1.

And I’ve never met another man who was more charismatic than Steven. At age twenty-three, he was travelling the Silk Road through Kazakhstan on a motorcycle, one of many dangerous and remarkable treks that he took in his lifetime. As he shot over the side of an embankment, he landed smack in the middle of a hijacking. Opium traffickers were attempting to kidnap the wife and children of a local government official as they travelled by small convoy through the rocky wilderness. There were machine guns and automatic rifles drawn on all sides, with the cracks of the opening round of fire still hanging in the cold air. Steven’s bike landed right on top of the traffickers’ truck, startling everyone, and killing at least one of the bandits in the process. The official’s guards used the distraction to their advantage, taking out three more of the thugs and sending the rest flying.

In the midst of the chaos, Steven had seen the terrified faces of the children in the Jeep window, and had sprung into action, positioning himself between the gunmen and the vehicle.

When he saw that the tides had turned and the children were safe, he tapped gently on the window of the Jeep. The woman cautiously rolled down the window. Steven grinned at the littlest of the boys in the back seat and handed the woman something, gesturing to the lad.

It was his mother’s tiny gold crucifix, hanging on a chain. Then, not being one for the limelight, Steven sped off. The pattern of his life.

The president of Kazakhstan publicly declared this mysterious Westerner to be a national hero in the fight against the tyranny of the drug lords.

The locals began to refer to him as “Clint Eastwood”. Too many spaghetti westerns in the local theatre, I guess.

But I’ll say this: this world sure could use a lot more Clint Eastwoods like my old buddy Steven McCartney...

“What?” I said, dazed, looking up from computer screen. I blinked. “Okay.”

I’d been deep into writing my column and miles away when Meg had spoken to me. Meg Cleroux was standing over me now. My editor, Bob Chamberlain, had hired her as a student intern from McMaster University’s Journalism School. She was very bright and had won the Lorne Freedman award for a series she’d written on turf wars in Hamilton between the rival Hell’s Angels and The Banditos motorcycle gangs. Meg was really cute and fresh-faced, with a great figure, the kind of girl that I would have been hot for a few decades ago. Now, even in her tight t-shirts, she was just too young for me to get really excited about. I appreciated her the way a guy appreciates the sports car that he’ll never be able to buy.

“Yeah, a few actually.” I shrugged. “Thanks Meg, I’ll be right there.”

Bob was, well, unique. Something of a throwback. Bob was fifty-eight and gay as a jay, but he came from a generation that still thought that it was shameful to come out. So, Bob expended a great deal of energy and hot air asserting his alter ego: Macho Man. I honestly think that he modelled his work persona around J. Jonah Jameson from the old Spiderman cartoons. And if there was a good-looking woman around, Bob had to make a comment. If there was an arm-wrestling contest or an “open-beer-bottles-with-your-teeth” competition, he had supposedly been there, done that. If a straight guy had acted like that, someone would have pummelled him by now, but we all shrugged off Bob’s antics. He really thought that he had us all fooled.

I forced myself toward his office. Here we go, I thought. Chamberlain is going to fire me. He’s been threatening to give me the boot for a month now. Says my articles are boring and uninspired, my writing “torpid”. “You’re not writing with the same pizazz these days. What’s got into you, Love? Problems at home? Mid-life crisis? C’mon, Love, throw me a bone here, would ya?”

That had been our conversation two days ago. At the door, Bob had said, in his usual metaphoric style, “Love, start producing professional copy or your ass is grass.”

But Bob was right. I’d lost my desire to write, to work at the entertainment writing I’d built my career on. My In Town column had begun to sag. For the past three months, I’d grown bored and disinterested in covering concerts and shows. Something had changed inside me. At age thirty-nine, my life was nearing a crisis point. A slow paralysis had crept in. Not depression, although that was part of it, but something else, something deeper. If I didn’t pull myself together, I’d be out of job. In the past, I could have handled that—I was younger then, there had been less at stake. I’d pulled the plug on my writing career a few times, had found other jobs, but always managed to bounce back into the writing game when my other career choices had bored me, or disappointed me. But I couldn’t afford to do that now, because there was Allison.

Allison was pregnant, and in her second trimester. I’d never faced a wall like this before, and the pressure was getting to me.

