He should have realized that nobody is against anybody.
–Grant Harrison
Two p.m., April 6, 1999. Pierre watches the main garage through the windshield of his black Sunfirgre. His eyes flit across rows of vacant, corrugated bus ports, a serried stutter of yawning lots. The tarmac surrounding the garage is edged by melting banks of rigid, blackened snow: the stubborn, clinging snows of early April. Everything is dirty, wilted, daunting. If there are trees, they are black fingers, arthritic and pathetic.
The sky is wan. The sky is a piece of paper. Pierre’s face is drawn tightly. There are bluish circles under his eyes. His hands are in his lap. He looks over his shoulder at the Adidas gym bag on the back seat of the car.
A #95 articulated bus heaves onto the tarmac from Saint Laurent Boulevard. The bus is empty save for a brown-skinned, squat driver, wearing an OC Transpo uniform: a faded navy sweater vest over a light blue, short-sleeve dress shirt. The parking lot is dotted with cars and trucks and minivans. The driver in the #95 crosses Pierre’s line of sight, turning around the side of the garage.
It is quiet and warm inside the car. Pierre’s heart thumps steadily in his chest. He pivots his waist and reaches into the back seat with his right arm, grabbing and hefting the awkward weight of the gym bag onto his lap. White, momentary spots flash in his periphery. His hands remind him of a jonesing junkie’s, shaky and clumsy, in need of a fix. He brings his hands to his face, feeling along his forehead, his cold, shaking fingers an insufficient balm to the hot, dry skin of his nose and lips. He has not slept since Detroit, Michigan, two days before, in a motel that reminded him of an OC Transpo station: a cold-lighted signpost impossibly remote from anything warm or recognizable or welcoming, his mind swarming with the entire spiderweb of half-memorized timetables, charts and graphs and circuit speeds. How it all seemed so small, so enormous – time trapped in light, wants bludgeoned by needs. And then it was perfectly graspable, as if crosshairs weaved over the image of his hurt. Standing in Detroit, staring into the halo of the VACANCY sign, thinking of a Transpo station he was once stalled at, long past regular hours. A Transpo station stranded off the shoulder of an empty highway, sometime between two and three in the morning, in the middle of winter, snowbanks knee-high against the curb, the wind so wicked the glass howled and moaned in D-minor sympathy. Cold so draining that the ache became all there was: fingers and toes curling and unfurling through a pins-and-needles torture, so much worse for its sodium vapour glow. Thirteen years of employment reduced to this image carved from ice. Thirteen years stomped to mistake in an instant of time no one heard or saw or could take note of, reduced finally to the pale glow of a bus stop in the middle of the night, imagined in the parking lot of a Super 8 on the outskirts of Detroit, awash in the pale neon blaze of the VACANCY sign. Transformed finally into something terminal and black.
While Pierre Lebrun stood facing the unravelling of his adult life (wordless, soundless), Martine Berthelot was sleeping in her apartment on Bank Street in downtown Ottawa. She was roused during the night by the sound of her roommate dropping a jar of moisturizer on the toilet seat. Her dreams were banal in their ordinary insensibility: a giant wasp hovering in the corner of her bedroom, a bicycle shop’s floor buried in sawdust, her mother laughing. The illness that would leave her feeling deflated still only in its formative stage, having yet to move from a mere tingle in her sinuses.
By the time she opens her eyes, she’s sick for real. She calls the office at 7:03 in the morning on April 6, 1999, sniffling into a dry Kleenex, eyes red, lymph nodes as swollen as ping-pong balls.
And thus she avoids the fires, the heaps of recycled paper and wood shavings salvaged from Blue Boxes and garbage bags that go up quickly, promisingly, but are doused by the efficient ceiling sprinklers before they can become more than showy piles of grey, smouldering detritus.
She avoids the PA speaker pronouncements, the frantic, shrill cries. She avoids the clusters of employees cowering beneath desks, in supply closets, whispering in huddles, doors locked.
She avoids the moment Pierre stops thinking: the sharp, sudden recoil of his lips as he finds the metal of the barrel still hot from the firing.
Pierre runs a red light at 7:04 a.m., eager to push past the boundaries of the City of Toronto, having been awake for nearly twenty-six hours.
The 401 is long and grey and heavy. Suddenly it is two o’clock. Suddenly he is pulling into the main garage. Unzipping a canvas gym bag. Staring at a moving bus. Suddenly it is Judgment Day.
He thinks of Mrs. Boros’s tight smile. Thinks of a dying buck. Rearranges all the words. Tries to put together a plot line, his head in his hands, the rifle on his lap. Isn’t there somewhere else to go? Some final opt-out, a safety switch, a booked ticket to Vegas?
