My Work Feeds Me

by Andrew Tibbetts

I’m completely out of money but for the dregs of my laundry change bucket. It’s temporary but I am hungry. When I put my gym membership card back in my wallet I saw my Starbucks card and remembered I’d put fifty dollars on it some time ago! I headed over there for a sandwich and a juice. In a line-up that was full of men I had a hope of impressing, instead of the usual Church Street crop of impossibly gorgeous guys half my age, I saw the kindly young woman at the cash crunch her face, tilt her head and tell me I had a two dollar balance. Oh, I said. You could get a cookie, she said. Okay, I said, something with nuts for the protein. She gave me a breakfast cookie and I put back my juice and sandwich. Everyone in line had gracefully turned away, intrigued by the wallpaper or the ceiling or the floor or their fingernails.

I walked a few doors down nibbling my cookie, feeling very sorry for myself. I stopped at “This Ain’t the Rosedale Library,” my favourite bookstore. The Guardian calls it “the best independent bookstore in Canada.” I looked in the window. There displayed on the bottom rack but clearly visible without bending, were the two periodicals I have pieces in this season, sitting almost beside each other, smiling at me. I finished my cookie in a fog of pleasure and pride, staring in at this new peak in my literary career.

On the way home, I gave my fist full of nickels to a homeless woman. I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t unhappy. And I had a home to go to- one with a computer all set to work on the next piece, which turned out to be this one.