Guide!

On the day I met Michel from Lac St-Jean, I was sitting on the front steps of the Hotel de la Couronne playing guitar and drinking a beer with Yves, Tony and Ken. Yves had his guitar too and we traded off playing songs.

Tony was a guy from Ireland who had spent his life working on cruise ships as turbine mechanic. In the early sixties Tony left Ireland behind for London. He was still in his teens and the last of ten kids. He never looked back and broke-off all ties with his family. I'm not sure if he ever said why.

He had mostly retired and had a condo in Miami even though he wasn't a US citizen. The love-lorn Mick was pushing fifty and badly wanted to settle down get married and have child. His condo was a real estate venture going belly-up.

He needed a good union mechanic assignment to for the cash to turn things around back in Miami. Even though he hadn't been in Canada for ten years or more, he was Canadian citizen and his union hall was way down rue Ontario in Hochelaga. He was waiting for some paperwork to go through so he didn't have anywhere to be until he heard back from them.

Ken was hanging out that day, too. Ken was a lawyer from Hong Kong by way of British Columbia. His real name was a sound that could not be easily reproduced. He had emigrated with his folks just before his city reverted back to the PRC.

Along the way to passing the bar in Canada, Ken realized that he had a knack for animation. The National Film Board of Canada concurred and selected his animated short as a prize winning entry that year.

The prize included financial renumeration so flush with his success, Ken decided to see Montreal since he had already traveled across Canada as far as Toronto.

We spent some time together, travelling to Quebec City. He was a great solid kind of guy and reminded me of Nobuki, a friend from Japan that I met in Paris.

The other guy on the steps was Yves. Yves had a story that he didn't volunteer but I knew it couldn't sum up in a paragraph. He was laying down sweet talkin' love song that he had written. I didn't quite catch everything he said but I knew it sounded good.

I followed with No Woman No Cry. I played it at an open mike in Northampton a month earlier and was a thought that had been rolling around my head every since.

"Guide!"

The yell, seemingly à propos to nothing came from a guy named Michel. It was yelled in French, so it sounded like greed without the "r".

Michel stood in front of the Couronne as we sat of the steps on that last warm day of fall. He was in the street between the parked cars and fast moving cars heading out of the city by going down the hill and hopping onto the Autoroute Ville-Marie.

Between songs, Yves and Michel were having a loose chat as each went on with their own business - ils jasaient.

Yves would think of a new song or light a cigarette and have a slug of beer. Out of the blue, Michel would light-up, as if revelling in the cars coming down the road when the light up the hill changed and then burst out with a smile, "Un autre guide!".

It was as if he'd scored a goal. After this happened a couple times, I realized that he was communicating with two people further down the hill.

I looked to Yves and chirped, "Qu'est qu'il veut dire? C'est quoi un guide?", but my new found buddy, East Montreal's answer to The Fonz, ignored my question.

Finally, Yves looked at me annoyed, maybe because he couldn't think of the word in English abd with a thick accent stressing the "ni" in mini-van said with deadpan eyes, "It's a mi-ni'-van, man, it's mi-ni'-van".

Michel liked minivans because their drivers coughed up the most money when approached at an intersection waiting for the light to change. The collaborators were getting up some money to go back up north to family or who would ever have them for the winter.

After a bit, the two partners came up the hill to talk to Michel. The first, a dark skinned, short woman didn't speak any English. She spoke softy and slowly in French. When I got a closer look it was obvious that she was impaired. Drunk maybe but more than that, I had a feeling that she had been drunk for days or weeks, maybe longer.

Then I took a closer look at the other part of Michel group - her boyfriend. I don't know if he spoke English either. He had a brooding, dangerous drunk of some sort going on. He wore an old army jacket and didn't look up much from his beard. He didn't say much in any language.

As they walked away, I learned that the woman of no particular age was Inuit and my mind reeled back in the geography of it all.

For some reason, Yves already knew Michel. Shortly after he was introduced to all of us on the steps, Yves lit a tightly rolled joint and passed it around in plain sight of the police man walking by.

I got to speaking with Michel and was surprised that someone like him bummed money on the street.

"What's wrong with it?" he said in a heavily accented French from well to the north of Quebec City, "You make a lot of money fast and you don't have to do anything."

Again I was confronted with something that one could do, but never occured to me was ever something that I would do. The three panhandlers decided to take a break from approaching motorist at red lights for money. The boyfriend took off, apparently after some booze and left the woman with us.

