Call It In the Air
Sheer InsanityLondon 1982
By: Greg Light - May 18, 2026
Pur'Tails,' Joey thought without thinking. In his head, the penny arched through the air like a young gymnast doing a backflip, landed on its edge, did a triple pirouette, and flopped on the hard, white surface of his desk. It was an unprompted image, on him without warning, and one he'd seen many times before.
Still wrapped in his bathrobe, Joey was at the makeshift trestle desk he'd erected in the bedroom of his ground-floor flat. Trying to work. But it wasn't happening. His papers and research notes sat untouched; his books remained unopened. Instead, two hours had been lost, sucked into his thoughts, this mundane image of a black one-cent piece superimposing itself across the awful hash and rehash of the argument he'd stupidly allowed himself to be dragged into the night before. 'Forget it,' he muttered to himself as he mulled over the incident for the umpteenth time. 'Let it go.' He turned and watched the rain drizzling through the barren February rose bushes outside his window. The bloated air swilled about them like the day-old tea sitting in the mug next to his books, spinning in his head, muddy and unsettling.
As far as Joey was concerned— ‘as far as I'm concerned,' he suddenly said aloud to the drops hanging from the bushes, 'This damned article is my problem. Not yours.' He turned back into the room. ‘It’s my burden, my gamble’ he murmured. ‘ Mine.' His eyes came to rest on a small, framed photograph. There was a slight pause. The photograph, a jaundiced black and white snap of his grandfather in a Canadian military uniform (Joe Senior circa 1945) looked back. His eyes, as ever, troubled. Deeply troubled. Joey looked away.
He never should have broached the subject with Gary in the first place. He should have known better. The evening had been fine until then: two old friends, a couple of pints of beer, and idle chat. Why risk spoiling it? Especially with Gary in the awful mood he was in. Still, to refer to his article as "insane" was low even by Gary's standards.
'Sheer insanity. They'll never publish it.'
'They have to publish it. They commissioned it.'
'If they do, you’ll be murdered,' Gary's voice was candid and forthright. 'The Guardian has changed. They won't touch it. No reputable newspaper would.'
'Give me a break. They said they wanted something different, edgy.'
‘It’s not an essay! It’s not an article!’ Gary shouted. ‘It’s an exposé.’ Joey didn’t disagree. ‘You have a family. Think of them.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
'It's getting late. I don't want to talk about it anymore,' Gary said abruptly. 'It's my opinion. They’ll kill you. Okay?' And with that, he left.
This was typical of Gary lately, to piss off when open conflict loomed. Joey admired Gary's ability to remain straight with him after all their years of friendship. But it still grated on him that he had to tidy up the left-over bits and pieces of their talks. It was he who had to brave the curious eyes of the public.
'Excuse me,' a young barwoman intruded cautiously. Cautiously? Joey felt like he had been hunted down. After all, he had chosen the most secluded corner of the pub.
'Another pint of the same,' he replied, handing her his empty pint glass.
'Sorry but we're closing.'
'Already?'
'It's ten past.'
Grumbling, Joey rose to his feet, slipped into his jacket, and threw his plaid scarf about his neck. He still wasn't used to the early closing hours of English pubs. Bloody London, he thought; ten million-odd people and you still can't get a quiet drink after eleven. The smallest town in rural Ontario could do better than that. Then he chuckled. Rural Ontario. That's where Gary had said he was from when they'd first met in the school playground in the nation’s capital over twenty years earlier; except he'd said "squirrel" Ontario. For months Joey thought Gary had lived in a squirrel park or zoo or something like that—a protected species sitting right beside him in grades four and five. A long time ago. He sighed. Now, look at them. In London. England.
'Joey! Joey!' His head was calling to him like his mother used to call for him for dinner. 'Come in!' At least get dressed, he told himself.
He pulled on a pair of faded jeans and sniffed at the armpits of a couple of his shirts. One shirt was begging for the laundry, the other passable. Outside, the rain was still dumping on the roses. Joey pulled the duvet up and sat down on the edge of the bed to put on his shoes. His neck ached and he suddenly felt tense. He closed his eyes. His head fell forward, his chin grazing his chest. He swung it up slowly in a circle. '... to the right, stretch, stretch … now up, up and back, farther ... as far back as possible ...' the voice was that of his former dance instructor. He had taken three classes with her in search of a relaxation technique. '... now to the left, stretch ... feel the pain ... and down. Let your head rest. Let gravity take it. Feel its weight. Relax.'
Relax? Who was he kidding? When you've accomplished nothing all morning, how do you relax? Hell, he'd been so tense he'd even gone so far as to scream out the window. That had happened when Gary's words had slipped through his head for the third or fourth time. A spontaneous explosion while watching the rain. Suddenly he had raised the window and in direct response to "It's sheer insanity," had blasted 'Oh yeah?’ into the drizzle. ‘I'll tell you what insanity is. This is insanity ... you ...' he paused, stumbling, the wet skimming his face, ' ... you ... you Fred-bag!!' Fred-bag? Imagine having said that. He hadn't used the term in years; then suddenly it popped out, as innocent as Amy's chatter to her various dolls.
