on his desk, Gerald’s computer screen had the time. Right now, the time was displayed in blue 24-point type and he couldn’t see it. His desk with its computer screen was like a mainland of wealth and abundance, and he was trapped on an island of scarcity with no boat. And whose fault was that but his?
    “Those people down there are top-notch,” said Bishop wistfully.
    There was always his watch. Bishop was still looking out the window, though the cube truck had long since disappeared, and Gerald’s own left wrist lay below the table, against his thigh; he could swivel his wrist and glance down in one smooth motion. But it was a dangerous operation, because when a man was telling you about his wife’s medical problems, you stayed engaged and involved; nothing was more important. Looking at your watch when a man was sharing his troubles was the kind of thing, if he happened to see you, that could shake the foundations of trust. You didn’t screw around with trust. Especiallywhen it was the sort of hard-earned trust produced by six dedicated years of ambition-restraint.
    On the other hand, there was the matter of unpredictable traffic.
    “What’s
wrong
with me?” Bishop demanded.
    Gerald had just begun to turn his wrist and glance down – his gaze had made it to the edge of the table – and now Bishop was looking directly at him.
    “I haven’t done a proper day’s work in a week!”
    Gerald kept his gaze fixed on the table edge, as though only the seam in