“Il veut te dire quelque chose, Annie.”
“Put me down, Izzy.”
“Cry uncle, Johnny!”
I was totally embarrassed but a little amused too. Isobel was sweating under the exertion of carrying a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound guy over her shoulder. She did have broad shoulders and was a strong girl, but it looked like a struggle. They both collapsed on the floor in a laughing mess of arms and legs and skin. When they finally got up, he looked right at me.
“Hi, Annie.” He smiled.
I nodded.
It seemed all quiet in Chez Max for a moment until, surprisingly, he sat himself right down on my lap and helped himself to a swig of my beer. The din resumed, and he leaned close and whispered in my ear, “I’ve missed you, my Alberta girl. Would you take me back? Please? Purrrrrtyy please, lil darling?”
I felt a wave of warmth flood my chest. It drowned my indignation over being ditched and picked up again. We stayed together for the last week of the program. He seemed to accept my virginity and resigned himself to drinking beer and playing tic-tac-toe on my thighs. I wondered what had made him come back when I wasn’t giving him what he wanted. I secretly hoped he really liked me, but I didn’t want to spook him by asking any questions.
After we’d been back in Alberta for a couple of days, Isobel and I discovered we both had mono and glands the size of golf balls in our necks. Johnny sent a postcard saying: I’ve got mono, what a drag! Too tired to write more. love, Johnny xoxoxo. It was my first love letter and I was delighted, despite my fatigue.
Because mono was also known as the kissing disease, Mom got suspicious: “What kind of funny business were you up to in Quebec? I think maybe there was too much alcohol and mischief! Were all three of you kissing each other?”
“Moooooooommmmm! Don’t be ridiculous. We were there studying French. Studying, not partying! We barely had time to leave our desks.”
“Don’t exaggerate, Annie! You don’t get mono in the library.”
“But—”
“Don’t but me. Get some sleep.”
As I spent days half-sleeping on the couch, I listened to Robert Charlebois, and I thought about Quebec and wondered if that night downstairs at Chez Max, Isobel and Johnny had kissed. But the summer and everything had been so great, it didn’t even really matter. We had been finally living real life. I never asked her if something had happened. No matter what, she was my pal first and foremost. Give and take was part of the sisterhood. Besides, we could have got mono from sharing Fuzzy Navels and Black Label beer. We did share everything back then.
Isobel’s whole Frenchy thing started all those years ago. And now all these years later we listened to Leonard Cohen deadpan romance us through the leafy streets of small-town Quebec singing songs about girls peeling oranges. I chewed a piece of cinnamon gum and thought how I’d gone from reading Harriet the Spy to Mordecai Richler and yet I still felt like the same young girl. Looking in the rear-view mirror I definitely looked older. And I had a car. The car was now ridiculously dirty with hundreds of dead bugs plastered on the windscreen. Sullivan and I used to like to go to carwashes in his truck and kiss while the whole world was covered in soap and giant black and yellow bumblebees squished us in their underwater hugs.
At our next pit stop, Isobel went to get us some poutine at the dep. I headed for a phone booth.
“Finn, how are you? We miss you. I miss you.”
“I miss you too, how’s it goin?”
“Good, you know, we’re in Quebec now.”
“Ah, la belle province!”
“Do you know if the boss is going to send me an advance? Sorry to bug you . . .”
“They gave it to me, and I put it in your account for you.”
“Aw, Finn, you’re so great. Now we can get home.”
“So, has Isobel, you know, said anything . . . ?”
“Oof . . . sorry, Finn, I think you know what . . . I think you just gotta let go of that one. She’s not ready for such a great guy as you.”
“Ya I know, maybe when we’re in our thirties she’ll have an epiphany. I’ll be peaking then in charisma. How’s the road trip going anyway?”
“Finn, thanks so goddamn much for the guitar! We busked, I sang, Isobel sang. We met this crazy English dude, and we all jammed.”
“That’s great. I’ve been thinking we should start a band . . .”
“Really? I don’t know . . . maybe . . . I’ll talk to Isobel.”
The operator cut in to tell us that I was running out of money.
“Call me again. Call collect. Any time!!”
