Words

The Parkway Plaza cowboys have a code. “If you can’t fuck it, and you can’t drink it, break it.” And they have a very specific attitude towards women. “Good friends are hard to find. Women you can get anywhere.” It is this latter belief, that in later life, Daniel will often turn to his sexual advantage.

The cowboys come from post-war two-bedroom bungalows and rent-subsidized apartments. They come from two-year trade schools. From gas station and factory jobs. From jobs because they want a car, because they want some good clothes, because they can’t stand it at home anymore.

They walk the strip from bowling alley to liquor store. Liquor store to bowling alley. Bowling alley to liquor store. There is nothing else to do. The cowboys walk side-by-side, cigarettes at the corners of their mouths, jackets open to the waist in winter, shoulders hunched against the cold. In summer the uniform is Cowboy King jean jackets and tight black t-shirts. The metal cleats on their Cuban-heeled boots tap out a code mums and dads understand well enough to quickly move aside.

On the way into the downstairs bowling alley, they usually gob on the handrail and leave a wet gooey message for the unwary. Once inside the bowling alley, they plug up the sinks in the bathroom and turn on the taps. They blame this on Edwin who sets pins and cleans up whatever messes the bowlers make.

Edwin is slow. The bowling alley owner underpays him. His mother takes the rest and gives him a tiny allowance. Girls laugh at him and are frightened. He is not allowed to clean the women’s washroom. Edwin will do tricks for money, or for candy, or for fear. He will do a flat-footed tap dance if you ask him, or if you make him. Edwin has a cleft palate and can put his fingers in his mouth and bring them out his nose. The cowboys like this trick the best.

“Come on Edwin. Do your trick. Do your trick and we’ll give you a quarter. Do your trick and you can hang out with us. Do you dance and the same time. Come on Edwin, do your trick. Do your dance.” The voice inside Daniel’s head often asks him if he really wants to be a part of the ugliness of the plaza. He doesn’t have an answer for the voice. He has no idea what his options are.

Almost all the plaza cowboys, and some of the cowgirls, have tattoos. Tattoos come from Bill the Chink’s place. However, Bill is Japanese. Plaza cowboys get tattoos when they’re drunk. They stagger in, pick out their designs and joke around as Bill buzzes them into their arms.

The most popular tattoo is a little red devil called Hot Stuff. Why it is the most popular nobody knows. Some cowboys have elaborate daggers which look as if they pierce the skin. Underneath is often written “born to lose”. Sometimes it is “death before dishonour” or “born to raise hell”. “Born to lose” is the most popular inscription. No one has to ask why. Bill often asks them if they want their name written in Japanese characters under their tattoos. Bill has an odd smile on his face when he asks this. It is just as likely the characters he uses will say “I am a racist asshole.”

Pete’s real dumb. He’s often an embarrassment to his family and sometimes to his friends. Pete’s got more tattoos than half a dozen sailors. He has a scar from a hockey puck under his left eye. The scar reminds you of the dog in the Little Rascals. Except the dog is smarter. Pete’s so dumb he will believe anything if you tell him often enough.

“Man, I am always hungry no matter how much I eat,” Pete says to the group.

It’s because you have a tapeworm,” says one of the guys.

“I do not,” says Bill.

“For sure you do,” says someone else.

“What can I do about it?” asks Bill.

“Well, you have to go to the doctor. the doctor will put a little piece of meat on your tongue.

When the tapeworm smells the meat, it will try to come out to eat it,” says a cowboy.

“He will?” asks Bill

“For sure he will. The doctor will grab the tapeworm with a large pair of tweezers and pull it

out.”

Really?” asks Bill.

“For sure. The tapeworm will take a long time to pull out. It’s at least six feet long and it’s all curled up inside you.”

“Wow!” says Bill. “I think that’s really cool. I’ve never had a pet. My parents won’t let me have one. So, I think I am going to keep the tapeworm. I’m going to call him Fred.”

Chunk has no front teeth. He has “Love” and “Hate” tattooed on his knuckles. Love is on the right hand. Hate is on the left. Chunk looks mean as hell. He looks as if he would kick your eyes out. And he would, if you happened to faint in front of him, and he didn’t like you.

Chunk is not as tough as he looks, and Daniel has figured that out. Daniel is low in the pecking order of the plaza. He gets pushed around. Guys steal his cigarettes. He is a nobody. The only way he can change that is to rise higher in the pecking order. He figures out that Chunk is all thunder and no lightening. He will wait for the next time Chunk tries push him around. When he does, Daniel responds with a left jab that so shocks Chunk he doesn’t respond.

As he stands there stunned, Daniel hits him with a right upside his head and Chunk goes down like a big sack of rice. Chunk does not get up and as he lies on the ground, he spits blood from his mouth and takes out the partial plate Daniel has driven into the roof of his mouth.

Chuck’s time as a supposed tough guy is over. He’s no longer seen as tough, just stupid. Chuck takes Daniel’s place and everyone will now use him for sport. Daniel takes Chuck’s place further up the pecking order and his life at Parkway Plaza gets immeasurably better. The voice inside Daniel’s head asks him if this is who he really wants to be. Does he actually want to do what it takes to be a part of the Parkway Plaza mob?

