ADAM LOVED THE ATTENTION WE WERE GETTING. Adam had every intention of being on the news when he got older. He hadn’t figured out what he was going to be famous for. At one point about a year ago, when they first met, Adam and Nicolas had formed their own political party. It was called The People’s People Party. Now they crawled in the apartment window with some posters of themselves that they had made at the photocopy store and were going to put up. Nicolas had suggested that they deface them with moustaches before they put them up around town. I had finished getting dressed when they held the posters up for me to see. They had combed their hair to the side and had these fake serious looks. This amused them to no end.
“We actually look really good as politicians,” Nicolas said. “Do you think that politicians attract a lot of ladies?”
“No,” I said. “You can’t sleep with anyone or do drugs, or they do an exposé on the news.”
“That sucks. What man doesn’t like a crack pipe and a couple underage girls after a hard day of campaigning about public schools?”
“That’s the problem with the world today,” Adam stated. “You can’t reap any rewards.”
“This is the stupidest political party ever,” I said. “You’re going to add crack and whores to civil liberties.”
“Give me liberty or give me death,” Adam said.
“It’s beautiful in its simplicity,” Nicolas added, nodding.
“Let’s go campaigning for our revolutionary party today!” Adam cried. “All we ever do is talk about it.”
“All right,” said Nicolas. “Let me go take a crap and then borrow a car.”
So far, their revolutionary tactics had largely been confined to soliciting sex from women who were obviously middle-class and clearly not prostitutes. Adam had been questioned by the police a couple times, but they always let him go. They could tell from his manner that he was an upper-class kid. Rich people weren’t responsible for petty crimes. They were responsible for the great crimes that took hundreds of years to commit and were, therefore, unpunishable.
Nicolas came back twenty minutes later. He was wearing a pair of giant old-lady glasses.
“These are my counter-revolutionary glasses,” he said.
“Counter-revolutionary means you’re against the revolution,” I said.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Look it up in the dictionary.”
“The dictionary is obsolete,” Nicolas said. “They don’t even have the definition of cocksucker in it. Our first act of government will be the public execution of René Simard.”
“Why? Just because you don’t like him?”
“His music ruined my childhood.”
“I thought your first act was going to be banning soccer.”
“I have to wait a while for that one. There are some soccer fans out there.”
Nicolas was mad at soccer in general because he had been kicked off the team in Grade Eight for showing up late. He was going to be an irrational dictator. He had also suggested banning fanny packs because he thought they were ugly.
We whistled when we saw the car parked outside the building. Low-lifes sometimes hung around old people for pocket money and their cars. You’d see these junkies driving old Coupe de Villes and wearing alligator shoes. Nicolas borrowed a Cadillac from an old lady he claimed was named Madame Prèsdelamort. In exchange, he would sit with her at the doctor’s office and repeat what the doctor had just said, but louder.
“You likey?” Nicolas asked.
“You look like a seventies cocaine dealer.”
“A seventies porn star. Porn stars from the seventies used to live in this area and bought a lot of the buildings. But then they got older and impotent and got laid off. So they couldn’t afford the upkeep. That’s why this whole area is actually falling into total disrepair.”
“Where do you get this stuff?” I demanded.
“A lot of Québécois do well as porn stars. It’s because we all have really big dicks.”
For some reason Adam and I laughed at that ridiculous joke. We were going to be laughing a lot that afternoon. I could feel it. I looked at my first pile of homework on the floor next to the bed, which I was supposed to finish. I had promised myself that I would be really diligent about it, unlike when I had originally gone to school. I decided that I could put it aside just once.
We were dressed in the way that only nineteen-year-olds can dress. I had on a blue shirt that tied behind my neck and a silver skirt that stuck out like a tutu and black cowboy boots with purple stars on them. Nicolas had on a pink velour jacket over a yellow T-shirt that had a drawing of a panda bear on it and purple track pants with green stripes down the sides. Adam had red sweatpants that were cut off just below the knees and a light blue dress shirt that had been washed about two thousand times and was threadbare. Adam was also wearing his suit jacket and tie.
Nicolas got into the driver’s seat. I scooted into the middle and Adam got into the passenger seat after me. The car kept jerking wildly because Nicolas was having trouble with the enormous stick shift.
Once we got onto the road, we bounced along like crazy. The shocks in the car were terrible. All the streets in Montréal were always all broken up from potholes because of the long winters. If you were drinking coffee, it ended up going all over your lap. Children would sometimes get carsick just going three blocks. We were pleased with ourselves. We thought that we must have looked like gunmen who were riding into a town on the Western frontier with prices on our heads and there wasn’t a damn thing that anybody could do about it.
I can’t remember who suggested that we head toward our old elementary school. It had to have been Nicolas. The school was a giant brick building with gargoyles of twenties schoolchildren over all the doors. There were cages on all the windows.
We had hated school so much. Just being near it filled us with a horrible feeling. The teachers were always chastising us for not having our gym clothes or school fees. Loulou was too old to be on top of anything.
We parked right outside the schoolyard fence. It was lunch-time and the sound of children was almost as deafening as the ocean. School was out, but they all went there for day camp. They were singing their skipping-rope tunes—wee tunes of resistance that had been passed down from one class to another. They were probably singing Étienne’s skipping-rope song:
I skipped out on my education
I was too smart for school
I skipped out on my bill payments
I was too cheap for those
I skipped out on my landlord
There were roaches in the sink
I skipped out on my court date
I have no time for prison
I skipped out on my woman
But she came and dragged me back
It’s been one year, two years, three years …
Adam reached over me to the back seat and grabbed a bullhorn from off the seat. I couldn’t even imagine where they had got it. But Nicolas and Adam were the type of boys that made friends easily and they were both thieves, so just about anything could appear in the back of the car or out of their pockets.
