Vancouver

It is an early Friday morning. The alley is quiet except for the shopping carts and the rattling cans and bottles of the bottle collectors. This area is home to mostly apartment buildings, some large and high with swimming pools, others three-story walks-ups. All of the buildings are well-maintained with pleasant flowerbeds, manicured bushes, and healthy green lawns.

On this particular street, a large brown house is flanked by two low-lying apartment buildings. At one time, this was probably a grand house, belonging to an affluent family, but somewhere along the way, someone had the foresight to turn the house into apartments and the backyard into a parking lot for the tenants. The owners, a young couple with two school age boys, live on the main floor. The remaining apartments and rooms are rented to quiet tenants who don't smoke or have pets and who are willing to sign a year lease. Because this is such a good area, the owners can afford to be choosy.

When Frank MacLean hears his wife's car pull into the driveway, he logs off the online dating site and deletes his browsing history. He's gone south more than a few times to meet women in neighboring towns and each time he thought about how much easier every part of the process would have been if he'd been drunk. Trusting himself enough to meet at a bar, he instinctively set about to get the women drunk. Sometimes it worked just fine and other times the alcohol was what derailed the thing. Some women didn't appreciate Frank trying to get them drunk in a hotel bar while he stuck to ginger ale. One of them came right out and said he was quite a bit older and shorter than his profile said.

Being married ten years puts Frank at a disadvantage. He cannot post a photo and evidently, not posting a photo tells women that he's ugly, married or both.

“I’m taking my talents to South Beach,” the King said. Not to me, but to the Mayor. At least, that’s what Carl Gibson told me while we waited together in line at the bakery that morning. Carl was a good friend of the Mayor’s, they’d been neighbors for a while before the Mayor became the Mayor and moved into the house behind City Hall.

“I’m taking my talents to South Beach,” the King had said. According to Carl. “Tonight’s performance will be the last, and then I’ll be on my way.” Carl didn’t say if the Mayor had said anything back. If he had argued, tried to offer the King some reward for sticking around, or if he had just nodded and wished the King good luck.