How Many Streets?

Paths and Their Crossing and Recrossing

How many streets do you think there are in this city? I ask the publisher, my boss. We’re looking out the second floor window of a vacant building we’re thinking about renting. One of the associates had spotted it a few weeks earlier. Could be just the thing, she said. I knew the street, knew it well, recalled the building, but it was early days and we were reliably slow movers. I didn’t need to worry just yet.

A little later I got a message, we were going to look. Now I could start to worry. It was about to be listed and we needed to act fast, the associate said. This was becoming a distinct possibility. Keep an open mind, I told myself, your feelings are secondary, this is business. 

The building was a good fit, a regular Three Bears situation: not too big, not too small, just right for a staff still finding its post-pandemic self. It was on an inviting residential street that got us out of the downtown and into a neighbourhood of Victorian homes with stores and restaurants a short walk away.

What do you think, asked the boss. It’s lovely, I said, Probably perfect, and then I asked my question: How many streets do you think there are in this city? Thousands, he said without hesitation. I nodded. And what do you think the odds are that both my ex-partners live on this one?

We loved until we didn’t, me and each of those exes, downed by early relationship frosts, our leaves turning prematurely brown and falling, but there’d been lush green times before that. I had three kids with one, one with the other. There was almost an air of inevitability about inhabiting the same street as them, chickens and coming home to roost, and all that. I used to think it funny that the two of them had ended up together. Poetic. Poetic justice. But that poem had turned mock-epic: two being company; three, a joke; me the punchline.

We’d all been friends until, things getting irreconcilable with number one, I started to look to number two for a greener variety of grass, he’d make everything better until he didn’t. Did we all have unfinished business? Is that why we were staring an odds-defying outcome in the face? I didn’t care. The whole thing chafed. It was like going commando, no boxers between me and them, the very way husband number one liked to dress. Too constricting, he said of underwear. But not without its selling points, I said. As it turned out I’d have to get used to the chafing. We rented the building.

The exes and I were friendly when required but it’s not much required of us any more, the kids grown. At husband number one’s sixtieth birthday I did, however, offer a heartfelt toast. I will always be grateful to you, I said raising my glass, You saved my life. This was not hyperbole it was fact. Owing to him I’d found my own mental and emotional wellness. To preserve the lightness and cheer of the occasion I then went on to properly introduce myself and the women with whom I was standing. I’m ex-wife number one, I said, and this is ex-wife number two, I said referring to the woman next to me, and that’s his next ex-wife, I said, referring to the woman at the end of the line. We all exploded with laughter, him included. As it turned out I was right.

About my other ex I still scratch my head. I thought we had a good thing, something with legs, but our stars were ill-fated, too much space junk.

The two exes are now back to the closeness they once enjoyed when the three of us were musketeers way back in the beginning. Maybe they were the ones who were meant to be together all along and I just got in the way.

Did I see you in that new building down the street, ex number two asks a few months after my company moves in. I’m non-committal. I was walking by one night, he said, there was a party going on inside, it looked like you. Note to self: pull the blinds.  

A few more months pass and ex number one asks whether my office has moved? Why do you ask, I said. I saw it on the masthead, he said referring to one of the magazines we publish, It says you’re on C- Street. That’s my street, he apparently said to himself at the time. That’s us, I said, Good eye.

I’d planned to tell them, it felt childish not to, but I’d been unable to summon the energy. I’d spent so much time summoning energy when each of us had still been a couple. My summoning days were over.

Thousands, said my boss. And a whole wide world, I thought, And yet here we are, me and my exes, together again on the same street. Causes and conditions for rumination aside there was no meaning to be had. Circumstances had not conspired, they were simply being themselves, blindly cheeky and indifferent to my consternation.