Michel joined the rest of us hanging on the front steps of the Couronne, just digging the last sunny and warm day of fall. Each one of us happened to be there completely independent of the other; free radicals in an insensitive environment. The sun was shining. I had smokes, a guitar, money and cheap place to stay. Any concerns regarding what was going on in Northampton were gone.

After a little while I poured on my beer bottle, lit a cigarette and took off to continue my research. Les Archives nationales du Québec were right around the corner from the Hotel La Couronne. I found it one day on my way from the Hilton.

At $20 a night, I saved $130 each day and I got a free croissant with butter, jam and a coffee every morning. You won't get that at the Hyatt. And at the Couronne the people at the next table actually spoke to you.

Unlike the Couronne, Les Archives was a serious place that closed daily from noon to 1:30 for lunch. It was quarter to two now and I needed to blow. They closed for the day at 4:30.

When I came back I met up with Yves and Michel and we went up to Yves. Something was said quickly, Yves answer back affirmative. And just like that Michel had taken out a syringe and was shooting heroine. He finished thanked Yves for letting him use his room and split.

I looked at Yves, "What the fuck was that all about?"

"Come on man, it's none of our business what he does. He just needed a place to shoot up."

"Why didn't he do that in his room"

Yves lit a cigarette , started putting on his sneakers and said briskly while squinting, "Come on man, don't you know he's homeless?"

"You can't leave that in the rubbish dude, the maid might stick her finger with it."

"Jesus, man." he exhaled a cloud of smoke that was either from the cigarette or the joint that was we were smoking. He had been out of Montreal for a while and since he had some money from a job, he was meeting a chick that he hadn't seen in a bit.

I took toilet paper, wrapped up the needle and put bundle into an empty beer bottle. These were not the sort of people I was used to hanging out with.

But that was nothing compared to my next encounter with the heroin addicted from Lac St-Jean.

Pute - December 2001

I should have known right off she was a whore. It wasn't like I was some babe in the woods, she just didn't look like one to me. Anyway, even if I guessed that she wasn't just another college student, there was no way I could have guessed who her father was. Or that her mother was the woman that Tony had met online and flown up from Miami to meet in person.

I would have thought the coincidences all to be signs from God at the end of October but it was December by then. I just didn't give a shit anymore. Borroughs was right, signs from God are nothing but bald face lies.
Tony talked about her nearly non-stop from the moment I picked him up at Logan and all the way up to Montreal. He wanted me to meet her too. In fact, I had just left them at an expensive Japanese restaurant on rue Mansfield before heading out for Greek food.

Deno's Restaurant was on the corner of Henri Levesque and St. Denis, it only took about 5 minutes to drive there. It had started to snow harder on my way there and I was lucky to find a parking space almost right in front on St. Denis.
Deno's middle aged son Christos had already turned off the sign and most of the lights but let me in because he knew me pretty well when I was staying at the Couronne, a block down the hill.

I had the last of the spanokapeta that Deno's wife had made and I was trying to read Voir by the light coming in the window. I was still trying to figure out who Andre was, if he was working the door that night and if the note that I paid the Ethiopian guy to bring into the club that night had reached Natacha.

It was dark and the snow was coming down in big wet flakes. Natacha had said that back in Charlesbourg they called called that kind of snow, peaux de lièvres. French people in Quebec have a lot of different words for snow too.

After talking to Christos for a bit, I left the restaurant. I was out of cigarettes again and I was heading to the depanneur a couple doors down when I saw her. We went there all the time when I ran out of cigarettes or Yves needed some beer.

I noticed her sitting on the steps next door as I went into the store. She made me think of this pain-in-the-ass chick from New Canaan that I dated in college. She was wearing tight jeans, a big white sweater and blue cowboy boots. Her face was bleached out from the flourescent light bouncing off the snow and her short, black hair getting straggly from the snow landing on it. The wet snow wasn't helping her mascara much either.

I shouted, "Bientôt!", to the depanneur's Cambodian owner as I lit a cigarette. I pulled the door tight against the wind and walked back to my car through four inches of unshoveled snow.

By now the girl in the once trendy boots was walking carefully across the wide sidewalk almost falling with each step because of their slippery soles. That part of Montreal was crawling with students, European backpackers, drug addicts, whores and other transients. Sometimes it was hard to tell them apart.

"I'm trying to get to NDG but I think I missed the bus." she volunteered.

"And where my I ask, is NDG?", I laughed as I unlocked my car, popped the trunk and took out the scraper to clean off my windows.

"They say it's Notre Dame de Grace but it's just No Damn Good if you ask me", she said in a rehearsed way that told me she had said that before.

