Monoceros. Suzette Mayr

he read Sounder when he was eleven.

      Max about to yank open the front door.

      — Wait, says Walter. — Where’s my goodbye kiss?

      Max purses his lips, his arms crossed. Leans forward and pecks Walter on the mouth.

      — That’s right, says Walter.

      — Doesn’t fix the goddamn table, spits Max, furiously shooting back the lock on the door.

      — Oh bugger off, says Walter. Max pounds his feet into the snow.

      — You bugger off.

      Max violently brushes snow off the car windshield, the hood.

      — No, you bugger off, whispers Walter, stepping through the front gate and out onto the slushy sidewalk.

      That Monday morning before all the bad things happened. A normal Monday. Monday. Monday. Monday.

      Monday, Walter decides to walk to work instead of taking the bus while the diapered and swaddled giant squalling baby Sir Max, His Royal Highness, the Sulking King of Coffee Tables, who as principal of the school and so technically Walter’s boss, drives away and onward to his special, reserved parking space at the school. Excruciatingly early for work. Walter estimates it will take him an hour and forty minutes to walk to school. Two hours maximum.

      Walter forced to run the last fifteen minutes to work, he broke down and jumped on the bus part of the way there, his clunky boots nearly kicking off his feet as he lumbers through snowbanks, leaps icy gutters, his coat flapping wide open, his armpits soggy, his knees creaking, his lungs raw and heaving, socks sliding down inside his boots, his heels naked and rubbing against the felt lining. Bursting through the doors only one minute before the first bell which means he’s twenty-nine minutes late.

      Walter mops and blots himself down in the bathroom with paper towels as best he can, his shirt drenched with sweat; ten minutes later, sauntering casually, his lungs still smouldering, to the main office to refill his coffee cup, The Pride and the Joy under his arm, when Joy the secretary says, — The Pride and the Joy? No no, I said The Pride of Provence! It’s a book about a man from Ontario who decides to renovate his country house in Provence. Look at this picture I took of my husband and son when we did a bus tour of Provence. More like an eating tour!

      Walter crinkles his lips, — That’s awesome! he says, tucking The Pride and the Joy behind his back. His chest pings. His book a different book entirely.

      She flips through her little plastic book of pictures twice, so he won’t miss the white canvas cap her husband is wearing, how tanned she is in her striped tube top, camera case slung over her shoulder, an irritating Frenchman who pops his head into the picture at the last second. Her son’s round face and barbed wire teeth blocking the view of a stone church, the outline of a quaint bakery window neatly arranged with iced pastries and loaves of bread. Walter gazes at the pictures, gazes at the bobby pins criss-crossed on the back of Joy’s head from where he is hunched over her shoulder for her exciting pictures.

      — How wonderful! he says. — Awesome!

      He grins when she swivels in her chair to watch the delight on his face. He’s read the completely wrong book — a dreadfully wrong book, a sentimental, gloopy, ridiculously happy-ending gay love story that he read for twelve hours straight on the weekend while Max was out, and which made him bawl.

      — You should go to France! exclaims Joy. — You can borrow our Michelin guide. And the French women are beautiful. Beautiful! Very stylish. Find yourself a girlfriend in no time. In fact, I have a girlfriend in my book club, Yolanda, recently divorced…

      — Getting too old for that kind of nonsense, Walter grins. He grips the wrong book, tucked even more firmly, behind his back. She’s new, been working here for less than a year. He’s a fat black man in his fifties, an old bachelor, who eats alone in his guidance counsellor office every lunch hour. Doesn’t she know to leave him alone?

      He points at a picture of her son doing a grinning handstand in a fountain to distract her from Yolanda, from the book burning his hand. His spilling desire, his longing to talk about The Pride and the Joy with someone, anyone, in this relentless place, who might understand just one word. Max so absorbed in the damn coffee table, he refused to listen when Walter tried to tell him about the book this weekend. On the way back to his office, Walter grasps the book, title in, against his chest, its pages slippery with inadvertent radioactivity.

      Walter puffs into his office, then realizes he forgot his coffee cup in the main office. He opens the Tupperware container on his desk, a jumble of carrots, celery pieces and cherry tomatoes. He pops a tomato into his mouth and bites on it while he scrolls his emails, flips through his appointment book, scratches his beard hard all over, beard dandruff flakes fluttering, then remembers with a start that graduation is in less than four months. He fritters the morning away printing up Grade 12 transcripts and trying to come up with a more time-efficient plan for the graduation ceremony.

      After a lunch spent eating an egg salad sandwich from the machine in the cafeteria and looking out his office window at a snowy honeysuckle hedge, he meets with two students, Laura Giardini at 2:30 p.m. who wants to argue about her aptitude test, — I don’t want to be a hairdresser, I want to be a lawyer, why doesn’t the test show that I should be a lawyer? Can I take it again? How many times?

      Josh Gatchalian at 3:00 p.m. who doesn’t want to talk about anything, — My mom told me to come, he says. — Nope, don’t know why I’m here. So what if I’m failing band, I never wanted to play the trombone anyway, only fags get good grades in band, Mr. Boyle.

      Only a half an hour left in this Monday. Walter opens files on both Laura Giardini and Josh Gatchalian, adds their file icon selves to his list, types in Laura’s history from her pink Grade 10 sheet, figures out Josh’s aptitude test results say he’s suitable for the police or law enforcement or party planning. Walter leaves a voice mail on Josh’s parents’ phones, — I think it would help Josh if we all had a meeting to talk about why playing the trombone is vital. Okay. Awesome. Hope you have a great evening!

      Sequestered in his office, he opens his Tupperware again, a piece of carrot crunched in half when he picks up the ringing phone and Max is calling him from down the hall, — Mr. Boyle. Walter, I need to speak with you immediately. I need you.

      A piece of carrot half-bitten, half-chewed, the secret thrill he gets when he has to interact with his boyfriend at work. Their dangerous, exciting secret.

      Thirty seconds later, his hand on the principal’s doorknob.

      The door opening, the vice-principals Morty and Gladys standing at attention on either side of the principal, a carved wooden crucifix hanging on the wall behind his head. Their silence cool metal. Walter’s heart falters.

      Walter’s Monday should have been the tedious photocopy of every other Monday, but Max the principal tents his pale fingers and breaks open the rotting egg of Patrick Furey’s suicide to him and the two vice-principals, turning this Monday into a Monday of unique suffering.

      — A student in our school has made the disastrous decision to end his life, Max says, his voice quavering. — I have already begun taking the appropriate measures.

      It’s okay to cry, Maxie, Walter wants to say. You blubber away. — I’ll draft a memo for the teachers and staff, Walter says instead.

      — And put in your memo, says Max, — that staff and teachers are forbidden to discuss the death with the students until I have all the facts. We’ll let the students know on Wednesday.

      — In my position as head guidance counsellor I have to ask if you really think that’s a good idea, Max, says Walter. — Better to give them the facts as we know them as soon as possible because the students will figure it out themselves but they’ll figure it out all wrong. We know enough already about how he died, don’t we? Today’s Monday. By tomorrow afternoon the rumours will be out of control. Better