The Fix

“You mean someone in the government ordered those helmets photoshopped onto the heads, to make everybody look all safe and Canucky?”

“Not just someone.” He sniffed a stalk of raw broccoli then put it back on the platter.

“Wib . . . so that’s why you didn’t come to the reunion! This can’t be true, can it?” “I swear.” Wib held up his right hand. Baked cheese dripped from it. He whipped a ten out of his own wallet and held it up. He still had my five, so it was hard to concentrate. I studied the ten from a distance. I could make out a slightly crooked figure in a beret.

“Look at that old vet on the back,” said Wib. “When we first saw the drawing, he was bent over double like some Miami snowbird trolling for quarters along Pompano Beach. Then we unbent him a little, so you could see that he was a vet. See? The beret’s kind of a giveaway.”

I could contain myself no longer: “Wib, Wib, you were meant for better things than tweaking the art on our cash. . .”

“I’m not through.” He pointed to another figure on the bill. “Look at that peacekeeping, flat-chested lady soldier with the binocs: she started out as a guy. We added that bun on the back of his head to make him a she.” He was right; it was a guy with a bun.

“They should have gone with a ponytail. Nobody wears a bun anymore.”

“It was a last-minute thing—we needed more women.”

“Even if the woman has a profile like Willie Nelson’s?” I muttered.

A young waitress came by with phyllo-wrapped shrimp, and Wib followed in her wake. I reeled from what I had just learned: Canada had become the first nation in the planet’s history to place the transgendered at the centre of a high-circulation currency note. What next? Would the loonie be withdrawn as a slight to the mentally frail?