Amy?? Oh my God! What time was it? Joey groped for his watch. Eleven forty-five. Whew! Not too bad. It could have been worse. Amy, of course, wasn't there. Joanna had taken her across the street to the babysitter at eight-thirty that morning. On her way to the Underground.
'Don't let my husband take advantage of you,' he knew she would have said to Mrs. Burton, 'If he hasn't come by to pick Amy up by eleven-thirty, call him. Insist!'
Some trust she had in him, Joey thought, looping his head through its aching circuit once again. Sure, he was behind schedule, but he had a singular rapport with Mrs. Burton. She was almost three times his age with a brusque façade that many elderly English widows seemed to exude, but Joey also saw how she flickered with warmth when Amy was visiting.
For Amy, Mrs. Burton would gingerly rise out of her forty-three-year-old, twice re-upholstered armchair, take a few moments to steady herself on her eighty-seven-year-old legs, shuffle slowly into her bedroom, dig deeply into an old, black trunk and carefully lift out a beautifully preserved pre-war (pre the Great War) doll. Shakily, she would hand the doll to Amy, staring intently at the young girl's face as she did so, her own eyes dancing with the childish, open-mouthed awe she saw in Amy's eyes. Amy, who instinctively seemed to appreciate the difference between this delicate antique and her small collection of blinking, wetting, and talking plastic playthings, would meticulously cradle the doll in her arms and rock it "ever so gently" across her chest while listening to the stories Mrs. Burton once shared with her doll and still remembered three-quarters of a century later. For the hour that Amy's attention span managed, they both lived in another world. Happy and enchanted. Afterward, they quietly put the doll "back to bed" in the trunk: a trunk that Joey once stupidly said in front of his daughter looked like a coffin. Amy had flooded into tears, shrieking hysterically that the "baby" (the stories? the memories?) was going to die.
'Oh, Amy I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.'
Joey often felt his own large and clumsy presence lived in a state of permanent apology before his daughter. Gentle and beautiful, her round, bright face was much more like Joanna's than his. That had been a godsend for which he had been immensely grateful when he was finally able to discern resemblances in the tiny, red, squelched-up face that belched lovingly back at him in the hospital the day she was born. The mouth especially; a miniature replica of Joanna's. Her smiles and frowns, even her yawns, were instantly captivating. With trepidation, Joey had watched some of his family features sprouting in her as she passed her first birthday. Fortunately, they jumped over a generation. Certainly, a happy detour of sorts had been made around himself. On his side of the family, Amy had lighted on his grandmother, Sarah, as a model to blossom after.
Not that Joey considered himself unattractive, rather, well, perhaps "out of fashion". But he was relatively tall, almost six feet, and he still had most of his hair; unruly as it was. Okay, he wasn't " slim" anymore, but neither was he overweight: in his mid-thirties, still an acceptable medium. It was his facial features, however, which gave him his distinctive look. His eyes had a definite "droopy" quality which, as a boy, had earned him the nickname "puppy". The only reason it didn't stick being the colour; a pale, grey, un-canine blue. His nose was normal (he guessed), but his mouth was somewhat large. ‘Wide’, he once insisted to Joanna, after she had teased him. 'Fashion models are making a fortune with this mouth'. She had rolled her eyes. 'Okay, all joking aside,' she replied, 'your features do make you eccentrically good-looking; a cross between a young Einstein and the older Trudeau.' It was the most despairing description of himself Joey had ever heard.
'Let your head drop. Feel its weight pulling across the back of your neck ... pulling you slowly over. Let your shoulders and the top of your back follow; then slowly the rest of your back, the vertebrae one by one folding ... pulling you to the floor. Don't move. Relax.' Joey was now hanging precariously over the end of the bed, his head below his knees. It was just as well Amy was with Mrs. Burton, he reflected upside down. What if she had witnessed his little tantrum? His loud bellicose shouts stabbed foolishly into the rain like a modern Lear. Impaled on the drenched thorns of the rose bushes, she wouldn't have understood the significance of his words. He wasn't entirely sure that he did. Worse, it might have undermined her faith in fatherhood; a faith Joey desperately hoped four-and-one-quarter-year-old daughters still blindly held for their fathers. Was he still invincible in her eyes? She could be infuriatingly obstinate sometimes and more than once he had cracked under the strain, letting loose a couple of reprimanding words. But, he thought, what were a few strict words between father and daughter? They loved one another.