She looked at me with a perky smile and said, "You lookin' for a date?"

"No, thanks", I said not looking up from cleaning off the car.

"Where you going?" she said back, unfazed.

"Ha! I've got no fucking idea right now." Cigarette smoke had singed my eyes and I was squinting. But I was lying. I was going to drive down to the Plateau to have get some coffee at the cafe on the corner of Rue Royale and watch the people walk by.

The snow had snuffed out my cigarette. I threw it in the slush and kept cleaning off the car. The snow that got into my unlaced, LL Bean duck-hunting boots had melted while I was eating and I was ready to go back to the hotel, take a shower and call it a night.


The plan was to be in Montreal. The fortune teller back in Northampton said, "Everything that ever happens was part of God's great plan for us all, there's no point in being anxious. Everything would be alright if I just let it happen. "

Everyone knew that the musicians, writers, actors and danseuses lived in the Plateau district of Montreal. And despite a thousand bucks worth of gypsy insight, I had to come back to Montreal to make His work a little easier. Anyway, it was Friday night and Natacha would be working at the club.

"Okay, so where's NDG?" I said without the slightest carnal thought.

"It's just down Sherbooke", she promised as she opened the unlocked passenger door and got in. As I turned onto Sherbrooke she said, "Okay, it's a $150 for the night or $250 for the weekend".

The next thing I knew, I was driving up Sherbrooke to a side street somewhere on the other side of the Decarie, the north-south expressway that slice off the western third of metropolitan Montreal. I had about nine hundred bucks U.S. on me. "Screw it, I was used to paying someone to listen to me talk",  but still I wonder what would have happened if I let Him just do his work.

"What else was I doing that weekend, you know?" he was back in the room at Cooley Dickenson when he broke out of his walking dream of that weekend in Montreal. It was to bright, white and sterile. There were AA signs scattered about the room from some kind of group session that also happened there.

"You don't sound like someone who missed his wife" the clinician answered.

"I was looking for anyway possible to not think about what was really going on. I couldn't stand to be alone. I couldn't stand to be at the house anymore. " I mumbled.

"You spend a lot of time pathologizing and glorifying dangerous behaviour, do you think this is helping?" She didn't know him from a hole in the wall. Of course this wasn't helping. He couldn't stand mental health therapist and their ilk.

He was only seeing her because it was prerequisite for getting his meds. He really trusted his new prescribing physician and hoped the lithium would help.

It was February, cold and bleak. Snow had crusted over the edges of the parking lot and the trees didn't look like they ever had leaves.

Nothing tasted like anything, all the colors had gone out of the world, and nothing really mattered at all. Everyone spoke in English now. It was pretty quiet everywhere he went.

L'Arrivee (2)

Johnny burst from the elevator elated and confident. He knew his way around expensive corporate hotels from trade shows in Vegas, Atlanta and other major hubs.

When it came to checking into an expensive hotel, he knew the drill.

He stormed up the stairs, through an immense, silent lobby and approached the empty front desk like a rock-star.

"Salut, Bonjour!", he called out to the lone desk clerk just inside the side door behind the desk. He had his gold Hilton Rewards card in hand and felt slightly drunk at the opportunity to speak French.

"Bonjour, Monsieur," responded the young woman with a perfect european accent.

"J'ai besoin d'une chambre." Johnny continued with an accent that she couldn't quite place.

"It's not from Ontario, not from anywhere around Montrealaise, probably Acadian from New Brunswick", she thought to herself.

She was sizing him up for his primary language like everyone does within seconds during any retail situation in Montreal. The salesperson usually does this just by the way someone carries themselves, before the initial hello.

When asked if he had reservations, he replied succinctly, "Aucunes, mais," and he presented his gold-colored rewards card, loaded with credits from various business trips.

The desk clerk explained that the hotel was booked up with fans of the Montreal Alouettes, who were playing in Canadian Football Championship. She intimated that he probably knew that and continued with a broad smile that there may be something she could do. He was just happy that she continued that conversation in French instead of switching to English like people used to do before he had spent much time in Montreal.

She picked up a telephone receiver and spoke canadian-french in stuccato bursts that Jean didn't completely follow. The call was punctuated with a warm, drawn-out, "Merci!"

She looked up again with a friendly, professional smile and said in a French that had recovered its European accent, "We do have a room for you. It's a suite and we'll have to move you to a single room tomorrow but enjoy, you will be charged at the single room rate".

He handed her his credit card and gave his home address. She looked up puzzled from her computer screen and said, "You're not Canadian?"