“Salut!”
side a, track 9
“She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes
Singing ay, ay, yippee, yippee, ay”
Old African American Spiritual and
19th-Century American Folk Song
Day 7 continued
In Quebec for this second time I thought I’d give Izzy all my Johnnies as long as she didn’t try to woo my Hawksley. My odds were slim at best, but I was scared they’d be nil if she went up to bat. I had the dim sense that now, nine years older, we were still foolish girls. But I knew Hawksley wouldn’t approve of that negative line of thought—he would tell me to rely on my animal urges.
I wanted to make sure we weren’t late so I insisted on driving the last leg, red eye. Isobel had wanted to park somewhere so we could get a good night’s rest, but I was stubbornly against it: who needed sleep when great love was on the horizon? And so on I drove, giddy with the combination of lack of sleep and a gut feeling that no matter what, when the sun rose and the new day broke, I was going to speak to Hawksley Workman in the flesh.
No matter what the outcome—I would meet the man who made the tunes that tapped deep into my happy bone. And on and on I drove, wilfully ignoring my thinking mind and embracing my animal self.
I just needed to stay awake long enough to get us there safely. Problem was, I couldn’t blast the tunes because Isobel needed to sleep. I decided to take some of her Sudafed. I wasn’t congested or anything, but my brother told me he took it when he needed to stay up late to study for exams. I took two and washed them down with my cold gas station coffee that slopped in a Styrofoam cup wedged between my thighs.
The car smelled stale. I opened the window a crack and enjoyed the breeze on my face. It was three o’clock in the morning and quite light out. I had the big harvest moon keeping me company. Felt like an omen. I hoped I wasn’t about to get my period.
We were still two hundred-ish klicks from the lights of Montreal, thanks to some geographical noodling and bad sign reading. The highway was almost empty except for long-haul truckers, Greyhound buses, the odd car, and me. I was behind a giant beer truck. It was painted with one huge, orange wraparound ad for a classic Québécois beer called Maudite. I alternated staring at the licence plate and giant tires and the little Lucifer guy spread across the back door and the apocalyptic LA FIN DU MONDE. Gotta love how those Québécois have a beer called Damned.
My foot was committed to the gas pedal but staring endlessly at the same satanic imagery was really zoning me out. It was too easy, that was the problem with the TransCanada. There weren’t so many winding turns or narrow stretches, not like the Coquihalla, where you had to be alert like Jacques Villeneuve racing along the mountainscape while wild rivers raged with white-water rapids far below.
I tried to not get psyched out like I knew I could, but once the first inkling of fear entered my head it was near impossible to stop the panic process in motion. My heart picked up its pace.
Shit . . . here we go.
I can’t have an attack behind the wheel.
Oh NO. I’ll crash, I’ll kill us both. I visualized our blood and guts on the windscreen; imagined my head decapitated and lying beside a dead gopher—just more roadkill. I saw Isobel’s eyeball impaled on the antenna. I fought not to close my eyes to escape my gore-filled visions; I had to keep my eyes focused on the giant beer truck ahea
d. I saw Hawksley laying a roadside wreath for me.
Calm down, calm the fuck down, I told myself. RELAX, GODDAMMIT! You’re just driving. It’s fine, you’re just nervous. You’re not panicking. You’re holding the steering wheel just fine, you’re driving along, it’s all wonderful. Never should have taken that Sudafed! Soon you’ll be in Montreal. You’ll be talking to Hawksley, maybe even smooching Hawksley. Mmm. Concentrate on the road. Think Zen. Yellow lines, tail lights, and green signs. That’s all you gotta do. Make sure your feet and hands stay awake. Wiggle your toes. Visualize smooching Hawksley . . . straddling Hawksley . . . eating spaghetti meatballs off Hawksley’s stomach. Ooo. I wanted to lick his ribcage. I wanted him to look at me adoringly, like he couldn’t believe how lucky he was, how perfect for him I was, how he wanted me more than anything. I wanted to watch sunsets with him, have Jacuzzis together, flirt like strangers, fuck like rabbits, and hold hands like otters . . .
