End of Summer, Past the Fall

Saturday November 10, 2001

I walked out and down the steps of the Couronne. The city bathed in a stark, saturated light like the memories captured in Pepere's Super-8 home movies.

The world that morning was just slightly sharper than the past couple months as the sun cracked the rooftop horizon of the Palais de Justice. Its light chased the shadows from the end of rue St-Denis and up past the hill.

Summer's air, long on the wane, was just about wrung out. Chances for a last 60 degree day were just about gone and in my Super-8 movie the absence of sound was conspicuous.

Last night was time to execute the end of the plan. In my third floor room, I opened the window and looked out. But because of its size and because it was above the sink, I would have to crawl out for the leap.

It was all wrong. All the research said that the minimum height was four stories. I always envisioned a clean jump, like from the pool 20 flights up atop the Hotel Bonaventure. Not here though, this was no way to go.

So now there was no plan. Walking up to the Jetta, the parking lot was still in the chill shadow of the building immediately next door to the east. When I pushed the button on my key chain in the early Sunday morning quiet, the locking mechanism of the door had a brighter click to it; the leather seat crunched as I got in.

I started the car, turned on on the stereo to Desperadoes Under the Eaves, opened the window and lit another cigarette. I put the clutch in and backed-up. The mechanics of driving provided focus, escape.

Another day, the same five or so songs over and over, with more cigarettes, more coffee. Another day marking time with no where to be. Driving to nowhere, up and down the streets of Montreal. Like Uncle Louis did around my hometown when I was a kid.

One afternoon, a couple weeks earlier, I was driving west up the mountain from Maisonneuve when I choked-up and broke down. Tears were coming from my eyes so much that I had to pull over because I couldn't see.

I put a cigarette between my trembling lips, as tears streamed down. I lit it and inhaled deeply. Cigarettes could help when things got that bad. But now, as the fall slipped to winter, breaking down like that happened less and less. I wasn't happy but I had a detached sorrow like I was thinking back to a sad movie I had seen.

I went down the hill of rue St-Denis, took a left and then another onto rue Berri towards a decent cup of coffee and maybe a croissant in the Plateau. I was thinking about getting food just because it served to make cigarette-after better. Coffee kept my mouth and throat from being parched while smoking so I could keep smoking without pain and, like driving, it helped me focus. I could only look forward and keep driving. It didn't matter where I went.

When I did think of the past, it was a long past. Quebec peeled back years, generations. It stripped the English from daily transactions and brief conversations. But I didn't really talk to anyone anymore. I drove. I bought gas. I bought coffee and cigarettes. I thought.