The doors were UV-filtering glass, hinged at the top and surrounded by
felt on their inside lips so that they closed softly. Each one had a
small brass prop-rod on the left side that could brace it open. Tony had
been responsible for measuring each bookcase after he retrieved it from
Alan's prot?©g?©s' shops and for sending the measurements off to a glazier
in Mississauga.
The glazier was technically retired, but he'd built every display case
that had ever sat inside any of Alan's shops and was happy to make use
of the small workshop that his daughter and son-in-law had installed in
his garage when they retired him to the burbs.
The bookcases went into the house, along each wall, according to a
system of numbers marked on their backs. Alan had used Tony's
measurements and some CAD software to come up with a permutation of
stacking and shouldering cases that had them completely covering every
wall -- except for the wall by the mantelpiece in the front parlor, the
wall over the countertop in the kitchen, and the wall beside the
staircases -- to the ceiling.
He and Tony didn't speak much. Tony was thinking about whatever people
who drive moving vans think about, and Alan was thinking about the story
he was building the house to write in.
May smelled great in Kensington Market. The fossilized dog shit had
melted and washed away in the April rains, and the smells were all
springy ones, loam and blossoms and spilled tetrapak fruit punch left
behind by the pan-ethnic street-hockey league that formed up
spontaneously in front of his house.
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