Isobel flagged down a chortling old truck full of Mexicans. She didn’t waste her time using her thumb, just some old-fashioned coquettish manoeuvre like Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night. A little smile. A little thigh. A little thrusting of the lips and hips.
We could tell they were Mexicans because of the flag painted on the side of the rusty orange truck and the rosaries and plastic Virgin Marys swinging from the rear-view mirror. Three of them got out and cracked jokes while making quick work of the tire changing. Our replacement tire wasn’t in great shape, the one named Pedro pointed out. Isobel smiled winningly and practised her self-taught French-style Spanish. Grande probleme, n’est-ce pas? No habla mucho Española. They were enchanted. They told us they were migrant workers on their way to pick Ontario tomatoes. Seemed like a helluva long way to come to pick tomatoes, but they were cheerful as all heck.
I smoked my last cigarette and by accident caught the eye of the guy still sitting in the truck, the anti-social one. He gave me a lazy, conspiratorial smile. I smiled back knowingly without exactly knowing what we were smiling about. Mexicanos are so beautiful with their golden brown skin, chocolate brown eyes, gleaming white teeth. Don Juanitos all of them, no matter if short or chubby, old or young, they’ve got twinkling eyes and are ready to flirt on the spot. Not to stereotype or anything.
No mucho Englese, they said, and it reminded me of our trip to Puerto Vallarta. Looking at these muchachos, I wanted to go back to Mexico, to travel with no sweetheart at home, free to roam. They are a kindred people, exceptionally romantic, like me. Always singing about love, talking about it hyperbolically.
I wondered why Philip, Marco, Pedro, and Guillermo were so far from home. I vaguely remembered hearing about migrant workers picking fruit, I guess they were trying to make a buck to take back to their families.
We thanked them, and Isobel gave them her email address. She drove us to the nearest garage. We bought a second-hand tire, loaded up with gas, bought some cigarettes, a green-apple-scented air freshener, some hand cream, red and black licorice, a bag of Spitz, and some ChapStick.
Isobel slapped her VISA card down on the counter. The red-headed and -bearded clerk swiped it, and we waited for it to be accepted and the little piece of paper to chit-chit out. It took longer than normal to work. The beeps sounded different. Red shook his head and whispered to us what the screen said: CARD NOT AUTHORIZED. Iz laughed nonchalantly and put her second card down, her MasterCard. No go. Red shook his head again. We’d been through this before, back when we were students. Her laugh sounded more hysterical this time round. My stomach rumbled.
I put my second credit card down, my VISA. I knew my MasterCard was jam-packed.
All three of us stared at the little black machine that would decide our fate.
No joy.
Isobel asked: Do you take department store cards? The guy shook is head. Gas cards? Aha, she said: my second VISA. We waited, holding our breath while he swiped it.
NOT AUTHORIZED! And I’m gonna have to confiscate this card, the guy said unhelpfully. Isobel tried to give him the fake Tag Heur Hubert had given her. Only an expert could tell it wasn’t the real thing. This guy was thoroughly uninterested in her watch and treated us like bimbos; it wasn’t like in the movies where you could make some sort of deal, like an IOU letter. He insisted on keeping our car as collateral until we could pay for our bill. Who knew Ontarians could be such hardasses? Sure, all of our credit cards had been declined, but we weren’t riffraff! I knew from waitressing that you could just ring through a credit card manually, without calling VISA, and if it was under one hundred bucks, VISA would honour it because the customer would pay their bill eventually.
Red was unimpressed by my inside knowledge. “Maybe that’s what you do in Alberta, that lawless province, but here in Ontario, we like to play by the book, eh.”
I don’t know if Red was being ironic or what, but screw him anyway. Isobel and I were experiencers, not savers. Go Hard or Go Home. This was our anthem. But now we had no wheels, no bucks, and we were stuck in a province that started with a vowel and ended in one but wasn’t our Alberta.
