2:1

Gareth adjusted the unfamiliar tie yet again. “You can learn a lot of things on Google,” he said to the mirror, “but you can’t learn to do them well.” Giving up on trying to improve the image in the mirror, Gareth walked down the hall and grabbed his jacket. “Might as well get on with it,” he muttered. He plucked the keys off the shelf by the door and let himself out.

On the street, the cab was waiting with Rowan inside. “Well?” Gareth greeted the smiling figure in the back seat.

“It’s done,” Rowan replied with a sympathetic duck of the head. “He’ll be waitin’ at the Big Grind like ya wanted. Ain’t been no big deal t’all.”

Gareth looked searchingly into Rowan’s eyes for any clue about just how easy it had been, but found nothing but mild amusement and a hint of excitement.

“Are you going to give me anything else? Any idea of how he feels about all this? You did tell him the truth, didn’t you?”

“Well, my lanky friend, I mighta exaggerated a bit here and there, but ya, I told him straight up. Don’t worry so much. I figure y’all always worry too much. Que sera, sera, dude. He’s there and soon you will be too, and then we’ll figure it out.”

As the cab pulled away from the curb, Gareth caught a glimpse of a small brown figure in the bedroom window of his apartment. “Well, at least someone else seems to be as worried as I am,” he murmured over his shoulder.

He turned to Rowan again and, with a wicked grin, said, “Did I ever tell you about my beaver? We’ve got some time to kill, and I’ll bet you the fare you won’t believe me.”

Rowan’s eyes widened in false alarm, and then grinned back. “Well, long as this ain’t some sort of cheesy double entendre, I’m in. Hit me with ya best shot.”

The cab was just pulling off the freeway when Gareth finished with, “… and that’s my roommate. Strangest thing I’ve ever been a part of, but somehow it just seems right.”

“So yer telling me that there is a beaver, a water-dwelling, fur-bearing, flat-tailed, tree-gnawing rodent, in your apartment right now and that he comes and goes whenever and however he wants, and no one even raises an eyebrow?”

“Yup.”

“This I gotta see. I’m hereby invitin’ myself for dinner tonight if this thing gets done. Hell, I’m a think’n I’ll be there no matter what happens. C’est in-croy-able!” Rowan exclaimed in a corny Texan accent.

At the mention of what was next up in his day, Gareth frowned a little and turned to stare out the window. Two, three more blocks to the Big Grind and he’d be irrevocably committed. Still time to bail, a voice inside mused. It was a bit hard to hear because right behind it were the gibbering screams and incoherent wailings of his hind brain: RUN! Run, you fool! Take the easy way! RUN! HIDE!

Unfortunately for his hind brain, the image of the drooling, slathering, fear-ridden beast brought a grin to his lips and some decisiveness to his day. “Been there, done that,” he said to Rowan, who had been peering questioningly in his direction. “Today, we do something new.“

As they got out of the cab, Gareth checked the fare.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Rowan interjected. “I didn’t believe not a word of your story. This ride is definitely on me.”

Gareth’s lips were beginning to feel like a faulty flashlight, blinking from solemn frown to silly grin every few seconds, but he flashed yet another smile at Rowan’s remark and said, “You’ll see. Just wait. The beaver’s gonna blow you away.”

Rowan paid the cabbie, saying “Keep the change” with a flourish, and turned back to Gareth. Doing so, he missed the even bigger grin the cabbie flashed at Rowan’s back. Cabbies see a lot of shit and no beaver tale is going to surprise them. Besides, he’d picked quite a few fares in Gareth’s neighbourhood before and was pretty sure he’d seen the beaver in question. “What’s so strange ’bout a beaver?” he wondered, turning up his radio and pulling back into traffic. “As long as he tips good…”

 

•••

 

The Big Grind was one of those coffee shops that had been a place for coffee snobs long before it was cool to shell out six bucks for a Venti. Close to the university and what passed for an artists’ quarter in this town, it had survived only because it wasn’t on a main drag or a busy neighbourhood. Quiet, filled with little niches and views of passersby and devoid of preppies, yuppies or -ies of any other kind. People came to the Big Grind not to be seen and to enjoy a bit of solitude, and that atmosphere seemed to keep the cool kids away. That and the fact that the place hadn’t been renovated since the mid 80s. The last person Gareth had introduced to this place had blurted, ”What a dump,” as he had crossed the threshold. But the coffee was good and the chairs comfortable.

Rowan opened the worn wood-and-glass door and stepped inside. Across the room a head bobbed up in recognition and Rowan stepped back, bowed elaborately and said, “The game’s afoot: your move, Sherlock.“

Gareth grimaced. “You’ll join us?”

“Nah-ah. I just paid my debt to the cabbie. This is your show. I’ll just grab an ad-rag and some java and wait for the screams when one of yous skewers the other.”

A brief look and “I guess” were all Gareth could muster. Rowan made a shooing motion and turned to the waiting barista. Gareth straighten his back, turned toward the seats in the corner and put one foot in front of another. The walk seemed to elongate and shrink like some sort of weird 70s sci-fi movie effect, and the gibbering in his head started to intensify.

When he was about five feet from the table, his father stood up, grumbling. “What a dump!”