Daniel Lehmann is sitting in his living room listening to the never-ending travails of his sixteen-year-old daughter, Lina, who has come to spend the summer with him. Her current complaints are about the guy she was dating and who she broke up with just before she came to see him.

“I really checked him out. I wasn’t going to have anything to do with him if he was a jerk. But he turned out to be a jerk anyway.”

Daniel is somewhat hesitant to ask exactly what the nature of his jerkism was. He is not sure how much he wants to know. “Does the jerk have a name?” he asks. And what does the jerk do? Do you go to school with him?”

“Right now, he is driving a tow truck,” Lena responds. “He’s also the goalie for our hockey team.”

“How old is this guy?” asks Daniel who does his best to not make the question sound like part of parental interrogation.

“Don’t get all wired up,” Luna says. “He’s only nineteen. He went to my high school.”

“What exactly did you do to check him out?” Daniel asks.

Lana gives Daniel a look that says she thinks he is dense as a brick. “I asked other girls who know him what he was like. I talked to his friends about what kind of guy he was. Everyone said he was a real nice guy. Honest and solid.”

“I take it that didn’t hold true,” says Daniel.

“Well, no one told me he would cheat on me. He was supposed to be the one,” Luna says, again with the look that challenges his intelligence.

The one? Daniel doesn’t think his daughter is old enough to find the one. Saying so would no doubt lead to an argument between them. Instead, he decides to do something different. He will be the kind of parent he never had.

Once, when he was not much older than his daughter, he wrote to his mother about the challenges of finding himself. That letter was returned with a message written on it: “This sounds like a soap opera.” Remembering how much that stung, Daniel decides to take a different approach.

“I am sorry that it didn’t work out for you sweetie. But you know there are guarantees in life. It’s like buying a car. No matter what the reputation of the vehicle is, you can still find yourself stuck with a lemon.”

Lana gives him the look. “That’s the best you can do? Cars?” she says.

“No honey, I can do a whole lot better than that” Daniel says. “I think it’s important to recognize that some people are bridges between two points and some people are destinations. They both have value. The trick is not to get them mixed up.”

Again, Lina gives Daniel the look, and as she gets up to leave the room, says, “Spare me your personal philosophies.”

Later that day, when the two of them are eating supper, Lana starts to complain about not being able to turn off her brain. “I am always thinking,” she says. “My brain is always working. There’s never a moment when there’s nothing going on inside my head. I am always thinking about something.”

“Ah yes,” says Daniel. “You’re not alone in experiencing that. But more important are the long-term consequences and what they cause you to have.”

“Like what?” asks Lina.

“It causes you to have personal philosophies,” says Daniel.

Lina gives him a look that says, “I can see them lowering your coffin.”

Daniel Discovers Rationalization

By the time Daniel is seven, he knows all about rules, regulations, authority, punishment, and the place in the world that has been designated to him. He knows he must line up in silence when the school bell rings. As he discovered, failure to do so results in getting the strap. He knows boys must never go onto the girls’ side of the school. Violating that rule will also get you the strap.

He knows that even the slightest infraction in class will get him the strap. He knows that correct spelling is all-important. He discovered that after he was given the strap for spelling “of” as “uv.”

He knows adults can hit you as much as they like, if they are teachers.

He knows he must memorize all the questions and answers in the Baltimore Catechism or he will never make his first communion and will never get into heaven. He knows he should think of his soul as if it were a milk bottle. Venial sins put black dots on his soul; a mortal sin will turn it completely black, but confession turns it white again. However, after the Guardian Angel incident, he has begun to wonder about the truth of what he is being told.

Daniel knows it is perfectly normal for children to march around the school yard following a statue of the Blessed Virgin adorned with a crown of flowers while singing “Oh Mary, we crown you with blossoms today. Queen of the angels, queen of the May.” He knows it is a mortal sin to eat meat on Friday during Lent and that if he does so, and then is hit by a car and killed, he will go directly to hell.

He knows he is required to march to church every first Friday of the month. Doing so for a full year and then dying is a direct ticket to heaven. He knows if he is wearing a brown, cloth scapular medal when he dies, he will go straight to heaven and that the metal scapulars do not offer the same benefit. He wishes he had a cloth scapular instead of the metal one he wears.

He knows unbaptized babies are sent to Limbo when they die and never get out even at the end of the world. Apparently, limbo is filled with African babies. He knows if you are a bad actor, but not a really bad actor, you will go to purgatory. He knows if you say the prayer on indulgence cards, you can limit the amount of time someone will spend in purgatory. And if you say a plenary indulgence, you will get them out right away.

He knows he must bring aid to the poor and helpless whenever it is possible to do so. He also knows the best thing he can do for a dying pagan is to baptize them, turn them into a Catholic, and get them a free ride to heaven. That seems like a really good thing to do for a pagan.

