I Hate New Brunswick Winters

Disclaimer: Liz, This is a work in progress. You are not supposed to see it until it’s done. If you do read this don’t tell me until I tell you that I’ve finished this

The beach in Saint Andrews where we walked across shimmering sun streaked sand, is now a frozen flat concrete, as my little dog hobbles with a limp on every second step¹ along the shore.

His snoot to the ground sniffing, for something.

The salty tidal pools that were filled with with sun and little squiggiling stuff like: dogwhelks, limperts and periwinkles are all barren except for frosted barnacles.

I retraced our steps across the parking lot onto the beach, hoping to find one of our footprints fossilized in the sand.

To prove that we were there.² But the ocean had swallowed our steps like a big grainy tounge across vanilla soft serve ice cream, and I was childish for hoping something would remain.

The beach’s sand was frozen concrete.

I could have played tennis on it, but it would have hurt my knees.

The frozen beach was a giant parking lot, attached to a hospital, or an airport.

The weekend I flew across the country on a red-eye to see you for the first time,³ again. The warmth of the airport bar pulled me in⁴ and the bartender beckonded me with a backstroke wave and said,

“Door’s open! Come on in!”

As if I was an extra on Cheers!.⁵

I grabbed the last stool at the bar between a young woman reading a book and a squat bald man who was probably Paul Giamatti talking to another squat bald man who was probably George Costanza, and I laid my laptop bag at the foot of my seat. The woman was wearing a black beanie and had on thick red lipstick which drew attention to her big full lips and from the moment I sat down I could tell every fibre in her being was vibrating with the desire for me to not talk to her: with a gaze even more focused on the text with a finger tracing line by line, her mouth became slightly agape, and she leaned in to what I would already describe as an osteoporodic posture towards her book on the bar.

I got the message, and ordered my beer and pulled out my book from my satchel.

Costanza and Giamatti were in a bit of a disagreement as Tom Sellick placed my pint in front of me as I mimicked the mouth open, crimped posture as I pretended to read.⁶

“Oh my god, It all makes sense now, you’re Doctor Climate! you’re the piece of shit who sells those shitty mini-splits to poor people from China! I get it now.”

“Oh wow, yeah, there it is, I run the company, yeah, so who are you?”

“I’m nothing compared to you man, but it’s patently obvious why you’re critical of buracracy.”

This was where you bit your bottom lip and looked up at the bottles of gin behind the bar and I knew you were about to talk to me.

“Im sorry,” you said as you turned towards me, “I’ve been trying to read, but I’ve been in and out of listening to their conversation this whole time.”

I lowered my head to my book and turned my head towards you and whispered, “I don’t know who the Giamatti character sitting next to me is, but the guy he’s talking to is the author of this book I’m reading.”

“Oh wow, maybe you should talk to him,” you said.

“No, I’d never want to. He sounds like an idiot in interviews and his stories are generally too drole, for my tastes”

“Oh wow, drole, that’s a word.”

“Yeah, would you like me to mansplain it to you what it means?”

“Ha! No thanks,” you said as you turned back to your book and I knew that I’d lost you. So I took a large pull from my beer and got up and went to the bathroom, thinking about what I could have said that would have been more clever.