Danny points his bike down John and Sara’s street. He’s a little winded from the long climb up Cambie, but feeling good. His old bike still fits him like a glove, but the chain needs to be oiled—the squeak is embarrassing.
        The houses on their street are all ‘50s bungalows with small yards and no driveways. He’s been over to John and Sara’s new house only once since they moved in three months earlier. Their housewarming. It was a pretty good party, though Danny struck out with the cute blonde coworker of Sara’s when he asked her to continue the night elsewhere.
        He glides right up to their porch. The railing bends a little under the weight of his bike and Danny makes a mental note to fix it even if it isn’t part of the work they want him to do. John’s call yesterday came out of the blue, the first time they’d talked since the party. He asked if Danny could do a couple days’ work around the house, mainly some painting, and said they’d pay him $500 under the table. Though it sounded like too much money for only two days’ work, Danny didn’t hesitate. He certainly could use the cash.
        John is on the phone when he opens the door. He gives Danny a quick smile, then motions him into the cool interior of the house. Danny tunes out the phone conversation and looks around. He stops in the entrance to the living room. Morning sunlight streams through a row of antique leaded glass squares bordering the top of the big bay window, sending dappled shafts of orange and pink dust motes across the room. If Danny had his camera, he would definitely shoot that light, but the XL-1 is in hock along with the rest of his film equipment, and even the promised $500 would only go halfway to getting it back.
        He is still staring at the beams of light when John calls from a few rooms away. “Dan? Where’d you go?”
        The scene playing out in Danny’s mind dissolves back into the empty living room, but a kernel of an idea for a film doesn’t disappear. He takes one last look at the light before following John’s voice.
        They meet in the marble and stainless steel kitchen under a chain lattice of copper-bottom pots strung from the ceiling. Danny pulls John’s handshake into a hug. He waits for his old friend’s stiffness to soften until the embrace grows uncomfortably long.
        “Hey, buddy. It’s good to see you,” he says.
        John smiles back at him. “Yeah, you too. How’ve you been keeping?”
        “Can’t complain. Little of this, little of that, you know.”
        “Don’t I though. Summer’s treating you well?”
        “Sure,” Danny replies easily, not thinking about the bills, the creditors, the waiting and wondering. “Can’t you tell from my tan?”
        John stretches out a pasty white arm. “You’d think all the radiation from my monitor would give me a little colour at least.”
        “Just cancer, dude. And hemorrhoids.” Stupid, he thinks. What a stupid thing to say.
        John chuckles. “Coffee?”
        “Sure.” Danny eyes the fancy Italian espresso maker on the counter, but John pours from a stainless steel thermos into a matching mug.
        “Black, right?”
        John is dressed up, at least in Danny’s eyes: dark pants that appear silky in the bright halogen, gelled hair, a pressed shirt and chunky black leather shoes. Danny feels grungy in his shorts, T-shirt, and scuffed sneakers.
        “I have a meeting downtown in about an hour,” John says, “I should probably show you what we want done.”
        “Sure thing, John-boy. Point me at the paintbrushes.”
        The main job is to strip and re-paint the six-foot wooden fence that encloses the yard. The boards are still in good shape, but the old brown paint is peeling off in big patches. The new paint is green, darker than the lawn, but lighter than the fir tree that leans over the house.
        “I figure a day for the stripping and another for the painting,” John speaks as they walk along the fence. “And we want the window frames in the same colour, too.”
        The paint cans and some new brushes, rollers and scrapers sit in a tidy pile in a little prefab shed in a corner of the backyard. Along with two pristine mountain bikes, some gardening tools, a step-ladder, and a neatly coiled hose. Everything is too clean. If this were a location shoot, Danny would ask the set dressers to dirty it up a bit.
        He starts stripping the old paint as soon as John goes back inside the house. The day is warm, so he has his shirt off in no time. The work is easy, and he finds himself remembering the summer after first year at UBC when he and John worked for College Pro. Those were the days. Long hours, parties almost every night. At the end of the summer, there was less money for school than he’d expected, but at least he had some great memories.
        The déjà vu of the moment is strong, but there’s no Nirvana cranked on the ghetto blaster and no skinny little John-boy with his glasses and pale skin. Danny’s belly hangs over his belt a little now, too. That certainly is different.
        He’s about a quarter of the way around the yard when John comes out to tell him he’s off to his meeting. He hands Danny a set of house keys.
        “Feel free to grab a drink, or make yourself a sandwich or whatever. I won’t be back ‘til late in the afternoon.” John examines Danny’s work. “Lookin’ good, Dan.”
