by David Pierce
"I sure can," I said.
"So all you got to do is invent a cement that doesn't seize up."
"Can I have until Friday?" I said. "I have a couple of simple tasks to perform first, like mush to the Pole and discover oil."
He laughed again and shouted at the stewardess for four more beers, paying for them with, among other assorted currency, a pink two-dollar bill that looked as phoney as hell to me but didn't seem to bother the stewardess any. I wondered if all Canadians were as friendly as Chuck, laughed as much, and drank as much beer. To spare the suspense, it turned out they were, they did, and did they ever. Good beer too, Labatt's and Molson and Carling; not as good as Corona and Dos Equis and Tecate, to my highly developed taste, but a lot better'n Coors and Miller and Bud, eh.
Chuck had a veritable host of amusing anecdotes about the cement business. He'd just finished up one about the time a guy dumped a whole truck into and over a rival suitor's parked convertible, when we landed. And at Dorval, luckily for my bankroll, because, as know-it-all Chuck piped up to say, Dorval was used for all U.S.–Canada flights as well as most charters. I don't know why, but Canadian customs and immigration authorities seem more worried about lettuce entering their country illegally than Yankee wetbacks like me, but that's their business. Anyway we had no problem; my guy even spoke English to me. So did the mademoiselle at Avis who rented me a bright red Ford. Even the free map she gave me of Montreal and its surrounds was in English. I gave Sara a dirty look in the rearview mirror after we'd climbed in and were about to take off, with Willing Boy beside me to navigate.
"Everything in French, eh?" I said. "I haven't heard a word of French since I got here."
"What's that, Swahili?" she said, pointing to an overhead road sign of which only one word, "exit," was understandable.
"Point taken, chérie," I said. "Boy, some country, where your copilot not only has to navigate but translate, too."
"Want me to drive?" Willing Boy offered. "I think I could manage it if you showed me where the gear stick is. Maybe it's this little doodad here." He flicked; the windscreen wipers started working.
"No, it ain't that," the twerp put in from the backseat. "Try something else."
"Try shutting up and stopping fooling and start navigating and translating," I said.
"Oui, my masterful leader," Willing Boy said. Sara giggled.
I drove. At least the road was fairly decent, it actually had more than one lane and was paved. We got to Montreal somehow, finally, after passing through a lot of terrain once featured in Chaplin's Gold Rush. On the way I discovered Montreal was an island, which I did not know. Well, did you? We even managed to find the hotel. From what I could see of it, at night, the gay Paree of North America seemed large, clean, slumless, old, new, and lively, with many a park and many a square, which cannot be said of many cities in the New World. It reminded me somewhat of a colder and more sedate version of San Francisco, with lots of water and lots of hills in close proximity. It seemed to have an awful lot of McDuck's restaurants, but when I pointed out this interesting observation to Willing Boy, he grinned and said the big M's were all stops for the city's underground system, or le métro.
"Just joking," I said. I noticed Curly had been right about the store signs, too, they said things like boulangerie and charcuterie and brasserie instead of plain-old bread, deli, and bar, which should be good enough for anyone, if you ask me.
