Evan stood at the podium at the centre of the courtroom. His shyster lawyer was at a table with other lawyers, sorting files that corresponded to the rows of bored, detached, anxious, perplexed men and women behind him, waiting for their few seconds in the judicial spotlight. The prosecutors were all women in their 30s in black pant suits, the lawyers were all men in their 50s in good black suits and ties and white shirts. Some in judicial robes looking like, well, over-the-hill choirboys. The phalanx of accused behind him dressed in Walmart best, most of the guys in oversized running shoes, most of them younger than him, all waiting for the powers arrayed before them to decide their fates. In front of him were clerks and bailiffs and guards and police with good-sized handguns on their belts.

This was definitely Annie’s greatest psychodrama, he said to himself, and smiled.

“Do you find this amusing?” the judge was staring at him, full of scorn, the state in all its fury and implied power. Actually, Evan almost admitted he found it all pretty whack. “If you find this amusing perhaps your attorney can take you outside and explain how serious the charges are.”

“Oh no, your honour,” Evan said, face straight. “I realize the enormity of the charges against me and I can assure your honour that I take this with the utmost seriousness.”

“Is your client ready to plead?” the judge asked Evan’s shyster, who so far had demanded $4,000 and had done nothing but show up and tell Evan not to worry. Repeatedly.

“I plead not guilty, your honour,” Evan said. His bail conditions were read to him by the prosecutor. He was not allowed within 200 metres of his home or his office.

“My hairdresser is next door,” Evan said. “What do I do for a haircut?”

The prosecutor smiled, the judge slammed his gavel.

“I won’t warn you again,” he told Evan. Evan was free for now, free from the weight of the state that Annie had enlisted to ensure control for as long as she could. It was a coup de grace.

Friends offered money, housing, support, validation. Annie had taken control of everything, a control freak’s wet dream. She had the house, everything he owned, the business, the files, his office. True to form, discussions with his lawyer and a mediator she found — they were not allowed to contact each other — were a waste of time. She would turn over no files, no paperwork, no possessions. She had taken control of his entire life. The fact that half the business and half the house were his mattered not a whit. She was punishing him.

“She’s a vindictive bitch,” said the therapist.

He was allowed with a police escort to take a suitcase and Fritz the cat as Annie watched from between two cops is case he tried to strangle her. He was sure she was enjoying this. He was facing felony assault charges. He had a criminal lawyer, a family lawyer, not a cent and no place to live.

A friend loaned him his condo while he wintered in Turkey. Fritz was not happy but there was little he could do. Evan had nothing of what he needed, was suffering a kind of post traumatic stress syndrome.

In his last attempt at communications he told Annie he needed his office supplies and printer.

“No, you don’t,” she said.

He couldn’t eat, he couldn’t sleep. Alcohol was a shortterm balm. He had panic attacks, his heart would pound. Fritz did not have his front stoop from which to watch the world go by, to enjoy the admiration of passersby and needed to cleave to him as an infant might, except he suddenly had no patience for the cat. Fritz complained often and would stare at him from his perch on an armchair or from the floor, waiting for something to change. His coat was matted, his great white bib unattended. His grooming tools, brushes and combs, had been left behind with everything else. The big blonde cat was not happy, but why should he be different?

“I have my own cross to bear and your 18 pounds of fur will have to carry some of the weight,” he told him one night. But he still came out to listen when he played guitar and sang, though music was tough going. There were five shows lined up and the thought of performing panicked him. But it saved him in more ways than one.

They were sitting in Stan’s living room, staring at the fire. The sofas were soft and plush and deep. Outside, winter — in all its northern fury, white and cold and windy — howled. The pine trees were coated in thick white scarves, their branches leaning and heavy. Inside, life was a dream. Evan was spending some time here in a room in a basement, some time in a room at Franklin’s in the city. He was living out of garbage bags and suitcases, his clothes balled and knotted by Annie at high tide. Evan wasn’t focusing too well. Conversations were hard to follow. He couldn’t concentrate, wasn’t sure he wanted to. He was stewing in his pain.

