by M.G. Warenycia

Like steering an ocean liner into its berth, Parvaneh eased the great land yacht closer, closer…just an inch closer to the curb. Two ‘harbour pilots’ had disembarked to guide her with non-standardized repertoires of ‘whoa’s and hand-waving – Kenneth at the bow and Stepan at the stern. Technically, there were two parking spaces available, but woe to the latecomer who wanted to wedge in behind her. Parvaneh was a reluctant captain, but her bestie, Charmaine Ngai, had dictated that the evening must be perfect in order that the night and its resulting memories must be perfect, and the evening would hardly have the same retro-summer-friends-beach-road trip vibe if they had tried to cram six people – five humans, one cat – into the anemically economically mid-2000s Honda Civic that Charmaine’s parents left her drive. A 1983 Oldsmobile 98 Regency, decked out in malaise beige and mission brown, had a retro hipster charm about it.

Retro charm was part of the flavour of the outing for the rest of the group, too. While the Beach drew denizens of the City every summer for the obvious reason that the City’s weather was cold and miserable three quarters of the year, the Great Recession had cast a pall over the individual aspirations of many Torontonians, the City itself began to serve as the avatar of shaky dreams and its habits and adornments were now shaped by the collective Will in the manner that one makes a bare house into ones own. Food trucks operating under special permits and restaurants catering to Boho tastes crowded the last fringes of solid pavement with particoloured nostalgia for eras the beach-goers themselves had never known – nor would have known no matter how old they were, since there was never any culture of streetside mole, burritos, satay and bulgogi in ‘vintage’ times in Toronto. Heck, there wasn’t even poutine, for in the days of unironic vinyl records, the gravy-laden delicacy was still a secret hidden in the distant solitude of New France. The gourmet burgers and hot dogs, at least, were authentic in their representation of midcentury consumerism. That night, there would be fireworks displays further down the shoreline where it sloped out towards Toronto Island and the Waterfront proper. However, this year, things had been scaled back to appease budget critics and environmentalists.

Which was fine. The friends all considered themselves members of the creative cultural class, as NOW Magazine and BlogTO called it, except for Kenneth, who had been a computer science major. The bright, loud pleasures of the mainstream herd were disdained by these artsy types, unless they could be explained as being enjoyed ironically. This particular stretch of beachfront was not wilderness or national park, possessing stone breakwaters and having a ‘wood’ which was clearly managed, the trees too thin and small to be a free-grown forest. It was a perfect zone for more refined – or naughty – business, though, being far from the spots which, thanks to proximity to parking and chain restaurants, were crowded by moms and dads with squealing, obnoxious children, gaudy beach umbrellas and large rambunctious dogs.

None of the friends had checked the regulations concerning fires on the beach, but the small hibachis that Parvaneh set up didn’t count as fires, really, and, regardless, they’d be overlooked by anyone except the most miserable killjoy. Parvaneh had marinated the materials for the kebabs the night before, while Raquel had prepared slaws and cupcakes in Tupperware containers. As the group had arrived, they’d observed a volleyball game with skeleton teams of three or four per side. Those people had packed up as soon as Charmaine’s party got out their towels and food, but the net stayed up, which suggested it might be City property, probably put up for the day’s events by the parks and rec department.

Charmaine walked her cat, Nominoe around like a dog, enjoying the curious glances from passers-by as those walked their labs and poodle mixes. As a pedigree Laurentian shorthair, Nominoe didn’t have much enthusiasm for exercise and contented himself with sniffing about strange patches of sand and waiting for dinner to be ready. Stepan, Kenneth, Devin and Raquel gravitated to the volleyball net. The previous group had left their ball behind. It wasn’t like they were going to steal it, so might as well have fun…

The teams of two served and counter-served, doing their best to remember the rhythms and techniques from school phys ed class. Unfortunately, they couldn’t keep the ball in play very long – the low player count and rusty skill sets ensured that. Nor, on the other hand, did anyone serve or spike the ball with much aggression. Stepan, who was teamed with Raquel facing ‘left’ or northeast, caught himself wondering about this several times, mentally planning to make some display of athletic prowess but never going through with it. Further interfering with the game was the tendency of the wind to lift the ball away if it was lobbed too vertically. “I got it!” Stepan shouted, sprinting behind the opposing team so Kenneth and Devin didn’t get discouraged by the constant task of fetching a wayward ball.