I checked us in under our phoney traveling names, Holmes and Browning, leaving off the initials "E. B." in case the desk clerk, who spoke English to me, by the way, was moderately literate. I left him two hundred U.S. as a deposit for the rooms as I only had (with me) credit cards in my real name. I'll tell you sometime how to get a wad of legitimate cards in someone else's name when I'm in the mood. I might however mention briefly how you can get all the major credit cards for yourself without having any credit, any employment, and or any money to speak of. True, I should really check over the details with my financial adviser, Benny the Boy, who first told me about it, as it is complicated and I'd hate to steer you wrong, mes amis, but what the hell:
Roughly, you have to form a corporation somewhere it's easy and cheap to do so, reputedly, say, Nevada, and where no proof of assets is required. Then you need a simple contract drawn up that says the corporation agrees to pay you, say, ten grand a month, in cash or stock, so now you have, on paper, one of the requirements for obtaining credit, a well-paying job. Next you have to set up a bank balance at least in the "low threes," ass the banks put it to anyone checking up on your savings balance, meaning roughly a few hundred bucks. There are a couple of ways of doing this, according to Benny the Boy, one requires a hundred-dollar outlay, the other a measly twenty, but both demand four bank accounts and a lot of well-timed shifting of (imaginary) funds from one to the other. Banks, disgracefully, take anywhere from ten to fourteen days to clear a check;' the slower the better, of course, as far as they are concerned, as they have the use of the money during that time and they are the ones who pocket the interest on it. Anyway, Benny once diagrammed for me how to use this delay and by writing checks on the correct account at the right time you can build up a sizable balance in one of them. It would be illegal to draw cash against it, of course, but the balance does exist, and any credit card company checking up would be told so. And voilà, there you are, with a wallet full of plastic at last. A free copy of Benny's diagram can be obtained by dropping a postcard to Yours Truly; please enclose $10.00 for postage and handling. However, I have a sneaking feeling this scheme is out of date by now because due to consumer pressure, the banks have greatly reduced the time they take to clear a check, so you might have to fall back on the old-fashioned but tried and true means of obtaining credit cards—mugging.
So: a contemptuous bellhop showed us up to our fourth-floor abodes. I was in a single, with a queen-size bed, the kids sharing a double, with a king-size bed, I noticed when I poked my head in to see if they were comfortable. How tempus fugits, even in Canada. In my day, even if you presented a valid marriage certificate at the front desk, along with color photos taken at your twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, they'd still put you in one room and the lady in another, and probably on different floors as well, if not different wings.
I don't know what the kids did then, although I might have taken a wild guess at it, but I unpacked a few necessities—my nightie, my old teddy, special scalp preparation, and the like—took a quick shower, and then hit the hay. Flying is especially tiring when you know that the only things keeping you up in the ozone layer is your steely will power and continual alertness. I blew Ruth a good-night kiss, then hastily did likewise to Evonne.
The bedside phone buzzed me out of sleep the following morn; it was half of the lovebirds wanting to know if I was awake.
"I am now," I said. "See you downstairs for breakfast in half an hour."
"We already had it," the twerp said. "We've been up for hours. We even went out for a walk, it's gorgeous out."
"If you're a caribou," I said. "Anyway, see you up here in an hour for a council of war, OK?"
She agreed it was OK by them. I got myself together, went down, found the caféteria by following signs that said CAFÉTERIA, wound up eating pancakes with maple syrup by ordering something called "crepes au sirop d'érable," had the bill put on my room number, left a U.S. dollar as a tip for the mademoiselle, and got back up to my room just as Curly and Willing Boy were emerging from theirs to look for me. They were attired in daring look-alike outfits of jeans, sweaters and boots. I was attired in every bit of clothing I'd brought except the nightie. She said they've been out changing money. I said I'd been eating pancakes. Then we got down to the day's business.
After a moment or two of panic, I managed to find the scrap of paper on which I'd written William Gince's number, or rather the number I hoped was his. Then I inquired of Willing Boy if he knew the name of a big butcher store or a big grocery chain in town.
"Provigo," he said.
&n
bsp; "I'll take your word for it," I said.
"Thank you," he said.
"Now here is what you are going to do," I said. I told him. He got up from the chair by the little desk by the window in which he was slouching and began walking around muttering to himself and waving his hands in the air.
"What's the matter with him?" I asked the twerp, who was on the bed beside me. "Was it something I said?"
"You really are stoopid sometimes," she said. "He's only preparing, don't you know anything about acting?"
"Are you kidding?" I said. "I've walked out in the middle of more plays than you can find rhymes for 'snow.' I just didn't know—and there's one to start you off—thespians had to prepare anything, except their wigs. I thought all you did was bring up the footlights and they immediately started emoting.
After a while Willing Boy crossed over to us and muttered tensely, "OK. Ready. Let's get it on. I'm up for it." Sara gazed up at him lovingly. I just gazed up at him.
"There's the phone, Marlon," I said.
