She pulled on the door to the auto shop from the outside, and he pulled from the inside. Thus demonstrating the law of reality that says when two or more people do exactly the same thing, it has no effect whatsoever on the world at large.

“Dylan?” she then said through the glass. Amazed.

“Rev?” he said back. Equally amazed.

They tried again. As people who want to change the world at large do. Only this time they both pushed. Demonstrating exactly the kind of teamwork they’d perfected back in teacher’s college. They eventually coordinated their actions and were face to face.

She was so not a hugger and he just kind of was, so you know how that part went.

“Well,” she said. And then didn’t say anything else.

So that hadn’t changed, he thought. Happily, he realized. Her capacity for small talk had always approached nonexistent.

“What are you doing here?” she said next. Okay, that sounded wrong, she thought, fully aware of her arrested social development, but not really giving a damn.

She took in the well-worn jeans, the lime green t-shirt, and the second-hand suit coat he managed to make so very his own. Still loose and lean. The pink rat’s tail was gone though.

“I thought you were teaching up in, what was it – Nelson?”

“Yeah…”

“You were all excited about it. Small community, informal school. I was a bit surprised, actually. Thought you’d go for the action of some inner city school.”

“Yeah, well, that must’ve been Monday.”

She waited.

“Tuesday I joined a bunch of drunken Indians,” he smiled cheerfully, the Irish lilt still in his voice, “and we formed a band.”

She broke into a grin. Typical Dylan, really.

“What’d you call yourselves?”

“A Bunch of Drunken Indians.”

She burst out laughing.

“I didn’t know you played an instrument,” she said in the ensuing silence.

He hesitated. She waited again, sure it would be good.

“Tambourine.”

This time she snort-laughed.

“Still haven’t lost the laugh, I see.” He started giggling then.

“Nor you.”

They stood there grinning at each other. And then just sort of picked up where they’d left off some twenty years ago.

“Hang on – ” Rev went to the counter, paid for her new brakes, then joined Dylan standing outside.

He’d gotten a couple cans from the nearby vending machine and handed her one.

“Thanks,” she said. She noticed then the knapsack slung over his shoulder, a larger bag at his feet. “So. You need a ride?”

He looked around, as if he were considering what to do next with his life. “Okay,” he said.

She led the way to her car. It was a black Saturn, polka-dotted with –

He studied it. “What in god’s name did you do – ” he walked around it, “to piss off an armada of pigeons?”

“It’s globs of pine tar.”

“Oh.” He leaned forward to take a better look. “So it is. Doesn’t this place clean your car before they give it back?”

“I asked them not to.”

“Right. And you did that because…”

“It’s my anti-theft device.”

“Ah.” He considered that. “Good idea.”

She unlocked the back door for him to throw his bags in. “Besides, in the summer, it’s all sticky and a real bitch to get off. Better to do it in the winter when it gets all hard and you can just flick it off.”

He looked at her expectantly.

“I’m not standing in twenty-below to clean my car,” she said. But what she meant was, I’m not an idiot.

“Cars are not meant to be clean,” she continued. “They stay outside all the time. Where it’s dirty. Where there’s gravel roads. And mud puddles. Which they go right through without a moment’s hesitation. Most of the time.”

She got in and reached over to unlock the passenger door. “You’re going to want me to cut my grass and sweep my driveway next.”

“You have grass and a driveway?” He got in.

“Well, not exactly. But if I did.” She pulled out of the lot and onto the highway.

“So what, exactly, do you have?”

She looked over and just – beamed. “A cabin on a lake in a forest.”

“No,” he said. “What you always wanted!” He smiled broadly, happy for her.

She nodded. “My dream come true. Been there for over ten years now. And you?”

“I’m sort of between dreams.”

“But what about – ”

“It’s in storage.”

“What – your dreams?” She grinned.

“No, my stuff.” He grinned back.

“You got stuff?”

“Everybody’s got stuff.”

“My god, last time I saw you,” she glanced over and thought back, “you were – blurry.”

“That’s because we were drinking tequila under the table.” He took a slug of his pop.