Having a squirt gun is all Daniel can think about. Lots of kids have them at school. He wants to know why he is the only kid who doesn’t have one.  When he asks his father if he will buy him one, his father looks at him in shock. “How much is it?” he asks. “Ten cents,” Daniel says. “Wait here,” says his father pointing at the living room sofa. A short time later, his father returns with a package of two rolls of toilet paper and a can of tomato soup.

“Do you know how much these things cost?” he asks Daniel. Daniel has no idea of what either toilet paper or soup cost and says nothing. “Ten cents for the soup and ten cents for the toilet paper,” says his father shaking his head in disbelief. “So, what would you rather have, something warm to eat, something to wipe your bum with, or a squirt gun.” Daniel considers answering his father’s question, but changes his mind.

After his father’s lecture about how important it is to spend every cent carefully and not on anything unnecessary, Daniel begins to think about the place of his family in the world. For the first time, Daniel wonders if his family is poor. He had heard about poor people, but has never seen himself as one of them. But it occurs to him that he does not know anyone else who lives with eight other people in a very small post war bungalow. None of the kids he knows get only one present at Christmas and who feel lucky that their one present isn’t a pair of socks. None of the other kids he knows have parents who don’t own a car. None of the other seven-year-old kids he knows have a paper route. There is no doubt his family is poor. He decides he will pray to Saint Theresa for help in getting his squirt gun.

Saint Theresa’s Shrine of the Little Flower is Daniel’s family church. Every Sunday the family walks the mile from their home to attend mass. Even at seven, Daniel finds the church strange looking. It is small and mimics the architecture of Mexico and the shrines built in Southern California. Daniel likes the church; it feels cosey. In school, he was taught about the symbolism that can be found in any Catholic church. He knows when the red light that hangs near the altar is lit, it means there is a consecrated eucharist in the tabernacle. The bell ringing symbolizes upraised voices in worship. The smoke from the incense use during high mass symbolizes prayers going to heaven.

Daniel particularly likes Benediction on Sundays. He accompanies his mother and listens to her sing. Singing energizes his mother, her face shines when she is singing. Her clear, alto voice can be heard above all the others. When he was younger, would put his mouth on the pew handrail and taste the salt from previous parishioners until his mother told him it was a disgusting habit and he should stop immediately. He did as he was told, but was always tempted to taste the salt again.

At Benediction, shortly after his father turned down his request for a squirt gun, Daniel sees something in church he has never noticed before. For some reason, he and his mother would inevitably end up on the right side of the church. This time they are on the left side of the church beside a small side altar with a place to kneel in front of a plaster angel. He watches as a man enters the side altar, says a quick prayer, and then takes a coin and appears to feed it to the angel. The angel nods its head when the coin goes in. Daniel knows that whatever coins are inserted, they aren’t going directly to God. If money goes in, somehow the money has to come out. He decides Saint Theresa is sending him a message that she knows he is poor and wants him to have the squirt gun. She is showing him how to go about getting it. Daniel decides that he needs a plan. He knows getting money from the angel will have to be achieved when nobody else is in the church. Luckily for him, the church’s doors are never locked.

The church sits at the corner of Kingston Road and Midland Avenue and he has to pass by it every day on his way home. Usually, he will walk home with his older brother Micky. He has to wait until he finds himself walking home alone. When the day comes, he is ready for action.

Daniel steps into the church foyer, scans the interior of the church, and finds it empty. He moves inside and stands by the holy water font inhaling the familiar scent of the incense used in high masses and at Benediction. He stands there questioning whether or not he should actually do what he has planned on doing. The plan wins, and he moves toward the side altar. He stands in front of the angel that holds a bag with a slot in it for coins. The angel seems to be looking at him and questioning what he is doing. Daniel stops looking at the angel and checks the back of the statue. He sees there is a small drawer. When he opens it, he finds it chock-a-block with coins.

As tempted as he is to take all the coins, Daniel only takes the dime Saint Theresa wants him to have. The deed is quickly done and soon Daniel is outside the church. There is no question as to what to do next. He heads across the street to a small store in a grey, dilapidated building on Kingston Road that was once a stagecoach shop on the route from Toronto to Montreal. The history of the building doesn’t interest Daniel. It is what’s inside that draws him. He knows that in an ancient, wood and glass display case is the object of his desire. Once inside, he stands in front of the case looking at the miniature, shiny, black luger with the orange filler cap just above the grip handle.

“Can I help you” asks the store owner who closely watches each kid who comes into his shop.

“I want that squirt gun,” says Daniel pointing to the one in the case.

“A lot of kids want that one,” responds the store owner who is sure this exchange will come to nothing. “Have you got the money?”

“Yes,” says Daniel holding up his shiny dime from Saint Theresa.

The store owner sighs as he reaches into the case for the squirt gun and wonders where the you’ll-grow-into-them kid in front of him has ten cents to spend. Most of the similarly-dressed kids who come into his store are there to steal not to buy. He hands the squirt gun to Daniel who lovingly cradles it in both hands. It is even more beautiful than it has looked in the case every time he came to look at it. Daniel is ecstatic as he leaves the store.

