I could choke on it by mistake, an undignified way to die. I should get bifocals. But then I’d look like an old biddy. I pull on my powder-blue sweatsuit, my disguise as a non-artist, and go down the four flights of stairs, trying to look brisk and purposeful. I could be a businesswoman out jogging, I could be a bank manager, on her day off. I head north, then east along Queen Street, which is another place we never used to go. It was rumored to be the haunt of grubby drunks, rubby-dubs we called them; they were said to drink rubbing alcohol and sleep in telephone booths and vomit on your shoes in the streetcar. But now it’s art galleries and bookshops, boutiques filled with black clothing and weird footgear, the saw-toothed edge of trend.

I decide I’ll go and have a look at the gallery, which I have never seen because all of this has been arranged by phone and mail. I don’t intend to go in, make myself known, not yet. I just want to look at it from the outside. I’ll walk past, glance casually, pretending to be a housewife, a tourist, someone window shopping. Galleries are frightening places, places of evaluation, of judgment. I have to work up to them. But before I reach the gallery I come to a wall of plywood, concealing a demolition. On it is spray-painted, in defiance of squeaky-clean Toronto: It’s Bacon or Me, Babe. And underneath: What Is This Bacon and Where Can I Get Some? Beside this there’s a poster. Or not a poster, more like a flier: a violent shade of purple, with green accents and black lettering. RISLEY IN RETROSPECT, it says; just the last name, like a boy. The name is mine and so is the face, more or less. It’s the photo I sent the gallery. Except that now I have a mustache.

Whoever drew this mustache knew what he was doing. Or she: nothing precludes that. It’s a curled, flowing mustache, like a cavalier’s, with a graceful goatee to match. It goes with my hair. I suppose I should be worried about this mustache.