Vegas! Pierre thinks. This isn’t the end!
He thinks that this is not an ending.
That this is not an ending.
Clare Davidson, 52. Brian Guay, 56. David Lemay, 45. Harry Schoenmakers, 44.
FRANKIE+HILARY+ROMEO+ABIGAIL+HELEN:
AN INTERMISSION
By Frankie, I mean, of course, Francisco James Muñiz IV (1985– ), son of Francisco ‘Frank-a-hey-ho’ Benjamin Eugene-Wallace Tyler Muñiz III (a Cuban-born restaurant owner of Puerto Rican descent), and Denise (ex-nurse of mixed Irish and Italian heritage), now divorced. The particular Frankie who, after watching his older sister Christina’s sterling performance in her Knightdale, North Carolina, high school musical, decided to pursue a career in acting, and who first got his chops as Tiny Tim in a local theatre production of A Christmas Carol. The home-schooled Frankie who slogged through several no-budget productions (The Sound of Music, The Wizard of Oz, etc.) and commercials and made-for-TV movies (e.g., To Dance with Olivia, 1997, starring Louis [or Lou] Gossett, Jr.) until his role in the David Spade/Sophie Marceau romantic comedy Lost & Found (1999), which, though roundly panned by critics, raised him in the eyes of Hollywood casting agents and facilitated his first big splash at the awkward age of fourteen in the Fox sitcom Malcolm in the Middle, a mid-season replacement in which Frankie played the eponymous leading character with such aplomb and earnestness that he was nominated for Golden Globe Awards in 2000 and 2001, an Emmy Award in 2001, and was awarded the Hollywood Reporter YoungStar Award for his overall performance in the series. Malcolm in the Middle being the long-running comedy series detailing the antics of a middle-class family modelled after a sort of ‘dysfunctional American post-nuclear’ (perhaps best epitomized by The Simpsons), lauded and known to push specific target-audience envelope thresholds and known as the vehicle that enabled Frankie to star in several feature-film productions through the early to mid-2000s, such as My Dog Skip (2000), Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001), Big Fat Liar (2002, matched with actress Amanda Bynes), Agent Cody Banks (2003, alongside actress, singer and activist Hilary Duff), Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London (2004) and Racing Stripes (2005, voice only), as well as to make numerous cameo appearances, such as in the films Stuck on You (2003), Stay Alive (2006) and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007). The Frankie who, over the last few years, has been transitioning out of traditional Hollywood acting roles, experimenting with various producing gigs (for example, producing in 2006 the film Choose Your Own Adventure: The Abominable Snowman, an interactive animated feature based on the popular ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ novels, for which he also provided voice-acting alongside actors William H. Macy and Lacey Chabert) and expressing a desire in print and online media to do some ‘growing up’ outside the limelight. The Frankie who has decided of late to pursue an exciting and rewarding career as a professional race-car driver (ever since gaining his driver’s licence in 2001, Frankie has been consumed with a powerful love of driving and of cars [no doubt influenced by his father, Frank-a-hey-ho, who similarly indulges in car adoration but has publicly expressed fears regarding Frankie’s safety behind the wheel] – a love which has led to the purchase of several exorbitantly expensive automobiles [a total of nine in Fra
nkie’s first year of licenced driving], such as the white 1995 Volkswagen Jetta from the film The Fast and the Furious [2001], a 2002 Cadillac Escalade previously owned by Penny Hardaway of the New York Knicks and a 1950s Porsche Speedster). The Frankie who, after more or less committing himself to the sport, took first prize in the 2005 Pro/Celebrity Race at the Long Beach Grand Prix and promptly signed a two-year contract with Jensen Motorsport, allowing him to race between the years 2006 and 2008 in the Formula BMW U.S.A. Championship, the Champ Car Atlantic Series (including the Las Vegas Grand Prix), the Sebring Winter National SCCA race, and drive for the PCM/USR team, finishing in the top ten in three races and completing the 2008 season in eleventh place (also bringing home the 2008 Jovy Marcelo Sportsmanship Award for his gracious and honourable conduct during the year’s competitions). The particular Frankie who, in 2005, was briefly engaged to hairdresser Jamie Gandy (a woman who bears a passing resemblance to Frankie’s ex-co-star Hilary Duff and whom he met on the set of the film Stay Alive) – an engagement that was swiftly called off due (in part) to Frankie’s hectic racing and travelling schedule, which left him a grand total of only forty days at home in 2007. The Frankie who is also currently engaged to Hollywood unknown Elycia Turnbow, aka Elycia Marie (a five-foot-four vintage clothing store-owner [standing one inch shorter than Frankie] tagged by many bloggers as ‘super hot’) who, in early 2011, reputedly assaulted Frankie and damaged numerous expensive artworks and pieces of furniture around his mansion in Phoenix, according to a 911 dispatch call made by Frankie himself, who was reputedly embroiled in such relationship stress and drama that he was pushed to hold a pistol to his head and threaten to commit suicide. The resilient Frankie who is currently mending his relationship with Turnbow/Marie and denying any ongoing suicidal urges, and who, among other appearances and racing projects, is currently playing drums for the rather middle-of-the-road, radio-friendly rock band You Hang Up.