I couldn’t call my parents—I wouldn’t—I didn’t want a lecture on living beyond my means. Of all the lectures, that was my least favourite. What about my dreams, I’d argue back. Isobel’s parents had already given her three hundred bucks for the trip. Who knew that gasoline could cost so goddamned much! We could call Finn, he would for sure help us out, but that would be so wrong on so many levels. Between us, we had ten bucks left. We could maybe hitchhike to Montreal, but we couldn’t just abandon my car in Ontario. Plus, we needed to be able to get home. We walked the rainy streets of Wawa, destitute and lame. At least Red had let us leave our luggage there so we didn’t have to schlepp it around town. Almost made up for him confiscating my keys.
It was a pretty place with loads of beaches around and an amazing super-hero-sized Canada Goose statue. I could add that sighting to the world’s largest perogy I saw in Glendon, Alberta, a few years back.
“Aw merde alors, let’s go to a movie, this is depressing!”
I loved that Isobel wanted to spend the last of our cash on a movie.
“Matinees are cheaper anyway, aren’t they?”
So we found the local art-house cinema, but it wasn’t open yet.
Needing to revive ourselves we headed to the grungiest bar we could find.
It had cheap decor of dark grey and black upholstered couches and ratty chairs stained from years of beer spillage. Mysterious abstract paintings of ominous blobs that looked like crows hung on the walls. Hundreds of empty beer pitchers sat stacked on the bar, for the evening ahead. Our table had a plastic black ashtray with an old butt squashed into a piece of green bubblegum on it along with one of the neon yellow flyers that lay on every table advertising The Hard Rock Miners.
On the back of our flyer we made a list of our options: camp, hitchhike, make friends. Fuzzy Navels and extra spicy chicken wings were on special, so we went for broke. Two Fuzzy Navels later, with my peach schnapps wisdom, I had written a postcard to Finn, asking him to get me an advance at work on my paycheque. They’d done it before. My bosses were good guys, fairly tolerant of their young staff’s dramas. Isobel had a stamp left in her wallet and went off to post it.
Later on after endless noodling and wandering around, we found a park and sat on a bench. I felt bad for Isobel. She looked a little demoralized as she fished in her bag for cigarettes. There was nothing to do but sleep in the park, like a couple of hobos. We lay head to toe on the long bench. “Isobel, this is just like a Tom Waits song, we’re actually living it.”
“I’d rather just hear about it in a song.”
“What song?”
“‘Cold Cold Ground’?”
Thank God it was a warm summer night.
It was four in the morning and here we were on a bench in small-town Ontario. At least it would make a good story. At least we were having an adventure. And then the rain started. I heard Isobel say Zut! She put her purse on her face to shield herself from the drops.
I let it splatter on my face. It was only a gentle rain. I imagined I was kissing Hawksley, and we were laughing in retrospect over my epic mission to get to him. We were a couple. Madly in love. Having sex at every possible, sneaky chance. Kissing in car washes.
He was busy with his rock-star lifestyle. But he made time for me. He needed me. I inspired him. I was the listener he’d longed for, his muse. And so we smooched and smooched.
Woke up five hours later. Nine in the morning and only a buck fifty between us. Hungry bellies, full bladders, and damp clothes from dew and drizzle.
Isobel looked gorgeous as usual, despite having slept in these conditions. She looked in her compact mirror and cleaned up her eye makeup, brushing on more mascara and slapping on some lipgloss. I looked in my mirror. I had bench imprints on the left side of my face. There was a weird look in my eyes. I snapped the mirror shut.
We walked back into town looking for somewhere to eat and pee. It was a sunny, blue-sky day. I didn’t know how we were going to get to Hawksley in Montreal in two days’ time, but I had hope. How could you not, on such a beautiful day? I ignored the tickle in my throat that hinted at a cold on the way.
“Do you think we should just go home?” Isobel asked.
My heart sank. We’d never given up on a mission. The thought that she didn’t want to carry on made me feel desperately sad. Down I went into a pit of self-loathing and pity pity pity.
“Annie?”