He picked it up, dialed, and then unleashed a torrent of French, which, after he'd hung up again, he roughly translated as, "Madame? Congratulations! It's Provigo here, Provigo, your friendly family grocers? You've just won a free, ten-pound, glazed Virginia ham for your Easter dinner! No, madame, you do not have to enter any competition, you do not have to purchase any goods from any of our thirty-two retail outlets in the Province of Quebec all you have to do is make sure someone's home when our delivery van passes your door. Of course you will have to heat it up, heh-heh, and we don't supply the sweet potatoes to go with it. . . . Really? This is the first you've heard of it? Madame, we've been doing it for years, twenty-five glazed Virginia hams at Easter, twenty-five free-range turkeys at Thanksgiving, and then of course the same number of geese, or turkeys, your choice, and there's always plenty of choice at Provigo, for Noël. . . . Well, how we do it is, and I'm not supposed to really tell you this, it's my daughter Debbie, she's almost four already, she does it, she just points to numbers at random on different pages of the phone book, and of course I have to check them after to make sure none of the winners works for Provigo or has any family member who does. . . . You don't? Good!
"Something else I always do, I always give the winners a call to see if they are still at the same address 'cause I'd hate for one of our vans to get out there and find you've moved recently because people often keep the same phone number when they move, but not the same address. . . . heh-heh, that would be tricky, wouldn't it . . ."
Here Marlon had covered up the receiver briefly and whispered frantically, "Pen! Pen!"
"You can sign autographs later, you ham, you," I whispered back. I handed him a pen.
"St. Michel, eight five five, um hum, that's what we have . . . just below Beaubien, the house with the white fence and there's only the one bell, fine. And your name? Mrs. François Leduc. Would tomorrow afternoon suit you? Anytime between two and five, swell, Mrs. Leduc, we'll be there . . . and thank you, Mrs. Leduc. Congratulations again. Bye-bye."
Marlon hung up and fell back on the bed, utterly drained by his labors. Ham is right, I thought. Actors—give them one simple call to make and they not only have to spend twenty minutes preparing but they have to go to a health farm afterward to recover.
"You would've really been in the sit if she was Jewish," the twerp said, stroking Marlon's fevered brow in a motherly fashion.
"I happen to know many Jews do eat ham," I said. "Only they call it Zebra. Anyway, well done, Marlon, although I did think it was a mite niggardly of you not to throw in a few spuds."
"Thanks, thanks," Marlon managed to gasp. "No flowers, please. Telegrams, OK."
"Now what?" Sara asked.
"As soon as Sir Marlon has recovered," I said, "from giving the definitive performance of a Provigo clerk, we might just go take a look at eight five five Rue St. Michel and see what we can see." I opened up the Montreal map I'd retrieved from the car after breakfast and spread it open, then put my glasses on so I could read the damn thing.
"There's Beaubien," Sara said after a minute, jabbing at the map with one finger. "And there's St. Michel."
"Can you get us there, Marlon?" I said.
"Can I act?" he said. "Easy. We'll take like Sherbrooke over, then turn left and then turn right."
"Well, mush, you huskies," I said. They went next door for their coats, I got my parka out of the cupboard and we went downstairs to the underground parking lot, climbed in the Ford, and mushed, Marlon not only navigating and translating but providing a running commentary as we did so. It was cold in downtown Montreal, and snow lay unevenly round about, on lawns, in trees, on roofs, on parked cars and fire hydrants. It might have been April and thus spring for some, but not yet for Montrealites.
"Sherbrooke, where the elite meet to shop, hop, and bop," Willing Boy sang out after a moment. "Up that mount on our left, which is named Mont Réal, by the way—"
"As against Mont False, I suppose," I said.
"Which means royal, not real, man," Marlon said. "Where the city got its name from, get it? Anyway, up that there mountain is Westmount, where all the bread is, or at least what's left of it."
"Where'd the rest go?" I said for something to say.
"West, man, west," Marlon said. "Soon as the natives in these parts started gettin' uppity a while back, wanting their own language spoken and all that, a lot of scared Anglo money hit the road."
"No!" I exclaimed. "How utterly pushy. Next thing these demned Frenchies will be wanting is the vote. And then—who knows? Tumbrils may yet roll again along these cobbled streets." At which time la petite twerp suggested that I put a sock in it as she'd seen the movie, thanks.
