I had been keeping a daily journal. A simple project about the neighbourhood peppered with sufficient inaccuracies and digressions to ultimately morph into a work of fiction. Both tulips and weeds grew out of the ground at the turn of a losing battle for real summer. I shared segments with the totally charismatic Mrs. Meeropol, her son—my unfaltering high school and neighbourhood friend Nat, and, at times, my unfathomable grandfather RK. While RK nodded, his eyebrows flaring, Mrs. Meeropol wrung her fingers with expectation, interrupting me with related stories she thought I ought to know. Nat was curious but mostly distracted. Sadly. I confess that nothing remotely fascinating happened in my life or in my diary until this woman sauntered in and uncovered the plane crash story to me. She ran a rake through my indifferent soil. Sun and rain did what they do and leaves and petals opened, vermin crawled, worms multiplied, bushes bloomed, diseases festered, and acid fell from the skies. My diary grew, stalled, wilted, changed direction, and then slowly evolved into an uninterruptable storm, a tsunami that transformed my life. My friendship with Nat was integral to my neighbourhood notes.
My part-time job as a desk clerk at a courier company was inadequate to pay my bills or my frequent sojourns to watering holes on that stretch. Nat and I had established key observation posts in several of these, from where we would scan and sneer at total unknowns or cajole the regulars. He held court. I marvelled at his ability to practice a kind of brinkmanship, taking things to an edge in terms of provocations and then settling down to making new friends or forever dismissing the rest as “bozos.” And then there was the flashy sexuality. Real and imaginary carnal forays in dim apartments, knees pushing against groins, wharfs sliding into lakes, and teeth biting into tanned shoulders. All this was duly entered in the journal. He did things, I recorded them. I did not do much, on my own. Just a little perhaps. I imagined a lot. Let’s put it that way. Now, what chance made me meet Myra, this bushy eye-browed woman, who casually informed me about the unsolved plane crash and disappeared for long periods? I would say that she found me, like when you are in a séance and you call up a medium. I became the medium.
I found a second part-time job that required I watch television in the evenings. They had given me a device with an encoder to record which channels I visited and for how long. I didn’t have to punch any buttons; I was simply required to wear it on my belt. I hadn’t told the company during the interview that I only owned a small Zenith that barely managed occasional grey and grainy images, so I made the investment and bought a new second-hand TV. Then, while single-handedly trying to carry it to my apartment, I threw out my back.
The pain started slowly but by the next morning I was barely able to roll out of bed. I spent two days either lying down or on hands and knees crawling between microwave and bed, heating up a magic beanbag for the small of my back. It would relieve the pain for about ten minutes before the excruciating contraction returned. Like a hydraulic tong, it forced me to arch my torso and scream my surrender. I spent a full hour in the bathtub and foolishly thought that the contraction had left. It snapped back as soon as I tried to towel.
So, on the third day, despite a deep suspicion of chiropractors, I took the advice of Nat and visited a practice close to my apartment. With hands on hips and knees bent I hobbled across Boulevard St-Laurent. My boss at work had understood my absence because she suffered from bouts of spondylitis. She made a remark, too coyly for my liking, about what exactly I had been doing, Que faisiez-vous, jeune homme? Peut-être je ne veux pas savoir!
There was a painting of New York City in winter, done in oil, hanging in the lobby just outside the door to the doctor’s examination room. I was immediately taken in. The snow drifted down in a remarkably separate dimension. I looked at it and felt I could catch the flakes if I put out my hand. Some artists dab paint on the canvas to signify falling snow. Doesn’t work for me. This artist had somehow imparted a subdued and effective sparkle above a dark, bustling street. I wanted to sit down and stare at it. But of course, I couldn’t sit and this was not a museum.
She was the receptionist who sat behind a semi-circular counter and chatted away on the phone with a thousand you-know-what-I-means interspersed with emphatic sighs of frustration and disgust. Her tinny voice scratched my eardrums like nails on a blackboard and her mispronounced consonants irritated me. She finally hung up and asked if I would like to sit, seeing as my appointment wasn’t for another fifteen minutes. I promptly advised her that the only reason I was there was because I couldn’t sit without being in great pain.