And by Hilary Duff, I mean, of course, Hilary Erhard Duff (1987– ), daughter of Robert (Bob) Erhard Duff (owner of many successful convenience stores) and Susan Colleen (née Cobb, homemaker turned film producer and Hollywood manager), now divorced. The precise Hilary who was born in the dry September heat of Houston, Texas, and – like Francisco James Muñiz before her – was home-schooled from the third grade onward and introduced to acting via various theatre productions at age six (along with her older sister, Haylie Katherine Duff, also an actress and musician of considerable fame and two years Hilary’s senior). The singular Hilary who leapt from acting school to local theatre productions (most notably in a production of The Nutcracker Suite in San Antonio) to a move to California with her mother and Haylie Katherine (while Bob Duff lingered in Texas) to television commercials and small roles in TV series such as Chicago Hope or the miniseries True Women (1997, uncredited) to her first leading role in the critically condemned, direct-to-video snore-fest Casper Meets Wendy (1998), the ill-fated sequel to 1995’s Casper, which starred Bill Pullman and a young Christina Ricci. The Hilary who endured the loss of a role in the ill-fated NBC sitcom Daddio, which shook the foundations of her preteen confidence and sent her spiralling into a depression related to feelings of inadequacy and failure and terrified envy of her older sister and guilt at the beseeching of her mother to move from Texas to California, which presumably helped tear the Duff family asunder and contribute to the elder Duffs’ eventual divorce – directly caused by Bob Duff’s illicit affair – in 2006 (believed to be described in certain of Hilary’s later songs, such as ‘Gypsy Woman’ and ‘Stranger’). The specific Hilary who broke through to stardom as the eponymous heroine in the television series Lizzie McGuire (2001–2004, originally airing on the Walt Disney Channel), a children’s broadcast recounting the exploits of a young girl with geeky parents and supportive, eccentric friends who on occasion morphed into a cartoon character (known as Animated Lizzie) in order to address the audience in fourth-wall-breaking digressions and asides revealing McGuire’s real feelings, not unlike the audience-addressing function of a Greek chorus. And while Lizzie McGuire drew roughly 2.3 million viewers per episode, won Favorite TV Show at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards in 2002 and 2003, won Hilary the Favorite TV Star at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards Australia in 2004 and garnered numerous successful merchandise endorsements (such as Lizzie McGuire Happy Meal CD-ROMs, Dakin toys and plush dolls, and TOKYOPOP cine-manga spinoffs, etc.) collectively earning the Walt Disney Corporation over $100 million, it wasn’t until Hilary reprised her role as Lizzie in The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003) that she really ‘blew up’ (though some might argue persuasively that her role in Agent Cody Banks [2003], alongside Frankie Muñiz, was the true catapulting vehicle of her cinematic career). In line with her previous efforts, The Lizzie McGuire Movie was near-universally disliked by critics, who associated her promotion of Lizzie with other celebrity ‘cash-in’ ventures, such as Britney Spears’s disastrous but image-reinforcing performance in Crossroads (2002). The certain Hilary whose subsequent films fared considerably worse, both financially and critically, than her earlier efforts – such films including perfect flops such as A Cinderella Story (2004), Raise Your Voice (2004), Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (2005), The Perfect Man (2005) and Material Girls (2006), all of which earned her Razzie nominations for Worst Actress in their respective years. The Hilary who, in 2008, declined a major role in the CW Network’s 90210 remake series because of a desire to edge away from the tween-to-teen market, similar to Frankie’s stated interest in pursuing non-traditional film involvements; strangely, Duff appeared the following year on the highly successful CW television show Gossip Girl (2007–present), apparently prepared to embrace whatever pigeonholed ‘teen’ actress roles came her way, or to at least linger in the hyperactive pastels of the genre for as long as possible. The Hilary whose film career, at least since 2008, has significantly declined (both in terms of frequency of appearance and visibility of roles), with the Charlie Sheen–co-produced non-event She Wants Me, released in April 2012, being her most recent film credit, receiving a score of 3.7/10 on IMDb and no reviews or rankings on Rotten Tomatoes. But this is also the Hilary Duff who electrified young audiences and certain older men with her successful singing career, debuting in 2002 with a cover track on the Lizzie McGuire