When we got home, I called Sébastien to arrange to meet him the next day. He could have just written a cheque, but he really wanted to be there. We could hardly say no, and in any case we needed a lift to Saint-Étienne. He’d come by and pick us up shortly after lunch. All this time he’d been desperate to come to our house, and now he finally had his excuse. Underneath it was the perfectly legitimate desire to see the family set-up of the girl of his dreams, but above all he wanted to meet Jude, the guy included in the “we” with which I start most of my sentences.
I was in the shower when he showed up, so they had to introduce themselves. That was pretty straightforward: thirtysomething males have a whole stack of things in common. Jude was playing Left 4 Dead when Sébastien came in. Two minutes later, the latter had a controller in his hands and the two of them were taking out zombies like old brothers-in-arms. On the way to J-M. Grenier, I sat in the back seat and they spent the best part of the journey bellyaching about Scott Gomez’s salary and the holes in Hal Gill’s defence. It wasn’t until the outskirts of Saint-Étienne that I interrupted to talk business. “So, Sébastien, how much are you willing to lend us?”
Sébastien: Dunno… How much is this car?
Me: Four thousand five hundred.
Sébastien: That’s fine.
Me: But could you trust us with six thousand?
Sébastien: Um…ye-es, it’s just that it’ll take you longer to pay me back if the Arts Council shits on our plans.
Me: That’s no problem.
Jude: I see where you’re going. Are you trying to say—
Me: Do you really want to drive a Mazda Protogé5?
Jude: Um…I don’t really have an opinion on the subject. I’ve only known about the existence of Mazda Protogés for twenty-four hours.
Sébastien: Mazdas are reliable.
Me: Reliable, reliable—do you really want that to be the first word that comes into people’s heads when they think about you? Like, Sébastien Daoust, he’s reliable.
Sébastien: To answer your question, yes. There’s nothing wrong with being reliable if you’re a person. But I’d say it’s an essential quality in a car.
Me: Is a 2003 Chevrolet Monte Carlo reliable, in your opinion?
Sébastien: I don’t know, but it’s definitely a poser’s car.
Jude: Are you sure, Tess?
Me: Aren’t you?
Jude: I am, actually. But my father won’t approve…
Me: What does your father approve of?
Jude: Yeah, not much.
Sébastien: If I’m getting this right, you want to buy a Monte Carlo?
Jude and me: Yes.
We didn’t waste time on niceties: when you do something on a whim, you need to hurry before the buzz fades. If Jude’s father was definitely going to think we were idiots, Jean-Marie, for his part, seemed to approve of our choice. People tend to think you’re astute when you’re spending $6,000 at their business. The formalities completed, Sébastien invited us to a restaurant to celebrate. We’d have preferred to be alone, but, once again, we couldn’t decently race off the minute we’d got what we wanted from him. We arranged to meet at Buffalo Wings at the bottom of Shawinigan. I drove with exaggerated care, like people taking their baby home from hospital after it’s born, driving ten kilometres an hour below the limit, putting the signal on ages before the highway exit, even going as far as obeying the yield signs. (I’m the only one who can drive right now, having been able to renew my licence quite easily since I’d only stopped paying to renew it two years ago.) We gobbled up our spicy wings and finally extricated ourselves from Sébastien. On the way back, we didn’t say a word. I stared at the road while Jude got to know the dashboard. After parking in front of our building, we stayed sitting in the car for a good half-hour, lost in our own thoughts. It was Jude who broke the silence: “Apparently we own something worth six thousand bucks…”
“And we’re six thousand bucks in the red.”
“Yeah. Mazda Protogé5, whatever. As long as it gets us from A to B. We can still exchange it and get the difference back, even if we look stupid in front of Jean-Marie.”
“Mazda Protogés are shit! Admit that this is a dream car!”
“But it’s not really our style. Don’t you like us a bit less?”
“Weirdly, I think I like us a bit better.”
“So do I, but I’m not sure I should.”
Ò...24...Ò
Journey By Chevrolet Monte Carlo to Sainte-Anne-De-La-Pérade and Environs, With Some Notes on the History, Traditions, and Customs of Said Places
People who know what they’re talking about, the neighbour being number one, are unanimous in thinking that the Monte Carlo’s major flaw is excessive petrol consumption, that she’s a bit of a gas guzzler, but since it’s our first car, we have nothing to compare it to, and I should point out that it was a week before we saw its little needle drop to E for the first time. To begin with, we scarcely dared touch it. We went on our little car trips in the evenings when I came home from work, but we stuck to our walking routes, sensibly remaining inside the city limits. We headed down to the English quarter by Fifth Avenue, came back up on Sixth, drove to the Domaine neighbourhood along Eighth Street, and returned by Fifteenth, with a few variations if we were feeling adventurous. The Grand-Mère bridge was making eyes at us, but crossing the Saint-Maurice seemed to us as freighted with consequences as crossing the Rubicon was for Julius.