What would I say to him? How would I captivate him and showcase all my best qualities? What were my best qualities? I was nice, funny sometimes, I had great taste in music, books, films. I had amazing friends. I had strong calves. Muscular forearms from waitressing. I knew how to French kiss underwater.
One thing I’d learned with the Bern interview, charm on demand was an oxymoron for me and spontaneous charm was a question of alchemy. The pressure might thwart me completely—give me charm impotence. What if I was obnoxious? Maybe I needed some mnemonic codes for conversation topics . . .
I psyched myself out so easily; it was my fundamental problem in life. Like the last time I was shooting stick and I tried to hit the eight ball and I got in the zone and all was quiet around me like it was supposed to be right before you hit and everything slowed down and I was ready to shoot. Then I had the stupid thought about distracting myself and I blasted that eight ball right off the table. Airborne. On bad days, I was Woody Allen. I couldn’t shut up about my neuroses, peccadilloes. When the self-loathing bastard in my head woke up for the day I felt like that person in the painting The Scream. Maybe a lot of people feel like that.
Let go, Annie. Let go. This is one of those things you gotta just trust in the universe.
It was amazing how big Isobel’s snores were for such a graceful girl. She sounded like a goddamned rhinoceros. Jesus. She needed to do something about her adenoids. Maybe they could be lasered out or something. I thought about sleeping.
One thing I was sure of, I didn’t want to be Isobel. I was comfortable in my skin, despite the demons. They were my demons. I didn’t like the look of her demons.
I had been noticing lately how she ate vicariously through me. She was always buying me food, encouraging me to have desert, but she always had an excuse why she wouldn’t indulge herself. It was getting on my nerves. My jeans were getting tighter. For years I’d have burgers, and she’d have a leaf of lettuce and a Diet Coke, always saying she’d eaten at home. Now that we were on the road I was noticing more and more how she had more chewing gum than actual food. But she did drink loads of booze, diet pops, and coffee.
Maudite ahead seemed to have picked up his pace. I stepped on the gas, I couldn’t risk losing him. The lorry had Montreal listed in its address and I was gambling on it being my guide into town.
I thought of this movie where this beautiful brunette girl approached a stubbly strange man in a bar. His novel had rocked her gypsy soul, so she followed/stalked him and then pitched her love to him in a café one night. He was so touched by her bravery that he fell in love with her on the spot and they went off to celebrate and have sex that same night. Surely it could happen for me just like that. It seemed realistic in the movie.
Wasn’t Priscilla just a big Elvis fan at the start too? And I think I read Paula Yates was a girl just hanging around the music scene when she hooked up with Bob Geldof. And that was in real life, not just in the movies. I bet there are countless unions between fans and stars. I wondered how groupies shook off their groupie status and became bona fide girlfriends.
Someone told me every author needed only one perfect reader. Every singer surely needed one true listener. I was his listener. I understood his lyrics; I lived them. His lyrics were true and, like sexy Keats said, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”
Checking the rear-view mirror to look at the state of my hair, I saw a guy in the car behind us wearing some kind of funny hat, not quite a cowboy hat, a cross between cowboy and sombrero? Weirdly I was almost sure that I’d been seeing him at night, every night on the road. But not during the day.
My first thought was that it was Finn in disguise.
My second thought was that it was an agent from my VISA credit card company come to throw me in debtors jail.
My third thought was that it was road-trip déjà vu.
He was nondescript and so was his car. His hat was a little unusual, but angles and shadows were surely doing their bit to distort my view.
I looked at the speedometer. I stared at it until it made no sense. I didn’t look in the mirror again.
After more and more and more and more kilometres of staring at the LA FIN DU MONDE banner ahead and the yellow highway lines passing underneath us, Isobel’s three-octave snore calmed me and diffused my paranoia. I was just a bit jittery still. It was getting lighter outside too. I had another gulp of cold coffee. I think the Sudafed was kicking in and making my eyes feel more open. My heart felt like it was part of a Latin percussion ensemble. I stretched my fingers on the wheel and tried to sit up straight, working on my breathing and my game plan.
Day 8 Dawn
4,541 kms!!!