“Time to disseminate some knowledge,” Adam said matter-of-factly.
We opened the sunroof. Adam stood on the seat with his bullhorn.
“Your teacher cannot search your locker without a warrant. Your teachers are part of a systematized, codified attempt to lower your self-esteem.”
I was amazed that he could get these statements out without cracking up. We would never have been able to do that in a million years. Nicolas used to start laughing while ordering a loaf of pumpernickel bread because the woman who worked there had a picture of the pope on her kerchief.
“You are sheep. Your brains are being fattened for the slaughter! They are teaching you lies! Lies!”
The children all started gathering at the fence like fish trapped in a net. Their buttons were in the wrong holes and the backs of their skirts were tucked into their underwear. Children their age were in awe of teenagers. We inhabited a brief period of time during which we mocked all authority and we could get away with anything. We were screaming and yelling as we gave birth to a new generation. They hung on to the gates, staring up at us, utterly transfixed. I stood up, stepping onto Nicolas’s bent leg like it was a footstool.
“My dick, Nouschka! My dick!” he yelled.
Adam handed me the bullhorn.
“Only prisoners are forced to line up,” I cried. “You have been imprisoned without due process of a trial. You have committed no crime.”
“Do not fear your hallway monitor,” Adam yelled. “He doesn’t actually exist. Just like the boogeyman. If you stop believing in him, he will disappear.”
The children started screaming and yelling. Finally, finally there was some chaos in their lives. We had showed up like summertime. Their applause sounded like a forest fire.
“You are not alone in your struggle. All over the city, children are rising up to plan a revolt. Arm yourself. You have a constitutional right to bear arms.”
Nicolas stood up and squeezed in next to Adam. He took the bullhorn from him and held it to his own mouth.
“Bring us the principal! I want Mr. Edery!” Nicolas yelled.
The principal was obviously on holiday, but the summer camp monitors came running toward us. They looked terrified, as if we were rabid dogs. They were waving their arms around in the air. One was blowing his whistle like it had some sort of supernatural power. An overweight counsellor with greying hair came outside the schoolyard and lumbered toward us as if he had just attached his legs.
Adam and Nicolas dropped back into their seats. We jolted back and forth a bit while Nicolas screamed hysterically, trying to figure out the stick shift, and then we sped away. Adam put his arm around me. It made me happy and I was in love with him. Or I was having such a good time that I mistook this good time for love. When you’re nineteen, almost every day is a day of wine and roses.
“Do you think they called the police?” I asked.
“Who gives a shit?” Nicolas said. “I have dirt on all those teachers. At least eight of them molested me.”
“No, they did not!” I screamed in laughter.
The sun was going down. The pink clouds in the sky were delicates soaking in the sink. We were parked on Boulevard Saint-Laurent, crammed in the front seat, eating Vietnamese takeout, romantic poets having a rest after a good day of making asses out of ourselves.
Adam turned on the radio. It was the same interview from the morning. They played the news on a loop unless something new happened during the day, and apparently nothing had.
“I can’t believe it!” Nicolas exclaimed.
The interview came to an end. They put on one of Étienne’s recordings where he just talks while his musicians play behind him.
“Do you ever think about how weird it is that this guy is your dad?”
“Étienne’s a jackass,” said Nicolas. “He’s not really our dad. Who gives a shit about Étienne Tremblay? Why are they playing these shitty songs? I’m going to write one myself about a guy whose wife cheats on him with the Hydro guy. I can’t stand his average-Joe business.”
My dad was drunk. He had just come home from a fight with the boss. He asked the boss for a raise, but the boss said no! So he came home and made love to my mother, Josephine.
I was conceived on a Thursday night!
I was born in a saucepan. My mother was cooking up a big frying pan of gravy. And she gave birth to me without turning away from the pan. I fell smack onto the kitchen floor. I lay there with the family dogs looking at me.
Étienne had a deep and gravelly voice. I felt his breath against my face as his words got louder.
Everyone expected me to pick up scrap metal like my dad. Or to go on welfare. We never had a book in the house, but I wanted to be a poet.
The funny thing was that I forgot for a second that it was Étienne who was giving the speech and I got goosebumps all over my arms. I always liked his political ruminations. It made me happy just like everyone else who was listening to his ranting in their kitchens. Unlike Nicolas, I was able to enjoy Étienne Tremblay even if he’d completely neglected us as children.
“Wonderful,” said Adam. “He’s wonderful and you guys are wonderful.”
“What are you going to do once we separate, Adam?” Nicolas said. “You’ll be exiled, that’s for sure. An English lawyer—ridiculous. I can’t imagine why any English person would bother staying in Montréal. You’ll have to leave with the rest of the exodus.”
That remark stung Adam. He wanted to be one of us, but there were just so many ways in which he was different.
One of these wretched black cats that looked as if they’d been struck by lightning one night and were now perpetually crooked walked by. His thoughts were broken things. The cat was looking at the sunset. Who ever believed in such a pink? Such a pink was terrifying even for grown men to look up at. It was terrifying to have the responsibility of living in a world that was filled with so much wonder.