“Riiiight,” she drew the word out, remembering. The cafeteria had been pathetically made over for a graduation party of all the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed new teachers. He was a History and Psych major, she a Philosophy and Lit major. He was going to make history a hands-on course, an experience! His students would not fail to learn from the past! They would not be compelled to repeat it! And she was going to make philosophy not just a new course, for high school, but a mandatory one. What could be more important than learning how to think? Logically, critically. And what could be more relevant than learning how to figure out right and wrong? They were both taking ‘Society, Challenge, and Change’ as one of their teaching subjects. And they couldn’t wait to get into the classroom.

“Did you ever finish your History thesis?” she asked. “Didn’t you get into the B.Ed. program on the condition that you finish your Honour’s thesis and get your B.A.?”

“And I got the Nelson job on the condition that I get the B.Ed.,” he said proudly.

“Don’t tell me,” she said. “You never finished it.” She glanced over. Then waited.

“I forgot what it was about.”

She snort-laughed again. He giggled.

They’d left the town and were on an empty stretch of highway, nothing but forest and rock.

“And what about the getting married and having kids thing? I remember you were so in love with this girl….” Rev thought back. “Wasn’t she Japanese? That’s right, you were learning to speak Japanese! And you insisted on being faithful…” she trailed off, eyes on the road ahead.

He looked over and smiled, then looked back out the window.

“Yeah, well. She wanted to move to Japan.”

“And you wanted to move to Manitoba.”

“Actually, I went to Japan. About a year or so later.”

“And?”

“Turns out I hadn’t learned to speak Japanese.”

She glanced over again.

“Hm. And there’s been no one else?”

“Oh there was, from time to time. But women have these – ” he gestured vaguely, “expectations – ”

“What, that you have a steady job and support them?”

“Yes!”

“And – ”

“And I much prefer unsteady jobs.”

She grinned.

“And you?” he asked. “You weren’t going to get married and have kids.” He had a horrible thought. “You didn’t, did you?” He looked over in alarm.

“No,” she said. With ‘absolutely not’ in her tone. “Men have these – ” she gestured vaguely, “expectations – ”

“What, that they’d have a steady job and support you?”

“Yes!”

“And – ”

“And I could never be a kept woman.”

“No. You have trouble enough being a woman,” he grinned out the window.

“What’s that supposed – well, yeah,” she conceded cheerfully. “Remember – ”

“Remember – ” he said at the same time. They grinned at each other. “Professor Bixby’s report, right?” Dylan pursed his lips. “‘Miss Reveille needs to work on her professional appearance. A bit of make-up and some jewelry would help.’”

“I still can’t believe he said that,” she said.

“Hey, I offered to lend you my earring – ”

She looked over. “You’ve stopped wearing it.”

“Yeah, well, for a while there it sort of got appropriated as a symbol – and now – ”

“Things don’t mean what they used to,” she said.

He nodded.

“Though I have to say,” she continued after a comfortable bit of silence, “I look around and all the women my age have these nice homes, and they drive those expensive stupid mini-van things, which they keep in a garage, and they have furniture – ”

“You don’t have furniture?”

“I have stuff that functions as furniture.”

“Well then,” he said conclusively.

“Okay, yeah, but, what gets me is they all act so – entitled. And I just want to shake them and say hey, if it weren’t for your husband, you wouldn’t have any of this!” She stopped talking for a moment as she changed lanes to pass an expensive stupid mini-van thing. “I hate these things,” she muttered. “Can’t see around them to the road ahead. It’s like driving behind a truck.” She zipped back out of the oncoming lane, then continued. “And yet I don’t know where I went wrong. Because if I haven’t been home raising kids for twenty years, I should be the man. I mean I should be able to afford that nice house, that garage – ”

“Not that you’d want a garage.”

“No, but.”

“Or real furniture.”

“Well – ” she wasn’t so sure about that. “But how do they do it? How is it that all these men have all that stuff and money left over to totally support someone else? I’ve been barely able to support myself.”

“What do you mean? All these years I’ve been taking comfort in the knowledge that at least one of us – you haven’t been teaching? All these years? You never answered my letter.”

“You sent a letter?”

“Yeah, telling you about the band.”

“I never got it. ‘Course I moved a lot the first few years – well, until the cabin, actually. I thought maybe you’d written – so I sent another letter.”

“I only got the first one. ‘Course we went on tour – ”

She looked at him.

“What?”

“You’re telling me there are people who wanted to hear A Bunch of Drunken Indians?”

“Well, when you put it that way – ” he paused. “But it must have happened. Otherwise – never mind.”

