Blind Spot

by Laurence Miall

  We returned to the hotel. Leonard had his conference to go to; we were free to entertain ourselves as we pleased.

  I reached Zoe Laboucan that afternoon. She sounded like she’d awoken from sleep. The previous night, she had been out partying with her friend Crystal. Partying where? Apparently the staff at Top of the Ninth, a bar by the university, had let them in, even though Crystal was underage. Top of the Ninth had a good rep for allowing kids to drink. They almost never checked for IDs. I wondered about the kind of people Zoe might have met in a bar. She didn’t want to talk about the night at any length. She asked how things were going in Montreal. I told her about the fiasco of the marathon hike up and down Mont Royal. My story came out clumsily and was mostly just me swearing about what assholes I had in my family — especially Laura and my father. (Laura was not around to hear herself defamed. She was out with Mom, shopping.) The conversation sputtered along and I failed to make an impression on Zoe. She did not express the slightest sympathy for me. I was convinced that it had been a mistake letting my parents drag me away from Edmonton. Absence was not making Zoe’s heart grow fonder. She said, “Call me again before you leave Montreal.”

  Call before leaving Montreal? Did she not want a call at least every day? I tried to talk myself out of my rising anxiety. In only another six days, I’d be flying home. Was that such a long wait?

  But nobody likes to want someone more than they want you. She smoked so much pot, maybe she was just apathetic about everything. Maybe she was like Ian Borger. With Ian, when you weren’t around, he simply forgot about you. He didn’t call, didn’t go out of his way to make plans. He just waited for you to rejoin his circle, and only then did you feel the friendship rekindle. Zoe might be the female equivalent of Ian. But I loved Zoe. If she cheated on me, it would break me. That’s what I feared above everything. She’d meet some guy at Top of the Ninth, cooler and tougher and older than me, and our relationship would be over.

  I lay on my dishevelled bed, Laura’s immaculate bed next to me, flicked on the TV and watched it for hours. Then Laura and Mom returned with a pile of shopping bags. They were dismayed to see me lying there, bleary-eyed and almost dozing off. What was the point of being on holiday if I just lazed around the hotel? I retorted, what was the point of the holiday if they kept nagging me to get off my lazy ass? The only consolation of this stupid holiday was lazing around on my lazy ass.

  “We’ll go to our room,” said my mother.

  They were going to try on their new clothes. I was happy just to be left alone.

  There was money in my pocket, thanks to a summer job in a north-end Edmonton bucket factory. For hours at a time, I had manned machines that wheezed and hissed and spat out buckets. My sweat was worth only six bucks an hour. But by sheer perseverance, by the time I was in Montreal, I had a small fortune of about a thousand dollars.

  South of our hotel on Sherbrooke was Montreal’s major shopping street, Sainte Catherine. That’s where I headed. It turned out that Sainte Catherine was a very different street from Sherbrooke. There were sex clubs everywhere. You would pass a church, a clothing store, and then the flashing neon lights would flicker with promises of girls, girls, girls, danse contact, best show in town, supersexe, then the boring shopping would resume, but only for a block before another massive club appeared. It was so hot and humid, and the street seethed with so many people, that I started to feel light-headed. I had not eaten since breakfast. Someone called out to me, “Monsieur, Monsieur!” but I hurried on. It was a big guy in the doorway of one of those clubs. What happened in those clubs? I imagined giant orgies, mouths and wet orifices everywhere. I imagined those tough guys at the door guiding you inside and helping you undress, throwing your T-shirt and jeans into a basket and saying, “Amusezvous, monsieur.” Did I look eighteen? Would they check my ID? I didn’t see anyone else entering the clubs. Were there entrances at the back that I didn’t know about? Who in their right mind would enter from Sainte Catherine — in full view of children and their families? This was crazy. This city was crazy. No one had ever told me about this.

