Alex Carrick’s Blog

Tracy Tindale was at her wits end. This was the Olympics in which she was supposed to shine. Instead, she was struggling again. While most of the problem was mental, it wasn’t all her fault. In fact, her condition had recently been given a name. It was going down in the medical books as a modern ailment. Often, despite all efforts to resist, she would find her head spinning like a figure skating diva.

Her Olympic career had started at the Vancouver-Whistler Games. Tracy was a star in the firmament of ladies’ downhill, super G and giant slalom ski racing. At the age of 18 in 2010, she made a respectable showing but didn’t make it to the podium. That had never really been in anyone’s expectations, including her own.

The media spokespeople had used the usual phrases to describe her first appearances on the Olympic stage. She was coming back nicely from injury, a bad bruise from a nasty fall in a world cup event at Val d’isére France. She was well-positioned for the next Olympics scheduled for 2014 in Sochi Russia. And she recorded several personal bests. No wins, but personal bests. That was the consolation prize that had seen many another top athlete through a tough time.

When the 2014 Games arrived and Tracy again failed to medal, there was a little more disappointment expressed at her performances. But she stepped up in the rankings. Also, in events immediately prior to and after the Olympics, she did very well. In fact, her career took off. The product endorsements flowed in and life in general became much easier. Still, there was the nagging dissatisfaction with failing to achieve success under the biggest microscope of all, the Winter Games.

Now it was 2018 and this was supposed to be Tracy’s year. In fact, the whole nation was counting on her. What everyone else did not know, however, was that Tracy had developed a severe case of nervous distraction. The offending party was advertising. She had consulted, in secret, several sports psychologists and was surprised and relieved to hear that she was not alone in her distress.

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Bradley found it was easiest to talk to his imaginary friend, Russell, while getting dressed before the full-length mirror in the bathroom. In such a setting, Russell became both a congenial valet and good sounding board. He would stand to the side and let Bradley talk.

Russell had been around for as long as Bradley could remember. A little portly, a tad balding and approaching 30, the two of them looked a lot like each other. Russell was more devil-may-care in his attitude, though. They had grown up together and now, getting ready for the most important evening of his life, Bradley needed to search out Russell’s opinion more than ever.  

BRAD: We’ve been together a long time and you’ve always given me excellent counsel. I have to come to you again because this is one more time when I’m not sure what to do.

RUSS: I appreciate what you’re saying but as I’ve told you before, the advice doesn’t really come from me. It comes from a very dear friend of mine, someone you refuse to believe in.

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David and Maria made sure to arrive home on a Tuesday evening before 6 p.m. after long hard days at work for both of them. They were a married couple in their mid 40s, with three children – William aged 20, Walter 10 and Wendy 5. Later that evening, they would be meeting with Maria’s younger sister, Lucy, and her acquaintance or boyfriend or common-law husband, Jerry. The exact nature of the relationship remained fuzzy. The occasion was Lucy’s birthday.

The following conversation was conducted in the master bedroom and the adjoining bathroom as David and Maria prepared themselves. Weeknights out were rare in their household.

DAVID: So how’d your day go, sweetheart?

MARIA: The usual. A mad rush. Worked too hard. Would have rather stayed home in bed.

DAVID: Did they say anything at day care when you picked up the kids?

MARIA: Yep. Apparently Walter came out with another one of his beauts. You know they went on a field trip to the art gallery. Our little treasure wanted to see John the Baptist’s head on a platter.

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Hostess Betty Bernard didn’t know what she was letting herself in for when she invited the television producer Mark Gatheral and the newspaper critic Gracie Phitts to the same soirée. Mr. Gatheral was a corpulent, but still handsome, man of 45. Ms. Phitts was an attractive dynamic go-getter in her early 30s. They could both be charming, but they were also career obsessed.

Betty was the socialite widow of an agri-business bio-engineering king. The bottom line, she was overburdened with money and loved inviting her friends and acquaintances to dinner parties. Her gatherings were always a mix of people at the top of their professions. Unfortunately, she didn’t always do background checks or keep up with the latest gossip. While she didn’t have a mean bone in her body, it sometimes transpired that her guest list turned into a virtual setup.

