When I’m feeling stuck or uninspired, I’ve been adding little bits and pieces to a Cottage COVID piece … which I’m not convinced I’ll ever (a) finish, and (b) publish. It’s essentially just plotless domestic fluff, but there are a few concepts and ideas and interactions tucked in there that I quite like.
Anyway, I read through what’s in there tonight and thought I’d share a snippet because I can picture this so very clearly in my mind and maybe you’ll enjoy too …
They’re lying on the couch, with Shane’s head resting on Ilya’s chest, watching an impressively dull documentary on the Library of Alexandria. Well, Shane’s watching, judging by the little “Huh!” chirrups of interest he makes from time to time. Ilya’s thinking, an activity greatly improved by the ability to stroke Shane’s hair like a very shiny, very well-fed, very heavy, very focused dog.
Ilya’s thinking about societal collapse. Not in a Shane-way, not anxiously. In a just-for-fun way.
Since shelter is sorted, and water is sorted (the well was a good investment, he decides, not that he’ll admit it to Shane), food would obviously be priority one. He's willing to bet that the hoarder’s palace that is David Hollander’s garden shed would contain quite a few packets of vegetable seeds. Both he and Shane are uniquely ill-equipped for futures as farmers, given their matching black thumbs, but he’d trust David with his life when it comes to coaxing nutrition out of soil.
Ilya knows fuck all about the fertility of Ontario land: good? Bad? What, exactly, is the difference? But either way, a lifetime without protein sounds untenable, so they’ll need to hunt. That’s where he could shine.
He pictures himself stalking in the white winter woods, the cold air sensitizing his sinuses, the damp humidity of his breath against a scarf. This isn’t some classical epic, his love is not a wispy woman waiting by the woodstove; no, Shane is fifteen feet to his left, prowling alongside Ilya, cold-flushed cheeks and a hungry mien (Ilya’s seen Shane go without protein for a meal once or twice (it’s not pretty (except to Ilya, who finds Shane’s pissy, snippy moods amusing (“Mr. Captain Canada is feeling bitchy,” Ilya remarks sometimes. “Go fuck yourself,” Shane inevitably snaps back, which only pleases Ilya even more)))).
Together, they locate and corner a deer, and (because this is Ilya’s fantasy) it’s Shane who flushes it out, and Ilya who raises his rifle and brings it down. They freeze cuts and strips of meat to feed their family, which David will cook alongside potatoes wrapped in aluminum foil and rosemary atop the ashes of a fire.
“In Canada, can I buy a gun if I am not a citizen?” Ilya asks, out loud.
It’s not until Shane raises his head off Ilya’s chest and levels him with an incredulous look that Ilya realizes he probably should have prefaced that question with some of his line of thinking.
