By the time I am finished showering, the bathroom is filled with steam and the mirrors are completely clouded over.

I make a few calls, including one to Stella, a friend of a friend, whom I had met about a year back. Stella promises to meet me to take a tour of a nearby mall.

I have breakfast at the same place that I bought dinner the night before. I take it out to the outside eating area. At a table nearby is the concierge talking on a cell phone. He takes a break to say hello to me and to direct me to a main artery, Yonge Street. He speaks in a heavy Middle Eastern accent. Somewhere among the gutturals I find his name, Hassan. After a few minutes on the phone he drives off in a large Chevrolet.

(Reunions)
Some hours later I meet Stella. She recalls our first meeting at the launching of Upscale Restaurant's Open Mic Poetry Night. She congratulates me and tells me that she knew that I could do it. Of all the times that I have heard this, this one is the most sincere.

We tour several floors of an enormous mall, up and down stairs and escalators. I am given a crash course in shopping in Toronto. I learn also that Stella's husband, Michael, used to go to President's College. I take his work number.

About midday, we part ways. I seek out an Internet café and send some e-mails. When I get back to the hotel I call up Michael. Michael was some six years ahead of me in high school, but we 'catch up' for almost an hour. After I'm finished, Stella calls and I invite them to the launching of the CCLE.

I spend the rest of the afternoon undoing my hair that was neatly corn-rowed for the occasion.

(A Gala Event)
At about five minutes to 6, I make my way down to the hotel's Mandarin Room. The Mandarin Room is divided into two areas, one section with a seating capacity for about 500 people and a reception area. The reception area is packed. I meet Nancy Rickford for the first time, a stout, energetic woman, bristling with energy and wearing a red dress. After a while, I am left to mingle on my own. I introduce myself to Peter Jailall. Peter has heard about me and is ecstatic that he is recognisable. I promise to meet him after the event.

A while later, I recognise Rachel Manley, thin and birdlike. I met Manley at the Trinidad launching of her book Slipstream, in 2000. She is talking to a tall, middle-aged British-looking woman who I come to realise is Pauline Melville. Pauline is dressed in something that looks very much like a piece of negligée. We talk for a while and I offer to get her a drink. When I return some ten minutes later with some punch, she asks whether there is "any rum in it." She says that she has to say something, and she wants to be in the mood to "say something nasty, preferably about America." I grin in agreement. I tell her that I have this idea of interviewing her and the other Guyanese guest authors for the Chronicle. She tells me that, as a rule, she never gives interviews. She recalls one incident where one "journalist" practically harassed her friends to get an interview with her as part of his series on Guyanese writers in England. I see a fat, grinning, John Mair blubbering belligerently on one end of a telephone line. We agree that though there will be no formal interview, I am free to grab sound-bites here and there.

An hour or two later, a vampish Pauline Melville strides up to the podium, shoots her guns blazingly from the hips, and then strides back to her seat, to the unsure applause of most of the audience.

(A night out with the boys)
After the opening, I am dragged away by Peter Jailall, Ken Corsbie and Bernard Heydorn to have a few drinks. We never make it to the bar. Ken, sprightly in his seventies, Bernard neat and conserved, and Peter enthusiastic and amiable. Around the corner from the hotel, Ken barges into a Thai restaurant and we trail behind him. A Thai woman who is obviously the owner sits tallying up the day's earnings while a middle-weight black woman sits peeling potatoes. The Thai woman informs Ken that there is no more food and that they are closed for the day. Ken spots a small pot of rice on a stove and then surveys the leavings of the various stews on display. The others chip in and convince the owner to give us the pot of rice which was for her own use. We each order a different stew and sit down at a table to eat.