She held court on the 60th floor of a five-star hotel and condo complex just up from the city’s waterfront. One particular evening in early March, 10 well-attired individuals perused, fondled and roamed among the mahogany, chintz, Wedgewood and Limoges of Betty’s home.

The canapés and hors d’oeuvres were served and consumed in the living room as a prelude to the meal that was to come in the dining area. Mark and Gracie were able to keep their distance at first, by circling around opposite sides of the room. Once everyone was seated, however, and the two of them were facing each other across the table, the inevitable happened.

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Pug-nosed Pat and gum-chewing Chris, two long-time Irish cops, were back on the day shift after a month spent on the night rotation. Their patrol area ranged from the entertainment district in the east to the upscale shopping blocks downtown. Being a cop in these days was quite a different experience than it had been for their family forefathers on the force. The city-state had changed beyond recognition.

At the turn of the 22nd century, the world was considerably different from what it had been 100 years before. War and most other manifestations of violence had been eliminated. Peace gained a stranglehold. Social media monitored and controlled all economic activity. Women held every managerial and leadership position.

The transformation began slowly in the early years of the preceding century, then exploded. The first big shift came with the founding of the FLYT Corporation. In the same way the word NEWS is derived from North, East, West and South, FLYT is a combination of the first letters of Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter. FLYT Corp., in a brief period of time, took over all communication on earth – news, messaging, broadcasting and entertainment for starters, then inventory management, data processing and the full range of other business functions stored in the clouds. The resulting paradigm shift was unprecedented.

When FLYT took flight, women finally achieved their full potential. The ladies were far more adept than men at welcoming and making use of the new tools at their disposal. The sisterhood, through a shared heritage of quilting and book clubs, watching Oprah and The View, coffee klatches, spas, trips to the hairdresser and a willingness to seek advice was much more adept at social networking. Sure, men had their lodges and their drinking buddies, but these were technologically ancient.

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Liz Stuckey’s marriage to her husband, Brian, was not without its rewards. First, there was their daughter Abby who was a delightful child of eight and accounted for much of Liz’ appreciation of life. Then there was her comfortable existence in the suburbs, with a 3,000 square-foot home and a Lexus in the driveway. Of course, it was Brian who drove the Lexus, but the cachet still enveloped the whole family. Liz drove a serviceable but hardly glamorous Dodge Caravan.

Brian, however, was another matter. Most nights, he wasn’t home. He either stayed late at work or he was out with the boys, playing in a house-league game or hanging around a tavern watching one of Toronto’s numerous professional sports teams on TV. Both Liz and Abby felt some sense of betrayal and abandonment, but most of the time they got by alright.

Liz had her own pre-occupations buried in her family history. There was a matter about which she felt a weighty sense of obligation. Perhaps there was more she could have done. Liz’ older brother Edward had turned into a troubled young man. Throughout his university years, his professors had marked him as brilliant. But he’d been overwhelmed by emotional problems.

Try as they might, the Smith family elders had never been able to rescue him from his demons. Bouts of rehab and mood-altering drugs all came up short. The upshot was that Edward disappeared into the legions of the homeless in the city’s core when Liz was only in her teens. She had been too young to do anything about it then and her sense of loss and impotence never left her. There was no doubt in her mind that she still had a duty to perform.

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Herb Green was frustrated beyond containment. His toxic mood might have been possible to deal with except he had newly acquired a truly foul vocabulary. He started swearing like Regan in The Exorcist. Furthermore, he lacked the originality to be entertaining in his gross verbiage. No, he was disgusting to listen to. His wife, Wanda, was really fed up with him. She had once dated a rapper and swore she would never again breathe in that kind of atmosphere.

Under normal circumstances, Herb was a soft-spoken decent man. But these were not normal times. In fact, these were the most difficult economic times ever experienced by someone of Herb’s age. He knew about the Great Depression through what he’d learned in school. Even his father was a child in the Dirty 30s. Herb wasn’t equipped to handle the emotional roller coaster that saw him lose all his money and go deeply into debt in the latest Great Recession.

