Mathieu Parsy
Glove
I dream we’re back in Toronto, inside St. Michael’s Cathedral. You’ve written a note on a Tim Hortons receipt—something about you and Stan lasting longer than the skyline. Me, I’m not Stan, and I don’t pray like you do. I slip out to Queen Street, where streetcars slide by on their tracks, sparks under cold wires. I watch them pass and start walking west as if I might cross the entire city.
In this dream, the Gardiner Expressway is clogged with traffic, red lights stretching past the CN Tower. Commuters, late-night cabs. I just step off the curb and let myself float, easy as smoke. A lady on the sidewalk waves at me like she’s missed her bus. She looks like you—a romantic, always searching for some grand meaning in the people she meets. You’re all the same, really, thinking you can tag along for the ride.
“Next one is on his way,” I tell her. I sound a bit unkind, so I wave back and smile, hoping to keep it friendly.
Ahead, a woman points at a raccoon waddling across a crosswalk. “My god, it’s huge, Jeff!” Her partner snaps a picture. The raccoon pauses to look back at us, totally indifferent, and for some reason, my heart swells with a kind of fondness for it, as if it understands.
I still think of that windy night on the ferry to the Toronto Islands. I remember the skyline glittering, the way you watched it like it was some enchanted city. I wanted to stay on the shore, but you convinced me it was better from the water. The ferry rolled with the lake, and I agreed it was idyllic in its own rough way. We had poutine at a food truck near the harbor. You made fun of my French accent.
I think of the movie Lost In Translation. How you’d quote lines and say I was your favorite love escape. I wasn’t. But I knew Stan was. Sweetly lost, untethered you. I can still see you in that cathedral, like you were asking for something sacred. This is where I left you, drifting away in my mind, letting go of the resentment. Like leaving a glove on the subway, knowing I won’t go back.
Timekeeper
You’re waiting at the bus stop when a stranger walks up to ask for the time. You tell him because you always know it. You permanently feel the tick of the clock on your wrist, the press of hours on your temples. And then someone else asks, and someone else, and before you know it, the line has formed. No one checks their phones, no one even glances at the clock on the train station across the street. They ask you.
You’ve spent your entire life wondering why. Is it your face? Something about the slope of your jaw, the way you stand like a sundial rooted to the pavement? Could it be the way you keep your arm slightly bent, as if you’re poised to check your watch? But it goes deeper than that, doesn’t it? It’s the fact that you always respond.
Your mother used to say you had a helpful face—the kind that strangers trust, that invites people in. She meant it as a blessing, but you’ve come to feel it’s a curse. You think of her sometimes, late at night, when the apartment is too quiet, and the clock by your bed glows like a dull red wound. She died at exactly 3:47 a.m., and you know because you were the one sitting there, counting the minutes as they stopped coming for her.
Sometimes you wish you could stop knowing. Hide your watch, keep your phone in your pocket, shrug when someone asks you what time it is. But you don’t. You can’t. Instead, you look down, squint at the little hands that never stop circling, and tell them.
“3:23.” “4:48.” “6:02.”
And they always thank you, even if they don’t mean it. Some just slightly tilt their heads absently and walk off, like they’ve taken something you didn’t even know you were carrying.
Today, though, as you stand at the bus stop, a man doesn’t ask. He doesn’t even look at you. He checks his phone, glances at the train station clock, and keeps walking. For a moment, you’re surprised. Relieved, maybe. Or something worse, like being a lighthouse no one needs anymore.
A cab pulls up. The driver leans out, cigarette dangling from his lips, and asks you the time. You tell him because, of course, you do. He nods and flicks the cigarette onto the curb.
“Always knew you’d know,” he says, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Mathieu Parsy is a Canadian writer who grew up on the French Riviera. He now lives in Toronto and works in the travel industry. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Nunum, FEED, Libre, and Brilliant Flash Fiction. Follow him on Instagram at @mathieu_parsy.