        Danny lasts about twenty minutes longer. He goes to the bathroom even though he doesn’t really have to. He doesn’t look through the medicine cabinet—he already did that at the housewarming party and didn’t find anything interesting. He walks through the house, looking in each silent room. He touches the duvet on their bed, tests the smooth, sliding mechanism of their dresser drawers, caresses the cool slickness of some of Sara’s lingerie. She doesn’t have anything particularly risqué, but he likes the feel of her black silk negligée between his fingers.
        In a hallway, there is a framed photo of John and Sara on a tropical beach. Thailand, Danny remembers. At the housewarming party, they talked about how they wished they could move there. And their other friends, all those couples—the guys with identical haircuts, the women with trim, yoga-toned bodies and bright, unwrinkled eyes who nursed a glass of white wine for hours—they laughed with John and Sara over the joke. Yeah right, move to Thailand, what a crazy idea. Any of those couples could afford to do it, Danny thinks. If they wanted to, they could do it. He almost said something at the party, but by the time he thought of a witty remark, the conversation had moved on.
        Danny shakes his head, still staring at the photo. Back in their university days, he would never have imagined John and Sara getting together. They were a tight trio in those days, and Danny was the glue. Sara had a thing for him back then—he knew by the way she hung on his every word—but he only saw her as a buddy. And John was his sidekick, following Danny’s lead in everything.
        He was surprised when John and Sara began dating shortly after graduation. And their wedding only a year after that. Danny was the best man, though they hadn’t seen each other much since school. But it made sense since he had brought them together in a way. He remembered little of the ceremony or reception, in part because of how drunk he got, but also because he was exhausted. He’d spent the year after graduation putting together the funding and crew to shoot a twenty-five-minute short that he wrote and directed. It was a harrowing ride of triumphs and failures that culminated in a sloppy film—he could admit that now—that was rejected by all the festivals. It also sent him into personal bankruptcy, a hole he was still trying to climb out of.
        Danny didn’t see much of John and Sara over the first few years after their wedding, but that was only the natural drift that happens to university friends as they start their real lives. Eventually, their paths began to cross again, and they developed a comfortable routine after a while. John and Sara would invite him over for dinner at their apartment every few months.
        In the kitchen, he considers cracking a beer, but since there are only three in the fridge, it’d be too obvious. He grabs a Coke instead, and stretches out on a lounge chair on the cedar deck. When he wakes up, his watch reads 2:37. Power nap or what. He gets up to go back to work, expecting John home at any time.
        Danny is about two-thirds finished with the stripping when he hears the patio door slide open. He turns to make a crack about John being late, but stops. It’s Sara.
        “Hey, Dan,” she says, stepping carefully down off the deck in pointy shoes. Even with the heels, she is well short of his own six feet. He likes taller women, but she’s pretty. She keeps herself slim, and doesn’t hide what curves she has. Her reddish-brown hair is pulled back in a pony-tail. Tan pants and a white fitted shirt with the top two buttons undone. Make-up. Her job is pretty high up in the university administration, so she has to dress up.
        Lifting his eyes back up to her face, he says, “Hey Sara, lookin’ gorgeous as usual.”
        She smiles back at him and stops a few feet away. Too far for a hug.
        “It’s roasting today,” she says, her nose crinkling like she smells something funny. Danny has always liked that crinkle, and the cute spray of freckles, too. “I hope you’re wearing sunscreen,” she adds.
        He likes the idea of Sara looking at his body, and sucks his gut in. “Nah, I’m pretty well impervious by now,” he says, flexing his dark brown arms, showing off his muscles. The back of his neck does feel a little warm. Tomorrow, he’ll wear a ball cap.
        “Looks like you’ve been working hard,” she says without even glancing at the fence.
        “You about ready to call it quits for the day?”
        “Another half an hour.” He wants to get at least to the big fir so John won’t think he’s been slacking off.
        “OK, you workhorse. But you’re staying for dinner, right? I told Jonathan to buy steaks.”
        “Sounds great.” His mouth waters at the thought.
        He watches Sara as she walks back to the house, lets his eyes slide over her tight little ass. She glances back as she goes through the patio doors, and he waves the scraper.
        He is almost even with the tree when John calls to him from the patio.
        “Quitting time, Dan-O. Come up here and grab yourself a beer.”
        Danny hears the reassuring sound of ice bouncing into a cooler. When he steps up onto the deck, John hands him an open Heineken.
        “Cheers.” They clink bottles and Danny slugs back half the beer.
        “So good after a day in the sun,” he says, and tilts back the green bottle again.