Bob Chamberlain’s office at the Hamilton Gazette was in the far corner of an otherwise open-concept floor plan. Fifteen other journalists were also busy drinking coffee, hammering away at the keys on their computer keyboards. Ted Slater, the office cynic, was paring a thumbnail, staring at me, his legs crossed at the knees as if he had all the time in the day. I ignored his smirk. Every office has a cynic, I thought. They criticize everything and everyone: the office dick, as I’d come to think of him.

“Come in,” he said, without looking up from his newspaper. His face was buried in the sports section of the Toronto Star. Perhaps he wasn’t a fan of his own newspaper, I thought. Or perhaps he longed to work for a bigger city rag. But the sports section was definitely a ruse set up for my benefit.

He had the phone stuck to one ear, nodding. “... Different, huh? A new direction for the paper? You’ve had some interesting response. A few emails and letters? Phone calls, too? Interesting, very interesting. Definitely more where that came from, Mr. Hill.” He pretended to scan the sports page as he talked. “... Oh yes, I’m quite willing to take it to the next level. My thoughts exactly...”

Allan Hill was the CEO of Hill Newspapers. He owned the Gazette, as well as a bunch of Canadian newspapers and magazines. I’d never met the man. They must be planning to hire someone to take my place. Someone who would take the paper “to the next level”. I was determined to get this over with as soon as possible. I could still freelance, if I had to—oh, yeah, sure, I could use the security of a regular paycheque, but not if it meant sucking up. I would never do that, not at the expense of my integrity.

He pointed at the door, so I closed it. He waved me into the leather chair in front of his huge, battered oak desk. I sat down and took a deep breath.

“Of course, it’s all true. Donny Love is a stand-up guy. I’d trust him with my life.”

Bob gave me a cavalier wink. His office decor, arranged by Bob himself, was a quirky mix of Ernest Hemingway and Martha Stewart. He had the walls painted a soft shade of green, with accents of pale yellow and cream around the room. I’d always found it a very pleasant room. Behind him on the walls there were several photos of fishermen with their trophies, photos of him posing with singer Celine Dionne, comedian Steve Smith, musician Tommy Hunter, actor Jim Carrey, and hockey great Paul Henderson. On his tidy desk there was a gumball machine; beside it, a portrait of himself crouching beside a bear he’d supposedly bagged while hunting last summer in British Columbia.

After he’d hung up the phone, he’d feasted his eyes on one more sports detail, then slammed his paper against the desk, making my heart jump into my throat.

Then his expression brightened. “Donny Love, my main man, my number one writer, my goddamn homey, we’re going all the way on this one.” Across the table, he extended a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt.

My jaw dropped. Somehow, I’d expected him to hook me in the chin, not offer a congratulatory handshake. “What’s this all this about, Bob?”

“Your last column shows promise, Love. Mr. Hill’s received some interesting emails and letters. And you don’t usually get letters, Love. Looks like people want to know more about this Steven McCartney fella. Mr. Hill likes this Steven guy, too. Likes the Clint Eastwood angle, the lone ranger of mythical proportions. And, as Alan Hill likes to say, ‘always give the people what they want’.”

Bob had been an editor with the Gazette for ten years He was pressing sixty, and last fall he’d bought himself a Hair Club membership. He power-lifted at Gold’s Gym on Locke Street, and was perpetually in spring training mode for pick-up football. He loved sports, yet had a penchant for the arts, especially Broadway musicals. On weekends, he got his kicks playing touch football, but he had a season pass to the theatre festival down in Stratford, Ontario, where he never missed a single Shakespearean play. Bob had the build and demeanour of a steel town grunt, but his brains had given him an edge that had pushed him out of the blue-collar arena into the world of academia and newspapers.

“I don’t know what to say,” I said, stunned by Bob’s revelation. I cleared my throat.

“Listen, Love, our readership is down—The Toronto Star is more popular than ever in this town, but I think we’ve got something here that can put the Gazette on top. I think we can bring the numbers up with this “In Town” column of yours, and start putting money back in the stakeholders’ hands. This paper needs an injection, and your column is the serum we’re looking for! Are you with me on this, Love?” He was rubbing his fingertips together, intensity building in his eyes.

“Sure, if you think it’s legal. I mean, we won’t get sued for libel though, will we?”

Bob’s face tightened. “Libel?” His voice became very slow and deliberate. “Only if you’re lying, Love. You’re not lying, are you?” His eyes bored holes into me.

“No, no, of course not,” I said, and imagined my nose growing like Pinocchio’s.

