// Toriv

I’ve been talking a lot about myself over the course of this writing project, which I guess makes sense since the idea was to write about my life. I’ve already admitted to being vain, so you must already have some idea of what you’re in for.

I think everyone at the café is surprised that I’ve kept this up for as long as I have. I’ve got, like, actual chapters worth of words in this thing. And I used to have trouble meeting the word count in high school essays. Which just goes to show, when you’re enjoying what you’re doing, then it just gets that much easier.

Not that it’s been easy the whole way. I’m not really someone who reads or writes, to be completely honest with you. And even just sitting and writing like this, it takes practice. The other day I was trying to write over lunch and just couldn’t. It’s like I had completely forgotten how to make sentences. I guess that’s what they call writer’s block.

I can’t really think of myself as a writer, though. I’m really just a guy with a tablet and a Bluetooth keyboard who likes to hear himself talk. Or read himself talk, as the case may be.

Anyway, I was trying to write today when Loriev came up while he was sweeping the floors.

“So,” he said.

“So,” I said.

“You gave that professor a free drink?”

So it begins. “Uh, yeah? I know I’m not supposed to, but whatever. My shop, my rules, etcetera, etcetera.”

Loriev frowned in one corner of his mouth as he swept. He hates it when I say “etcetera” out loud, which is half the reason why I do it. Nerd.

I thought Loriev was going to lay into me about the freebie — he helps out with the finances because I both hate and am terrible at math, so he knows how the accounts are going — but instead he just went on quietly sweeping. Which is how I knew he actually wanted to say something really badly, but wasn’t saying it because his morals work in strange and mysterious ways.

Fortunately, “inhibition” isn’t a word I consider a part of my vocabulary. “What’s up, Lor? Are you mad at me?”

He shook his head as he crouched to sweep under the table I was sitting at. I lifted my feet to help him out, then nudged him in the shoulder as he stood. “Then what?”

“Nothing,” Loriev said, as if I’d believe that.

“As if I’d believe that. Tell me your thoughts.”

“Never mind.”

“Lor. Come on.”

He just kept on sweeping for a little while, pausing to push the fruits of his labours out the door into the street, then he turned and sighed. Victory.

“I was just wondering,” he said in finally. “Why you did it.”

“It? Oh, you mean the drink. Because I like to make the customers happy. He seemed happy, right?”

“He did,” Loriev agreed, but in a way that made the two words sound capitalized.

We stared at each other for a second or two, then I said, “You think I was hitting on him?”

All he did was raise his eyebrows at me, but I felt it like he’d said the words aloud. I have to say, I was a little bit shocked. Just a bit, though. What can I say, I know myself pretty well, and so does Lor.

Still, I said, “Bro. He’s so not my type. And he’s, like, forty.”

Loriev said, “You’re not that far off from forty either.”

“Ouch. I’m thirty-one,” I whispered in my most scandalized voice. “Plus I don’t date teachers. They always love rules more than they love you.”

Loriev rolled his eyes, and even I knew I wasn’t being super convincing just then, but he turned away and continued his diligent sweeping of the floors, so I guess he was appeased.

I’ll admit I wasn’t being totally honest back there anyway. I’ll sleep with a teacher just fine. I have no issues with that. But the thing about dating them, that is one hundred percent, absolutely, no-jokes true. And don’t even try to tell me I’m prejudiced or anything because let me tell you: I’ve tried it. I’m not speaking out of my ass here. This is based on bona fide dating experience.

(“What dating experience?” I hear in Loriev’s voice. Get your overly-developed morality out of my head, please and thank you.)

So I hadn’t actually dated anyone in some time. Big whoop. The dating scene is totally overrated anyway. I was tired of it by the time I’d finished high school. That’s not to say that I stopped having crushes. I have fancies to be tickled, just like anyone else. Very specific fancies in very specific places. It’s just that I usually choose to fulfill those fancies in the most efficient way possible. Loriev disapproves, I guess, but he’s the marrying type. I discovered that when I took a crack at him myself, all those years ago. Ah, youth, and the mistakes of them. Not that it was bad, really. It was about as good as could be expected from going for a straight boy. But that was yonks ago, we’re over it.