“Oh!” She replied nonchalantly and carried on chewing her gum, adding a slapping sound to the previous swishing sound. I stared at her over the top of my glasses. She put her head down. I looked away and tried to focus on the painting. This happened again, before she said, “I see that you like something about that painting.”
“Uh-huh, I do.” I looked at her face more carefully. Very pleasant, actually.
Sensing my approval, she jutted her chin out in a playful way. “Well, there’s a long history to that painting and the doctor might tell you if you ask him.” She smiled before going back to slapping gum.
Dr. Roberge opened his door at exactly the appointed time and waved me in. A tall man with large hands, he wore a striped t-shirt and loose slacks. His sneakers had Nike bottoms on designer leather uppers. They made no noise. He had one eyebrow raised and took a quick look at the receptionist. She put her head down. I was irritated by the fact that there had been no previous patient and he could easily have taken me earlier. He did not ask any questions, as he had clearly leafed through what I had filled out. It was lying on his desk. He had me take off my shirt and asked me to lie down on my stomach and then measured my back with his fingers. He made strange flicks with his fingers at the end of certain manoeuvres. I didn’t know what he was doing, but he was definitely into his technique. After about ten minutes, he asked me to lie on my back and then he positioned himself behind me. He started stretching my neck very slowly. It felt good. I felt the relief I had come for. The tension was dissolving.
When he finished I simply walked outside to make the payment with the money earned from my new job, noting that so far, I had worked for free, given the cost of the TV and the visit to the chiropractor. The receptionist asked if I had mentioned the painting.
“No, I didn’t, but if you know about it why don’t you tell me?” I said it aggressively, although that didn’t seem to register on her. She casually licked the pen and thought it over.
“You’re the only one who has really looked at the painting in my two years here. I’m off in five minutes. You can meet me at the corner café, if you want, and I’ll tell you.”
I liked the painting. It was a work of art. It should have been in a private home or a museum. In this lobby on an unlit wall seemed the wrong place for it. And besides, this was definitely shaping up to be a potential diary entry. “Okay! I’ll see you in five minutes.”
I hobbled across the street and sat down at the café next to the large windows. I ordered a cappuccino and sipped it very slowly. Five minutes passed and she had not appeared. Five minutes turned to twenty and she still hadn’t turned up. At this point I felt like I wanted to yell at her: she had stood me up. I slowly crossed the street and climbed the stairs painfully to the doctor’s office. The door was ajar.
As soon as I re-entered the lobby I knew something was wrong. I heard her whimpering from inside the doctor’s room, “I didn’t mean to! I didn’t mean to!” And to my amazement, I noticed the painting was gone from the wall.
I made a coughing sound and heard the shuffle of feet behind the doctor’s door. He eased himself out and then closed the door behind him before demanding, “Yes?”
“Sorry to bother you . . . I was supposed to meet your receptionist for coffee downstairs.” Awkwardness shrinks my newly stretched spinal column.
“She’s gone for the day.” He said briskly.
I walked away. I simply went down the stairs and walked home, knowing she was still in there with him. But it troubled me. Why had he not acknowledged her presence? Why had the painting disappeared? And why had I been treated like riff-raff?
I entered my apartment, found my encoder, and turned on the TV. The device started to change lights and flicker. I pulled out my diary and began to record the event, with appropriate embellishments. I was pretty sure I’d run into her again, so I noted that, too. This was to be a turning point.
Then about three months later, when the snow had melted, I was back from my day job at the courier company and enjoying a large sticky Danish at the same café when she walked in. The gum-slapping garrulousness was gone. Her hair was loose and in disarray, no longer tied in the tight bun I remembered. She looked haggard.
She saw me and her hand quickly went to her face but it was too late, our eyes had met. I waved to her. She peered at me carefully, as if trying to recognize who I might be. She followed that with a startled look and then, smiling, walked over to my table and said, “Hi! How are ya?” I realized then how good an act she can put on. “How’s your back?”
“Recovered. Nice of you to remember.”