We pulled into Montreal at dawn. I felt like I’d been assaulted by the challenge. The only way I managed to get us through the clusterfuck of terrifying overpasses and bridges and confusing signs coming into Sin City was because Maudite’s driver was indeed going into town too. Guardian Angels come in funny disguises. My heavy eyelids had long ago lost sight of the Man with the Strange Hat’s car. It was 5:00 AM, and the big fat orange sun was rising in its full glory on the quiet but funky streets of downtown. We were too early for bagels, too early for coffee, but perfect for flower raiding. I felt funny. A bit dizzy, almost seasick. Izzy woke up grumpy, dehydrated, and badly needing to pee.
I stopped at a gas station. I loved seeing French signs for everything, French people everywhere. Getting out of the car we must have looked like arthritic oldies, all gimped up from sitting in the same position for six hours. We snuck into the bathroom and tried to clean ourselves without touching any of the grim-looking surfaces.
“This is totallement dégoutant! Cochons pissing all over the floor. And let me tell you, it’s a special kind of imbécile that wets toilet paper and hucks it at the ceiling. Don’t these cochons ever think about the poor people who clean these places, and they’re usually immigrants, it’s terrible!” Ever since we’d crossed the border Isobel had ramped up her Franglais.
“You could fill out the customer complaint card. C’mon, let’s just get out of here and find some coffee and bagels and a park to sit in.” I wanted to protect the mood of the day. It had to be right. Not tense.
“Oui!” said Isobel.
The downtown streets were empty. We parked the car and walked around looking for a place to hang out until we stumbled onto the grounds of McGill and parked ourselves under a giant cedar tree until it was coffee time. We figured nothing would open until at least 8:00 AM. It was heaven being out of the car and in the fresh air.
After a good rest, we got back in the car and somehow navigated our way over to Fairmont Street to pick up some bagels. We had never forgotten the sublimeness of proper Montreal bagels when we tried them all those years ago. The bagel makers were up early shovelling the glistening white dough with their long spoons into the dark womb of the huge, crackling wood-burning oven. Isobel reckoned we should get a bag of twenty-four because they were so goddamned delicious. They could be our sustenance for the whole way home. The difference between these lovely skinny and air
y Montreal bagels and the rest of Canada’s doughier ones is that you can taste water in these ones. According to some random guy at the store it had something to do with boiling them and baking them at sea level.
We drove over to a coffee shop on St. Urbain, the street I’d read about in Mordecai Richler’s longwinded but gut-bustingly funny novels. The view now before me was so exotic for my Albertan eyes: the two-storey red and brown brick apartment suites with their long staircases down to the front path, like big inviting tongues. Sure we had the odd old building in Alberta; they called them character apartments, but they were freaks and were mostly being knocked down. This was like the Europe of my imagination—or even better, a fabulous fusion of old and new worlds.
The owners of the coffee shop were old-school Italian men in their late sixties. There were soccer posters on the wall, Italian flags and photos of famous Italians: Pacino, Sophia Loren, Pavarotti. Before I could order anything, the elder man behind the counter sized me up and instructed the guy on the chrome espresso machine beside him: Cappuccino. The machine was regal-looking, with a silver eagle perched on top, extending its full wingspan.
Gramps looked at Isobel and said: Espresso, double. He had a white, short-sleeved shirt on with a blue-and-white tea-towel swung cavalierly over his shoulder. I think every major town in Canada had the same version of this kind of bare bones Italian coffee shop. I’d been to one in Vancouver on Commercial Drive, Joe’s, the little pool hall with velour wall hangings of matadors and elderly cappuccino makers. E-town had one over in Little Italy where Isobel and I sometimes went to scope all those Euro-hotties.
We found ourselves a nice spot on the patio and sat down with our coffees. It was prime people-watching territory. My cappuccino was gorgeous. Not too much milk, just a creamy, slightly stiff cloud of foam on top and a strong dose of espresso. This was the kind of coffee that tasted just as good as freshly ground beans smell. Out of three hundred and sixty-five cups in a year, you might remember less than a handful—this one was in the top three.
Cadillac Couches Page 14