Jean recounted how he came to speak a French that mixed a very rustic Quebecois and Acadian with European vocabulary and expressions, "pas vraiment, non," he winked.

She smiled at the delivery as he continued his explanation. By this time other front desk staff were popping up to start their shift and sharing a laugh with the animated character who would be a guest at their hotel.

She handed him a small envelope with two room keys, circled the number and provided a brief explanation of amenities and contact information.

She pointing out the way to his room across the lobby, finished with a canned, "Bonjour!"

Keys in hand, Jean went over the conversation in his head to make sure that he understood everything the desk clerk said. He didn't go back to the Jetta weighed down with his baggage. He lit a canadian Marlboro and felt the color leaving his face. The adrenaline that propped him up was ebbing quickly. He was starting to feel a little wobbly kneed.

To the left were banquet rooms named after notable french-canadian figures from history. To the right, a floor-to-ceiling glass wall ran the length of the corridor. On the other side of the glass were small pools with swirling fog rising from the water that were bordered by plants and islands and connected by irregular inlets.

In corner of his eyes, he noticed shadowy masked figures dressed in black that motioned to each other in the swirling fog of the heated pools. It seemed to him that they were confirming his identity. He looked straight ahead, tried to ignore them and was happy when he turned left to the guest rooms at the end of passage. Was he just tired or was he really being followed?

He checked the numbers on the door against the number written on the envelope containing his key and realized that he somehow he missed the room. He was still a little concerned about the shadowy figure he thought he saw in the pool. The massive hotel was silent as he retraced his steps down the long, empty corridor.

The door number that matched the one on his key wasn't found on a door like the others. The door was much wider, though not as wide as a banquet room door, and set in from the hallway. He tried the key and the door opened to what seemed to be a upscale apartment. It made him think of the apartment of Andrea's aunt in Paris.

On one wall of the dimly lit apartment was long buffet, in the center of room was a formal dining area leading to arm chairs and couches finished with expensive fabrics. Through the far wall the rumour of a grey, chilly dawn came through floor-to-ceiling window that looked out on misplaced park setting that he knew hid more shadowy figures under the eaves.

Jean pulled the curtains closed. In the complete darkness he lit a cigarette, sat down and thought about the cars that followed him through Vermont. Who were they and why were they always after him?

L'Arrivée

Johnny looked out from the isolation of the speeding Jetta. He wondered if he was awake or sleeping, still in the swift-moving dream in which he had been wrapped so long since the great ride began. The darkness was rushing by and the blues rang loudly in his ears.

He had seen nothing but the highway for hours, away to his left and right vast shadows against the sky where the mountains rose unexpectedly from the forests and farmlands. Sleepily he tried to reckon the times and stages of their descent, but his memory was drowsy and uncertain.

The satisfaction of seeing the road signs changed back from English to French after crossing the frontière had settled to a warm glow as a world of memories flooded his thoughts. It was like going back in time.

He was looking out from his grandparents' kitchen table as the Sunday morning sun glinted through the snow and ice on the tall pines.

Pépère stood in front of the stove beating eggs with a fork in his favorite coffee cup, making a quick click-click-click against the side of the tea-stained cup.

He called out to Mémère getting ready for church, "'Henriette, Depeche-toi!"

Breakfast had to be finished an hour before Mass in order to receive communion.

The spell of his childhood recollections slammed shut as Autoroute 10 verred northward and the harsh fluorescent light from improbably tall poles marked the final approach to the Pont Champlain and Montréal. He was still topping 80 mph mid-way over the bridge as he changed lanes and prepared for final descent into the city.

He downshifted at the sign for Autoroute Bonaventure/Ville-Marie, put it back into fifth as he raced past the Parc de Technologie and the Casino de Montréal, then came to a complete halt at the bottom of Rue University.

Jean lit another cigarette and opened the window. He looked mechanically with eyes pinned open from coffee and cigarettes at the signs on the enormous Tour Bell.

He was still starring in a suspense movie that was playing in his mind.

He remembered his Hilton Rewards card in his wallet and decided where to go. The light turned green, he put the Jetta into first and took a left halfway up the hill.

The white door of Hilton Bonaventure's underground garage opened in perfect sychronization to his approach. Van Morrison's Bang Sessions smashed the waning darkness for a last time. He put on a tired and stretched fisherman's sweater and his irish cap while steering down the circling entrance to a parking space with his knee . It was 4:32 am.

Turning off the car, Jean threw the cigarette out the window and smiled to himself as he stepped out into the garage, "It's go time, baby."