It took ten days or so for us to dare going somewhere we couldn’t get to on foot. It must have been one in the afternoon, we weren’t doing anything much, I was reading and Jude was trying to beat Soda Popinski in Punch-Out!! when suddenly he turned off the Wii, turned to me, and told me to get dressed, we were going to Sainte-Geneviève-de-Batiscan. I didn’t ask what had inspired this destination—I knew perfectly well that he didn’t know himself—nor what we were going to do once we got there, I simply complied, and ten minutes later we were crossing the bridge. We drove past Saint-Georges-de-Champlain without even bothering to look at it and took the 153 toward Saint-Tite, making a little hook by Lake Lafontaine. We have a thing for Lake Lafontaine. It’s ten bungalows around a pond (so insignificant that Google Maps doesn’t even mention it), far from everything, totally devoid of charm, and yet people still choose to live there. Returning to Saint-Tite, we turned on the way into the village to take the 159 to Saint-Séverin and Saint-Stanislas. At Saint-Stan, we took the 352 toward Saint-Narcisse, where not much happens on the 360 days when it’s not the Solidarity Festival. (You can always see its vaguely pretty church with two gothic-inspired bell towers, if you like that kind of thing; if not, you’ll have nothing to do there, except get excited about mattress making, which is the town’s main industry.)
Coming in sight of Sainte-Geneviève-de-Batiscan, the original destination of our trip, we decided we didn’t want to stop. We drove slowly, windows open, SoftRock blasting out, it was fucking glorious. We crossed the Batiscan River to the sound of “Dust in the Wind” and ran into the Saint Lawrence around Saint-Pierre-les-Becquets. There we took the 138 north and drove along the river to Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade. We thought briefly about pushing on to Grondines, but we were starting to get a bit peckish and, anyway, for our first real car trip we didn’t want to leave the region. In Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade we also found a neo-gothic church with two bell towers, even more beautiful than the one at Saint-Narcisse, and a tommy-cod interpretive centre right at the entrance to the village, which we felt duty-bound to visit. The lady at the ticket desk told us they were closing in half an hour, but a swift glance around the exhibition room told us that it ought to be enough time to see everything. For eight dollars a head, we could watch a couple of tommy cod in an aquarium, look at a diorama of the village of huts on the river, as well as several displays explaining the habits of the tommy cod and the history of ice fishing. (Tommy cod used to spawn in the Sai
nt-Maurice, but when industrialization rendered that waterway too polluted, they moved down to the Sainte-Anne River. In 1938 one Eugène Mailhot, who’d come to cut blocks of ice for the family icebox, noticed them there and built the first cabin by the river. Who’da thunk it! After we’d reeled off every single joke we could think of about how it must have been one tasty fish for us to fork out eight bucks, we set off to look for somewhere to eat. We followed Lanaudière Boulevard, which seemed to be the main street, and after driving for ten minutes we came across the Motel Café la Pérade. It didn’t look like much but it was there or nowhere… We ordered two pints of the least terrible beer, which we downed in three gulps before ordering two more. The alcohol had more of an effect than usual; after ten minutes we were already starting to stumble over our words and snigger stupidly at nothing. Our excitement must have contributed significantly to our light-headedness. We couldn’t get over the fact that here we were having a drink in an establishment of whose very existence we’d been unaware when we got up that morning. We’d barely driven a hundred kilometres, yet we were almost stunned that the people spoke our language and accepted our money. In any case, we thought ourselves very daring.