soundtrack and a song written for a compilation album entitled Disneymania, followed by the full-length Christmas album Santa Claus Lane: a certified-gold CD that featured duets with sister Haylie, rapper Lil’ Romeo, singer Christina Milian and other mid-2000s sensations. The Hilary who, in 2003, launched Metamorphosis, the pretentious-sounding sophomore album that nevertheless went on to become certified quadruple-platinum, sell out arenas across the world on its tour and boast the singles ‘Come Clean’ and ‘So Yesterday’ – songs of adolescent confusion, romantic freedom and simplistic, almost nursery-rhyme melodies that reduced tweenage girls to a kind of synthetic, fantasy-world mush. The Hilary who followed up Metamorphosis in the next year with Hilary Duff, a collection of original tracks that was immediately followed in 2005 by Most Wanted, a compilation album that went platinum a month after its release, featuring the catchy and inoffensive, Good Charlotte–written single ‘Wake Up,’ which was supported by a music video of Duff attending parties around the world, clearly demarcating a line between her earlier, tepid child-pop and this new, more danceable, more mature sound. This was further expanded upon in her following album, Dignity, released in 2007, which pushed her personal image into more vixen-like territory and that expanded her musical repertoire with a more committedly dance-hall, electropop and New Wave sound (even earning mixed-to-positive reviews from major album-reviewing publications, to the surprise of just about everybody). The Hilary who, after the 2008 release of Best of Hilary Duff, mentioned via Twitter and her own website that she was back to recording another album, stating that she was ‘going to mess around in the studio and work on some music.’ The entrepreneurial Hilary who also founded the preteen-targeted clothing (and jewellery and fragrance and furniture) bra
nd Stuff by Hilary Duff in 2004, which sold at fluorescent-lit, headachy chain stores such as Kmart, Zellers and Target before fizzling out in 2008. The Hilary who fearlessly entered the women’s fragrance market in 2006 with With Love … Hilary Duff, the perfume that boasted hints of mangosteen fruit, cocobolo wood, amber milk and musk, which was followed by Hilary’s second perfume, Wrapped With Love, a fragrance sparkling with a wider array of fruits, flowers and musk-based scents, including mandarin, honeydew and white lily. The Hilary who, having witnessed the demise of Stuff by Hilary Duff, partnered with DKNY to promote Femme for DKNY Jeans, a line of women’s clothing that took inspiration from trendsetting New York fashion icons (jeans ranging in price from $39 to $129), and that was supported by a series of videos called The Chase, filmed in various European cities and uploaded in serial fashion as a seven-part miniseries to Duff’s official YouTube channel (the first video receiving 22,000 views in its first week of publication). The ever-ambitious Hilary who also co-authored (with Elise Allen) the New York Times–bestselling book Elixir, a young-adult novel that received overwhelmingly positive reviews to the surprise of absolutely no one in the world and spawned its sequel, Devoted, also co-authored by Elise Allen, which continued the paranormal story of Sage and Clea and the Elixir itself (for Hilary has insisted upon her love of reading, having publicly praised other recent top-selling books such as The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, The Pact by Jodi Picoult, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer of Twilight fame). The philanthropic Hilary whose generous financial donations and personal appearances and endorsements have assisted with numerous premier charities, such as the Think Before You Speak campaign, Kids with a Cause, the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund and more, including generous work with Hurricane Katrina relief, animal rights and LGBT organizations. The Hilary who is known to have dated Aaron Charles Carter, pop and hip-hop singer (with adolescent-friendly lyrics similar to those of early Lil’ Bow Wow or Lil’ Romeo) and younger brother of Nickolas Gene Carter of Backstreet Boys fame in the synth-rich, McWorld years between 2001 and 2003, before dating Joel Rueben Madden, vocalist for the pop-punk band Good Charlotte (now on hiatus), between the years 2004 and 2006 (Madden being twenty-five and Hilary being sixteen at the beginning of their relationship, to the genuine and legitimate concern of many well-meaning observers). The Hilary who, on August 14, 2010, in Santa Barbara, California, married the Edmonton-born, now-retired NHL centre iceman Mike Comrie, with whom she has now mothered her first son – Luca Cruz Comrie, born on March 20, 2012, weighing in at seven pounds, six ounces.
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