Once outside, he looks across the street at The Shrine of Saint Theresa of the Little Flower, and ecstasy immediately turns to guilt. It is not the little kind of guilt Daniel normally admits to in confession. This is way big guilt. He has stolen from God! But he has learned in school that he can get rid of the guilt. What does he know about God and sin? A lot he realizes, he hears about it every day. It’s only the sixth commandment. It’s not like he murdered someone. Though, he did recently have to confess to threatening to kill his brother when they were fighting. Penance was five Hail Marys.

God will forgive him for stealing a dime. He knows that. What does he know about how to get forgiveness for stealing? He will have to do some sort of penance. It’s only a dime. So, two Our Fathers and five Hail Marys? There is another step. What is that complicated word they use for it? Means something like having to give back the thing you stole.

Daniel wonders just how he can give back the dime he doesn’t have. Leaving the squirt gun with the angel won’t do it. Maybe the store owner will take it back and give him his dime. He is not sure that can be done, but another glance at the scene of the crime convinces him he has to try. He re-enters the store and stands in front of the cash register.

“You back again kid?” asks the owner. “Did you forget something?”

 “No,” responds Daniel. “I want to give you back this squirt gun,” he says while holding out the gun for the store owner to see.

The store owner is perplexed. No kid has ever come in and asked for a refund. “Why should I do that?”

“Because I really need my dime back. It’s really important that I have it,” Daniel says in his best please-help-me voice.

“So let me see if I understand,” says the store owner. “Five minutes ago, you didn’t need the dime for anything more important than a squirt gun. And now there is something more important that you need the dime for.”

“Yes,” Daniel says.

“Tough luck,” the store keeper says.

“That’s not fair,” Daniel says.

“Welcome to the world,” says the store owner.

Daniel is left with the challenge of figuring out what he should do next. He has stolen from God and that is probably a mortal sin. If he dies, he will go to hell. Even if he goes to confession, he won’t be given absolution until he gives the dime back. Suddenly, he has an idea and he heads back across the road to the little church.

The Church is still empty. He slithers over to the holy water font, pulls the squirt gun’s red plug, and quickly fills the gun with holy water. In a few minutes he is back out on the street. He is feeling good. He has turned a bad situation into a good one. The squirt gun will enable him to do God’s work. If the comes across a pagan in danger of death, he can produce the four squirts necessary for salvation.

Squirt one: “I baptize thee.”

Squirt two: “In the name of the Father.”

Squirt three. “The son.”

Squirt four: “And the Holy Ghost.”

Sometime later, Daniel trades his squirt gun for a big bag of marbles. Daniel wants to tell the gun’s new owner what he is required to do with it. In the end, he decides God will let him know, and he never thinks about the squirt gun again.

No Guardian Angels

In 1956, Scarberia is a developing suburb on the east side of one of the most boring cities in the world. One of the sources of the city’s pride is the Orange Parade celebrating the victory of Protestantism in Britain over Catholicism. It is not the best place to be for those who are not Orangemen. It is a bad place to be if you are a Jew, a Bohunk, an Italian or any other type of person who is not white and Christian.

If you were in Scarberia in the autumn of 1956, you might see a seven-year-old, blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy of no particular significance walking home from school. You would be right to assume he is a lot like other boys his age. There would not be a whole lot more about Daniel Lehmann you could discern from just looking at him. There is no visible evidence of what is going on inside his head, and there is a lot going on inside his head. Though he doesn’t know it, his experiences at various points along the mile-and-a-half walk back and forth each way from school to his home and the half-mile from his home to where his newspapers are dropped off will greatly determine the trajectory of his life and his eventual descent into madness. On his way home today, he will learn about bravery or his lack of it.

To understand the importance of Daniel’s experience, you must understand the context in which his first act of cowardice occurs. Daniel’s head is full of stories about Catholic martyrs: men and women who stood up for and defended their faith and died doing so. The stories relayed to him by nuns, priests and lay teachers were supposed to instil in him a desire to embrace martyrdom should the need arise. Being beheaded, crucified, burned at the stake, raped, or flogged to death should all be seen as opportunities for showing God just how much you love him. Being killed for being Catholic should be seen as a gift from God.

Daniel assumed his older brother Joe knew all about martyrdom and standing up for your faith. He saw Joe’s commitment one day when Joe was giving him a ride home on his bike. Joe took a shortcut through the Protestant school yard. Some guys that were throwing a ball up against the school started calling out “Hey Dogan. What you doing here?” And others were shouting “No Micks allowed.” Daniel had no idea of what those terms meant. But apparently Joseph did. “When the crowd yelled out, “Hey. Go kiss the Pope’s toe.” He pushed Daniel off the bike and threw it to the ground. He then challenged the Protestants to a fight. Joe was older than them, and they backed off and walked away. Daniel wondered if he would have been as brave as Joe.