“You know Evan, you don’t think so and you might not want to hear it, but in a year or two or three, whatever, you’ll take a deep breath and it will be over, she’ll be gone, you’ll be free and life will be good. You’ll see. It’s like when you have a flu. One day you wake up and suddenly you feel normal. You’re back.”

“Drinking water and taking Tylenol doesn’t seem to do much with this strain of flu,” Evan said.

“No, now only booze does it.” Except it didn’t.

The doomsday clock was getting closer to midnight, he knew it and if she didn’t, she was lying to herself. He was desperately trying to turn back the hands.

“You’re my number one priority,” she said. “You’re the most important thing in my life.”

“Annie, I don’t have to be the most important thing in your life,” he said. “So don’t bullshit me.”

A few weeks before the roof collapsed on their house of cards he began to take stock of what kind of life they really had. He had suggested they save coins in a jar for a cherished trip to Italy, maybe it would take two or three years, but they could do it. She said she owed $20,000 in taxes and couldn’t go anywhere.

He asked her how she saw her life in a few years. What she saw for the future for her, for them. They were drinking white wine in front of the fire. A curry was simmering. Did she see herself raising chickens, writing more books, teaching, retiring somewhere warm? He was trying to get a fix on how she wanted to age, maybe get her mind off the obsessive worry of how they were to deal with the house she finally realized they had to sell. He had paid cash for the renovations but she had taken a second mortgage and could not pay it. She became intimidated, irritated.

“The only thing I can think about right now is selling the house,” she said. “I can’t see anything beyond that.” In her latest all-consuming obsession, he was going to screw her somehow — intrinsic in her belief system was that men took financial advantage of women — because legally he owned half the house. She had sold it to him to secure a better mortgage rate. She didn’t earn enough to carry the mortgage herself. To add to money worries and work worries was the “he’s going to screw me on the house” worry.

“We have to get through this,” she said over and over again.

Evan was worried about getting to Spain and writing the book. Annie was preoccupied with finding a way to wrest the house from him. She knew their relationship was on the ropes and protecting the house was more important than protecting the relationship.

He didn’t see a problem. They sell the house, sit down, do the numbers and come up with a reasonable division of the profits. He was naïve. The more she ratcheted up the obsession over the house and what percentage, if any, he owned of it, the farther away he drifted.

“Why did I think it’s my role to save her, to indulge her?” he asked his friend Robert. Robert was in Ottawa and Evan was enjoying the solitude of his empty mansion in the hills outside Morin Heights. He could see the steam rising from the hot tub on the deck and figured he would immerse himself when they were through, watch the stars, try and shut his mind down. He was away from her but couldn’t get away from her. They were talking on Face Time, Evan wondering why he always looked like hell on the little iPhone, as if he was staring at a fun house mirror. “I don’t think she’s ever going to change, so why do I bother?”

“You know why?” Robert said. “‘Cause you’re a fucking idiot. You and her make a good pair, you’re both fucking crazy.”

“Thanks, Bob, makes me feel a whole lot better.”

“You’ve been bitching about her for too fucking long, man. No one knows why you stay with her. She’s certifiable. Everyone knows that but you.”

Evan was finding the phone’s reflection of his face even more distorted than usual.

“You know what you got to do,” Robert said. “I don’t want to listen to this anymore.”

“And what am I supposed to do? Where would you suggest I live and on what? It’s easy to say ‘leave.’ Leave to where? And live on what? Newspaper business is in the toilet, music business is in the toilet, book publishing is in the toilet. Everything I have done all my life is in shambles. I write stories and make less than I did 25 years ago. If I’m lucky I make $200 for a fucking show. The grants for the books we do barely cover expenses. And I leave her …”

“Well, see?” Robert said. “You get away from her you don’t have to worry about the lousy Canada Council grants.”

“Bob, you’re not fucking helping. Every cent I have is in that house and, if I tell her I’m leaving, she’ll go fucking crazy again.”