“Good,” he said, exhaling long and hard. He leaned forward, his eyes widening. “So, tell me more about this Steven guy. He actually did all this stuff? What is he, some kinda superhero?” Bob’s tone was half-respectful, half-disbelieving. “You’d better not be making this shit up, Love, or we will be on the hook for a lawsuit. Are you making this shit up?”

“Do I look like a bullshitter, Bob?” I said, sitting up straight. I am a bullshitter, but he doesn’t have to know that. My friends know that, my wife knows that, but no one else does, and it’s none of their damned business, either.

He narrowed his eyes. “A good bullshitter never looks like one. I oughta know.” He paused, rubbing his chin.

I had to get out of there—I needed to get back to my column. But first I had to satisfy my curiosity. “So, who’s been calling?”

He chuckled in delight. “Mostly women from your old alma mater. That’s always a good sign, eh? Appealing to the lay-dees.”

A sickening anxiety spread from the centre of my being. The office walls closed in on me. I’d done everything in my power to avoid thinking about my days as a student at Irondale Collegiate. I’d left Hamilton seventeen years ago to escape the ghosts and memories and now, since April, I’d found myself back again, trying to start fresh. Revulsion lurched up inside me. Those women calling Steven had wanted nothing to do with me back in the day. But, somehow, writing about Steven had created a direct link to my past. Funny thing was that those women had wanted nothing to do with Steven then, either. But now that he was in the paper...

Thank God Meg Cleroux was fielding the calls, I thought. She was my only line of defence. I knew, with a great sense of relief, that she also had the smarts not to give out my home telephone number.

Adrenaline was firing me up. I stood up abruptly. “Got to get back to the column, Bob. Steven’s fans are waiting. And you’re right—I think we’ve got something here.”

I think that the synapses in my brain actually stopped firing for a moment there.

Bob’s mouth parted. “Oh, that’s bad. Real bad. Oh well, who cares? Just keep writing that damn stuff. We’re selling newspapers here, so who gives a shit? Forget dead, just write him like he’s alive and kicking.”

Well, maybe Steven wasn’t dead, I thought, but how else was I supposed to envision someone who’d bailed on me all those years ago?

I looked over my shoulder and saw that Bob had gone back to the sports section as if we’d never had the conversation in the first place. I walked towards my desk, serenaded by the clatter of keyboards and telephones ringing off the hook.

Heads turned in my direction. Meg was on the phone, waving me towards her, leading me to believe she was fielding another phone call from one of Steven’s fans. She said something into the receiver, and put the caller on hold. “Do you know a Jennifer Chalmers?”

My blood curdled. The mere utterance of her name sent shockwaves through me—Jennifer had been the snottiest of snotty girls. “Yeah, I went to high school with her,” I snapped. Jennifer Chalmers, one of the hottest, richest kids to walk the halls of Irondale, one of many who had held her nose so high it had blocked out the light. I shuddered, thinking of her. I could almost see her and her brood cackling as they hung out in the cafeteria and mocked everybody they deemed unacceptable. I saw them sneering at me, their faces hideous, ugly masks.

“Uh, I’m not here,” I said, panicking, gesturing with my upturned palms, shaking my head.

Meg rolled her eyes at me. “She’s looking for Steven,” she said, “not you.”

“Steven, of course,” I said, taking my seat at the opposite desk. “Who else? No problem there. Excellent. Very good.”

Meg spoke briefly with Jennifer Chalmers and ended the phone call. I leaned across the aisle. “Meg, please don’t give out my phone number. I don’t want people calling my home and bugging Allison, you know. With the baby coming and all, she’s under a lot of stress.”

What the hell was I going to do? I wondered. Paranoia flew around inside me like a frightened bird.

I told myself that this would soon blow over, that the phone calls and emails were probably from a few cat-crazy women who were now desperate to hook up with someone from the past who would help them relive their halcyon days.

My wife’s pregnant and I have a decent job and benefits. I’m a lucky man. I don’t wanna blow it.

But what if Steven really is dead? What if he died a long time ago? He hasn’t called you. He must be dead. It’s not really a problem if you’re not actually writing about a real person.

Ha! I think the law would say different. Fraud, at least. And what about libel? I’ll be sued for character defamation. You can’t make up shit about someone and get away with it.

Besides, Steven had wanted to be famous, dammit. He was always craving the limelight. And suddenly I realized what it was I’d been doing with that stupid column—I was forcing Fate’s hand.