Cadillac Couches (20 page)

“This is totallement dégoutant! Cochons pissing all over the floor. And let me tell you, it's a special kind of imbécile that wets toilet paper and hucks it at the ceiling. Don't these cochons ever think about the poor people who clean these places, and they're usually immigrants, it's terrible!” Ever since we'd crossed the border Isobel had ramped up her Franglais.

“You could fill out the customer complaint card. C'mon, let's just get out of here and find some coffee and bagels and a park to sit in.” I wanted to protect the mood of the day. It had to be right. Not tense.

“Oui!” said Isobel.

The downtown streets were empty. We parked the car and walked around looking for a place to hang out until we stumbled onto the grounds of McGill and parked ourselves under a giant cedar tree until it was coffee time. We figured nothing would open until at least 8:00
AM.
It was heaven being out of the car and in the fresh air.

After a good rest, we got back in the car and somehow navigated our way over to Fairmont Street to pick up some bagels. We had never forgotten the sublimeness of proper Montreal bagels when we tried them all those years ago. The bagel makers were up early shovelling the glistening white dough with their long spoons into the dark womb of the huge, crackling wood-burning oven. Isobel reckoned we should get a bag of twenty-four because they were so goddamned delicious. They could be our sustenance for the whole way home. The difference between these lovely skinny and airy Montreal bagels and the rest of Canada's doughier ones is that you can taste water in these ones. According to some random guy at the store it had something to do with boiling them and baking them at sea level.

We drove over to a coffee shop on St. Urbain, the street I'd read about in Mordecai Richler's longwinded but gut-bustingly funny novels. The view now before me was so exotic for my Albertan eyes: the two-storey red and brown brick apartment suites with their long staircases down to the front path, like big inviting tongues. Sure we had the odd old building in Alberta; they called them character apartments, but they were freaks and were mostly being knocked down. This was like the Europe of my imagination—or even better, a fabulous fusion of old and new worlds.

The owners of the coffee shop were old-school Italian men in their late sixties. There were soccer posters on the wall, Italian flags and photos of famous Italians: Pacino, Sophia Loren, Pavarotti. Before I could order anything, the elder man behind the counter sized me up and instructed the guy on the chrome espresso machine beside him: Cappuccino. The machine was regal-looking, with a silver eagle perched on top, extending its full wingspan.

Gramps looked at Isobel and said: Espresso, double. He had a white, short-sleeved shirt on with a blue-and-white tea-towel swung cavalierly over his shoulder. I think every major town in Canada had the same version of this kind of bare bones Italian coffee shop. I'd been to one in Vancouver on Commercial Drive, Joe's, the little pool hall with velour wall hangings of matadors and elderly cappuccino makers. E-town had one over in Little Italy where Isobel and I sometimes went to scope all those Euro-hotties.

We found ourselves a nice spot on the patio and sat down with our coffees. It was prime people-watching territory. My cappuccino was gorgeous. Not too much milk, just a creamy, slightly stiff cloud of foam on top and a strong dose of espresso. This was the kind of coffee that tasted just as good as freshly ground beans smell. Out of three hundred and sixty-five cups in a year, you might remember less than a handful—this one was in the top three.

To bagel purists, it might have seemed like sacrilege, but I went all the way and slathered a bagel with cream cheese and blackcurrant jam that we'd also bought in little tubs. Then I dunked the bagel in my coffee. Bliss, happiness. I could feel Isobel watching me. She picked at her bagel in between puffs of her cigarette. She shot back her espresso and went to order another. By this point in our road trip, we weren't speaking much; we'd run out of topics.

I watched the other customers. I was so attracted to Montrealers; they were a sexy bunch. It's not that they dressed fancy, they just seemed to have a just-rolled-out-of-bed innate chic. Our classic Albertan men with their baseball caps and Oilers sweatshirts couldn't compete romantically with the Québécois men in their loose blazers and woolly turtleneck insouciance. Theirs was a nonchalant elegance. Not pretentious, just distilled Euro flair. Think Leonard Cohen. Plus they had that whole bilingual thing happening; they could woo in French
and
English.

Isobel came walking back over to the table with a latte. She looked a bit like a flapper with her sleeveless, jade green short dress and her Cleopatra haircut. “The old man thought two double espresso back to back wouldn't be idéale.”

