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Ming’s answering machine, emotional diatribes examining their relationship’s dynamics. He left messages saying he wanted to discuss medical school application issues with her, and when she didn’t call back he left further messages in which he discussed his thoughts about her possible responses to his issues. Sometimes he described his day’s study progress, subject by subject. Fitzgerald pleaded with Ming to call him. He addressed the reasons he imagined she might have for not calling him, and promised that if she called, he would be calm and neither of them would cry. He would be silent for a few days, and then call to leave a message saying that he was finally getting beyond their relationship, that it was wonderful that things had cooled down a bit to give them both space,so it would be great if she would call and they could talk like good old friends. Like colleagues, he said.
    Fitzgerald began calling to hear her voice on the machine. In the middle of the day, when he felt lonely, he would call just to hear the recording.
    Hi. You’ve reached Ming, but I’m not here. Leave a message.
    One day, at two in the afternoon, she picked up the phone.
    â€œHello?” she said.
    â€œHi.”
    Her voice was sticky. “I was napping. I just grabbed the phone. Why are you calling in the afternoon?”
    â€œI’m addicted to the idea of you.”
    â€œOh, I didn’t check my call display,” she said with a mix of annoyance and apology, as if to explain why they were actually talking.
    â€œWe’re meant for each other. We decided.”
    She said nothing, and then came the dial tone.
    The next day, Ming’s number was out of service. The new one was unlisted.
    Â 
    It was an early March day in Ottawa. Fitzgerald rode his bicycle under a noon sun that chewed gleaming wet facets into snowbank peaks as streaks of black sediment crumbled toward the curb. Fitzgerald had just checked the midterm exam results, and was near the top of each of his classes. Tomorrow he would go to Toronto for his interview. The invitation had comefrom the Faculty of Medicine in a stunningly ordinary white envelope.
    Fitzgerald pedalled away from campus along the canal, through lakes of slush toward the red light at the intersection of Sussex and Rideau. He chewed upon the imperative of acceptance into medical school, and scripted the shining, clear conversation with Ming that would set aside all the misunderstandings that had separated them. For months now, Fitzgerald’s mind had alternated between studying and allowing his speculations to spin like wheels stuck in a rutted path of Ming and medicine, digging the tracks deeper and deeper. Everything would fall into place once he was accepted to the University of Toronto. That was it, the end point after which career, perfect words, heroic acts, and true love would come naturally as a matter of course.
    She might call tonight to arrange to see him in Toronto tomorrow. He prepared himself for the things she might say, thought about what response would show tenderness, strength, and more maturity than when they last spoke five months ago. Fitzgerald pedalled slowly, timing the lights. Spinning his legs backwards, he judged the crosswalk with its orange hand flashing, then the traffic signal that turned yellow as he came closer, then red. Now his light was green, and he stood up out of the saddle in order to sprint through the intersection. As his rear wheel gripped the asphalt and he surged forward toward the green light, Fitzgerald saw the bus running the red, and now he was in theintersection with the bus, gigantic and fast, rushing at him. He grabbed the brakes with a spasm of his hands, and the bus swerved, its rear wheels locking, sliding sideways and throwing a fan of slush. He flew over the handlebars of the bike into the air with a sense of vast calm—an empty mind in the sudden knowledge that he was very near his death.
    The humming noise