She glanced over, grinned again, then resumed her update. “I did get a teaching job. It was just part-time though. But that was exactly what I wanted. Because, as you recall, I was working on my first novel. I was going to be a writer,” she said with mock enthusiasm. Mocking enthusiasm. “Yes I was.”

“What happened?”

“Well you know what it was like back then. We were lucky if we got any kind of teaching job. Unless we wanted to teach English overseas. End of my first year, I was declared redundant.”

“There were two of you?” He giggled. Then said, “I meant what happened to the ‘going to be a writer’ part.”

“Oh, I am a writer.”

He waited.

“I write the questions that go on the LSAT.”

“You became a lawyer?”

“No, I don’t know anything about the law. Well, I do, but – ”

“Ah-hah! I thought so!” He seemed so – pleased. “Misdemeanour?”

“Yeah – how did – ” She glanced in the rear-view mirror before making a lane change to pass another stupid mini-van thing.

“The principal – ” she sighed as she started the explanation. “I’d become a sub and after a few months of a day here and there, I got a long-term placement at one school – the principal caught me teaching my grade ten boys how to put on a condom.”

“All of them at once?”

“Yes – no!” She reached over and cuffed him one. “It was a late and lazy Friday afternoon, and some of them were hubba-hubba-ing about their hot dates for the weekend, and I said something like ‘You guys do know how to use a condom, right? ‘Cuz if you put it on wrong, it’ll bust, and you’ll end up a daddy.’”

“Bet that got their attention.”

“It did indeed.”

“So the principal laid charges?”

“I was ‘corrupting minors.’”

“Socrates would be proud. Still, it seems a bit over-reacting.”

“Well – ”

“It wasn’t the first time.” He waited.

“I refused to stand for the anthem,” she said. “Every goddamned morning they wanted us to proclaim our allegiance. You’d think we were in the Soviet Union. Or the States. ‘Nationalism is – ”

“ – an infantile disease,’” he finished the quote. “And the next time?”

“Well, the long-term placement got turned into a short-term placement – ”

“Isn’t it usually the other way around?”

“Smart ass. At the next school,” she continued then, “I started a discussion club. I chose abortion as the opening topic.”

“Well, you can’t do that at St. Mary’s of the Eternally Blessed Virgin Who Never Goes To First Base Not Even If She Really Really Wants To. Especially If She Really Really Wants To – ” he stopped then.

She looked over at him with inquiring eyebrows, but he didn’t elaborate. Didn’t really need to.

“It was a public school,” she said. “A regular public high school. Next time, it was something else. I can’t remember.”

“Yes you can.”

“Yes I can. The next time – oh it doesn’t matter. The next time, when I – ” she paused to find the right word, “left, I offered to sponsor an annual Award for Independent Thought. To be given each year to a graduating student chosen by the teaching staff. Each May, I’d send a book prize for the award. They’d give it out at the graduation ceremony in June.”

“And?”

“The Awards Committee refused my offer. They said it would be too complicated to administer.”

“Ah, well, they’re administrators. The May-June thing probably stumped them.”

“So if you aren’t a lawyer,” he said after a while, “how can you write the questions that go on the LSAT?”

“I write the questions for the critical reasoning part. You know, ‘If X, Y, and Z are true, what must also be true?’ or ‘Which of the following conclusions can be drawn from the information provided above?’”

“Multiple-choice questions? I love multiple-choice questions! No, wait a minute. I hate multiple-choice questions!”

“And they certainly don’t all go on the LSAT. I send in my quota per month, they go through first review, second review, sensitivity review, edit, penultimate review, re-edit, and ultimate review. If the question makes it that far, if the on-site team is convinced the question would stand up in a court of law – ”

“You have to defend your work in a court of law?”

“Well, it turns out the LSAT test-takers are a litigious bunch. Go figure.”

He grinned.

She passed a transport truck on an uphill. “But no, not me. The onsite-staff. That’s why they’re so picky about accepting questions. They have to be able to say, for example, that in item 34, the question itself is perfectly clear and totally unambiguous, there’s no way it could be justifiably interpreted to mean anything other than what it means, and that option (B), for example, is absolutely and demonstrably correct, no ifs, ands, or buts about it, and each of the other options is just as demonstrably incorrect.’”

“That sounds – exhausting.”