Although we hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch, we weren’t particularly hungry. We were fine just eating some almonds from the vending machine and a bit of cheese from the Pichet Dairy, situated right next to the Motel Café la Pérade. After my third pint, I declared that I was going to stop there; after all, I was the one driving. “But there aren’t any police in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade,” Jude pointed out. “If we head back through the villages, there won’t be any risk. They’re all under the jurisdiction of the Quebec police, and they only have two cars to cover an area the size of Normandy. If you ever wanted to kill someone in Saint-Roch-de-Mékinac, you’d just need to report a robbery in Notre-Dame-de-Montauban and the coast would be clear for a good hour.” After I’d decided that what was coming out of his mouth was simple good sense, I ordered one last one for the road. After that, we got back in the Monte Carlo and tried to do our journey in reverse, the only difference being that we went through Saint-Prosper rather than Saint-Narcisse, which would be a perfect example of the expression “six of one, half a dozen of the other.” At that time of day, the show P.S. Tenderness was playing on SoftRock: people (mostly women) phoned in to dedicate a song to a loved one. (“I’d like to dedicate ‘Unchained Melody’ to my little Coco, who’s working all night. From your Gisèle, who loves you and can’t wait to hug you”; “It’s already been two weeks since you left, Lucette, my heart is broken, I would dearly love to erase the past so that everything can go back to how it was before. Just for you, here’s the song that was playing when we met: ‘How Can I Tell You,’ by Marie-Chantale Toupin,” etc. It was almost unbearable at times.) We went through Saint-Prosper, Saint-Stan, Saint-Séverin, Saint-Tite, and Hérouxville belting out Pierre Bachelet, Didier Barbelivien, and Julien Clerc at full volume, and before we knew it we were heading back over the bridge. We went slowly down Sixth, mildly astonished that everything was exactly as it was when we’d left. The neighbour was pottering about on his balcony. We could see just by looking at him that he’d have given ten years of his life to know what we’d been up to all this time, but he had enough self-control to ask us no questions whatsoever, so we just exchanged polite small talk as we passed. I was so drunk on alcohol and good humour that I even spoke to him myself.
It was only ten o’clock when we got into the apartment, but we were out like a light and slept until the next morning. Strong emotions suck out all your energy, even if you don’t notice it at the time.
Ò...25...Ò
A Little More Geography?
As everyone knows, the first step is what really matters. After this journey to the realm of the tommy cod, our boldness knew no limits. As soon as we had the cash to fill the tank (around fifty dollars, depending on fluctuations in gas prices), we went onto Google Maps to choose a destination and plan an itinerary, threw a few things into a cooler, stopped off to buy a case of beer, and set off. For example, we might decide to go and see what was up in Saint-Côme. So we’d leave Shawinigan, wisely waiting until we’d left civilization behind (that is, getting as far as Saint-Boniface) to pop the cap off our first beer. After Saint-Alexis-des-Monts and Sainte-Angèle-de-Prémont, we left 819 country and entered unknown territory. Shivers of excitement! Often, when we arrived in a village, we parked the car and went for a little walk, so we could stretch our legs, piss out our beer, and see how they lived in Sainte-Émélie-de-l’Énergie or Saint-Damien (although we never found anything out about Saint-Damien, since we didn’t see a single soul in the streets of that municipality, which is, let me just point out in passing, one of the biggest in Quebec, with its 417 square kilometres. It’s a long way from the Gaspé’s 1,447, but it’s still nearly as much as the entire island of Montreal.
Once we arrived at our intended destination, we’d take a break to eat the food we’d brought, or, budget permitting, we graced some local establishment with our custom. In Saint-Côme, for example, we ate at the Rhythm of Time Inn, which cost us an arm and a leg, but I’d just got my tax return back so we really needed to celebrate that. After doing some sightseeing for an hour, the time it took for the wine to wear off, we came back by Saint-Alphonse-Rodriguez, Sainte-Marcelline-de-Kildare (which truly does exist, I promise), Saint-Ambroise-de-Kildare, Joliette, and Lavaltrie, where we picked up the 40 and then the 55 to get us home.
Our next journey took us to the heartlands of the Chaudière-Appalaches, to Irlande, Saint-Adrien-d’Irlande, Saint-Ferdinand, and Sainte-Sophie-d’Halifax, which, as the name does not suggest, is situated slightly south of Plessisville. We also went to Kiamika, in the Hautes-Laurentides (to orient you, it’s very close to Val-Barrette and a tiny bit east of Saint-Aimé-du-Lac-des-Îles), and La Tuque, that other ridiculously large municipality (big enough to fit New Hampshire inside it), where we attended a hotly disputed wet T-shirt competition at the Chez Bo bar and where we stayed overnight for the first time, at the Ideal Motel, in case you’re wondering (fifty dollars for a double room).
Even though we’d become veritable Jack Kerouacs, we carried on with our virtual travelling. Now that we knew how brave we could be, we wondered if we hadn’t been too timid in limiting ourselves to a thousand-kilometre radius. Pennsylvania was essentially our next-door neighbour, after all. Why not push on to Florida, to Two Egg, for example, west of Tallahassee? A trek of 2,600 kilometres. No, not Florida, we couldn’t stand the climate. (We start grumbling when the mercury goes above twenty-five.) Arizona seems much more bearable, so we could set off for Allah, located 4,400 kilometres distant, and which shares with our own Lake Lafontaine the distinction of being ignored by Google Maps; or maybe for Aztec Lodge, northeast of Phoenix, right in the heart of Usery Mountain Regional Park. From there, we could take the 88 toward Tortilla Flat and try to discover how many of the place’s six inhabitants have read Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat. Then, come slowly back to Utah on the 87, going through Tonto Basin, Gisela, Star Valley, Strawberry, Lake Montezuma, Pilgrim Playground, and Pumpkin Center. (See Pumpkin Center and die!)