Daniel’s walk to and from school along Kingston Road each day takes him past the John A. Lesley Public School danger zone in which Joe defended the Pope’s digit. His first brush with potential martyrdom came within that zone. Two large boys, who were Protestant, stopped him on the sidewalk and menacingly demanded to know if he was a Catholic. At that moment, Daniel experienced a flood of images. He saw Saint Agnes being stripped naked and her hair growing out to cover her body. He saw Saint Sebastian stripped, tied to a pole, and shot full of arrows. He saw the Jesuit Martyrs being burned at the stake. They called to him to be a soldier of Christ. “Are you a Catholic or not? the boys asked again, even more angrily. “No,” he said. “But those boys are,” he said pointing at two boys playing in a nearby field.

Denying his faith and sentencing the boys in the field to an unpleasant fate didn’t bother Daniel much. It might have if he hadn’t already realized that much of was being told about his faith was not true. Angels were just one example. Stories about angels had filled his early years. He knew a lot about angels such as Gabriel and of course, the fallen angel, Lucifer. From early on, Daniel was assured his Guardian Angel was always watching over him, and he believed that to be true. This belief was reinforced by the picture in his bedroom that showed a guardian angel watching over a young boy just like him. That all changed when the school inspector came to assess the reading ability of grade-one students.

A couple of times a year, an Inspector from the school board would come and sit in on classes to see how well students were doing. This time it was Daniel’s classmates that would have a chance to show how well their reading had progressed. Daniel was looking forward to this visit. He was a good reader even before he started school and he wanted to show the inspector just how good a reader he was.

The students arranged themselves in a semi-circle around the Inspector. Daniel was seated next to him. Each student read in turn and when it was Daniel’s turn, the Inspector to glanced down at his reader and saw that all the circles in the d’s, b’s, and o’s had been filled in with pencil.

“Did you do that?” asked the inspector pointing to the penciled pages of Daniel’s reader.

“No.” said Daniel.

“Maybe it was your Guardian Angel,” said the Inspector as he looked toward the beautiful Sister Mary Peter whom Daniel had fallen in love with the first moment he saw her even though he wasn’t sure if nuns were women or a different gender.

“Maybe,” said Daniel, sure that it was a distinct possibility. Afterall, some angels were bad actors and were thrown out of heaven and left to create mischief in the world along with the devils and demons he had heard so much about. Colouring the circles in his reader was a kind of mischief.

The Inspector again looked at Sister Mary Peter, then motioned to Daniel to begin his reading.

When all the students had read, the Inspector thanked them for their work, and then asked Sister Mary Peter to come into the hallway with him. After a few moments, she returned to the class and asked Daniel to come into the hallway with her.

Once in the hallway, Sister Mary Peter motioned for him to follow her. Daniel did not know where they were headed, but he convinced himself that he was going to be rewarded for being such a good reader. His optimism began to fade when they arrived at the office door of Sister Luke, the school principal. Sister Luke was short, fierce, and rumoured to take great pleasure in disciplining students with her thick, black strap. Daniel had only heard about Sister Luke’s strap. He was now about to meet it in person.

Daniel was given three slaps of the strap on each hand. Once for pencil-marking his reader, once for lying to the Inspector and once for blaming his Guardian Angel for what he had done. Daniel continued to fume long after the stinging in his hands had stopped. He kept on asking himself how Sister Mary Peter and Sister Luke knew for certain his Guardian Angel hadn’t marked up his reader. By the end of the day, he was certain the only way they knew for sure was because Guardian Angels did not exist and they had been lying to him. This led him to wonder just what else he was being lied to about. Some time later, It’s a Wonderful Life was shown on television. Daniel was unmoved by a story featuring a Guardian Angel and he never watched the movie again.

A minor mistake in wording can create a chain of events with unforeseen consequences. Daniel Lehman is 33-years old, and of average height. He is wearing glasses and has brown hair and a light beard. He is what most people would probably consider good looking. Where he sits on the one to 10 scale, he does not know. His misunderstanding of the meanings of j’taime, je t’adore and je t’aime bien is why in the September of 1982 he is sitting in his living room reading and rereading the last lines in the letter from Patricia he received earlier in the day.

Beside Patricia’s letter on his coffee table is another letter, one he is struggling to write. Next to his letter is the “Bescherelle” Daniel needs to navigate the intricacies of French conjugations and how to spell verb endings. He wishes he could write in English but he is not sure just how well Patricia can understand it. In English he could easily create the kind of nuanced message this situation requires. In English, he is sure he could make a bad situation seem like a good one. When he is not trying to write, he is asking himself why he is struggling with how to craft the right message for someone he barely knows. All he needs to do is nothing, and the situation he is in will slowly resolve itself. He can’t do that to that to the Patricia who has shown him so much ardour.

What has brought Daniel to this circumstance was his decision to attend an école d’été in France. Going to Strasbourg for summer school and meeting the very special Patricia was not something Daniel had planned on. It was his older brother Jack who convinced him that spending his time in France was a better idea than lying in bed sucking his thumb wondering who his girlfriend, Jan, was fucking.