  I walked and walked until there were no sex clubs left. I was weak on my legs. I needed to eat. I found a shop where there was donair meat turning on a spit. I pointed to the spit and said, “Ça, s’il vous plaît, merci,” and the guy behind the counter answered in English, “To stay or to go?” and I said, “To stay.” Just the sound of English was reassuring. I had to sit down and rest. I waited impatiently for that donair, having never been so hungry for a meal in my life. I ate it in a few large mouthfuls, asked for a glass of water — talking in English now — and the guy gave me one.

  After eating, I felt better. I started walking — not along Sainte Catherine — but down a smaller street. I followed it a long way. The apartment buildings on either side were old, and at one time might have been impressive, but were now rundown and shabby. A guy stepped out of a doorway in front of me and walked in my direction. He had acne, a large nose, spiked hair, and a long black leather jacket. He looked at me. He had the look of somebody that you hope leaves you alone.

  Right when he was passing me, he asked me a question in French. The only part of the sentence that vaguely made sense was a word that sounded like “shit.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” I said.

  I reached instinctively for my cigarettes.

  “I said, do you want to buy some weed?”

  I thought, why not?

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Or cocaine?”

  I looked into his eyes. They were pale green. He had very small pupils. Was this offer for real, or was he making some kind of joke? I didn’t know anyone who had ever tried cocaine. If I returned to Edmonton having tried it, my friends would be pretty jealous.

  “How much?” I said.

  “For a nice English tourist like you, only sixty bucks.”

  I did not know what quantity we were talking about or if this was a good deal or a bad deal, so I didn’t reply right away. I smoked my cigarette and pretended to think it over.

  “All right,” I said. “Sixty bucks. I’m on holiday. What the hell?”

  He reached for my hand and shook it. His palm was cold but sweaty.

  “Yeah, what the hell?” he imitated me. His accent was strong. “Wait here.”

  He went down the street a few paces and disappeared into the doorway from which he had emerged. While he was gone, a motorcycle came roaring up the street. It was absurdly loud. There was nothing else happening on the street except the theatrics of this speed demon. He looked at me and then zoomed away.

  The spiky-haired man returned. He came up to me so close that I could see the pores in his face. He started talking very quickly.

  “You got the money? I just saw cops from the window. We gotta do this quick. You got the sixty dollars? No?”

  I reached into my pocket and counted out sixty bucks as quickly as possible. He was making me nervous.

  “Good, good. Here man. Enjoy your holiday in Montreal.” He pressed a small white ball wrapped in plastic into my palm. Then he closed my hand around it. “The cops are coming right away, man. You better get out of here. Move it, man.”

  I turned around the way I had come and set a swift pace. He had made me nervous but also exhilarated. I imagined the cops coming by on motorbikes, roaring just like the one a few seconds ago. I covered half a block, made it to the intersection, and trotted across to the other side. Still no cops. I glanced around briefly. There was no sign of the guy with the spiky hair. No sign of cops, either. They must have gone another way.

  Eventually I slowed down to a civilized walk. I opened up my clammy fist to see what treasure I had. My first hit of cocaine! I unwrapped the plastic, and inside I found a piece of Kleenex, rolled up into a little ball.

  There was not even a speck of cocaine. The asshole had scammed me. No wonder he had fabricated the line about the cops. He had wanted to rush me out of there as soon as possible.

  I imm
ediately turned around. I’ll never understand why the spiky-haired guy stayed in the doorway of his apartment, but that is exactly where I found him when I ran back. He was just standing there with his hands pushed into the pockets of that leather jacket. He looked very surprised to see me.

  At first, I thought I was going to be able to negotiate something. I had just opened my mouth to complain about the shitty deal when suddenly his hand darted out from his side and he clocked me in the face — square in the nose. It was a huge shock. A moment later, blood started leaking.

  He whirled around to escape, but it wasn’t going to end like this. I lunged for him and got a good grab on the back of his jacket. He wrenched himself free, tearing one of my fingernails badly, but at least I’d slowed him down. I kicked out clumsily. I hit him in the thigh. He turned again and tried to fend me off, and even landed a punch to the side of my eye — a good punch, too. But that was as far as he got. I kicked him in the gut. While he was choking for air, I gave him a punch that landed on the side of his face. Then I got my arm cleanly around his neck and put him in a headlock. I dropped my weight, making sure that when we fell, it was me that landed on top. Jammed awkwardly into the cement of his own doorstep, he was not about to make any more trouble. Happy that he was out of commission, I quickly released my grip, got up, and ran.