“So how is that different than what you’re living with now? You’ve always made a living, you always will. You need a place to stay, come live here. You got lots of places to stay. You keep thinking you can fix her or she’ll change, Crazies don’t change, they only get crazier. She’s not doing anything to get better. And you know what? You’re making her crazier, it’s like enabling a drug addict. ‘Oh, I’m sorry Annie, you’re a fucking lunatic, here, take another swing at me, feel better? Or would you rather just make me crazy drip by drip, like Chinese water torture?’”

“I’m sick of leaving, of starting over, of giving up, of …”

“You’re afraid of being alone,” Robert said. “So you’re letting her slice and dice you, trying to be noble in the process. Sacrificing yourself for her. For what? Give up, you’re not going to save her. You got to save yourself. It’s great to be a romantic when you’re writing songs, not when she’s kicking you in the head. She’s turned you into a fucking masochist. Go pack your fucking bags and then call me.” The line went dead.

He sat in the hot tub, staring at the spray of stars over his head, thinking of the bottle of scotch waiting inside.

“And if I didn’t let her blame her parents for the rest of her life, why should I allow myself that luxury?” he asked the Little Dipper hanging over his head. “Maybe I don’t. I like life, I like myself. I do. Better not let Annie hear that. I battle vice and addiction and lust along with the squash ball and the weight room and the water in the lake and the barbecue and the computer and the guitar. I fret over what I write and how I sing and what performance will come next. I sometimes tear at my cuticles and sometimes over-indulge my affection for Mr. Grant. She hit me and kicked me and I never hit her back and never threatened to. I know who I am.”

But no one was listening, not even him.

He ran into Mickey Roberts in his favourite café. As always they chatted. After all, it had been, what? More than 30 years at least he’d been watching him play. But, in fact, they knew each other not at all. They talked about gigs.

“I heard your CD, Janet has a copy,” Mickey said. “Some good songs. Did you just wake up one morning and decide I’ll be John Prine today?”

People had been continually comparing him to John Prine, though he was embarrassed to admit he had never listened to Prine. People compared him to a lot of people, some he knew, some he didn’t. He figured it was a good thing.

“Just an unfortunate alignment of the moon and stars,” Evan said. “It’s been weird.”

“Songs are good. Janet says she listens to it over and over. That’s where they say the work is. Write your own stuff, you’re way ahead.”

Evan thought about it for a minute then popped the question.

“I got a gig at the Petit Campus next month, opening for some guy I never heard of. He’s got a band. I could do it myself but I’d like to try it with a band. There’s not a lot of money but …”

“Money? What’s that? Musicians live on air and the groove. It’s the 21st century, we don’t need money.”

“It’s one 45-minute set. Maybe ten songs. You interested?”

“Well, you know we got three criteria we use to decide if we’ll do a gig. If we get two out of three, we’re in. The music, the people and the money. You got two out of three so I can speak to Jimmy and John, see if they’re free. As far as I know we got nothing next month. Send me the date and MP3s of the songs … we’ll try and do it. You got a place to rehearse?”

Evan was suddenly tongue tied. He was going to play with Mickey Roberts and the band. Nah. “Uhm, yeah, I guess. My house.”

“Okay, man, send me the shit and we’ll set up something.”

“You sure?”

“If I don’t get hit by a truck, I can swing it. Here’s my e-mail.”

He scribbled something on a napkin, left Evan at the table in a daze. Nothing made sense anymore. What the fuck was he doing playing with Mickey Roberts? And how the hell would Annie deal with an invasion of a band? There would be hell to pay. She’d have to deal with it. He was drawing a line in the carpet. Fuck her.

“She’s a whole new woman,” he told the therapist. “Barely recognize her.”

He had sat down with Annie before Barcelona and told her he wasn’t going. He had been to Spain a couple of times to research the book and he knew what to expect. If he said let’s walk, she’s insist they take a cab; if he wanted a cab, she’d insist they walk. There was no thought too small, no idea too big that didn’t require contradiction and argument. The farther from the comfort and safety of her desk and computer screen they roamed, the more control she needed. Being away terrified her and control of everything became the only coping device. That, and of course cheap Spanish wine.