“Yeah.”

“But you like it.”

“I do,” she looked over and smiled. “It makes my neurons sing.”

“Ah, well, neurons singing, that’s always a good thing.”

“And when they buy a question, I get paid well. ‘Course when they don’t – ”

“So you have a flexible income.”

“Exactly. But it’s a job I can do whenever I want and wherever I want. And I don’t have to deal with people.”

“Because you have no people skills.”

“I do not,” she agreed.

“Which is why you went into teaching,” he grinned.

“Okay,” she looked over at him, “that was a wrong turn. I so wanted to make a difference, you know? But I didn’t. I couldn’t. And I figured that out,” she said, proudly. “After ten years.”

“So whatever happened to – ten years?” He put his hand on the dashboard as if to absorb an impact.

“That’s how long it took, remember? For real jobs to come around again. The ones with benefits and a pension plan. But, since I wasn’t exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed anymore – ”

“No, I imagine by that point you were walking into the schools with a loaded rifle, taking aim at the principal, and screaming ‘Leave the kids alone!’” He tilted his can and finished it.

“How did you know?” she dead-panned.

Pop sprayed out his nose.

“So when I got out of prison that time – ”

He started choking, so she gave him a moment to recover.

“ – I was de-certified.”

“I can see how walking into the classroom with a loaded rifle might have that consequence.”

“Well I just got so tired of the – resistance. Schools are such hostile environments,” she added.

He raised his eyebrows at the irony.

“That explains it,” he said then.

“What.”

“Well, you’re still angry.”

She flared at him.

“Just a little,” he pulled back as his eyebrows got singed.

“’Course I’m angry. Aren’t you?” She looked over at him. “And if not, why not? What happened to you? I mean – after Japan…” she tried to cue him.

He shrugged. “I wasn’t as persistent as you. I didn’t try as hard.” He looked out the window. “I’m not entitled to be angry.”

“Hm,” she nodded thoughtfully. “We’ll come back to that.”

He grinned.

“So whatever happened to the novel,” he said after a bit. “Did you finish it?”

“I did. Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman. It’s in my desk drawer. Unpublished, unknown, unread.”

“How – appropriate.”

“Isn’t it just.”

“Couldn’t get a publisher?”

She snorted. “Twenty years and I still can’t get an agent.”

“Um, you ever think it just might not be very good?” he said a little delicately.

“Of course. But apparently that’s not an obstacle to getting something published.”

“Good point.” He looked out the window again.

“So what about you,” she asked again. “Are you still playing,” she couldn't keep a straight face, “the tambourine?”

“No, alas, my tambourine days are over.”

She waited.

“Carpal tunnel syndrome.”

She burst out laughing, and a snort escaped.

“Well,” he resumed, “I too have a flexible income.”

“Doing?”

“Oh, this and that. And a good deal more of this than that. For a while I was a dj at a radio station.”

“Oh yeah? That must’ve been cool.”

“It was. I did social commentary. I’d play ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ followed by ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want.’ Or the Carpenters’ ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ followed by Deana Carter’s ‘Did I Shave My Legs For This’ followed by Neville’s ‘Everybody Plays the Fool.’ Then one day, I played ‘I’ll Be There,’ ‘I Am Here,’ and ‘Here I Am,’ followed by ‘What Am I Doing Here?’ – and – it was all just so confusing.” He paused.

“And so then you were not there?” Rev said helpfully.

“And so then I was not there. At the moment, I’m a freelance reporter.”

“Yeah? How did that come about?”

“Well I started in Obits. ‘John Smith led an unbelievably boring life. And now it’s over.’ They saw right away I had a gift.”

“So they fired you.”

He nodded. “Thus I became a freelance reporter.”

“Ah. Though I was after an explanation more for the reporter part than the freelance part.”

“Ah. Well, I wrote an article about something, and it got published. And I got paid. So I wrote another article. About something else,” he clarified, “and it got published as well. And I got paid again. So I wrote – ”

“Got it. It was that easy to get published, eh?” There was, of course, a tinge of sour envy in her voice.

He looked over, regretting immediately his insensitivity. “Well, remember that we established the irrelevance of quality.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She was not convinced. Either that or she was convinced.

“So what do you report on?”

“Oh, this and that.”

“And a good deal more of this than that, I’ll wager.”

He grinned over at her.