  I was lucky it was a quiet street. For three blocks, I did not encounter anybody. When I did, it was the same biker that had looked at me before, speeding the opposite way. I was aware that I must look like a mess. I veered off the street and into a convenient little alleyway. Then I remembered my money. I hadn’t even retrieved my sixty bucks. That scam artist still had it.

  There was no going back now. It was too risky.

  I took the pathetic scrap of Kleenex that the spiky-haired guy had tried to pass off as cocaine and wiped my nose with it. That wasn’t going to do much good. Well, there was no point being classy now. I saw a page from a newspaper floating around in the breeze. That would have to serve as a handkerchief.

  Most of the way, I took the back streets to return to the hotel, but I couldn’t entirely avoid everyone on a hot summer night like that. A couple of people approached me to express concern — both times in French. I just continued on my way, saying nothing. I had to cross Sainte Catherine, and here I became a walking freak-show. Literally dozens of people stared at me. Then I headed up to the Ritz-Carlton, dashed past the check-in, and ran up twenty flights of stairs to our floor.

  My family was in the hallway. They were dressed in their finest clothes. Dad in a black suit and burgundy tie, Mom in a navy-blue dress, and Laura in a pair of scarlet pants and a white blouse. My dad noticed me first, looking right at me and then turning away as if from a stranger he preferred to ignore. Then he looked again.

  “Luke?”

  In an instant, they were all squawking over me. They were disturbed to see me in such a state. Disturbed and embarrassed. My mother walked with me to the bathroom. I looked terrible. My face was covered in blood and black smudges of newsprint. She wetted a cloth and dabbed at my face as if it were as fragile as a porcelain vase.

  “That’s not going to do much good,” I said.

  I was irritated. I just wanted to clean myself up and lie down and rest. But there was an onslaught of questions to contend with. I had to think on my feet. How exactly had this happened to me? Good question. I grimaced and gasped with pain a few times — not because I was in pain, of course, but to buy myself some time. How did this happen to me? Let me tell you. I had been walking around for pleasure, having just left the main drag of Sainte Catherine, when some guy approached me shouting something in French. He was clearly insane. His eyes were bloodshot as if he hadn’t slept in days. He was about thirty. The hair on his head was greasy and some of it had fallen out in chunks. You had to see the guy to believe him. Clinically insane beyond a shadow of doubt. He was speaking so fast and he was so agitated that my high school French was not equal to the job of understanding him. That made him even angrier. He threw some punches. I did my best to fend him off with my arms, but he was coming at me pretty serious. In the end, I managed to shove him backwards, and then I ran.

  “You should tell the police,” said my father.

  “What am I going to tell the police?”

  “They need to know that tourists are being attacked out of the blue.”

  “And what are the police going to do?”

  My father just shook his head.

  “They should know about it, I definitely think so.”

  “I agree,” said my mother.

  I could tell what was going on. My face had cleaned up pretty good and it was clear that I wasn’t badly injured. In the place of concern, there was skepticism. They wanted to see if I would maintain this story, even to the unforgiving face of the law.

  “I need to rest,” I said.

  “We were just going out to get dinner,” said my mother.

  “I see that,” I replied. “But I’m not feeling good.”

  She looked at my father. It was a strange moment. On the one hand, they should be sorry for me. But they couldn’t bring themselves to buy the story. So on the other hand, they weren’t sorry for me.

  “Okay,” my father said with a sigh. “We’ll leave you here. You can order a meal from the restaurant downstairs. We’ll talk more about this when we get back. You should report this incident to the police while it’s still fresh in your head. And you should see a doctor. We’ll be back by nine.”