I should probably erase all that stuff about Loriev. I think he’d be embarrassed if he knew I was writing about him. But then again, this is a story about my life, and Loriev is definitely a part of my life, as much as my mom and dad and the café are. We’ve known each other literally forever. I don’t even want to think about how different my entire existence would be without him.

I guess that’s the thing about knowing someone for so long: if you’re anything like me, there’s a good chance you’ll start to develop feelings with a capital F. Or, y’know, a capital D. Hahah.

Anyway, all that to say, I’m not beyond crushing. I actually crush a lot. I am a pro crusher. So don’t let anyone tell you I’m not.

For your information, I wasn’t actually crushing on the professor at the time. Giving away free drinks was a thing I did sometimes, when I thought we could afford it. People like free stuff, and if you make them happy with a lil’ freebie while they’re here, I figure it makes it more likely for them to want to come back. It’s good business, okay? I’m pretty sure I read it on the internet somewhere.

And if you’re wondering what my type actually is, I’m kind of obligated to say something like “why don’t you come over here and find out?” Cheesy, I know. For the record I don’t actually say that kind of thing out loud because I’m not in high school. I have lived and learned.

// Mahendra

I am forty years old, single, and celibate. Apparently, this surprises people, though Lord knows why. I’m not particularly attractive or wealthy or anything that would have impelled anyone to snap me up anytime prior to my fourth decade of life.

Perhaps it is simply my age. Admittedly, most of the people I know were married or at the very least attached by their fortieth year. I suppose that makes me a little vieux garçon. I don’t mind. Rushing into marriage just to meet an arbitrary age limit seems silly to me, though I’m careful to not mention that in front of anyone who has.

The only person who hasn’t yet realized the futility of discussing marriage with me is Charlotte, which seems convenient given the only person I wouldn’t lose patience with in such a discussion is my sister. She thinks I must be lonely, I suppose. Not entirely true, but not entirely untrue either. I’m perfectly content to return alone to my quiet apartment on most days. It’s a thing that grows on you, the peaceful solitude, though I suppose I was already disposed towards it from the start.

What does it mean to be lonely, anyhow? I’ll be the first to admit I probably fulfill most of the stereotypes ascribed to teachers and academics such as myself, but I don’t want for friends. Admittedly, none of them are old friends; those are the ones I left behind in England, the people I met in secondary school and college undergrad. But they’re a pleasant bunch, other professors, mostly. We talk shop and argue about politics and bemoan the cost of living just like any conventional group of working adults. Some of them have been over to my place for a glass of wine and conversations of a slightly more personal nature. Others have seen me down a pint of stout during a game night, and have found it both astounding and hilarious. (I should take a moment to add “down with Boston!” here. Only proper that I should demonstrate how assimilated I’ve become.)

So I’m not lonely. The amount of socialization I get in my day is perfectly standard, thank you, though writing it now makes me wonder whom I’m trying to convince. Not Charlotte, for I’m sure I’d be mortified if she ever got her hands on this piece of writing.

Myself, then. Though surely there must be something off if I’m reduced to convincing myself of things in writing.

It isn’t that I don’t wish to be married. In fact, there was once a time when I was rather taken with the idea. How long ago was this? I almost don’t want to know. In the summer, it’ll be eleven years. Nearly a quarter of my lifetime, as it stands.

Her name is Anushka. We met properly at Oxford, though I’d known of her for a long time, from a distance. Such is the way when your socialite parents have friends of friends of friends. “Why can’t you be more like so-and-so’s daughter?” That kind of knowing.

Simply put, she was the best friend I had at college. The best friend I have now as well, though she’s lived in Manhattan nearly as long as I’ve been in Montréal. Perhaps that makes us the kind of friends whose affection persists better at a distance. Lord knows being close did us no good. It certainly ruined our engagement.

