Whew. Um...four days late? I was a bit busy during my trip to Toronto and my niece was born on Monday. I have a few other perfectly valid excuses but I should stop typing and get this posted...

I suspect #17 will be a bit tardy, too, given that it's already Thursday. But I'll try to have it up by Monday night at the latest. Luckily, I already know what I'm writing about.

Update: I tweaked the story a bit after Ginny's comment.

---

Delayed

Bob Hewlitt squirms in his seat, trying to get comfortable. He tightens his seat belt and loosens his shoelaces. Looks around the cabin and wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans. A recovering aerophobe, he's still something of a nervous flyer, albeit better than he used to be. He rarely has to down more than one or two vodkas before boarding these days, but he still has the habit of watching the flight attendants, trying to gauge the state of things by their expressions, their body language. Bob isn't a good poker player, though, and everyone reacts differently to situations. On a flight earlier this year, he watched an attendant rush to the front, then talk anxiously into a handset while balling her hand into a fist so tight it turned white. Bob had begun to hyperventilate before he learned she was just upset about the mess someone had made in the bathroom.

So, he is alert and watchful when one attendant walks quickly up to the other, cups her hand over his ear and starts whispering. Is she saying, "Oh my god - we're out of peanuts!" or "Oh my god - do you think they'll be able to identify our remains?" Then, the two of them walk to the front of the cabin and confer with a third flight attendant.

While they are still talking, the pilot says over the PA, "Your attention please everyone, this is the captain speaking. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but our flight has been rerouted due to a problem on the ground. It looks like Toronto has disappeared."

A collective groan runs through the aircraft like a wave.

"I'm still waiting for instructions on where they're sending us, but as soon as they tell me, I'll pass it along. In the meantime, the airline would like to offer you a complementary beverage."

The woman sitting beside Bob heaves an angry sigh and checks her watch.

"It figures. And I've meeting with a client booked for an hour after we were supposed to land."

Bob is flying to Toronto to visit his sister and isn't in such a rush. They've never got along, but he's flying out to help her move out of her now ex's place. Their mother insisted.

"I guess they can't really predict these things," he says.

"It's not fair," says the woman, "This is the second the time this has happened to me. Last fall I was flying to Winnipeg and it disappeared. They sent us to Fargo, North Dakota. Do you know what there is to do in Fargo? Even less than in Winnipeg, I'll tell you."

"How long were you stuck in Fargo?"

"I think it was three days before Winnipeg reappeared."

Bob shakes his head, "Three days? That's longer than usual. I heard that usually the cities reappear in less than a day."

The man across the aisle from Bob says, "Maybe they'll just send us to the Hamilton airport. That's not too far away."

"Which doesn't do us much good if Toronto is gone," Bob responds.

"And anyway, when they say 'Toronto' they most likely mean the GTA and most of the Golden Horseshoe."

"Typical."

Disappearing cities were becoming a more frequent annoyance, not just for air travellers, but also of course for the people who lived in the cities. Politicians and pundits had been quick to blame their own typical and personal bugbears: climate change, the homosexual agenda, globalization, plate tectonics. Studies were undertaken, blogs, scientific papers and op ed pieces were written but in the meantime, nobody had any clues as to the causes or any potential solutions. Geographers the world over were left scratching their heads.

The woman starts to methodically tear up a napkin and Bob tries to think of something comforting to say.

"Well surely they'll have to postpone your meeting. I mean, it's not your fault an entire city disappeared."

"You don't know my boss."

The PA system crackles and the pilot comes on. "Ladies and gentlemen, I've just received word that we're to be rerouted to Ottawa. Once again, we apologize for the delay. We're anticipating a smooth flight into Ottawa and we'll be at the gate in about two hours. A friendly WestJet staff member will be waiting on the ground to assist with accommodations or alternative travel arrangements."

"At least it isn't Sault Ste. Marie," says the man across the aisle.

---

Bob bumps into the woman again while waiting by the baggage carousel. She cups her hand over her cell phone and asks him, "Have you booked a hotel?"

"Not yet."

The woman rolls her eyes and says into the phone, "Do you have any other rooms? Alright. But mine is a double? Okay, there will be two of us then."

She snaps the phone shut and tells Bob, "There were so many flights redirected here that pretty much all the hotels are booked solid. You'd probably have had to drive to Bellville before you found a place to stay. I hope you don't snore. I'm Linda, by the way."

They shake hands.

"Bob Hewlitt. I'll keep a pillow over my head."

---

Linda and Bob sip beers in the lounge of their hotel. The place is packed; hundreds of displaced travellers have taken every available bed in the city.

The bartender has turned off the music and turned up the volume on the televisions. An interview with an NHL spokesperson has just ended, with the league vowing to carry on with their schedule as best as they are able. Teams who disappear along with their cities will not be penalized, unless they miss more than three consecutive games. The news channel flips to a live feed from what would normally be the outskirts of Toronto.

A young, female reporter stands in front of the large blue sign that reads: Welcome to Toronto. Population 3,150,000. It's windy and she has to almost shout into her microphone.

"Normally we would be looking at the houses of one of Toronto's many suburbs. Further off in the distance," she waves a hand behind herself, "you would be able to make out the skyscrapers of downtown and, of course, the CN Tower."

Beyond the sign is a flat stretch of sandy ground. It looks like prairie that is being reclaimed by a desert. Here and there are a few patches of grass or weeds. The horizon shimmers where Lake Ontario meets the shore, or perhaps it's just an optical illusion.

Bob says to Linda, "I didn't think the area around Toronto was so flat."

"And where are all the basements?" she asks.