The morning got hotter and hotter as we sat there sipping coffee and eating bagels, reading newspapers until lunchtime. By noon it felt like +40 and humid. Steam-room humid. I took some more cold medicine. I was surprisingly alert for having not slept yet.

We took off down Mont-Royal East, needing to find a flower shop or a well-stocked flowerbed in a public park. It was imperative that I found a red flower so Hawksley would be able to recognize my signal like I'd told him in my letter. After milling up and down the streets for a while, and seeing no flower shops, Isobel pointed at a flower box in someone's front yard. A whole box of red snapdragons. I looked in the windows, saw no one, and so bent down and struggled to break off one from the bunch. I had to shimmy it from side to side and then yank it out from the root.

I wasn't sure how good it would look in my hair, this snapdragon with its puffy petals that looked like painted earlobes on a stalk. I felt shame for stealing it and leaving a flower tomb in the soil. A flower robber. “Come on, Annie, we're going to be late, what are you doing? Why are you sticking a bagel in the dirt? Those bagels are precious, Annie, Montreal bagels, for heaven's sakes.” The bagel felt like the right thing to fill the gap. Maybe the flower bed owners would understand the swap.

Isobel helped to secure the flower properly in my ponytail's elastic band. She said it looked a bit like I was wearing an Indian headdress, but not to worry Indian chic was all the rage. I had been aiming more for flamenco dancer.

When we got back out on the street we saw it was much more crowded. Downtown Montreal and the streets were now heaving. People of all ages strolled everywhere. I wondered if there was a parade or some kind of protest. It was mad. People were barely clothed. So much flesh. God I loved summer!

Summery people in their light clothes, all just sliding along in rivers of summer sweat. We joined the crowd and walked for a block. I hoped we could get off the main road, but when I looked down the other street, it was packed, feeding onto Saint-Laurent. I felt nervous in the crowds, claustrophobic. I hadn't experienced a heat wave in forever. My heart pounded; I was definitely overheating.

Unlike me, Isobel could see over most people's heads. “I could lift you up on my shoulders, if you're feeling claustrophobic.” The fact that she knew me so well mellowed my mounting fear. We considered slithering across the car roofs to get to the gig on time. I stood up on a bumper of an old Citroën to see ahead. All I could see were swarms of more people.

And then it hit me.

Everyone was headed to the mountain that day for the free concert.

They were all headed for my Hawksley.

We were but two in a sprawling, buzzing mob.

He had become, without my noticing, a megastar, no longer an indie fave with a cult following; the masses were involved. My stomach forecasted doom.

When we got to the mountain area, we saw an outdoor stage. I did a double take. Hawksley was walking on stage! It was too early, surely. No, it was Him. But it didn't look like we could get anywhere near the stage. I felt sick realizing I'd driven red-eyed to get to the city early and somehow, lost in coffee land, I had messed up and now we were late. My eyes welled up. My nose felt stuffed. I felt Isobel looking at me.

Isobel rose to the challenge. “Don't worry, darling. I'll get you to him, ma chérie!”

She grabbed my hand and shimmied us through the crowd, “Excuse me, excusé moi, merci, nous sommes Albertaines!” and wandangled us to the front. At one point she even hoisted me onto people's arms. I was crowd surfing, which would normally have deeply embarrassed me, but here I was an anonymous Albertan. It was just a little ticklish.

Hawksley was alone on stage, without his disciples, the Wolves. He cleared his throat. With Isobel beside me, now up close to the stage, I waited anxiously, my heart pounding. Sick with anticipation. He closed his eyes and looked like he was meditating. My salivary glands spurted as if there was a chocolate eclair within my reach. I wiped the sweat off my forehead and worried about my blood pressure dropping.

“Salut, Montréal! Ça va? Ça trippe? Ça gaze? Eh oui, j'espère que toute la gang icite se sent fort fort sexy aujourd'hui! J'en ai ben des chansons là pour vous autres, si vous en désirez?”

The crowd roared and clapped and wolf-whistled. The grass was lovely and green, the sky was blue, the woods were full of bouncing life. Summer, Montreal-style, hot and sweaty.

He was wearing a fetching, episcopal purple blousy shirt underneath a suit vest and he had on matching pinstriped trousers—vintage shop chic. From a distance, it looked like he had safety-pinned his fly together; I was intrigued. I admired his sideburns and roguish black curly hair. His beauty was frightening, almost too much for me to bear.