It was funny, the micro climate in this spot. The winds blew strong, as they do all across the Lake, but with a quirk of frequently turning from the prevailing direction, thus pulling the ball roughly parallel to the shore and down its slope towards the water, as if the wind was diverted from its normal course by an invisible cliff or embankment. Twice Stepan had thought he’d grabbed it, only for the ball to slip further away and downwards, till the last time it was even licked by the spray of a wave. Stepan used the anxiety of having to compensate the owners for the ball and the embarrassment of losing something they borrowed without permission to persuade his game-mates to abandon their lacklustre effort, leaving the ball secure in a hole scraped to half its depth in the sand.

“These kebabs are…mhh, the smak! Such savour!” Stepan commented while chewing. “Mmph! I didn’t know you were a chef.”

“Thanks.” Parvaneh’s mood didn’t reward Stepan’s flattery. “Nothing special. It’s my mom’s recipe, but I think it came from a cookbook, I guess.”

Kenneth threw in some buttering for Raquel, who relished the praise precisely because she knew the mediocre red velvet cupcakes, iced with Betty Crocker straight from the tub, didn’t deserve it. Phones emerged from pockets and bags for time checks or out of anxious habit, but then returned to hibernation out of consciousness that this was a moment which needed savouring. Raquel shared a hypothesis about a mutual friend’s much-hyped move to Australia not having occurred despite it being seven months past the declared migration date. Stepan, in turn, paused Raquel’s salacious speculations to explain to Devin and Kenneth exactly who Melissa Rudiger (the subject of the tale) was. Realizing that gossip doesn’t really work when most of the people listening have no idea who the individuals being scandalized are, Raquel let the theme die and stuffed her mouth with kebabs and mayonnaise-laden slaw to resist the pressure to fill the void of silence with words. Someone brought up the election that would be happening soon. Everybody could agree to hate Prime Minister Harper, invoking his name and reciting the socioeconomic ills he was associated with as if, should their criticisms be shared and fierce enough, Fate would cost the ruler his throne. Nobody, of course, had any idea would would fix the skyrocketing house prices – soon to surpass a million bucks on average – or what a coherent alternative foreign policy would look like in an era when the Global War on Terror was winding down and there were no clear enemies. What they all wanted, though none could articulate it, was for someone to reassure them that the world would right itself onto the solid, even-keeled course which their parents and teachers had promised them and which, moreover, was the only world any of them was capable of comprehending. Sports? Maybe they could talk about sports? None of them watched sports…

After eating, the sky was still too light for fireworks. Stepan and Kenneth got up to stretch their legs, strolling away from the smouldering hibachis. Attempts to get Nominoe to join them failed. The cat was alert but unwilling to be tugged away to explore further areas of the beach. Charmaine wanted to check out a copse which protruded like a spit down the sand. It had been unmanaged, left to grow feral, developing a distinct canopy and understory layer crowded with small wildflowers and creeping berry bushes. She hefted Nominoe to carry him – she, Parvaneh and Stepan had all taken forestry courses as electives at uni and had done much hiking on childhood vacations – but the rotund beast squirmed and muttered protests, so Charmaine remained by the fire while Stepan, Kenneth and Devin went to explore.

“Like it’s own little world,” Stepan marvelled at how such a vast, teeming metropolis could contain such an untouched piece of forest amid it. In the diffused light two or three metres in, clusters of berries glistened like rubies – some variety of boysenberry or wild raspberry. They would be an exotically local addition to the beach-side feast. However, to a man with bare shins, those berries were as inaccessible as if they were growing on the moon. Stepan bent down and plucked some fluffy spikelets from the laces of his shoes. He was quite sure he’d not made a single step inside – it was as if the forest had reached out its claws to grab at his feet, or so he imagined to himself.

“Really helps you understand how there’s still foxes and coyotes around,” Kenneth noted. “I guess you could say this is the benefit of living in the Beaches: you don’t have to take the car or bus to experience Nature. I could see it…” he daydreamed, “You got your computer, your espresso machine; you do some programming in the morning, make yourself a protein shake, go out and connect with the Wild. It would be so awesomely at peace.”

“Yeah, if you’ve got a good job working from home most of the time. That’s actually probably how most people around here do it, or at least some of them. I’ve seen in windows walking around the neighbourhood…you don’t build a home office like that unless you’re enjoying it,” Stepan replied, smiling because he was agreeable but wondering how one could find monk-on-the-mountaintop solitude for toil when there’s always people walking their dogs, jogging, going to and from work, shopping, etc.? “Though I don’t think there’s many amateur naturalists or hikers. I see nobody’s picked the berries in there. None of the vegetation tamped down either.” There were birds’ nests in the forks of branches in various stages of dilapidation, but no bird song. Stepan could not help noticing that, despite the berries having matured to full ripeness, no bird or insect had taken them either. He walked back out onto the open sand, hoping Kenneth and Devin would follow his example.