        “It’s good after a day dealing with hard-ass clients, too, let me tell you.” John sips his beer. He has changed into baggy shorts, a loud Hawaiian shirt and prissy brown leather sandals. Danny hides a smile behind another swallow of beer and finishes the bottle.
        John waves him towards the cooler where, to Danny’s relief, there are another dozen bottles among the ice cubes. Danny pops the top off another with the opener on his key chain and sits down across from his friend, who is staring at the fence with a distant look on his face. Before he can think of an excuse for why he hasn’t finished the stripping, John smiles at him.
        “This is great.”
        “Yeah, it’s coming along.” Danny nods at the fence.
        “No, I mean, it’s great to drink beers with you on a summer evening. Like the good old days.” He reaches over to clink bottles again.
        “Damn straight.” Danny stops himself from chugging the rest of his second beer. He’ll try to time it so that he finishes it when John finishes his first.
        The patio door swishes open and Sara comes through with a platter of raw steaks slathered in spices.
        “Now, don’t you men worry about getting up to help or anything. I’m sure I can manage on my own.” She’s changed out of her work clothes into a sleeveless summer dress. Her hair, loose now, brushes the freckled tops of her shoulders. Danny likes the bulge of her little biceps as she carries the platter.
        “Like she’d ever let me close to the barbecue.” John winks.
        “You’re on salad duty, buster, in about twenty minutes.” As she leans over to kiss John, Danny glimpses white lace and freckled skin down the drooping neck of her dress. When he looks back up, he finds her eyes on his.
        “Anything I can do?” he asks. “Set the table?”
        “No. You worked hard all day. Just relax.”
        As Sara bustles in and out of the house, John tells Danny about some clients who are complaining about a Flash sequence on their website. Danny tries not to let his eyes glaze over. He forces John to finish his beer by fetching him another without asking.
        The slight buzz from Danny’s third beer competes with the growing warmth of his sunburned neck. And neither helps him focus on John’s story. Luckily, Sara interrupts with, “Salad time, Jonathan.”
        She stays at the barbecue while John goes inside. She flips a sizzling steak, tests it
with a finger, licks the juice off her fingertip.
        “Smells great,” Danny says, going over to stand beside her.
        “How do you want yours done?”
        “Medium rare if you can.”
        “No problem.” She squints up at his face, the sun behind him. “Can I have a sip of your beer?”
        He hands her the bottle and she takes a little swig, then another, then hands it back. She tests the biggest steak again.
        “Jonathan likes his burnt.” Her nose crinkles again, “but I like a little blood on my plate.”
        Danny has trouble reconciling this confident meat-eater with the quiet, pale vegetarian Sara was back in university. He likes her better now, and he wonders when she changed.
        They eat on the deck. Danny savours each bite of his steak, sopping up the juice on his plate with a piece of salty focaccia. John opens a bottle of thick, purple Argentine Shiraz. Danny loves red wine, but rarely can afford anything this good; he wants to hold it in his mouth and never swallow.
        After dinner, Danny helps clean up the dishes, and then they all return outside to sit in the waning sunlight. He turns down their offer of coffee, content with ice-cold Heinekens.
        An hour or two later, Sara is telling them about a member of her staff who complains about everything—the office is either too hot or too cold, his chair isn’t ergonomic, the computer screens emit radiation. Danny smiles as her face grows red, fired by indignation. This is the Sara he remembers from their university days, but back then the things that pissed her off were homelessness and the lack of support for prostitutes.
        It’s close to midnight by the time Danny finds nothing but icy water in the cooler. How many has he had? He spots four or five empties beside his chair, knows he put at least as many in the box beside the cooler. He looks around. Just John. When did Sara go inside? John has a sweater on now. Danny shivers. All he has is the t-shirt he put back on when they ate.
        “Man, I’m bagged,” he says. His head is thick, and he yawns uncontrollably. No doubt Sara is making up a bed for him. Clean sheets and a real mattress, nicer than his flat old futon. “Guess we better call it a night, eh?”
        When Danny comes out of the bathroom, John is standing by the front door.
        “I don’t want you weaving home on your bike so I called you a cab, OK?”
        John tells the taxi driver Danny’s address, which pisses him off, like he doesn’t know
his own address, but he decides not to make a deal of it.
        “Thanks for dinner,” Danny says. “Say good night to Sara.”
        “I will. Good night, Dan.” John hands the driver a twenty-dollar bill, and with a tap on the roof, sends the cab on its way.

Danny doesn’t arrive until just before noon the next day, so he goes straight to the backyard without checking to see if John is inside. His bike is in the shed. He should have put it in the trunk of the taxi the night before. It would have saved him the hassle of three buses this morning.
