Birthday

It started innocently enough – me reaching into the back of the cupboard to draw out the Baco Noir that had waited in reverent darkness for almost a year. The bottle and I curled up on the porch and watched the cats hunt, the moths bounce off the balcony’s bare bulb, the night pass. My doorbell rang early Saturday morning and the rest of the day I shopped with an old friend, picking up our rhythm like it hadn’t been paused for the past ten months as lives and careers moved us to different countries, time zones. We came home to find a more recent friend climbing my back stairs. He held out his hands – in one a bag of young green shoots poking hopefully out of their training pots; in the other, bacon. More people materialized as the day wore on, some were even found serendipitously on the street. The bar closed its doors as we left and stumbled sideways for poutine.
Morning: coffee, Advil, bacon. Sunglasses before venturing out for the afternoon’s provisions (the market for strawberries and the SAQ for white wine). We sprawled carelessly on the balcony and devoted the actual birthday to our characteristic conversational swings. As dusk dropped we dressed up and pranced prettily through the door of my favourite restaurant. The waiter applauded the alcohol consumption, saying most women would have passed out under the table. We drained an expensive bottle of red upon our return, christening the just-renovated porch with its first set of wine stains.
And now… Stash’s vodka has been roundly depleted, days with the California blonde ostensibly left us with nothing to talk about and yet we couldn’t stop. She’s flown back to San Fransisco, and I'm on a train to London, my black skirt and shoes stowed safely in the overhead compartment.
I knew my grandfather had died. I knew halfway through my parents singing “Happy Birthday” – my father was hammier than usual and off the phone quickly. But for the rest of the evening I pretended, like my parents, that I didn’t know. They called early the next morning and everything has been in motion ever since… rent a car or take the train? Quickly send emails postponing or bowing out of the week’s obligations. Find a cat-sitter to take over my cat-sitting, and get a spare set of keys cut. Slide down to the floor and sob my way through a Cat Power song. Decide train, definitely. Call a girlfriend in London and ask her to make up the spare bed. Do a load of laundry, freeze the rest of the birthday bacon. Water the plants, change the cat litter, just keep moving...
The Tetris-like tension of such details breaks as I'm on the train. The tourists in front and behind me (Eastern European and Australian respectively) are captivated by the postcard scenery. My eyes are just as fixed out the window, but I'm seeing different things. The sunlight drops behind heavy clouds and light rain as the train hurtles further west; I try not to read too much into this. I'm quietly anxious. My brother is picking me up at the train station; until then, I tuck my legs under me, turn up the volume on the iPod, and keep staring out the window.