We might also decide to take a themed trip. For example, we could head down into Pennsylvania to King of Prussia, location of the second-biggest mall in the United States. (We’re talking here about 260 square kilometres of shopping area, which is a bit larger than the surface area of Luxembourg.) Since it’s probably impossible to see it all in a day, or even two, we could really go to town and make a reservation at the Dolce Valley Forge Hotel for a week, which offers, for the modest sum of ninety-nine dollars a night, the following services and amenities: restaurant, bar, twenty-four-hour reception, newspapers, non-smoking rooms, equipment for people with reduced mobility, elevator, safe, heating, shuttle service to the shopping centre, gym, outdoor pool, etc. On leaving King of Prussia, we’d head northwest, go around the Great Lakes, and stop in Bloomington, Minnesota, site of the
biggest shopping centre in the United States, the famous Mall of America, with its 390 square kilometres (Norway), shared among more than five hundred shops (soon to be nine hundred). Then we’d make for the Ramada Mall of America, situated right next to this monster. Since the King of Prussia Mall would be fresh in our minds, we could compare them, like, “Yes, it’s true that it’s bigger than King of Prussia, but it doesn’t seem quite as good.” “There are more shops, true, but the eating was better in Pennsylvania,” “Yeah, we’re a million miles away from Trois Rivières’s Galeries du Cap,” etc. And then, having ventured so far west, we could just nip across North Dakota and Montana to come back into this country through Alberta and finish our tour with a trip to the West Edmonton Mall—the biggest shopping centre in North America, this one (and fifth in the world), with 570 square kilometres of floor space (not quite Kenya, but pretty close). After this last shopping orgy, we’d get on the Trans-Canada and zip back home, with stories to tell for the rest of our days. Obviously, the budget is the stumbling block in this whole enterprise. (What exquisite torture it would be to wander around West Edmonton Mall without a cent in your pocket!)
A less expensive idea would be to do the Lick Tour. Start at Lick, Ohio, then cross Cincinnati from north to south and stay a few days in Bone Lick State Park. Then off to Kentucky, fill up at Salt Lick, and retrace our steps to burn a few dollars at French Lick Resort Casino, situated in the charming village of French Lick, whose main claim to fame is being the birthplace of the legendary Larry Bird, one of the best players in NBA history, whose nickname was “the Hick from French Lick.” After striking it rich at roulette and spending a few moments paying our respects at Mr. Bird’s grave (if he’s dead) or having our photograph taken with him (if he’s alive), we’d race off to leap the 500 kilometres separating French Lick and Knob Lick, a hole so unimportant that not only does Google Maps snub it but nobody has even published an article about it on Wikipedia (where it is nonetheless possible to find information on the following subjects: “The problem of sexuality between men and mermaids in literature,” “Benzedrine in popular culture,” “List of fictional characters with nine fingers,” “List of English words containing a q that is not followed by a u,” “Cotard’s Syndrome” [in which sufferers imagine they don’t even exist], “Names of chemicals containing unusual words” [such as angelic acid and cadaverine], “Mucophagy” [or eating mucus], “Rapunzel syndrome” [sufferers of which eat their own hair], “The story of Mary Toft, a woman who claimed to have given birth to rabbits,” “Historical figures who wore pointy hats,” “Urban legends about the McDonald’s chain,” Adolf Hitler’s vegetarianism,” “chicken sexers” [people trained to determine the sex of poultry], “Nils Olav, the penguin colonel in chief of the Norwegian royal guard,” “List of pigs in history,” “Axinomancy” [or how to see the future with axes], “Religion in the Antarctic,” “List of unrealized religious prophecies,” “List of fictional chameleons,” etc.). We’d stop briefly at Knob Lick before setting off again to meander across Kentucky, since most of the Licks are in that state: Lick Fork, Grants Lick, Lick Creek, Mud Lick, Spring Lick, Flat Lick, Paint Lick, Blue Licks (the site, in 1782, of the famous Battle of Blue Licks, in which Daniel Boone took part, and which was one of the last clashes in the War of Independence), Beaver Lick, Big Beaver Lick, Plumb Lick, May Lick, and Lickburg. After having exhausted all possible pleasure in Lickburg, we’d leave Kentucky at last and pop over for a quick look at some other nearby Licks: Lizard Lick, Black Lick, Lick Skillet, finishing up with Otter Lick, North Carolina. Then back on Interstate 95, lamenting for once that we have no social life and therefore nobody to whom we can brag that we’ve just done the Lick Tour.
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