“Come to Strasbourg and take a French class. I know you can speak a half-assed French. A month in school will give you a chance to improve it.” was Jack’s suggestion.

“I don’t have any money,” said Daniel

“Yes, you do. You have way more than enough money,” said Jack.

“I can’t take the time off,” said Daniel.

“You’re your own boss, so yes you can,” said Jack.

Jack was right on all counts, and a few weeks later, Daniel found himself in France.

When Daniel met Patricia at the école d’été, he was struck by her directness. What he said in class he can’t remember. But whatever it was, Patricia found it interesting enough to want to talk to him, and she asked Daniel to have coffee with her. Daniel knew better than to assume a 19-year-old, petite, bra-less, tight-jeaned, pretty, young woman with long brunette hair, a wide smile, and engaging blue eyes was interested in him romantically. Daniel rarely assumed that. He usually waited for a woman to make the first move or give some other clear indication of her interest in him as a man. Making the mistake of thinking a woman wanted anything more than friendship is a blunder impossible to come back from. But it didn’t matter to Daniel that it wasn’t going to turn into anything romantic. He wasn’t looking either for romance or for no-strings-attached sex. Classes were over for the day, and Daniel was happy to have company. If not for Patricia, he would just walk around aimlessly before returning his dormitory room.

Patricia took him to a café kitty-corner to the university where their classes were being held. He asked her about herself and why she was taking a course in French when it was quite clear she spoke French fluently. Her answers were perfunctory. She was half French from her father and half German from her mother. She lived in a city called Kehl across the Rhine from Strasbourg. She had dual citizenship and was entitled to go to university in France, but she needed to prove she had sufficient ability in French to study at a French university. Thus, the need for the French course.

During their first coffee together, Daniel waited for Patricia to ask him about himself. It became clear that no such questions were going to be asked. Daniel’s assumption was right. Patricia had no interest in him beyond a temporary friendship. What she was really interested in was “Qui a tiré sur JR?”

Her question about who shot JR made Daniel smile. Apparently, Dallas was a year behind in Europe. Though millions of North Americans had tuned in for the answer to that question, he was not one of them. He knew about the JR thing because it was difficult to avoid the chatter around the program, but he had never seen it.

Patricia was only momentarily disappointed that she was not going to be the first of her friends to know the answer to the burning question about Dallas. Instead, she quickly turned to talking about what she was really interested in. Movies.

She couldn’t have picked a better topic. Daniel will watch just about anything that flickers. When he was 13, he found a late-night television show that broadcast classics and foreign films and he would watch until the wee hours of the morning. The movies of Bergman, Truffaut, Fellini, and others were like discovering a whole new cuisine. Listening to the host talk about movies made him want to be a film critic and for years he watched every movie he could.

Just how into movies Patricia was became apparent when he inadvertently said that Bunuel had directed “Last Tango in Paris” instead of Bertolucci. She looked at him as if he had lost his mind Patricia could not believe he made such a mistake and began to lecture him on modern cinema. She told him when the movie was shot and where, how long it took to film, and the full names of the cinematographer and editor. She knew more about movies than any normal human being should. It was as if she had memorized every issue of Cahier Du Cinema.

During the next three weeks, Patricia and Daniel spent every afternoon together walking and talking. Mostly about movies. Patricia wanted to watch only BOF movies. Eventually, Daniel had to ask what that was. Bande Original du Film was a complicated way of saying in the original language, not dubbed. Patricia really wanted to go to the Le Grand Rex in Paris and see movies the way they were meant to be seen. According to Patricia it was an amazing theatre with a huge screen. She made Daniel promise to go there if he ever got to Paris. Daniel thought that was unlikely to happen. He had no plans to visit Paris, with or without Patricia.

The three weeks Daniel had planned on staying in Strasbourg went by quickly. The course ran another week, but he had pressing, personal business at home. Instead of going to the university and saying goodbye to the people he had met there, he spent his time packing and getting ready for the train to Frankfurt airport. He thought of tracking down Patricia to say goodbye, but he decided it wouldn’t matter to her one way or the other. It wasn’t like they were lovers. They were just two people hanging out temporarily.

Daniel was more than a little surprised when Patricia showed up at his dormitory room that last day. When he opened the door, Patricia just stood there silently looking at him. It was as if he had done something very wrong and she was waiting for an apology.

After an eternity of silence, she said, “I was looking for you this morning. But you weren’t in class.”

“Yes,” he said. “I told you I was leaving today. I didn’t have enough time to go to class and get ready to leave.”

Patricia looked at him as if he were talking gibberish.

“You didn’t think about saying goodbye to me? I wanted to find you earlier so we could make love before you left.”

Daniel did not know what to say. He had never imagined sex with Patricia. He had done all he could to remain in the friend zone. Once when they were on a bus and she was sitting while he stood, she leaned forward and her loose top afforded him a view of a small, perfect breast and its pink nipple. He immediately turned his head away. He did not want to think of her as a potential sex partner. He did not want to have sex with her. His life was already complicated enough and having another lover would only add to his challenges.

