— Oh, said Baddeley. I must be home.
And looking up he suddenly recognized the corner of Bathurst and Dundas, and saw that the passerby was not a stranger but, in fact, Avery Andrews, looking much as he’d looked when Baddeley saw him for the first time.
— I know, said Andrews.
Meaning that they were both home, a thought that filled Alexander Bertrand Baddeley with such relief he let himself sink deeper into the place from which all worlds come. And he woke the next morning feeling that he’d been — even if only briefly — as lucid as a human can be.
Toronto, 2011 — Ocala, 2012
About the Author
André Alexis is the author of two novels (Childhood and Asylum), two books of short stories (Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa and Beauty and Sadness), a children’s book (Ingrid and the Wolf) and a number of plays (Lambton Kent, Name in Vain, Fidelity). He was a contributing book reviewer for the Globe and Mail, and has worked extensively in radio, having been the host/writer of CBC Radio One’s “Radio Nomad” and CBC Radio 2’s “Skylarking.”