1: The Big One

George had just wanted to sleep but there was far too much activity going on in the cosmos for even the most peaceful of minds to avoid. Only the increasing light of morning would slowly burn off the voices in his head.

He looked over at Joan, envious of her slumber, then rolled out of bed and padded down the hall to the bathroom. It was pretty gloomy in there. The light filtering through the blue-grey sheer curtains made the grey marble countertop look even more ashen than usual.

The mirror was screening a deteriorating black-and-white feature that had been held over for many months. Some pale-skinned old coot with white stubble on his face stared back as he moved in for a close-up.

That particular morning George had the look of a prisoner after a long interrogation, an expression made even more vivid from a lack of sleep since the middle of the night.

Suddenly a waft of dizziness fell on him like a mist and… he knew . He knew he was avoiding something , pushing some incoming back from a conscious mind that wanted no part of it. He gripped the counter until the event subsided a moment later. He then returned to the daily salute to masochism… a morning glimpse of himself.

George flipped the light switch on and it was even worse in colour. “Oh God… good thing I don't have my glasses on.” The words hit the air then submerged into the depths of other unspoken horror stories of vanities stolen by time.

Glasses were the latest reminder of the twenty-year difference in age with Joan – and George felt like it was increasing. He wasn't so much pre-occupied with his own demise as he was annoyed that it had to be so bloody apparent. He didn't feel fifty… well… come to think of it he did, that landmark having already gone by. He felt he was sitting squarely on the slide to the big dirt nap.

A gaseous puree of toast and coffee was wafting upstairs from the kitchen. He tried to fluff his hair up – “yeah right,” – then smiled at the thoughtfulness of his love, Joan, rising early just to have a few minutes with him before he left for an early class.

Joan was at the partially refinished antique maple table nursing a mug of coffee. The outline of everything naked under that T-shirt she called nightwear made him forget pretty much everything… for a moment. He leaned over and squeezed some of the most rewarding flesh he could hope to squeeze, then kissed her on the back of the neck. She went up on her toes as she snuggled her soft, dark hair into his face.

George smiled. “God, you're a pretty girl.”

A prevailing socialization designed to have him seek some cheerleading, blond streaked, dream-girl with big breasts had not taken root. The societal trend favouring implants of course had defeated gravity but they had also made breasts dangerous protrusions – things moms warned their children about because: “They could poke your eye out!” But there she defiantly sat – relatively short with an athletic sturdiness that exuded good health – while sporting her own beautiful imperfections. She had an unaffected appearance that made him weak and very aware of an inner bio-diversity program that steered him away from girls named Mandy, Randy and Brandy.

“Thanks for making breakfast,” he said. “Sweet of you to get up.”

“Hmm,” she murmured as she sat sipping coffee and staring into her mug. “You know, I've been thinking about going back to school.”

George couldn't believe his ears. “Why would you want to do that? You're already making twice the money I am.” Joan and a computer-wise school friend by the name of Jim Grayson had a very successful marketing research company. It had been a couple of years since Jimmy emigrated to the United States and the US contracts they were now pulling in, once converted to Canadian dollars, made George's academic salary look like chump change.

“I think a PhD would look better on my business cards than an MBA, and maybe even attract some contracts that appear a little out of our reach at the moment,” Joan mused. “Letters impress some people… yours really impressed me Dr. Moss, enough to follow you home.”

George looked at the clock, stuffed too much toast into his mouth and washed the mulch down with coffee.

“If only you could love me for the inner me and not some academic veneer… how shallow,” he huffed with feigned indignation, pulling his green oil-cloth jacket off its hook.

George opened the back door to the drizzle of rain only to be snared, spun around and grabbed by the buttocks. “See you later, old-timer,” Joan grinned. Then she kissed him sensually enough to make him want to call in sick. It was one of those deep and somewhat wet kisses resplendent with germs and wonderful promise. But Dr. George Moss was above all a responsible man, a punctual man. Okay, somewhat overly punctual. He squeezed her buttocks, and kissed her neck.

“Lunch?” he asked hopefully.