“We still have some time before I have to get my train. We can still make love if you want,” Daniel said without knowing why both he and Patricia were so willing to change the nature of their relationship.

Patricia’s face responded to his statement before her mouth did. She looked at him as if he were as dense as a potato.

“You think I want to make love with you and then say thank you and bon voyage? We could have spent the morning together if you had bothered to come look for me.”

Daniel did not know how to respond. Patricia shook her head and started to leave.

Daniel could think of nothing to say except, “Aurevoir.”

Patricia turned around and with inexplicable tears forming in her eyes said, “It’s not aurevoir; it’s adieu.”

The look on Patricia’s face made Daniel feel like shit and he didn’t know why. He hadn’t promised her anything. They had never even kissed. Daniels was pissed off with the French and their word that means goodbye forever. Daniel wanted to argue semantics and the differences between how French and English speakers express themselves. He did not know how to do that in French. What he did know was that he didn’t want Patricia to be unhappy because of him.

Again, he surprised himself with his response, “It’s not adieu; it’s aurevoir. I’ll come back to you. I promise.”

“When?” asked Patricia in a voice that also said, “I don’t believe you.”

“Soon,” said Daniel. “Give me your address and I’ll write to you and let you know when. It won’t be long. I promise.” She gave him her address and then asked for his.

On the train ride to Frankfurt, Daniel had a lot of time to think about what he had promised Patricia. He prides himself on not making promises he can’t keep. Would he keep his promise to Patricia? Would it really matter if he did or did not? He was sure the very attractive Patricia would quickly find herself different company. University is a breeding ground for far more than intellectual challenges. Soon Patricia would be swimming in a roistering sea of male hormones.

The onslaught of letters from Patricia caught Daniel by surprise. They arrived almost daily and were often augmented with mixtapes she made for him. The tapes contained everything from pirated movie soundtracks to incomprehensible German rock music from Cologne. Why the young, smart, and beautiful Patricia is investing such time and effort in him, he cannot fathom. Anyone listening to him speak French would have thought he was developmentally challenged. Daniel can only assume that was part of his charm.

One of Patricia’s first letters inadvertently encouraged Daniel to continue to think of her as a nice kid with whom there was no real future. At first, he thought she was saying he and his brother Jack were without equal. When he translated the letter properly, what she was actually telling him was, “You and your brother are not alike. He tried to start something with me. He is an old man and should not try to seduce young girls.”

The fact Jack is only two years older than him strengthened his feeling that Patricia was too young to be taken seriously. When he pointed out to her that he and Jack are close to the same age, she responded by saying that he was different. Daniel didn’t buy that. He was sure one day she would just look at him and wonder what she was doing with an old man.

Daniel wonders exactly who Patricia is enamoured of. She knows very little about him and his life. When they first met, she didn’t ask him if he was connected to anyone, and he has never given her that information. She didn’t ask a single question about his personal life. Experience had shown Daniel that when a woman asks about a man’s personal life it is often indicative of the asker’s interest in being part of that personal life. Not so with Patricia. If she had asked, he would have been honest with her. He would have told her about his complicated circumstances. He would have told her about Jan. He would have told her how miserable his life in Jan’s orbit had become, how he was struggling to figure out if he should end his relationship with her and how best to go about doing that.

If Daniel were going to be completely honest with Patricia, he would also have to tell her about what role he played in creating the misery he is experiencing. Fidelity has never been Daniel’s long suit. Before Jan, his relationships rarely lasted more than six months. Lots of passion and then, poof, nothing. Time to move on.

A woman who was on the receiving end of his cut-and-run behaviour accused him of wanting to kill the puppy. When he told her he had no idea of what that meant, she told him, “That is what my therapist called it when I was discussing my relationship with you. Killing the puppy is about a fear of intimacy and commitment. Starting a relationship is like getting a puppy and becoming so enamoured of it you fear the emotional damage that will befall you if it runs away or dies. The mere thought of that kind of emotional devastation makes people want kill the puppy before they get too attached to it.”

Though he shrugged off her comment and sent her on her way, he did not forget it.

With Jan, he was determined to make their relationship work by actually trusting her. It did. At least at first. He changed his behaviour, and turned down several opportunities for casual sex that were offered him. He wanted their relationship to work. He was just beginning to feel like he could really let down his guard and demonstrate their commitment to each other when he found a note from one of Jan’s friends expressing her condolences for the end of Jan’s brief love affair with a colleague. It was a gut punch, and it started a sexual tit for tat when it came to inviting other people into their lives.

But when it came to cheating, in Daniel’s mind, what Jan was doing was different than what he was doing. He was simply protecting himself. They had agreed to be exclusive, and for the first time, he kept his side of the bargain for more than two years. So smitten was he with her, so excited by her sexuality, it was not a difficult task. But Daniel was not one to put his hands by his side and let someone pummel him. After her first venture down a different path, he always had a plan B. He made sure he had someone else in his life to shield him from the hurts he knew were coming. On bad days, he would often wonder if he spent far more time and energy protecting himself from Jan than he spent loving her.