        As he works, he thinks about the film idea that came to him in the living room yesterday. He’s surprised at how much it’s grown in his mind. It’s almost all there, start to finish: a conventional, well-off young couple, seemingly perfect—except for a dark secret.
        He is a few slats away from the sidewalk when a black Jetta pulls up. John gets out of the car and walks over.
        “Hey, Dan-o. How’s the head? I was hangin’ a bit myself this morning, and I know you had a few more than I did.”
        “It’s all good,” Danny says. “That half-a-cow I ate soaked up all the booze, I think.”
        “Yeah, those steaks were good,” John agrees. “Hey, I have some clients coming over for a meeting in about an hour, so let me know before then if you need anything.”
        Danny wants to talk to John about the film idea. He knows John will get jazzed on it, and maybe he’d agree to loan Danny the money to get his camera back from the pawn shop. Hell, Danny could give him Producer credit. But the main thing is the house. He needs to use John and Sara’s house. It’s perfect for the film.
        “Do you have time for lunch, like a sandwich or something?” Danny asks. His stomach is actually a little upset—probably not used to the steak—but this way they could talk.
        “I just ate downtown, but you go right ahead.” John pauses on his way into the house. “And don’t worry if you can’t finish before Sara and I leave tonight.”
        They’re leaving? A glimmer from last night’s conversation refuses to drop into focus.
        “Our timeshare in Kelowna, remember? We’re leaving as soon as Sara gets home.”
        “Right,” Danny says. “Right.”
        “You can take all weekend if you like. We won’t be back ‘til Monday some time.”
        John disappears inside the house. Danny stares at the closed door for a moment before returning to the fence.

When John’s clients arrive, Danny is in the stifling hot shed, opening the first paint can. He hears them talking in the front yard, then, “Jonathan! How are you?”
        Danny starts in the corner of the yard where he can see into John’s office. While he paints, he surreptitiously watches John talking to his clients. Danny can’t hear anything through the closed window, but from the smiles and laughter, he can tell they like John. But John seems fake, acting or something. It’s too bad, Danny thinks. He’s glad he never has to do that.
        Later, after he hears the clients leave, Danny waits for the sound of the patio door, imagines John holding out a couple cold beers, beckoning him to take a break. Danny will tell him
about the film and John will offer him some cash.
        After a few minutes, Danny stops painting and looks toward the house, but the door remains closed. He stares at the dark mirrored surfaces of the window-panes. There’s a reflection there: the backyard, the half-painted fence, and a figure—himself, paintbrush in hand. He closes his eyes for a moment, and then turns back to the fence.

A few hours later, Sara comes out to the edge of the deck. He turns when she calls his name, but stays by the fence.
        “I hope you won’t have to work all weekend,” she says, holding up one hand to shade her eyes from the bright sun. Her yoga pants are the colour of the lawn, and her sleeveless top is sky blue.
        “Nah, I’ve only got a couple more hours left.”
        “Good. Well, we’ll bring you back some wine, if we don’t drink it all.”
        Now he remembers—they’re spending the weekend touring wineries.
        John steps out of the house behind her. “We better hit the road, Sar. I want to get over the Coquihalla before dark.”
        “Did you remember to pay the man for his hard work?”
        “Oh, shit! I forgot to stop at the bank machine.” John looks at Sara for help, but she just frowns back at him. “I can write a cheque, though. That’s cool, right Dan?”
        It isn’t cool. With Danny’s bad credit, the cheque will take a couple weeks to clear.
        “Jonathan, under the table means cash,” Sara says. “I think I’ve got a hundred or so. How much do you have?”
        They pool their paper money and come up with $240, which John hands to him. “I’ll get the rest to you on Monday, OK? Sorry, buddy.”
        Danny pockets the cash and wishes them a great weekend.
        When Danny hears them drive off, he puts the paintbrush down and stretches his back. He’s done for the night. He won’t be able to finish before dark anyway. After putting everything away, he goes inside and washes up in the bathroom. He manages to get most of the paint splatters off his hands, but he still smells like paint, sunscreen and sweat.
        He shrugs at himself in the mirror and removes his clothes. Their shower is a little room blocked off from the rest of the bathroom by a wall of glass. The tiles are cool and rough under his feet. The jets of water feel good on his sore shoulders—the pressure is stronger than his shower at home. He smells the contents of each bottle and settles on two that must be Sara’s—minty shampoo and lavender conditioner. He pours apricot shower gel over a coarse loofah and scrubs his skin raw. When he turns off the water, he feels pink and new, cleaner than he has been in years.
