Times New Viking - "Middle Class Drags"

A cold fall Friday night, the sun beaten off early by the streetlights. A concrete high-rise with a bike rack that, bulging and salted with yellow leaves, sits like a brooch on the building's moist lapel. Up on the fifteenth floor, a power-saver pre-drink is fully underway. Freddie randomly messages girls on twitter, while Gut plays Unkillable and listens to some soupy guitar on tiny tinny speakers. Drang drang drang drang. Freddie gets his first reply in a half-hour: "@stingsfan fuck off."

Freddie and Gut get KFC combos and eat in baseball caps. Freddie wears a frayed Stingers cap, his jacket flecked with white paint from an old job, and the smell of his shoes wafting up from the floor, damp from the light drizzle. Gut, his age swimming somewhere between thirty and a heart attack, is aptly nicknamed. Freddie nudges Gut with a look, points his eyes towards the line-up, where a teenage girl in a fur-lined hood stands in black tights looking up at the menu. Gut smiles.

After nine drinks each, at Danny's the well-lit bar where the tvs competed with the conversation, they stumble to a certain corner where they know they part ways. "Well. Yep." "Yep," and they separate like two water droplets, blown by different winds. Freddie texts his girlfriend from three years ago, and Gut knocks a garbage can over. [pre-order]

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Also, Toronto-people, the wonderful Emma Healey is launching her new book of poetry Begin With the End in Mind through Arbeiter Ring Publishing at Type Books (883 Queen W) this evening at 6pm. Come!