“I'll be here – hurry home,” Joan purred with a sensual tone that may have ended many a war a little sooner than expected. But that day, the pull of responsibility would drag him out of the door.

George was never late and had a low tolerance for people who kept him waiting. Lateness demonstrated, in measurable units, the self-centeredness of a person. His theory was that the farther away from zero or an agreed-upon time, the more self-centered one was. He knew a fellow back in Lincoln , New York , who, on one occasion, was exactly on time with the small exception of being an entire week late. They all thought he did the brown acid at Woodstock and never made it back to this reality in his entirety. Only a selfish and distant part of him returned.

Of course the opposite also applied. People who measured in negative integers and arrived a little early, were, very often, quite humble and selfless. But once again, if they got too far away from zero, if they arrived way too early, something could be clinically wrong. George surmised that serial killers probably showed up way too early, unless of course a previous murder kept them late; like some poor victim who kept getting up, blow after sickening blow, in a painfully pathetic testimony to the tenacity of life.

The rain had been light but persistent in most of Ontario that week and the Hamilton Bay area seemed to be getting more than its share. The ten-minute walk to the McMaster University campus felt like the outer envelope of survival for a wet April day.

George loved the Gothic architecture of the original part of the university that had been run by Baptists until the ‘fifties. In those early days of course, and true to good Baptist thinking, there was hardly any sex on campus because it could have led to dancing. George had found the place comfortingly familiar having attended an old rural Baptist church in his childhood in upstate New York . Even without the surety of life made simple and safe by the blinders of dogma, the campus still had the feel of a less complicated world. For him Academe was a haven from a real world for which he didn't much care.

The ivy-covered Arts and Humanities building was now before him.

But as he jogged up the stone steps, the sensation suddenly hit him again. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end followed by another waft of dizziness. He stopped, spun around and stood frozen, connected now to the morning occurrences that awakened him at 3:05:53:27 a.m. according to his sports watch. Watche s now offer too much information. In the middle of the night, a clock that said three-ish would suffice nicely, thank you very much. But no-ooo, it's the new millennium and everyone must know where they are in hundredths of a second. As a directionless social evolution increased in speed, so too did the need for smaller and smaller measurements of time. I woke up at 3:05:53 :27-ish. The “ish” left room for even more annoying technological growth....

It was an odd feeling that had awoken him that morning. It was as though a vortex behind the bed's headboard was trying to suck him in. The hair on the back of his neck had stood on end accompanied by the usual dizziness but he resisted the pull. It would have been easier to let go but George wasn't going there anymore. At times it took everything he had, but with years of practice, resistance was getting easier…

The sensation subsided. George pulled one of the mammoth oak doors open and walked down the hall to his office. Dark paintings stuck to the walls like windows to another dimension. Former chancellors and professors peered out from their gold-framed cells with a look that appeared sinister in the dim light. It was as though they knew something he didn't know or didn't want to know. He tried to shake all such thoughts from his mind, seeking only some kind of normalcy as he entered his office.

After hanging up his coat and quickly scanning the day's junk mail, he headed to class. He couldn't help but notice how much younger the students looked every year. It had only been five or six years since Joan was one of them. It was just after his divorce from Margaret.

Margaret was what they now refer to as a starter marriage. They had known each other for about eight years, thought the convenience of casual sex might become love, and got married. Their marriage was like an old car. It got them around but neither one seemed willing to invest much in it so they drove it until it broke down. It sputtered to the lawyer's office where they handed over the keys, got out and walked away. The attempt to squeeze love from a friendship had summarily killed the friendship. After the divorce, whenever they saw each other, the most they had to offer was a nod of reluctant recognition.

George first noticed Joan in his second-year class a couple of weeks after the divorce papers were finalized. She used to stare at him during lectures, making him both nervous and a little self-conscious. His jokes never made her laugh, but on the other hand, when he was being serious, she would smirk. She later told him that whenever he spoke passionately, regardless of the subject matter, it turned her on.