A small group of protestors is visible on the television, marching on the new grassland, but the camera is too far away to make out their signs and what they are protesting about.

"I tried calling my sister," Bob tells Linda, "but all I got was a message saying the call could not be completed, and that I should try again later."

"What do you suppose 'disappeared' means?" Linda asks. "I heard an interview with some people from Portland a while ago. For them, no time had passed at all." A month ago, Portland has disappeared for a few hours. "When they reappeared, they were out of sync with the rest of the world. The same thing for all of the other cities that vanished. They had no sense of being gone."

"My sister is going to be pissed."

"It's not your fault the city she lives in disappeared."

"You don't know my sister."

---

Bob wakes up the next morning to something jabbing his ribs. He groans and rolls over.

"Bob."

He groans again.

"Bob!"

Linda puts a hand on his shoulder and gives him a good shake.

"Wake up, would you?"

He opens his eyes, mashes the heels of his hands into them and then looks up to see Linda looming over him, fully dressed. She's wearing less makeup than she had the previous day.

"What time is it?"

"A little after eight. It's back."

"What's back?" Bob asks through a yawn.

"Toronto. It reappeared about twenty minutes ago."

This perks him up a bit. "And it's all still there? It all came back?"

"Seems to be. Let's get going. I want to get to a restaurant before the breakfast crowd fills them all up. I rented us a car."

"A car?"

"To drive to Toronto. It'll be hours before the airlines get their schedules straightened out and flights start taking off again."

---

Traffic on the 401 is extra heavy and it's the middle of the afternoon by the time they reach Toronto proper. The traffic gets worse the deeper into the city they go, and grinds to a crawl before they reach the Don Valley Parkway.

Linda curses under her breath and digs her nails into the steering wheel until they reach an exit. The rental car limps off the highway and into a residential area. It's a newer development; all the houses in the area are large brick homes, packed close together with small patches of grass in front of them.

In addition to the heavy traffic, groups of people are wandering around the neighbourhood. The cars are honking but the people on the sidewalks don't seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere.

Linda pulls the car up to the curb and turns off the engine.

"No sense in wasting gas inching our way downtown. We may as well just wait until everyone settles down. Maybe there's a coffee shop around here."

"What are they doing?" Bob points to a group of people gathered at the intersection just down the road from them.

"Why don't you go ask them. I'm going to try to get ahold of my client."

Bob gets out and walks up to the group. As he approaches, someone turns to him and asks, "Hey what do you think: Mel Lassman Way or East Toronto Boulevard?"

Someone else says, "Mel Lassman? Come on! And there's got to be a thousand Toronto Boulevards by now."

"What's going on?" Bob asks. He looks back toward the car and Linda is talking on her cell phone and waving her free hand over her head.

"We're trying to come up with a new name for our street."

Bob looks up at the street sign. According to it, they're standing at the intersection of Royal Maple Lane and Golden Meadows Way.

"It's gotta be unique," someone in the crowd tells him.

"But reflective of our heritage. Of Toronto."

"Are you allowed to just change the name of your street. Doesn't city hall have to do that? A committee or something?"

Around the neighbourhood, he sees people out on their lawns. One man is sticking a pink flamingo onto his patch of grass. His neighbour is painting his garage door a luminous yellow.

"Well we have to do something. We don't want to forget again."

"Forget?"

"Why else would we have disappeared? It's all over the news. We're one of the cities that vanished."

"It feels like Tuesday but the rest of the world says it's Wednesday."

Bob is about to ask why that would keep the city from disappearing again, but his cell phone rings. He takes it out of his pocket; the number is his sister's.

"Hello?"

"Bob! Where the hell have you been? Do you know what's been going on?"

"Hi Tonya. Yeah, of course I do. My flight got rerouted to Ottawa. I'm in Toronto but traffic is nuts. I -"

"Just get your ass over here. I'm supposed to get my stuff moved out of Tom's place by tonight. Some brother you are."

She hangs up.

Bob looks around the neighbourhood again.

"Hey, let me help you with that ladder," he says to the two people carrying it up to the intersection.

7 responses to "Week #16 - Delayed "

Ginny! wrote: Friday, 28 Mar 2008 08:46 um… the sister's bitchiness kind of came out of nowhere. There's no relief or urgency when Bob's trying to call her and can't get through. At the beginning, he's going to visit his sister "and isn't in such a rush". I just found it weird and jarring. Aside from that, I quite like your idea.

Dana wrote: Friday, 28 Mar 2008 10:27 I think you're right, Ginny. Maybe I'll see about tweaking it tonight...

Karen wrote: Friday, 28 Mar 2008 22:38 whoa! I loved this. You have such original and witty ideas, it's amazing. Really.

Debs wrote: Saturday, 29 Mar 2008 00:12 This is fabulously cool! I could definitely see this turning into a longer piece!

Kim wrote: Saturday, 29 Mar 2008 03:40 My favorite aspect is your descriptive abilities. The cities disappearing is too weird for me, but I like how the chararcters relate and interact with each other. Linda cracks me up. I envision her as a "Sheila" with damaged,frizzy, dyed red hair! :)

Marie wrote: Saturday, 29 Mar 2008 18:57 This is one of the stories where I'd like to read tons more about it, what happened to people, how they reacted to it, stuff like that. Write more!

Dana wrote: Monday, 31 Mar 2008 12:53 The perils of only having a week to write the story, Marie!

Leave a comment

Name
Email (will not be displayed)
Website

(HTML tags allowed: b, i, blockquote, ul, li, strike)

I've been getting a lot of spam comments lately so my filter is pretty aggressive. If your comment doesn't show up, it's probably just been quarantined. I'll authorize it posthaste :)