Now he swore and cursed about his depleted finances all day long. He turned the air blue with his ranting. Wanda instituted a new rule in the house. Every time Herb cursed, he had to put a one-dollar IOU in a large glass jar. In quick order, Herb was in debt by another $1,000. This distressed and depressed him even further. That is, until he came up with a novel idea.

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It was medieval times in Merry Olde England and tales of knights and dragons, sorcery and witchcraft still held sway over the land. Superstition was rampant and those who could foretell the future were held in high esteem. Revered for being at the top of her profession was Madame Lazonga, a woman who had grown wealthy through necromancy on behalf of the common folk.

Madame Lazonga’s abilities came in visionary snatches from which she was able to deduce logical outcomes. In one such trance, she even foresaw her own untimely end. She would meet a violent death at the hands of a vicious murderer. This made her more cautious in her everyday dealings. She became overly protective of her private life and turned miserly to a fault. She wouldn’t share her riches with anyone, not even her only child, her daughter Angelina.

Angelina, in the full bloom of youth, was a stunner. She had russet-coloured hair down past her shoulders, hazel-flecked eyes and a curvaceous frame that brought many men to kneel at her altar. Unbeknownst to most, however, her sexiest feature was her brain. Also a secret to the world at large was the fact Angelina had a lover among the nobility, Lord Flatley.

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Now that he was dead, Norman Watts was in possession of certain information that someone in the living world would have given an arm and a leg to discover. Forget Halloween or Dia de los Muertos or any of those other days of the year when the departed are supposed to be revered. They might have been more meaningful in earlier times, but circumstances had changed. Mechanization had come to the afterlife.

With respect to sorting out the good from the bad and those to be rewarded from those to be punished, there was a new way of doing things. Everything now happened once per annum. That day was far more obvious from the back side of the curtain than from the front. 

There is a time of year when it becomes nigh on impossible not to think about relatives and friends now departed. It’s a time of great joy but also deep sadness. When the sense of loss can be overwhelming and memories of moments spent with grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, friends and loved ones can sweep one away in a flood of regret for shared occasions no longer accessible.

It’s a time of year when popular music playing everywhere features lyrics that squeeze the heart. The whole season is a setup to remembrances of sunny skies past and nostalgic warmth that can never be repeated. The anthem for this instance is Auld Lange Syne and life centres on thoughts of old acquaintances. In newspapers and on television, respects are paid to celebrities whose glow has been extinguished over the past year. Of course I’m speaking of New Year’s Eve.

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In early September, Leonard Smith covered over his family’s backyard pool and started swimming at the local health club. It wasn’t a fancy club, but it still required a membership fee. This restricted the number of people who had access to the property. Nevertheless, whenever Lenny tried to get in a swim, at lunch or after work, the other members drove him crazy.

The pool always seemed to be spilling over with either an aquasizer class or teenagers playing smurf football. Lenny liked to swim lengths. He saw himself as a power swimmer and fantasized about how he could have been in the Olympics. He did fancy head-over-heels turns that even he found impressive. The crowds weren’t working for him. He quickly learned the thing to do was to go to the club first thing in the morning and have the pool to himself.

However, that meant getting up at 5:15 am to be there when the doors were unlocked at 6:00 am. He followed this schedule Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. Tuesdays and Thursdays, he was committed to driving his children to day care. All in all, it was a comfortable schedule.

By following this routine, Lenny could quickly change into his swimming suit, then dip into the pristine water. There was nary a ripple. It was perfection at its most sublime. The smell of the chlorine was intoxicating. The amniotic fluid accepted him into its heated embrace. He cut a perfect straight line up and down for his standard 50 lengths and he could not have been happier.

In early October, however, a significant fly appeared in Lenny’s ointment. Out of the blue, another individual started showing up at the same time as him, disturbing the purity of the moment. The newcomer was a quiet but still upsetting presence in the locker room. He created little waves in the water. He even liked to hum in the shower area. This was not acceptable.

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