There aren’t many people who know I’ve been engaged. This is mostly because whenever I tell, I get a very specific look for it. “Oh, what a shame. I’m so sorry.” After getting a look like that, it’s difficult to rejoin with “oh no, it’s all right. We drove each other mad anyway, and all we did was live together for a year and make a few botched attempts at being intimate. Better off this way, really.” They just think you’re saying that to put on a brave face, so I’ve stopped mentioning it, unless it’s to try making someone feel better about their own love life. I’ve found that there isn’t anything quite so distressing to the romantic heart as a failed marriage, and by association a failed engagement, so most people find it reassuring to realize they haven’t yet hit that legendary low.

I can promise that it’s really all right. Like I said, Anushka and I are still close, just not physically, in all the senses of the word. Just think of how much worse it would be if we had actually gotten married, only to discover how horrendously incompatible we are. No, I prefer to think of it practically.

Whoever you are, you must find me horrible. It isn’t that I don’t have romantic aspirations. It’s simply that they’ve never been very high on my list of priorities. They’re more the kind of thing for the It Would Be Nice list, the window dressing to a life.

So I don’t exactly go out looking for the romance of a lifetime, but that does not mean that I am completely immune to the charms of the occasional passerby. I’ve even been on a few dates since Anushka, if you can believe that. What would an introverted professor like me have to bring to a date? Honestly, I’ve been wondering that myself.

If you’re curious about the dates, none of them ever went past the second. A mutual decision on every occasion, before you give me the look reserved for the formerly engaged. I think I tend to talk too much about work with people I don’t know well. Well, what else does one talk about when one is getting to know another? Hobbies and family? That would be novels and oh, I suppose I’ve forgotten to call Mum again. Not exactly the most riveting stuff.

This must all make me sound frightfully dull. That’s what Charlotte used to call me when we were children. Imagine your eight-year-old sister declaring, “You are so frightfully dull, Maddy!” just because you’d really rather read or practice the piano than play out in the yard. I suppose some people are simply born dull. If that is to be my station in life, then so be it. I’ll be satisfied if fading into the background helps others reach the spotlight they crave.

Some people are like bright lights. They stand out to you in a crowd, often for no reason you can immediately discern. Like that elven barista at café Vanellas, Toriv.

I won’t lie, to you or to myself: I’ve been thinking about him. Not with any particular design in mind, just a kind of idle wondering, like you do when someone catches your eye and you begin to ask yourself if you care enough to try to speak to them again. In this case, it was almost certain that I would be speaking to him again, given that I had chosen to make café Vanellas my coffee haunt. It seemed I had already made my decision before I had finished really thinking about it.

So, an afternoon late in February, with the slush alternately melting and solidifying on the streets. I’d discovered it could get pleasantly warm at the little table by the bay window of the café, so I was finishing up my class notes for an upcoming lecture by the light of the winter sun and sipping on a lukewarm London Fog. Toriv was working — he seemed to always be working — and he had smiled brilliantly as he had passed the foamy ceramic mug over to me.

When he came over to collect my empty cup during a lull in orders, he asked, “So, Prof, is that where you’re from?”

I looked up, my vision refocusing from the words on the page to his face. “I’m sorry?”

“London. Are you from there?” He grinned suddenly. “You don’t have to look so startled. I’m just making friendly conversation.”

“I’m not–” I readjusted my expression. Nothing like that dazed academic look to make people wonder if you’re all right in the head. “Yes, I am. Is it that obvious?”

“Really just a lucky guess this time. We don’t see many of your kind here.”

I smiled at that. “Really? I get the impression us British expats are a dime a dozen in Montréal.”

He laughed and looked sheepish. On a face like his, it was almost a kind of a movie star gesture. “Are they? My bad, then. I just haven’t met very many.”

“Well, not many of us drink coffee.”

“Does that make you special?” Toriv said conspiratorially, and walked away to take care of my used mug.

Have you ever paused just to watch someone walking? I’m a little embarrassed to say I did at that very moment, but well, even stuffy old teachers have urges sometimes.