An old friend who used to live beside me in the University residence and who shared late night conversations sitting on my floor and leaning on my concrete walls, told me she was coming to the "Harvard" of French schools here in Montreal for three weeks in August. The music ladened night out come-down story that stuck the most included her finding a familiar face from her athletic childhood among the strangers of a house party who said her memory of this "Tall-Black Girl" back in those soccer days make it shocking to see how small Christina had become - Quite shocking. A couple of weekends before, my buddies Davy, Prattsy and I watched the fast-paced home movies that play like reality shows or music videos who documented our days through school and into the apartments, friends and our own faces which we had a hard time recognizing. I never knew that "Tall-Black Girl", but I knew the Christina on my floor and I hoped I'd recognize her.
I came out of the underground at Champ-de-Mars and she phoned to tell me she was going to be coming up those same steps. We talked with excitement as we walked up the hill towards the Vieux Port while seemingly ignoring the explosions of the fireworks happening off in the distance. We hopped an iron railing and by-passed the audience to give the lit the sky the attention it deserved and the reaching lights with their delayed booms over the massive LaFontaine bridge blew us away.
Her first weekend came at the same time my cousin with her boyfriend, visited the city. Along with them, their friends from their city and mine, showed up one after the other which seemed to give them all a grand entrance. I saw my cousin let loose for the first time in as many months as I can remember. Her constant warm smile was genuine and she was enjoying it as much as I was. The restaurant which had only one of its remaining stone walls played us through crowd-pleasing jazz music under the open air which must have still been filled by the clouds created by the fireworks. We walked out to the end of the port and crossed a wooden bridge to reach a night club who's multiple levels were their own patios. The bouncer mentioned that at 2am the cover charge would be dropped so we decided to wait and grab and ice cream cone from the shop below the top-40 dance floors.
It started to rain in sheets and some of the party go-ers were embracing the shower and the ones dressed in suits standing beside a bucket of ice and their ticket for the night weren't so happy I'm sure. We took refuge under the roof that covered a portion of the patio but the wooden planks had a space in between them in an attempt to keep our view of the stars grand. We made a dash for it when the rain slowed but half way through it dumped on us with laughter and we laughed right back. Tonight, I feel like a good person.
The next Saturday, Vas, Jonas and I left the park and went to a BBQ just outside the city where his dragonboat team were mixing the blueberries they had spent the day picking into crusts and cake pans. We pushed on Jonas' balcony and this lime green walls and looked over the street to the mouth of the Lachine canal. I caught a flash of my cousin and I, older and with our personalities splitting each time the children would come through the patio's sliding door - and it was funny. I know she would hold me for ransom, dangling stories over my head, just like our parents did.
We met up with Christina and her friends near 130 in the morning and waited in line at a bar only to see Jonas get tossed out by a jacked pony-tail door man for drinking a bottle of water. We left the bouncer's centre of the universe and jumped into different bars trying to find a good time before the house lights came on. We walked for what seemed to be miles and stopped on a grassy knoll halfway in our search for an after hours club that we found to be locked. Near 5 am, Jonas said goodbye to us and I realized that this was the first day I had met him.
7 am with Christina and friends and I could feel the others quietly watching their clocks because their time in the city was short and they remembered the list they had to check-off with the same sun that was rising out my window - we just ran out of time. We wanted more but that summers night and the 12 minute EP Logue felt bigger. Moments, friendships and romances seem to end too quickly and their soundtracks are abruptly cut-off to say that its best to say goodbye with the folding over of the back cover of your season's favorite album.
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