It was as if they had been distracted for half an hour: natural twilight was still some time off, but the sky was already a violent purple over the lake. Like an ink stain on paper towel which blended out right above the third or fourth building up inland of the beach. “You think they’ll maybe cancel the fireworks later?” Kenneth wondered aloud.

“Huh. Wasn’t in the forecast. I think. But, no, yeah, I dunno if they will go through with things if it’s raining. And we’ve got, what, ninety minutes to go?” Both friends looked at each other with expressions of disappointment, though the firework display itself didn’t interest them much.

The northward-blowing wind rolled the water like a tightly ploughed field, bringing cold moisture in invisible sheets that could be felt on the cheeks, hands and any other exposed skin. The girls were talking animatedly about something. Maybe because of the wind, Stepan could not hear them, so moved closer, giving himself an excuse for retreating to some kind of shelter from the ominous lakeward sky – even if the shelter was only the huddled bodies and familiar voices of a group of fellow humans.

“Think maybe we should pack up and head home?” Parvaneh asked like she was demanding it. “Because I don’t think there’s gonna be any fireworks and that concert you were talking about, even if they don’t cancel it, no way I’m walking a mile on the beach in a thunderstorm to stand and listen while I’m all cold and soaked.” Charmaine, whom she was most directly addressing, had used a concert being put on by a subculturally-famous emo-punk band as an additional incentive to come down to the Beaches for the evening.

Looking down the shore, occasional flashes of colour indicating the presence of jumbo beach umbrellas and blocks of milling crowd appeared in the spaces not blocked up by the layered leaves of intervening trees or the angles of the sand. Obviously, a lot of people were hanging onto their festival plans. Equally obvious, the unpitying wrath of Nature would rudely compel them to abandon their plans, probably no later than fifteen or twenty minutes from that moment.

Charmaine stoically began pouring drinks, digging the tumblers into the sand in the lee of their makeshift fire pit for stability. “I don’t have the equipment for Jagerbombs, but we can have basically the same thing. Rum and Coke I can do though…or you can just take whatever straight, if you want. None for me anyway, so drink up!”

Notwithstanding that it had been an active day, the spicy-sweet fragrance of the rum-and-Coke didn’t inspire thoughts like it normally would in Stepan – who was as far from a teetotaller as it was possible to go without being an alcoholic. To slow his reaction speed and dull his senses felt not quite right…he started to become afraid of what would happen, although precisely what threat might take advantage of his unpreparedness out here, it was hard to say.

Robbery or assault might be a possibility if they took the subway home (which no sane person with access to a car would do). But out here? Stepan, as if to test his own opinion, swept his gaze up and down the beach, which had become markedly darker thanks to both the hour and to the dampness brought on by spitting droplets and the air itself. It had been a win to find their own less-crowded patch of sand to stake out, far from the major, semi-organized public gatherings. Now, it slightly terrified him to see that there were no other humans who were actually seeing what they were seeing, experiencing the place as they were experiencing it. A second wave of discomfort came over him when he speculated whether any of his own party were occupying their minds with the same questions which were vexing him, eventually coming to the conclusion that they were not. After all, the girls were chattering among each other over jokes and gossip, which he could now overhear just enough to be annoyed without understanding any of it.

Stepan and Kenneth found a channel for their mental energies pacing along the shore discussing politics and video games with religious vehemence. The expression of energy and ideas made them feel less overwhelmed by the failed promise of the evening and the existential ominousness of their environment. Suddenly, Stepan came to doubt all the school units about rainforests and oceans which taught them that Gaia was fragile and weak, and he might destroy it by leaving the water running as he brushed his teeth.

Somehow, the conversation steered to malls and the new collection of region-locked Asian horror and romantic comedy movies Kenneth had bought or downloaded and the new fusion BBQ hotpot and dessert restaurant up by Steeles Avenue that they would surely soon patronize with mutual friends. It occurred to Stepan that it was hopeless – the visions of The Walrus magazine and Pierre Berton books – to expect that his generation or any coming after it would inherit and carry on the cultural ideals of the country as a land of rugged, intellectual folks equally at home in City and Wild. A tame taste of the wilderness hemmed in by concrete and steel, and they’d all mentally retreated, or were strategizing the retreat, to the suburb, tower and mall…indoors, with climate under a dial and screen standing between themselves and Nature, red in tooth and claw. The generation which did Boy Scouts and fishing, and then the hippies and Gen X with their extreme sports; mountain bikes and snowboards racked on the back of a Nissan Pathfinder, a two-four of Labatt in the cooler…those generations kept alive the national theology of the Group of Seven, P.E.T., the spirit of ‘67…whether in its intellectual or plebeian forms. They could. His generation, however, could not, even if they wanted to. None of his friends owned a boat or a cottage, for one. Precious few had a reliable vehicle suitable for bad roads in remote areas, and you can’t easily store much fishing, skiing and hunting gear in a tiny shared apartment.