I didn’t tell her that she might be considered gorgeous, despite the tornado-hit looks. Instead I said, “I’ve never been back to the doctor.”
“Good for you. I quit right after.”
“Are you working somewhere else?”
“Sort of.”
I asked if I could offer her a coffee and went up to the counter to do so. Awkwardness put aside. When I returned, I noticed her stockings had a long run shaped like Italy working its way down the inside of her leg.
Without any prodding, she immediately started to chat. “That painting. Did you notice the sparkle in it?”
I said that I had, of course.
“Well, it’s one of those things. You know what I mean? Very subtle. You wanna talk about it?” She sipped her coffee and raised her eyebrows. She spoke like a bougainvillea plant would. Sprightly petals and wilted leaves. Reticent and sensitive with thorn on the branches. She took another sip. “Once I noticed that, too, you know, so I asked him what was in the paint. And he said ‘diamonds, my dear, diamonds,’ in an off-handed way, but then he obviously regretted having said it because he added he was just kidding.”
Diamond dust! And that’s why he didn’t have any lights shining on it. It made it too obvious. She looked into my eyes and I could see she was searching for some recognition.
The snow seemed to have a life of its own. Her eyebrows had lifted and her mouth was partly opened. For a moment, I felt the flakes coming down my entire body, condensing into droplets of moisture that flowed down ridges in my torso.
“I knew you had noticed. You can tell when a person’s got it.” Her confidence had returned. She asserted that the doctor was a strange man. That he hauled her into his office after I had left and gave her the third degree. She was scolded for mentioning the painting! She confirmed she was still there when I went back. You know!
I enjoyed her gathering energy. I told her I heard her protesting. I knew something was wrong and I didn’t like it. But I had no reason to stay. To be honest, I told her, I was upset she hadn’t shown up to have coffee as she had agreed. “I’m glad to meet you again after so many months.”
“Same here! Same here!” She put her palm on the back of my hand and looked at me again with questioning eyes. “You thought I was an idiot, right? Like the way I just walked away from a promise. I was mad, ready to quit on him. You don’t think I’m an idiot, do you? By the way, my name is Myra, Myra Banks.”
“I’m Chuck,” I replied, putting my other hand on top of hers. It felt warm.
She told me that he had given her the pink slip when she went to work the next day.
“Arse-hole! But I wanted to quit anyway.”
“I’m sorry. I guess I was partly responsible.”
“Oh! It’s nothing. Life goes on.” She was silent for a while, looking out at the cars and the people in the street.
I asked if she remembered the name of the artist. I was trying to get her attention.
“Yes. She signs L. St-Onge. Her first name was Linda. She was his wife. She died in a plane crash in Trois-Pistoles while he was having an affair with a lady he later married. I guess that’s another story.”
“What do you mean?”
She looked out to the street again, looked back at me and then got up and said, “Gotta go. Got an audition and then classes.”
She thanked me for the coffee and left like a gust of wind. I never got to ask her what audition, what classes? I saw her cross the street briskly with her head down.
The next day I remembered her lips teasing the edge of the coffee cup. I remembered, too, her legs as she crossed the street. I saw them as the choreographed footwork of a dancer on a darkened stage, a follow spot trained from the hips down to the arched heels. I saw again the rip in her stockings, and behind it all, diffused and sparkling, the snow fell gradually.
Even though I had originally been irritated at her masticating, casual persona, a change had now taken place. Removed from the receptionist’s desk, she seemed distressed, less snappy and cocksure. A withdrawn distraction seemed to glow in her eyes.
I took to parking myself in the same café where we had met, taking the same seat beside the same window. It was like I was on a cliff top overlooking an undulating valley. My insides groaned and knocked around like the clanging of a lonesome broken gate on a windy promontory. Trois-Pistoles. I waited. Would she sneak in from behind and put her arm on my shoulder? Would she sit next to me as I quietly added to my diary?
My expectations had been founded on a single chance encounter. I realized I needed to discuss this with Nat, or perhaps his mother—and, if necessary, my grandfather. The plane crash story was way too much to keep concealed.