“I have no more patience for the inevitable shit,” he told her. “I’m staying home.”

“What do you mean?” She was stunned, frightened. “You have to come. It’s our book.”

“That’s the problem, it’s our book but you make sure it’s not. I’ve been here before. Once we get there, you’ll freak out, you’ll be abusive, you’ll contradict everything I say, you’ll throw tantrums, you’ll interrupt me when I talk and will refuse to do anything I suggest. I’m staying home.”

“I want you to co-write it, I want you there,” she said. “I don’t want to do this alone.”

“And I don’t want to be your punching bag.”

The therapist suggested they work out a behaviour agreement, rules of engagement designed to ensure civility. It was common sense to Evan, basically treat each other with respect. When that stopped, work stopped. Differences had to be negotiated. There was to be no abuse.

Evan put the list on the table.

“I’ll go to Spain if you agree to follow this list, a kind of rules of decorum,” he said, as Annie scanned it. “And we get a spare room in whatever apartment we rent so I have a place to escape to when you go nuts.”

“I’m not going to go nuts,” she said. “I promise.”

“Annie, if you pull any of the usual shit, the constant contradiction, interrupting me when I speak, refusing to listen to anything I say, temper tantrums, hysterics, the usual punching and kicking, I’m getting on the next plane. I promise. I will not take any more shit from you.”

“It’ll be great, we’ll have a great time, you’ll see,” she said. Annie was beaming, pumped. She hugged him. “I love you.”

He hugged her back but he didn’t believe her for a minute.

She remained calm for the entire 10 days. No hysteria, no fights. Discussion and compromise had reigned with only a whiff of anxiety. Sometimes he could see her biting her lip, doing her best to rein in the terror that came with the luggage.

They had a good time, he indulged her cravings for wine and austerity, they ate pizza and salads, none of that expensive paella — “it’s expensive and we can’t eat all that. It’s going to go to waste” — and came back friends. The transformation was stunning. Suspicion remained but he was hopeful. They had worked together the way he had always hoped they could.

“She’s fine for now,” the therapist told him. “But if she doesn’t get help, in another few months, she’ll fall apart again. She can only hold on for so long.”

The clock was ticking. They had a few good months. She compromised, she listened, she was affectionate, she kept asking, “I’m getting better, right? It’s better, isn’t it? I love you. I want to make you happy.”

This was an Annie he hadn’t known before. Somewhere, maybe she meant it. Or maybe it was lip service. Evan wanted to believe, he wanted to love her, to grow old with her. He wanted to believe the therapist’s prognosis was wrong. But, it would’ve taken the credulity of a religious zealot. He had lost the faith.

“Yes, you’re better,” he’d say. “You’re great.” But it may as well have been a Latin liturgy he was mouthing in a grand stone Catholic church. “Body of Christ … body of Christ.”

Two weeks before the rehearsal, he dropped the bombshell. There would be drums and an electric guitar and bass coming into the living room for a few hours in the middle of the afternoon.

She immediately said no, it was knee jerk no, exactly as he expected. There was the expected litany of “I have too much work to do, it will make too much noise, it’s an office …”

“You’re not getting it,” Evan said. “They’re coming. And we’re rehearsing. You can hide in the bedroom, go out for the afternoon, do whatever you have to do, but we’re rehearsing here. It’s my house and I’m playing with these great guys. This is about me. I’m playing my songs and we’re going to rehearse in my house. It’s like a dream for me. I’m doing it. That’s it.”

Annie was screaming at him but Evan turned away and left. “Three o’clock two Wednesdays from today,” he said and closed the door and went for a walk as she continued to yell. “Screw accommodation,” he said, smiling, as he headed up the road for his new comfort food, fries and gravy in the back booth of the corner La Belle Province. Sometimes only fat and salt would do.

He got a cheque for a book he had edited, one of many little jobs he had netted in his scurry to make a buck. He made a happy excursion to his favourite jewellery store to finally buy Annie a proper engagement ring; a peace offering. Yes, she had gone nuts a few days after the engagement party but still wore a shitty ring she had bought herself at a novelty shop. Now Evan figured it was time for a real ring. They were heading back to Spain to do the book and then down the aisle, which aisle he wasn’t sure, but that was the plan.