As if to prove his theory, the girls had begun packing up before alcohol and rain made it too unpleasant. Too, having earned her place carrying up a handful of things, Charmaine was hunkering at the car, turned sideways looking out the open door, her cat in her lap, while Raquel and Parvaneh finished the remaining clean-up.

“Come on!” Stepan urged Kenneth, as if both ought to know they were late for something important. “Time to get a move on!”

If Kenneth ever had any deeper thoughts about the Lake or the concert, they were extinguished then and there. A few steps further up the beach, he asked, “Hey, where’s Devin? Dev!?!” He called out to everywhere below them on the beach. Raquel and Parvaneh stood up like startled prairie dogs, then moved toward the car, not quite grasping what was going on and thinking Stepan was panicking over the incoming storm and whether they’d packed up everything.

Without really thinking it over, Stepan followed hesitantly by Kenneth, jogging back in the direction of the coppice. Nothing else in the plain, empty stretch of land suggested itself. Thoughts of potential serial killers or wild coyotes cross the friends’ minds, until seven or eight seconds later they saw Devin down towards the water.

“Hey! Didn’t you hear us?” They both called to Devin. “Come on…we’re heading back. Don’t think there’s gonna be any celebration anyways. Hey?!?”

Devin didn’t answer. Then Stepan and Kenneth observed that Devin wasn’t standing on the shore meditating on the power of Nature. He was, if only just barely, standing in the Lake itself: just at the point where the water never entirely receded away when the waves lapped this shallowest part of the beach. Devin’s expression was, however, entirely consistent with a man deep in meditation; spiritual and calm – highly inconsistent with a man up to his Achilles’ heels in the still-chilly early summer waters.

“Hey, Devin! Dev! D-ev!” Both his friends called out to him, waving and pointing, cupping their hands around their mouths to make the sound carry better, which was ridiculous at ten to fifteen yards away.

Charmaine, Parvaneh and Raquel, along with the car, were invisible behind a berm. Some buildings could be glimpsed over the dunes or through the trees, but distance, angle and possible absence meant no living humans could be seen in any of them.

As they approached their entranced buddy, Stepan and Kenneth ceased to cry out. Their pace slowed as they studied Devin, then the scene, back and forth, trying to discern what exactly it was that Devin was so transfixed by. Stepan’s best guess was the sublimely threatening beauty of the oncoming storm, but, really, it was nothing out of the ordinary for the season and place. He tried to remember if Devin had mentioned a breakup or some other life trauma which may have reduced him to start taking substances a little stronger than beer and weed. Even with two people next to him, arms outstretched, Devin never took his attention off the waves (if, in fact, that was where his attention was), nor did he lose for even a second his almost smug calmness. Stepan made eye contract with Kenneth. The latter shrugged and shook his head demonstratively. The wind was perceptibly louder than five minutes earlier. Although they hadn’t moved their position, as new waves expired, they came up to the edges of their shoes. A peal of thunder decided things: seeing Kenneth hesitate, Stepan reached and slapped Devin’s shoulder. The slap landed harder than he’d intended, but Devin didn’t seem to notice. Stepan held his palm firmly over Devin’s lean shoulder, as if nothing short of unbroken physical contact could bring him back to his senses. Quite naturally, Devin turned around. He betrayed no sings of disorientation or derangement, only the sluggish gloominess of someone wrenched from contemplation of life. “Sup?”

“We’re leaving. Come on!”

“Oh? Right. Looks like a storm, huh?”

It was impossible to tell if Devin was really a bit out of it, or if he was trying to make an honest comment on the mildly bad weather. “You alright?” Stepan inquired.

“Huh? Yeah, nah, it’s just a thing with me…” Devin saw that his companions were staring awkwardly at his feet and jeans, which were soaked up to the shins. “If you went with me on vacation you’d see. I don’t normally swim in the ocean. Sharks, haha. But when I go down to like the Dominican or wherever I like to just walk beside the ocean and let the water come up, almost like I’m doing it, I guess; just let it wash over my feet. So, yeah, it’s just a personal thing.”

