Fiction: A Dream, Deferred

Lewis let out a groan without moving his lips. More of a grunt, really. His camera was on, but he was muted. It was past eight in the evening on a Friday, and his meeting would not end. The client prattled on and on about how wonderful their product would be for his business, but he was scrolling through emails and just wanted to close this sale. Actually, he just wanted to get off work.

“Was there anything else you wanted to know about the API integration with your SAP backend, Carlos?”

The face onscreen was caught off-guard, and hesitated. “No, I don’t think so,” he said.

“Great, we’ll pick this up on Tuesday then? I’ll send you the agenda sometime before then,” said Lewis.

Lewis’ own smiling countenance was the last thing he saw as he left the meeting, and when he shut down his computer a few moments later, it had been replaced by his sullen face in the black mirror of his laptop screen.

Another lazy Friday afternoon truncated by work. It felt bad to be working with customers whose businesses hung on by a single spreadsheet with circular references as the streets of King West started to get busier and louder with the usual crowd out for a suburban night out.

He checked his notifications. A picture of his friends watching the NBA finals had arrived to his phone an hour ago. He didn’t know why they insisted on a bar in North York, only that it made the journey prohibitively long, especially as they were coming back down for more drinks after the game. Lewis didn’t even like basketball that much. He got up and looked in the fridge. Absolutely nothing left, cleaned out after a week of hard work.

As his elevator arrived in the lobby, he looked at himself in the mirror and his face twisted into a smile, the first genuine one of the evening. He was wearing a pair of black tennis shoes, purple boxing shorts, a fitted green shirt, and a New Yorker tote. He nodded sheepishly at the concierge, and then walked to the city bike station, loud rock music blasting in his ears.

It was too early for people to be boisterously drunk, but it was undeniably Friday night in the city. People out in droves, on the way to or from dinner, and blocking the bike lane. No matter. The energy was infectious and he found himself continuing to smile as he docked his bike and entered the Loblaws. The bikeshare system was the closest thing that adulthood had to a Pokémon bike: press select to hop on, hop off when entering a building, and then hop back on, somewhere entirely different. In this case, he could walk his groceries the ten minutes back home. In his mind’s eye, he turned into a little pixelated Pokémon RPG sprite and walked up the escalators to the Loblaws.

Lewis liked to think of this Loblaws as his Loblaws. He knew it well, what times the stockboys put out the produce and what times the baked goods were market down, but his favourite time to come was on Friday nights. Just as the streets were the busiest during this time, so the Loblaws contained people who never really went to the grocery store, except on Friday evenings. There were the boys wearing their freshest sneakers and crispest jeans, and girls wearing their smokiest eyeshadow and skimpiest of dresses. In their hands, they held cases of beer, bags of chips, and bottles of pop.

Lewis did much of the same, filling his tote with a rotisserie chicken and Oreos. He allowed Oreos as an adult wasn’t he? Even though he was buying nothing but prepared food, he felt like more of an adult walking next to the butcher’s display. Cooking for just one required so much time and effort that it wasn’t worth it on most days. Especially today. Lewis was making his way over to the checkout when someone caught his eye.

At the end of the aisle was a woman who looked like Death. Death, Dream’s sister from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman comics to be specific. Pale, dressed in black, and stick-thin. Like a Nagel woman. Her makeup and feathers were sharp, and she looked like a fierce person to get into a fight with. The exact sort of woman that the internet had convinced him was the singularly most attractive right now. He realized he was staring, and that it was too late to look away, because the woman started staring back at him. Her face split into a wide smirk as he passed by, and he felt like an idiot. He was about to mumble his apologies when she spoke.

“You come here often?”

“Huh?” he said, taking out his earbuds.

“Oh, come on Lewis, you don’t remember me?”

Lewis stared at her, wondering how she knew him.

“It’s Sonya, from Colonel Crothers?”

At the mention of those two names, she jogged his memory. Two teens who grew up on the outskirts of London, Ontario, absolutely obsessed with rock music. Everything from Guns and Roses to Depeche Mode. United against bad taste amongst a crowd of Beliebers and Swifties, until his family moved to Oshawa, to be closer to the city, right in the middle of high school.

“Oh my God, Sonya.” Sonya laughed and gave him a pout. She was carrying groceries of her own, four ripe avocados, three large grapefruit, and two jars of sauerkraut. She caught him eyeing her haul.

“What?”

“Oh, I was just admiring what a well-rounded adult you’ve turned into, with your health foods and whatnot.”

“What, grapefruit for Palomas, avocado for toast, and sauerkraut for bloat? I’m the most basic girl in the city,” Sonya said.

Lewis laughed.

“Do you live here now?”

It turned out that Sonya moved to Toronto a year ago with her band. She no longer did rock, but was the guitarist for an alternative folk band, and they were playing some gigs around the city, turning tables to pay rent. They had twenty thousand followers on Spotify.

“What about you, what are you up to these days?” asked Sonya, eyeing his outfit dubiously.

“Oh, well I went to college and got a job,” said Lewis, shrugging sheepishly.

“Okay, look at mister college education here,” said Sonya, “what sort of job?”

“I do enterprise sales at a software company. Small medium enterprises.”

“What? No singing at all? What a waste of a voice. With a getup like that I thought you were doing something cool for sure.”

“I kind of threw whatever on to come and buy some dinner,” said Lewis, looking down at his purple shorts.

They had arrived at the front of the self-checkout line, and each found a kiosk to scan their purchase. Lewis waited for Sonya at the exit.

“Are you up to anything tonight?” asked Sonya.

“Yeah, I’m going to have some drinks with friends,” he said, but regretted it.

“Well, have fun! We’re playing at Drom tomorrow if you want to come by. Food is pretty good, and reasonably priced for Toronto,” said Sonya.

They went their separate ways, she north towards the Annex and he further west. Lewis checked his phone when he got home. The third quarter had just ended, and it was a close game. His friends wouldn’t be back downtown for another half hour. He put the Oreos in a cupboard, and ate the rotisserie chicken with sliced bread, washing it all down with Gatorade. Lewis put the game on the television and pulled out his work laptop. He needed to follow up with Carlos.