He was excited at the thought of surprising her with it. He chose a 14-carat white gold ring, worth about $400. It wasn’t a diamond, but she didn’t like diamonds. It was just a simple white gold band.

The only worry was Annie’s odd habit of returning almost everything he bought her. One year it was a winter coat she needed badly. She became apoplectic. “We can’t afford it, you can’t afford, I don’t need it!” She almost ran to the store the moment she opened the box. She did need it and he could afford it but returning gifts or telling him his gifts for others she cared about weren’t the right colour or the right style was almost automatic — she needed to choose everything.

He came home happy though wary and dropped the ring in its box on the kitchen table on the anniversary of her marriage proposal and said: “I know you probably won’t like it, but here.” Not the most romantic of openings but he was gun shy. She opened up the box and said: “What is this? A nun’s ring? What is it made of? Tin? It’s a man’s ring. Where’d you get this?”

Even prepped for Annie’s less than gracious acceptance of presents, this drew blood. He suddenly felt sick.

“It’s gold,” he said. “From the jeweller.”

“It’s ugly. Why would you buy me a ring?”

“It’s an engagement ring. You’re wearing a piece of $35 shit. This is 14-carat gold.”

“It’s not gold,” she said. “It’s tin.”

“It’s white gold.”

“Why would you pick me out a ring? Why can’t I pick out my own ring? Why are you trying to control me?”

This went on for two days. For the first time in the long list of illustrious battles they had waged, he lost his appetite. He ate and puked. His nerves were shot.

Annie decided the best thing was for them to go back to the jewellery store.

“I’ll buy you a ring and exchange this one,” she said. “Then we’ll both have rings.”

Sure, he said, but the air had gone out of the balloon. They went to the store and she picked out rings. He said “yes, dear.” He no longer gave a shit. To get a discount, she marched to the bank machine and retrieved a handful of cash as he waited in the store in a fog, stomach churning. How can buying the woman you love a ring be so fraught with craziness? For the first time in months he wanted to get stoned; his feelings were too intense to grapple with. What the fuck had just happened?

“That’s just neurotic,” the therapist told him a few weeks later. He was still trying to figure out how his gift of gold had turned to rust. “You know what she did? She took the moment away from you and made it her moment. You might have been better off to tell her: ‘No, I don’t want a ring from you now and if you want to exchange the ring I bought you go ahead.’ But you didn’t have to accommodate that. She killed your pleasure and made it her own. Killed your generosity and made it her own.”

Things got worse. The grant for the Spain book was finally approved after three years of working at it, fighting over it and waiting for it. But once it came in Annie decided she was too busy to plan for the trip, the interviews, the subject, the narrative. She started working on other things. This would be her first book in English, he would help with the writing and the idea was to sell it internationally and especially in the huge U.S. market, where no book of hers had ever penetrated. The prospect intimidated her. And when she was intimidated she procrastinated or simply avoided.

“We have to talk about this,” he said. “We have the money, now we have to work on it.”

“We’re just going to wing it, like cinema verité,” she said.

“Annie, you can’t do cinema verité thousands of miles away from home on this kind of budget. We can only be there a month. We have to draw up plans.”

“You’re interfering with my work, you’re trying to kill my career, I have to work on this!” She shifted onto the all-too-familiar tirade. “You have no right to tell me what to do.”

“We’ve invested in three trips to Spain to research this, now you’re saying we’re going to wing it. We’ve spent $30,000. We have to plan.”

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” she yelled. “You’ve never written a book, you don’t know anything about it!”

What she was working on instead was a project they had tried to float the year before without success. A series of Canadian-travel mini books but no distributor was interested and they were turned down for a grant. But a publisher had called her from Vancouver saying he could float it, make it happen, and she abandoned everything they were doing and threw herself into the project. Suddenly they were awash in books about Gander and Flin Flon and the far north and the Bay of Fundy and Annie was on the phone with this guy six times a day and researching Canada’s lobster fleets and polar bears. She went into a manic phase where Spain was forgotten, and left to Evan.

