Beautiful Cheap Living

FRIDAY

There's a sort of clothing fair in the student union building, and I have time to kill before I have to meet Sally in room 125J, so I browse. I find a black t-shirt with a snarling blue cougar featured on the front under a banner that reads: Where Legends Roam . There are also bikers in the corner, and possibly flames involved at some point. I give the girl in the booth ten bucks and immediately send Melanna a picture of this gem. Her reply: I will wait for you until you get home.
Sally is carrying various folders and loose papers which she shuffles around to free her right hand and open the door to 125J. She says: So you're Emily. Affirmative, Sally. She takes my ten dollars and writes "paid" beside my name. While I'm adding my signature to the line, she reminds me to bring along my Aviation Club card tomorrow, and be at the Jade sculpture by the international arrivals gate at 9:45 am sharp. A minute later and the group will leave without me. Important business, this is. Can't have anyone delaying matters. I ask about pictures. Sally tells me the occasional photo of the equipment is fine, just be careful about getting too snap-happy in the control tower, we don't want to distract the people working there, or our tour guide.
Outside, the campus is shiny-wet and bright and flush with colour under a dim gray sky. Now this is a sky, this is a grand and mysterious sky. It is hazy, vast, and dark. There is a foggy feeling everywhere, but close range objects appear sharper than usual. The clouds have no border, just waves of thick and thin, as a hastily painted background. There is no source of light, there is just light. It isn't raining, the air just moistens everything that moves through it. The little hairs at the edge of my forehead curl in the damp. This is a sky that means a different time of day, one I've never come to before. It's not evening, or mid-morning. There is no name for this new hour. It creates the sensation of having nowhere in particular to be.
On the way home, I stop at the corner second hand store and buy four shirts for eight dollars. She also lets me keep the hangers. I am thrilled. I cross the street twice, turn into the alley; slick with autumn leaves. We are the third gate. The yard is wet overgrown grass. I climb the steps, open the door to the kitchen. Parisa is making a sandwich. She approves of my thriftiness, and we plan to meet up later tonight with Brian and Connor, who we met at Elwood's last weekend and discussed movies with at length, to watch the game. Calgary is playing Vancouver again, and Parisa and I agree that it's great fun to hurl insults at each other for the couple of hours our rivalry lasts.
Melanna emerges from her room and I show her the roaming legends shirt. She is fairly certain it will fit him, and that he will enjoy the animal's ferocity. She has been looking for weeks for a shirt with a cougar on it for Russ, who lives in Kamloops and whose t-shirts-with-Canadian-wildlife-on-them collection is missing said beast. The two of us go for coffee at Coco et Olive to celebrate. This is a very good place. There is art on the walls, dreamy panoramic sky-scapes. The tables and chairs are all antique looking and charmingly mismatched. The patrons are much the same, but with an air of intelligence. And the coffee and baked goods are a new brand of heaven. Melanna pays, to thank me for my keen shopper's eye, and we sit in the cafe for an hour or two drinking lattés out of bowls; laughing and talking mostly about sex.
At home again the three of us girls are getting ready to go out. Tomorrow morning Kevin and Stefano are leaving for a neuroscience conference in Chicago and won't be back until Thursday. In case we miss them Melanna writes this note and puts it on the fridge: YO BOYZZZ! We all look super hot. Too bad you missed it. Have a rad time being nerds. We'll be thinking of you. Love, Melanna, Emily, and Parisa. Melanna is meeting a friend in North Van, but we all leave the house together, and actually coordinate our exit out the back so that we are mid-conversation as the door opens, like we're in a movie!!!
Parisa and I walk down to The Shack to watch hockey with our new friends. We all chip in on beer and nachos, and watch my hometown outplay my new town 5 to 3. Hours of good cheer and merrymaking go by and around midnight we are ready to go home; I have to wake up early for my tour of the control tower, and Parisa wants to nap for a couple hours before she meets friends at 2:30. The girl is in every way a social butterfly, and she operates on a different schedule than most. Our evening has been for her something like brunch. We get home and stagger up the steps into the kitchen, where we find our note turned over and an answer written on the other side. It reads: WOMEN... You all must take good care of yourselves whilst we men are gone on our journey of adventure, in search of great prosperity. We will return with a large bounty of the finest grains, goats, and milk. In return, we expect you to bear us many children, and to look after the homestead once we grow old. Farewell fair dames. -The Men