        John’s clothes are way too small for him, so Danny is stuck with what he’s been wearing in the hot sun all day. He delays dressing, though, and looks through the medicine cabinet. Same as at the party, nothing interesting or worth trying, no pill bottles with strange names. But what’s this? Something new after all—a home pregnancy test. Unopened. What does that mean? They’re trying to get pregnant, but Sara hasn’t missed her period yet? Or maybe she had a scare but is too chicken to check. Danny returns it to the shelf, and closes the cabinet. He smiles at his reflection. The possibility of a pregnancy is the perfect addition to his screenplay.
        He’s tempted to shave, but likes the look of the stubble on his face. He uses some styling gel to make his hair look purposely disheveled. Eventually, he gets dressed. Reluctantly.
        He checks the fridge. No beer. He pours himself a tumbler full of vodka from the bottle he finds in the freezer, and carries the glass and bottle into the living room. He eyes the big flat-screen TV—they probably have a hundred channels—but no, he should think about his film. He doesn’t like working on paper; he prefers mapping it out in his head first. He stretches out on the leather sofa, props his head on the arm, and gets to work.

A thump on the door wakes Danny early the next morning. Where is he? He sees the empty vodka bottle, and finds the time on the VCR—6:17. He can’t remember the last time he was up this early. His head is surprisingly clear, but then again, he probably crashed long before midnight.
        He remembers the noise and checks the door. The Saturday Globe and Mail. He picks it up and carries it back into the living room, but stops in the hallway. Warm shafts of sunlight, filtered through the stained glass, shoot across the room. They’re even more spectacular than the morning when he first saw them. He tosses the paper aside and drops into a crouch, finding the perfect camera angle from the bottom right corner of the doorway. He stays down on his haunches, working out the scenes where he would use the light, until his knees start to ache. Then, he goes outside to finish the work.
        The fence takes him the rest of the morning, and then he starts on the window frames. As he works, he lets ideas for the film roll around in his head. Characters come and go, scenes are shot and then discarded. Bit by bit, he smoothes the rough edges of the idea.
        Late in the afternoon, Danny is painting the frame around the big living room window when he realizes it’s the last one. He’ll be done in ten minutes, which is good because he’s tired. He has pushed himself hard all day.
        He twists his body to stretch his aching back. His perch on the ladder gives him a clear view of the street. It would be a good opening shot for the film. Houses similar to this one, their yards clearly marked by a fence or a hedge, SUVs and Volvos parked in front, here or there a sportier Audi or BMW. A rusty old pick-up truck beside a yard where a young man mows the lawn. Even as Danny watches, the mower’s motor dies and the young man pushes it over to the truck. He empties the bag and lifts the mower over the tailgate. As he drives past John and Sara’s house a minute later, he lifts a lazy hand, but Danny, up on the ladder, doesn’t notice. The perfect climax for his film is playing out in his mind. The landscaper will reveal the dark secret and shatter the yuppie couple’s perfect life. Danny is ready. When he gets home, he’ll start writing. He has it all now.
        As he turns back to the window, his balance shifts and he reaches out to steady himself. His fingertips catch the window frame, but the brush handle taps the pane lightly. Steady again, he pulls his hand away. There is a crack. He stares at it in disbelief. He hardly touched the glass. He blinks his eyes but the crack is still there, splitting one of the small panes of leaded glass almost perfectly in half.
        Danny feels sick, like when he was a kid and he did something he knew he’d get in trouble for. His stomach churns. He swallows. He puts the brush down, and carefully touches the fractured pane of amber glass. It still feels solid. Why did it crack so easily?
        Danny closes his eyes. He tries to think of scenes from the film, but all he can see is the cracked glass. John and Sara should be able to replace it; they can take the money out of his pay.
        But even as he tries to calm himself, his hand curls into a fist. He feels his bicep flex and his fist punch through the cracked pane. He opens his eyes wide to see the empty frame, only slightly larger than his fist. Two neat halves of leaded glass rest on the living room carpet inside. He moves his fist to the next pane of coloured glass and punches. This one shatters into several pieces, one sharp enough to draw a little blood. He punches the next one, and the one after that, until he has broken all the little panes of coloured glass along the top of the living room window.
        It takes him about five minutes to finish painting the window frame. He carries the ladder to the shed, and cleans up the paint cans and brushes. He walks his bike out to the front yard, locks the house and drops the keys John gave him into the mailbox.
        Danny pedals hard down the big hill on Cambie, fast enough to keep up with the cars, fast enough that the wind pulls tears from the corners of his eyes.