Annie was jettisoning their other project proposals — everything they were doing died on her desk — for the promise from a publisher in Vancouver she had never met. They fought constantly. No, her new friend in Vancouver didn’t have money for an advance but he was promising he could get money from a foundation and the government. Annie had seized upon a new saviour. The feminist had found another man she believed would protect her. She wouldn’t talk about Spain. Didn’t want to know about it.

“You’re afraid, aren’t you?” he said during a truce. “The Spain book is a big one and there’s lots riding on it and you’re afraid to get going on it in case it fails.”

“I think so. You always have these big ideas. Maybe ‘cause you’re a man you think big but it intimidates me. I think we should think big but what if we don’t pull it off? I’m used to doing my books in French, they sell a few copies here and a few in France and I do the radio interviews and the TV interviews and a few newspaper interviews but this is a whole different thing.”

“Yeah, it is,” he said, putting his arm around her. She put her face against his chest. “That’s what we should be doing: aiming big.”

“I know, I know. You do a play you want to get it on Broadway, you start singing and there you are performing on stage, you get a recording contract. I don’t know how you do it. Everything scares me.”

He feared the worst as the fights escalated. She wouldn’t talk, she wouldn’t discuss, she wouldn’t help with the paperwork. What she did do was get loopy at any demand that she work on the Spain book.

“You’re trying to destroy me,” she screamed at him. “You can’t tell me what to do. This is my work! And I’m going to do it my way!”

He was again the enemy.

“Do it your way, as always,” he screamed back. “But do it without me. I’ve had it. I’m done.”

There had been weeks and weeks of hysterics and insults. He had been spending more and more time away from home, working in the mountains, avoiding her phone calls, simmering over what he saw was going to be a disaster. Every once in a while he got a dose of sanity by spending time with Patricia, they kept their clothes on but she was as much a balm as the hot tub and the highway. They exchanged horror stories of relationships past and present. Patricia reminded him there was sanity outside the portals of his life with Annie. Another voice to the growing chorus of “why are you with her?”

He told Annie he wasn’t going to be going to Spain; he already heard her telling him paella was too expensive and was he going to finish his wine or could she have it?

“I didn’t grow up with a Spanish-speaking nanny. I don’t speak the language. We have a fixer there who does. And I’m not into any more abuse, arguments, insanity. I’m done with insanity. We’ll get there and you’ll lose it. If I stay here I can make some money and keep my sanity. I have stories to write.”

She left it at that. Her mind was on the new arrangement with her new best friend, the publisher in Vancouver. She was primping for a meeting with him. He was flying into Montreal and she was laying on the makeup, the lip gloss, the eye shadow. Evan was heading up to the country.

“You want to come?” she said. “You should meet him.”

“No,” Evan said. “This is your gig. I’m going to the country.”

Few hours later, she phoned him, deflated, distraught, near tears. He was playing guitar, staring out at the pond across the way where a loon had settled. “He’s an asshole,” she said. “I can’t work for the creep. He can’t get any money. He was full of shit. When are you coming home?”

She had lost the dream of the book series, she had lost her saviour.

“I need you in Spain,” she said. “I need you. I won’t lose it. I promise.”

“Annie, I can’t handle the shit anymore, I told you before the last trip. I can stay here and make a few bucks. You don’t need me.”

“I won’t do that,” she said. “I promise. It worked out last time. We had a good trip. I need you to come. I won’t go nuts, I promise.”

Didn’t he always need to be needed?

He got on the plane for the long flight, the same trip they had made together three other times, sometimes entwined on the floor of the plane in a desperate attempt to sleep. An adventure of a lifetime, he had always said. Who else gets to crawl through almost every nook and cranny of Spain, Barcelona to Madrid, Grenada to the Costa del Sol and even maybe make a few bucks doing it? And Annie was true to her word. Kept her temper in check. For three nights. On the fourth night, she lost it. And it never returned.