  20

  There is a feeling of invincibility that comes over you after winning a fight. I wasn’t hurt, I didn’t need to recover, and as soon as my parents left, all I could think about was what kind of adventure I could get into next. I didn’t want another fight. But I wanted something to happen. To have been offered cocaine — at my age, at sixteen — truly excited me. Ten minutes after my family had departed, I had watched all the television I could handle. Montreal was outside with all its temptations and dangers. What was I doing in my hotel room?

  I returned to Sainte Catherine. I was fascinated by the sex clubs. I stopped at one of the neon entranceways. I now forget the exact name of the club; I only know that it included the word Pussy. Was it Pussy Galore?

  “I’d like to see a show,” I said.

  The doorman was shorter than me, but one hundred pounds heavier. He had a stubble-flecked face on top of a fat neck. Eyes, surprising for their greenness, appraised my shoes and my hair. I thought the guy made a faint nod, as if to say that I was free to go inside. So I started to move inside. Then his arm swung out to block my path.

  “ID, please,” he said.

  I pretended to pat my pockets up and down. I wanted to see what was beyond those doors so badly. The urge had stealthily apprehended me, but now wouldn’t let me go. I continued the charade of searching for my ID for almost a minute.

  “Where the hell is it?” I asked.

  Those green eyes darted suspiciously out to the street, then back to me. Three black girls passed by, all of them tall and sexy. I imagined girls like that inside. I imagined girls like that twisting around poles and kissing each other.

  “I can’t find it,” I said. “I must have left it in my hotel room.”

  “I can’t let you in here without your ID,” said the doorman.

  “Listen, I’m nineteen,” I said. “I was born in 1973. I graduated last year. I attend the University of Alberta. Is there anything more you’d like to know about me?”

  “No, there isn’t,” said the doorman.

  His businesslike attitude was a supreme disappointment. I had hoped that providing a few answers to potential skill-testing questions would help. I had seen something like that work before in Edmonton. One time, my friend and I had wanted to get into a club, and the doorman was so nice he just asked, “What grade are you in?” but we said we had already graduated, so he let us enter. It was as if the club policy was to prohibit not minors, but stupid people.

  No such luck
here.

  “Come on, man,” I protested. “I’m almost twenty.”

  “You could be almost thirty, but you still need ID.”

  “Why don’t you just let me in?” I said, acting as if we were done kidding around.

  He stepped up to me real close and I could smell onions on his breath.

  “Why don’t you just get your ID, kid?”

  I couldn’t stand his attitude. I wanted to say something sarcastic, but I couldn’t think of anything fast enough, and to be honest, even if I had, I probably would not have risked it. I felt humiliated having to turn around, as if backing down.

  “Asshole,” I said, under my breath.

  “You’re the asshole,” he called out.

  I was in a foul mood. If Zoe had been around, I could have done any number of things to improve my spirits: drink a beer, have a joint, make love. I should never have left her.

  I went to a payphone and fed it all the change in my pocket. I called Zoe. I wanted someone to talk to, someone that cared about me. But her phone rang and rang without answer. I pictured the spot in her apartment where she kept the phone. It was beside the couch on a small table where she kept all her pot-smoking paraphernalia, including her grinder. When anyone called, the number showed up on the screen of the phone. It occurred to me that Zoe was sitting there in a cloud of smoke, ignoring my calls, giggling away with her pot dealer friend, Ryan. I cannot explain why that image came into my mind at that particular moment.

  I returned to the street. I wandered up Sainte Catherine, heading westward this time, away from the scene of the earlier fight. The crowds started to thin out. The sex clubs gave way to buildings that were boarded up and dilapidated. It became depressing. Some bums asked me for money. They were speaking English. I didn’t give them anything. It was becoming darker outside. Purple crept into the frayed edges of the scattered clouds. I felt unbearably lonely. I sat on a bench in a small park. In front of me there was a statue of somebody famous that I’d never heard of, and perched on his head, two pigeons, heads close together, as if talking. I sat there for a long time. I smoked three cigarettes and watched various sketchy types wander into the park, wander out again, sit down, talk, mutter to themselves — and, for the most part, leave me alone, except for two aboriginals who, on separate occasions, asked me for smokes. It felt just like home. I gave each one a cigarette.