Chapter 4:  Ottawa.  Towards Spain.
    

It’s that mid-March.  Another Greyhound terminal, this time my Ottawa.  X and I were awaiting our Air France shuttle to Dorval airport in Montreal, separately together.  She looked very pretty, sitting quietly on a floor that lacked an open bench.  I took a moment to call my older brother Clayton and his wife Julie, their two young children the constant background to any phone conversation.  Julie answered and I yelled hi three times, whispered that I was leaving for Spain and then apologized profusely for not seeing them more often. 

Clayton was still at work, she said, adding that their new home was fine - in another part of our Ottawa and permanent me without a car.  There was the Pause and me offering that I’d heard of her recent miscarriage through my mom; I was so very sorry and her voice cracked a thank you.  She’d had two caesareans and still felt the pull of a vaginal birth.  Pride.

I told her about X, that we’d broken up yet were obviously still embarking on our travel through Spain together; I laughed at the absurdity and then my voice, too, wavered.  A mere rumour of amiss was now public fact; this was a first tell to a person, she never too close and yet always connected in an unsaid way, a sense.  We’re both part of the quiet tribe and I’ve always believed that she’s understood a weird in me that cannot be entirely bad.  I left it all at that and croaked a sincere good-bye, placed the of course black receiver back to rest.  There was the necessary sound of machine eating quarter.  There was a brief nothing and then an overwhelming sway of severity as I stifled myself, walked back over to X and squat lotus for the diesel of bus that did come and set in motion the stuffing of this questionable You inside of my Now head.  You spelled large.

And so a house, its particular rooftop visible from the drive down our local fabulous expressway dividing and linking us with rest of province and highway nexus.  And so this house carrying a mounted billboard, bearing a tidy black Saying forgotten by me since my days of propane and delivery and actual driving around city, reading by the side of the road: “Jesus said: ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’”  Sentiment, replete with obligatory footnote.  That was just dandy, staring out the window of a bus shared with ex-girlfriend of three seats over.  I believe I was pouting.  Trying very hard not to catch a glimpse of what she might be expressing to me or any other at this or that precise moment of memory.

She appeared quite calm sitting there by herself, alone in the growing dark of heading east late in an evening, myself turned forgetful of the absolutely bore of a drive down the 417 to beautiful Montreal; chasing the split 4-lane blacktop amongst a repetitive background of skinny tree upon skinny tree, guessing whether they birch or beech.  Just maybe not very enough of game to stave sleep at the command of a 5-tonne truck racked full of cylinders of propane - me the forever to always pretend an absolutely spectacular crash or grand propane heist of certain magnitude to excite the Tale for the future listening audience.  But, really, only able to presume evasion to past ennui: me, and an old AM-slash-FM radio for company - Zeppelin in my cab if the static were done lucky to me.

We passed small Rigaud and were now province of Quebec proper: array of town steeples had begun; prescient brick spires conveying the coming of religion and gathering of people, the beginnings.  In that hour of somewhat need I promised myself to learn more about churches, believing I suppose that it would amount to a something more than architecture, a beyond my former semi-suburbia telling me that whenever friends travelled to Montreal they always absolutely to stop off at one precious strip joint in Riguad for a blow job or half-and-half. And, with the memory of begin, with the gradual consumption of highway punctuation before me, I closed the lids of my eyes and began to recall that thing spelled Sex.  Across the way, X had curled herself up into a tiny ball for snooze; I blinked then stared, moved to undress her.  Removed her jean jacket with nary a whisper - the bus near empty as the sun behind us winked one of its better crimson good-byes.  Her hair had been left curly that rare once, not straightened with the heat of a hair dryer applied to comb and curl.  There was a brief encounter within the aloe of shampoo we still shared as I slowly, one by one, jacked open the buttons of her blouse with my teeth; at that point I really didn’t give a flying fuck who was watching - their presence neither prevention nor kink.  I slid a hand inside my frilly 36C Christmas present to her, ran along breast and embraced areola, ignored nipple and circled slow desire.  My hand was now warm from her, quietly taking the pulse of her pleasant dream.  I watched the REM of the eyeballs behind their lids, stared at one of her closed eye at a time, the most that any of us is capable of at once.  This is true and trivia and mostly useless, but I now had both of her wonderful breasts in my needy hands, cajoling a slight massage - the left counter, the right clockwise.  My eyes flickered with iris rising high and half-hidden.  This was enough for me.  The bottom jaw worked a slow back and forth, a slight mumble to highway bump and engine moan.  This was free and me and on the move towards vacation of weird. 

This was me staring out the window, across the aisle from X.  I was wide awake, reflected in a wondering about regular sex.  Ever sex.  What I would do now that I was unable to be seen.  This was me, a bartender about to be abroad.