“Weird, huh? Yeah, well, thank God for weird!” He mumbled, striding down the hall. He would often defensively point out, to anyone who cared, that he didn't date her until he was no longer her teacher. And those “dates” consisted of her precociously sitting at his table to talk whenever he ate lunch in the cafeteria.

She was so bright, funny, and… the other thing, which he tried to ignore, not wishing to be accused of being a dirty old man. Why would she want him anyway when surrounded by muscular young bucks in their prime? But he was so glad she did. They became friends long before they kissed a year later. Jesus, just thinking of her gets things stirred down below.

“Dr. Moss?” A voice came out of the abyss behind him. When he looked up he realized his reverie had caused him to absent-mindedly walk right past the lecture hall. A first-year student held out a book that he had borrowed. George thanked him for the rare occurrence – the safe return of a book – and continued back in the right direction toward the classroom. Now, if I can just keep my mind off of Joan long enough, I might be able to get through this damn class.

The room was chaotic as usual – the rustle of coats, the clunking of books as they hit the desks or the floor, a few mating rituals in progress, and jocks talking about the game last night. It was one of George's pet peeves; no matter where you were on campus, no matter what time of day or year, there was always “the game last night.” He rolled his eyes, gathered his thoughts, though his mind was clearly not fully with him.

Things seemed to quiet down a little quicker than usual. There was a general air of enthusiasm, at odds with the norm for a generation that considered the world – its soil, water, air, rainforests and ozone – “all fucked, dude!” George delighted in this particular batch of students, who offered a strange glimmer of hope for the species.

An engrossing discussion sprang from a recent college publication about the holocaust, and how the Nazi extermination of the Jews was more than an isolated example of man's dark side. The writer asserted it was symptomatic of a flaw in humankind, citing recent evidence in Bosnia , Zaire , East Timor , and France where a political party was calling for the expulsion of immigrants.

The province of Quebec entered the discussion with what was called a linguistic version of ethnic cleansing. One student felt it frighteningly similar to other historical attempts at racial purity.

The lecture hall was electric with spirited debate when, suddenly, the hair stood up on the back of George's neck, again. Oh no, not now! Something was terribly wrong on the other side of the lecture hall door. A fuzzy red head in the front row, noticing his distraction, stopped dead in the middle of a good rant with a more-than-curious expression on her face. George was aware the entire class was watching, but whatever was pulling him toward the door was too powerful to ignore. The room fell quiet with the exception of the hum of fluorescent lights that buzzed like an electric razor in his ears. He opened the door, and there was Joan with a curious but ominous expression on her face. The sensuality of her lips had disappeared into a tight, quivering line.

“What is it Joan?” George went into the hall, quietly pulling the door shut behind him.

Joan gathered herself but clearly did not want to speak. Her eyes filled, she put her head down unable to look at him, then finally pushed the words out: “Somebody named Doctor Harris called. Your father had a heart attack and is... he's... he's dead George.” She started to cry, and buried her face in George's shirt.

He felt an odd sensation. Why was Joan crying? She didn't even know his father. He had thought about such a moment, pictured it in his mind and how he might deal with it. He had more or less imagined the perimeter, but then the floor started to fall. Oh shit, the floor, I forgot about the floor! His father had always said: “The presence of those who love us is like the floor on which we stand.” Presence didn't have to be proximity, just the knowledge that somewhere in the world... a piece of reality, security, a floorboard, actually existed.

A sick feeling started in the pit of his stomach and moved up and across his chest. He felt like he was in an elevator plummeting to the ground. His father, it appeared, contributed more to his sense of well-being than he could ever have anticipated. Hitting ground would have been merciful; at least there would have been an end to it. The ground, his ground, ground taken for granted, no longer existed.

The pain felt larger than life, far worse than he had ever conjured in his occasional futuristic mental meanderings. He couldn't cry, and he gasped for air with the realization that he was even forgetting to breathe.

A morbid stoicism covered him like armor, completely out of sync with the pain inside . I'm not crying. Why am I not crying? Am I such a cold heartless bastard that I can't cry? I want to cry! I want to cry like Joan! Oh Jesus, my father is gone! Oh Jesus!