He opened with “Bullets,” which he spiced up with a four-minute tap-dance solo that made the crowd swoon. While he tapped away, he held an angelic high note and kept us all in breathless rapture.

Following his spectacular opening feats, a girl in the audience with pigtail braids, who was balanced on top of a guy wearing a vintage military green jacket, pitched a handful of flowers on stage: blue, purple, red, yellow, and orange African daisies. He bent down to pick them up one by one and blew the girl a kiss.

He gathered the daisies together, arranging them into a bouquet, and then held it with both hands and pretended he was holding a bat. He swung them luxuriously in the air, hitting an invisible baseball. It was beautiful. So beautiful that the cynical thought crossed my mind that he'd arranged for the girl to give him the flowers; it was hard to imagine he could improvise such poetic elegance.

But I dismissed the thought pretty quickly; the man was an Artist.

He rested his arms over his left shoulder, daisies dangling, and sang a vaudevillian number about a man named Johnny.

He then ripped off a few petals and ate them.

Stopped to put on some lipstick.

Sang a song about stripping for your lover while he licked out sharp 1970s electric guitar riffs.

The crowd went nuts.

I could see his tonsils wiggle.

I felt hot.

The crowd pogoed up and down.

As always, his shtick brought everyone together, like we were in on the joke. Everyone around me was fanning themselves. Couples danced lewdly. His spooky aphrodisiac effect had kicked in: girls smiled, purring like cats; boys puffed out their chests like peacocks. Winks and bashful nods. These uninhibited Québécois made it feel like one big summer festive mating dance.

A man beside me turned to me and said, “I've got the shivers.”

I nodded knowingly.

Hawksley was a joy peddler, a love promoter, a bliss manufacturer. I could feel the endorphins releasing wave after wave in my brain, my mood elevating, my spirit soaring, my libido roaring. Love for everyone and everything, compassion, forgiveness. Serotonin was dancing in my brain. I had the feeling of pride when I saw him play, even felt a surging of corny patriotism: Canada produced this guy, we could hold our heads high as a nation.

Isobel turned to me and yelled, “
YOU'RE RIGHT, HE'S SO MUCH MORE DIVINE LIVE
.”

“
I KNOW, HE'S SO HOT-BLOODED
!” I screeched just as the music died down. Hot-blooded and Poetic.

He let out a moan, the kind you might do when your toes are curling from your lover's caresses. The crowd hollered.

He moaned again.

The crowd cheered.

He shook his hips Elvis-style.

The crowd whistled.

A girl on Isobel's left kept repeating, “Fabulous. Fabulous. Fabulous . . .”

He moaned himself into a frenzy, playing his guitar like he was in love with it. He threw himself down on the ground. A fan jumped up on stage and mopped his brow.

I almost forget from gig to gig how goddamned gorgeous he was. How over-the-top sexy he was. How he flirted, lamented, crooned, and seduced. My arm hairs stood up, like a strong breeze had blown them. My smile was hurting my face it was so intense.

I could see that I wasn't the only one smiling, the whole crowd was high, girls and boys.

Business owners on the streets opposite the park were out in front of their restaurants, corner shops. People on balconies in high-rises waved and clapped. In the distance, I saw a deer coming to the edge of the woods. Were there even squirrels standing to attention? Could have been Sudafed hallucinations.

We were all enamoured with Hawksley's lust for life. His every yip revved up the crowd. He flattered. He flirted. He made fun of himself. He played matador, teasing an imaginary bull with a faux-fur red coat that he pulled out of a costume trunk on stage.

Between songs, he drank tea from a pottery mug. He said he liked it with lots of honey, like his grandma used to make for him. He spoke of his grandparents between songs, retuning his guitar. “My grandpa was a farmer, he, like, loved birds . . . you know what I'm saying? This one year the drought was so bad, he couldn't sleep at night 'cause he worried about the birds not being able to make nests 'cause it was so dry there was, like, no mud. None. So I go to visit him, right, and he'd be there—watering a patch of dirt. And I'd say, ‘What are you doing, Grandpa?' And he'd say, ‘Just making the birds some mud.' Every day for the whole drought he'd water that patch. You can see why Grandma was crazy in love with him . . . Now Grandma . . . she taught me how to put on lipstick and play poker. I love visiting them . . . They're in a different lane than everyone else . . . you know what I mean?” When he was done tuning and talking he launched into “Striptease,” an anthem call for primal sex.