“Okay, but this isn’t the Dominican Republic. Aren’t your feet freezing?”

“It’s May? Nah.”

Stepan was weirded out, but everything was forgotten when the rain began to lash the beach with the fury of a drunken stepdad right as the three friends joined their female and feline companions at the car. As the hulking sedan lurched away, perfunctory comments were shared on how it had been a pleasant evening regardless of the lack of a show; how so and so’s cooking was on point, and so forth. Internally, each felt a relief too confusing to vocalize; a relief at being sealed off from the rain with other warm, breathing bodies and when, later that night, Charmaine and Raquel would lounge around texting and Stepan and Kenneth would log on for some gaming and bootleg movie watching, nobody felt guilty like they ought to be experiencing the beauty of the great outdoors instead.

Six weeks later, it was Canada Day, and each of the group remembered because it was again a day where it was custom that everyone should go to the beach and witness pyrotechnic displays. Moreover, the weather was finally objectively hot. Another mutual friend, one Marina who hadn’t been on the first trip, proposed the idea of a beach picnic. The offer was collectively ignored.

“I don’t know the pull the Lake seems to have on people,” Kenneth grumbled, annoyed as always by violations of logic and reason. “There’s not really much you can do because it’s so built up, the water’s so cold; you can’t swim safely in it. Plus there’s so many people there for Canada Day, how do you enjoy it?” Kenneth forgot or wanted to forget how empty the place had been last time.

“True!…True…” Stepan sighed, unable to argue the merits. “What are we going to do, then?”

“I dunno. Restaurant? Chill at home?”

“We have to do something. Everyone’s busy with boring life.” Before deciding what would be done for the evening, the pair scrolled through Facebook, Kenneth on his desktop and Stepan on his phone, to remind themselves of potential guests and to send messages of inquiry as to whether people would be available for something. A fact which struck Stepan as peculiar was how few people were travelling – it was impossible, of course, that, if they were travelling, they would not be posting about it. He recalled those who had done semesters abroad; those who had once made the act of distancing themselves from their origins a huge part of their identities. Maybe something had changed in the economy, which caused everyone to passively submit to the grind. The notion entered Stepan’s mind that perhaps there was – much as he couldn’t fathom what it might be – a positive attraction to the City; something which drew them in and kept them there; something with a hold more powerful, more profound than the pleasures of sipping cocktails on a beach or basking in the infrastructure and public services of Brussels or Amsterdam. Despite the undesirableness of the situation, it didn’t wash with him. After all, he knew for a fact that many of his peers loathed the grind, and for those who were further above water, financially speaking, it made even less sense to just sit at home.

Without admitting why, both friends nixed the idea of going to the Lakeshore. A club or even a downtown pub, on a statutory holiday, would not feel like “their” thing; the fun of others would dilute their own. “Destiny Teahouse? And movie night at Joey’s, if he’s interested?” The grandly modern, two-storey waffles-and-bubble-tea palace on the Scarborough-Markham border would be perfect for catching up: the diasporic neighbourhood wasn’t overtly patriotic nor given to organic displays of public revelry. Joey’s family’s mcmansion would resolve entertainment needs without exposure to tweakers harassing them for money for ‘food’ and ‘bus fare’, as well as mosquitoes. Most importantly, it would be their thing…no intrusion by those whose character or class culture threatened the comforting homogeneity of the circle to which Kenneth, Stepan, Parvaneh, Raquel and Marina all belonged, whether they were aware of it or not, which in the long tunnel of seemingly perpetual recession and uncertainty became an armour and a lifebuoy…

Neither asked the other about whether Devin would come along. Devin’s family didn’t ask the Toronto Police about him, although the detectives who showed up when a patrol boat watching for smugglers of untaxed cigarettes asked why someone would have gone out in bad weather, at night, upon the unforgiving Lake. The army surplus coat he’d been wearing suggested outdoor pursuits, but the cops searched in vain for the foundered boat or fishing gear. No drugs or alcohol found in system; shoes on, indicating a hasty abandonment of the missing vessel. A canvas book bad, well blended in among the underbrush, was found in a copse along the shoreline two days later. Alas, its contents – a vintage volume of Margaret Atwood short stories, an uneaten ham-and-cheese sandwich, and a russet pippin apple with a bite taken out of it ultimately provided no leads. Hypothermia, rather than drowning or anything self-inflicted, was the cause of death.

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