I looked at her, trying to suss out whether she was fed up with our mission. “I’d really like to see him, Iz. I really would. I know it’s stupid, but I think he could change my life.”
“Okay then, let’s do it! Oui. We’ll find a way. Let’s go to that café over there. It looks nice.”
“We don’t have any money, Isobel. Remember, all of our credit cards are up to their limits.”
“Look, we’ll go in, order food, use the bathrooms, eat, and then we’ll be able to think clearly, I don’t know, maybe they don’t have a VISA authorization machine, maybe they just imprint the cards. We’ll case it on the way in. Baby steps. Petits pas.”
I didn’t really think it was a good idea. I didn’t want to get sent to the clink in small-town Ontario. Plus I was a waitress, I had honour. I couldn’t possibly do a dine and dash, the last refuge of the lowest of the low.
But I was hungry and I had to pee like crazy, so I acquiesced.
I waited at our table while Iz went to the can first. I saw her looking all around the place, trying to figure out what their credit card payment situation was. It was a tiny café painted a light lemony colour. Blond wood tables. Georgia O’Keefe prints on the walls. Fresh orange tiger lilies in a vase on top of the cake display. A bookshelf overflowing with paperbacks with a sign above saying, TAKE ONE, LEAVE ONE. A menu written in electric blue chalk.
There were a lot of customers: a smattering of twentysomethings, families, a few professor-looking types. Isobel came back and it was my turn to go and freshen up. “Did you see a machine?”
“No, it’s too cluttered by the till to really see anything.”
She was right, the till area had dirty plates all around it. It was an impromptu bus station for what looked like a large party that had just left. Weird that this place was so busy at nine-thirty on a Wednesday morning.
I came back to the table, and we scanned the menu. I felt better after having brushed my teeth and hair and put on some lipstick. My stomach was worried, wondering how we were going to pay for this, but my appetite was blithely panoramic.
Isobel was annoyed that the place was non-smoking. I thought it was good for us to have to conserve our supplies.
The menu seemed way more sophisticated than anything back home. I felt that my body might even forgive all the debauchery if I cleansed it with this healthy food. I ordered a fruit soup of puréed cantaloupe, nectarine, and raspberries, a tofu and veggie bacon English muffin, and gyokuru Japanese tea to drink. Isobel ordered pan-fried portobello mushrooms filled with organic pesto and caramelized shallots.
“What a menu!”
“I think this place must be for vegans, I just wanted some damn eggs,” said Isobel.
I was so hungry I felt faint.
Just then, we overheard the waitress say to another customer, “We don’t accept credit cards here. Sorry, there’s a bank machine around the corner.”
“What are we going to do?” I whispered.
“I know for sure there’s no money in my account, or yours, is there?”
“Nope.”
“Maybe we can argue about the fact that we didn’t know.”
The waitress arrived with our food. It looked beautiful.
“Sorry I just overheard, you don’t do credit cards? In this day and age?”
I cringed from the rudeness of Iz’s tone. The waitress sighed. “Look, these credit card companies charge a huge fee for us to be able to use them, and for a small place like this, with gourmet food at reasonable prices for the customer, we just don’t want to pass on the costs to you, so we thought, ‘Hey let’s simplify this, let’s be old-fashioned and just use cash.’” And she walked off.
Isobel snorted. “Well, it looks like we might have to do a runner.”
How horrible is that? In this nice place. I put the first spoonful of soup in my mouth. It was a kind of heaven. Beautiful fruity, tangy flavours erupted in my mouth. I had a sip of the tea, that was delicious too. I leaned across the table and even had a piece of Iz’s mushroom. Wow.
“Let’s just eat first. Then we’ll worry. Meanwhile this is the healthiest food we’ve had this whole trip. Think of all those Husky greasy-sausage–fried-egg assembly-line breakfasts.” As I said that, I noticed a blond man in his early fifties sitting at the table next to us, peering over the book he was reading, which was something about eco-criticism.