After we left the high-rent area we came to a part of the city that looked more like what cities were supposed to look like—tenement buildings, small businesses, sex shops, counter joints, cut-rate drugs, Jewish delis, and carpeterias. We even passed a couple of drunks arguing on a corner.
"That's more like it," I said, stopping carefully for a red light. "How can you have a decent city without winos."
"Mordecai Richler," the tour guide said.
"So what," I said.
"He came from around here, St. Lawrence Main, St. Denis, poor Jewish and poor Catholic fighting it out."
"Never heard of him," I said. "Who did you say he played for?"
Willing Boy tossed his tresses out of his eyes and directed me left onto Beaubien, which we cruised along for a stretch. I turned down into St. Michel and drove slowly past 855, which turned out to be a wooden-shingled, steep-roofed duplex, with a small porch out front and the low white fence Mrs. Leduc had mentioned. In the yard next to it was a large snowman with a carrot nose and coal eyes, an old broom tucked under one of its rather shapeless arms. Someone in an old clunker he just managed to start pulled out from the curb a few door up; I backed deftly into the space he left and then cut the motor.
"Now what?" Sara wanted to know.
"Now we wait awhile," I said. "See what happens. We might get lucky."
"Why don't we just knock on the door and see what happens?"
"Because we might get unlucky," I said patiently. "He could have friends in for tea. Large ones. He could have things called firearms, which make a lot of noise and then kill you. When I do approach him, I'd rather it was somewhere nice and public so if he does have a gun he won't be as likely to use it and maybe he's left it at home anyway."
We waited awhile. I started up the motor from time to time to reheat the car. Sara toyed with the nape of Marlon's neck from time to time; he didn't seem to mind. After another little while he dug out a roach from one of his pockets and they both took a toke on it while I kept an uneasy eye out for guys on horses in red coats and Boy Scout hats.
It wasn't even an hour before someone came out of Mrs. Leduc's half of the duplex who could have been our man William, if Fats' description had been accurate, and why would he lie about that part of it whatever else he might be lying about
. The man was small, nondescript, with a receding chin and large glasses. He waved at an upstairs window, took an unsuspicious look around, checked the sky for what I don't know, maybe passing geese, then he headed briskly off toward Beaubien.
"We better split up," I said hastily. "You two take him on foot, you're smaller than me, he's not likely to think you two drugged-out freaks are tailing him but try and look Canadian just in case. See where he goes. If he's headed for a car parked somewhere, I'll take him. See you back at the hotel. Go."
They went, the twerp stopping just long enough to make a snowball and check it at the windscreen. I started up the car and, staying well behind the parade, followed William as far as Beaubien and then along it until he disappeared into one of the big M's for métros. The kids tagged along after him. I drove back to the hotel, only losing my way twice and once almost.
I know what they do on a rainy night in Río but what do you do on a cold afternoon in Montreal when the salmon aren't running? I suppose I could have gone sightseeing or read a good book or, even better, some good rubbish. However, when I am in a new town I've always found it fruitful to try and get a feel for the place by mingling with John Q. Public in one of his typical habitats, so I changed some money at the desk and then, although it was undeniably early in the day, I decided a tavern I'd noticed just around the corner from the hotel would be a sensible place to begin my studies. I found a seat at the bar, ordered a Molson Export from the innkeeper and shifted the bowl of free pretzels a soupçon closer to my elbow. I was happy to see that the St. George's tavern looked remarkably similar to a lot of other low-class joints I've had the luck to visit over the years during my investigations of the local populations. It had the usual beer signs on the walls and miscellania behind the bar and a shuffleboard game along one wall; even the drunks looked familiar.
There was a little fellow sitting two stools down from me who was frowning at some words he'd just scribbled in a kid's lined exercise book on the bar in front of him. He had a red, white, and blue woolly hat with a large C on it on his dome, horned-rimmed glasses on his roseate nose, and worn over a lumberjack's checked shirt, a T-shirt that said, in English, INSTANT ASSHOLE—JUST ADD ALCOHOL.