'Then you won't mind taking care of her this morning?' Joanna had said, explaining today was the only day she would have free from her studies at University College London to get down to the Air Canada office on Regent Street to purchase her ticket to Toronto.
'But your sister's wedding isn't until the middle of April,' Joey had groaned. 'Surely you can do it next week?'
'I have the time today.'
'But I don't. I'd set aside this morning to get a start on my article.'
'You've still got over two months,' she said, slipping into her coat.
'Two months? I had six months. Please, Joanna!' His piece, commissioned by The Guardian last October, was merely a collection of notes at this point; random, chaotic, and desperately resisting any notion he had of introducing them to each other. Formally or informally. They all claimed ignorance of one another and a keen desire to keep it that way. Joey had awesome sympathy for how Pierre Elliott Trudeau must have felt in his attempts to drag a coherent agreement out of the nation's provinces on the long-standing effort to repatriate Canada's Constitution from Britain. On the other hand, if Trudeau had not insisted on capping his political life with Repatriation, The Guardian would not have asked for the article, and he would be free to spend the afternoon with his beautiful Amy.
'I'll take her to Mrs. Burton's,' Joanna finally said, picking up her umbrella, 'But no more than a couple of hours.'
'What can I get done in a couple of hours?' Joey grumbled. But secretly he was relieved. He knew that Mrs. Burton was delighted to take Amy for more than two hours. It enriched whatever time she had left on this earth. Although she invariably looked a decade older for it. Or would have if she hadn't already been a solid member of that "end-of-life" age group when no matter what the duration left, the next bit of business on the agenda is death. Heads or Tails? It didn't matter. They both had the same outcome. 'I love you,' he said to Joanna as she and Amy rustled out the door.
That was two hours ago. Since then, nothing. Not a single word to paper. Was this what the day had in store? Joey leaned back on the bed and dug the penny from his left-front jeans pocket. Small, round, and copper. On the one side, the majestic profile of George the Fifth and on the other: Canada - One Cent - 1936, bordered by an artless-looking etching of two maple leaves. A keepsake, of sorts, which he kept within easy reach: on his night table, in his pocket, tucked into a flap in his wallet—places like that.
He sat forward and flipped it in the air twice, both times catching it and slapping it down on the back of his wrist. Two tails. He grinned. The short-term forecast looked good.
The two tails were the first two flips of the day. He marked off the results in a blue-covered notebook he tucked in the drawer of his night table. Replacing the penny in his pocket and the notebook back in the drawer, he chastised himself for not having waded through a few hundred more tosses. Even that would have been something he could claim to have accomplished. The article looked unfinishable. Gary's merciless voice chuckled deeply at the back of his mind. Joey rolled his head through its aching loop one last time.
He made his way into the kitchen. Plonk. Plonk. Plonk. 'Ah shit,' he muttered under his breath. The roof on the back extension. Another thing he might have done with his morning. Although God knows how many times, he had been up there looking for the leak. Where the hell was it? He certainly couldn't afford to re-do the entire roof for one little leak, and the landlord was even more difficult to find.
Plonk. Plonk. Plonk. He emptied the saucepan Joanna had placed beneath the leak earlier that morning and mopped up a puddle on the floor next to it. He replaced the pan, re-spotting it to the right of its previous position by a few inches. The next burst of drips missed it entirely, falling to both sides. 'Oh, God!' He took down Amy's cereal bowl, still half-filled with soggy porridge. At least when the drips struck the porridge there was no sound.
Then the telephone rang.
'Mrs. Burton,' Joey cried, stumbling into the next room. He felt terrible. If Mrs. Burton was calling, it meant she had been harassed well beyond her ebbing strength. He shuddered to think of what a tired, hungry, Amy might be inflicting on the poor woman.
It was McDougal.
'How about lunch, pal?' McDougal's chirpy voice said.
'Today?'
'What, you only eat on alternate days? Yeah, today.'
'Can't today, George. I'm busy. Amy, my work ... it's all over me.'
'Take a break.'
'I can't. Today's impossible.'
'How about tomorrow?'
The last thing Joey wanted to do was lunch with McDougal. 'No, don't think I can make that either.'
'Come on pal, it can't be that bad. One hour or so.'
Joey paused. Why did George have to call him "pal"? 'One moment,' he said. He dug out his penny and flicked it into the air with his thumb. It shot out into a simple tumbling trajectory, landing easily in the palm of his hand. He quickly slapped it onto his wrist. A head. 'Fuc…' he huffed silently. 'Yeah, okay George,' he said into the receiver, 'Tomorrow. About one.'
'Terrific. Drop by the office.' There was a short pause.
'Yeah, sure,' Joey replied and hung up. 'Thanks a lot,' he said to his penny. What had the short-term forecast been? Sunny? He returned to the kitchen; dirty brown water swirled in Amy's porridge. If this day is sunny, I'd hate to see—he let the thought die.