“Sorry for being so terribly rude, but I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. Since I’ve been here, I’ve been dying to have some classic, greasy-spoon breakfast like you see in American cinema but to no avail. Do you know of such diners in town? I’m dying for a steak ’n’ eggs breakfast!”
He had a BBC accent, which of course made us both sit up in our chairs. He must be an expert of something.
“Well, if you get out of town to the highway, you should be able to find a Husky. But it’s nothing special,” I told him.
“Do they give you endless coffee refills, in fact leaving a thermos on your table?”
“Sure do, and there’s a phone on every table so that truckers can call their wives,” Isobel added.
“Thanks for the tip.”
“Are you from England?” I couldn’t believe I’d just said that, of course he was.
“Yes indeed, I’m a Somerset man.”
“Like Sting, and Tears for Fears, Peter Gabriel and Joe Strummer and Van Morrison sometimes and . . .”
“Yes, it’s an attractive region. Draws a lot of rock stars and birdwatchers, burnt-out Londoners and farmers. Gabriel’s ‘Solsbury Hill,’ I go there all the time for picnics.”
He couldn’t have impressed us more.
He was hugely boyish despite being in his fifties. Super red-faced, very fair. Looking like he might burst somehow. I hoped Isobel wouldn’t try to seduce him, just for sport. He looked vulnerable. And sweet. The more he talked, the more it made me think of George Emmerson, cups of tea, Billy Idol, crumpets, and all good things English.
“So, I really am not generally an eavesdropper, but how about we create a diversion for your little problem,” he suggested.
“I don’t know, I don’t feel right about it, I work in restaurants.”
“Oh . . . I took you for radicals, bohemians, revolutionaries. Isn’t property theft? . . .”
“Well—”
“Okay, when you’re done eating, on the count of four, I’ll spill my coffee and you two get up and leave. Don’t look suspicious, just head out the door as if you’d already paid. I’ll meet you around the corner.”
Pretending to try to scratch his ear, he swiped his coffee cup, spilling it all over the table. To make matters worse he instinctively jumped up to avoid the lake of coffee but managed to tip the table so all the coffee spilled over his lap definitely making a bigger mess than he’d intended. It was an incredible act of kindness, I thought as we walked casually out of the place.
We hid around the corner. He came out in a few minutes.
“That was just like in the movies!”
This guy had a bad case of movie-itis, I figured, possibly worse than ours.
“I don’t feel good about this, I gotta go back and confess.” I stormed back in. “Wait—” I heard behind me.
When I walked up to the counter I said to the woman that I had forgotten to pay and I was sorry. Before I could start my negotiations of how I might pay, she said, “Don’t worry about it, honey, that English dude paid your
tab.’’
Gobsmacked, as they say in England. That’s what I was.
“Kerridge,” he said, “pleased to meet you both! Mind if I walk with you?”
We headed back to our bench. Along the way, we told him our story, the Hawksley mission, the mushrooms, Rosimund in captivity, Sullivan, Finn, Ani DiFranco, and a little about Hubert. He told us he was a visiting professor/poet here for two months to host a spoken word festival at the local arts centre. He was here to slam poetry!
“My God, you girls are living in a Don Quixote saga. He expected the inn he stayed in to accept his credit, but they wouldn’t. You’re sort of on this Thelma and Louise homoerotic psychedelic landscape picaresque of the big Wild Wild West/East. Yes, of course, of course—this is too perfect . . .”
His eyes looked dreamy, maybe he was composing one of his poems about us.
“So you’re saying we’re a couple of sirens?” Isobel asked.
“Well that’s one way of putting it. So tell me, what’s the next chapter of your saga, how are you planning to get to Montreal? I’d drive you myself, but I need to be hosting this poetry-off. I could give you some cash, I’ve got fifty quid in my pocket.”
“Whoa, monsieur! No way, no how. We’re adults, we need to find a decent way to get ourselves out of this mess that doesn’t include les shenanigans with older British men!” Isobel laughed.
“Do you have anything you could sell or pawn?”
“We just have our car, and Finn’s guitar and we can’t sell that,” I said.
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