Daniel wonders if he should make Patricia his plan B. Should he use her as a shield? Should he treat someone who cares about him like that? He could make her plan A, but would she want to be with him if she knew she was not the only woman in his life? How would she respond if she knew his life has been a trainwreck since he was 17? Would she be horrified by the number of women who have drowned in the emotional tsunamis he can create? Even if he uncomplicated his life, he doubts Patricia would be happy with him for very long. He lives in a crappy, cold, city that would have very little to offer her. What would she do? She has just started university. Would she want to go to school in his city? Would she be able become the filmmaker she wants to be? Or would she stay with him just until she fledged and then fly off to somewhere else?

As Daniel sits, pen in hand, contemplating the reasons why it would be a bad idea for Patricia to connect with him and leave her home and country, he also wonders if he is coming up with reasons or excuses. Or are all reasons just excuses by a different name? He is being offered something quite special, by someone who apparently likes him just the way he is and not the man she would like him to turn into. Patricia is setting the tracks that can take him to a different kind of life, one that he keeps veering away from. Could he do marriage and children? Will she continue to care about him if he tells her exactly what is going on in his life? Daniel doubts that.

Daniel expected Patricia’s letters to be filled with the vacuous ramblings of a newly-minted 20-year-old. They weren’t. He thought she would eventually get distracted by someone younger and stop writing. She didn’t. She talked about European politics, art, and of course movies. She also had a way of talking about him that touched his heart. Especially when she quoted Pablo Neruda: “I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.” The quote from Kahil Girbran, “When love beckons to you, follow him. Though his ways are hard and steep.” took him back to the 1960s and made him smile. He was sure if Patricia didn’t already own an I Ching he was certain she soon would. Daniel surprised himself by looking forward to getting Patricia’s letters and doing his best to respond in kind.

The issues between Daniel and Jan have continued to fester since he came back from France. Their relationship is not being helped by Jan’s need to temporarily relocate to another city for her job. The phone is the only way for them to connect and it does not connect them at all. It has also become clear to Daniel that she has started a sexual relationship with another co-worker. When he challenged her, she responded by asking him just what he had gotten up to in France and with whom.

After the argument that created, he decided he would go back to France and spend time with Patricia. He didn’t know how the visit would turn out, and he didn’t care. All he wanted was some time away. He didn’t know if sex with Patricia was going to be part of his visit. It wasn’t what he wanted. He just wanted to spend time with someone who did not have boxes that needed to be ticked before she could truly commit to him.

A few weeks later, Daniel was back in Strasbourg waiting for Patricia to arrive at the small hotel where he was staying. Eventually, there was soft knock on his door, and when he opened it, Patricia was standing there the same way she stood at his dormitory door. But it was different than the first time. They were no longer just classmates. He saw her in a different light.

Patricia was wearing jeans, some kind of flat shoes, a mauve, short-sleeved, knit cotton top, her hair in a ponytail. The army medic’s bag she used as a purse was resting on her hip. The strap was around her neck and not on her shoulder. She told him before that was the way a smart Parisian woman does it to make the purse snatcher or pickpocket’s life just a little more difficult.

Daniel stops trying to write and gets up to pour himself a whisky. He lights a joint, sits back down and begins to reflect. The world becomes soft and hazy. He begins to float toward an often-replayed memory of his trip back to Strasbourg and his second time with Patricia.

He liked what he saw whenever he looked at Patricia. There is nothing he would have changed even if he could have. He liked the smell of her. Not a purchased scent, but the smell of her. Whenever he looked at her, his heart began to beat fast. Looking at her legs her arms, her waist, his temperature rose and he could feel himself radiating heat. Patricia just stood there saying nothing which forced Daniel to talk first. “I told you it was aurevoir and not adieu.”

Daniel is enveloping himself in their first time together as a man and woman. She stepped in, and he closed the door. Patricia dropped her purse, and they started kissing. They kissed, long, slow, gentle. At first it was just lips. He wanted to learn her taste. He wanted Patricia to taste him and remember him forever. It has been said a kiss is a letter the lips write. Daniel wanted their lips to write a novel. After their lips introduced themselves, Patricia put the tip of her tongue in his mouth and his moved out to greet it. He could have stood there kissing her for a very, very long time.

He put his hand on the small of Patricia’s back and pulled her gently toward him. She drew herself into him and used her leg in a most naughty way. He ran his hand over her bottom and pulled her even closer. She stayed for a moment then broke away from the kiss.

“I would very much like you to fuck me, Mister Lehmann,” she said in English with her strong German accent.

Daniel continues to drift among the memories of their first days together in the old hotel. He was shocked at some of the cultural differences that surfaced. When he and Patricia were going out one morning, he asked her if she had any deodorant because his had run out. She was offended and asked him why he thought she needed deodorant. Once, when they were in bed, she asked him if he liked her seins. Daniel thought she was talking about her saints or the river that runs through Paris. Seeing his confusion, she pointed to her breasts and asked again if he liked them. He did. Then there was the time he used vous instead of tu when he was talking with her. She asked him if they had entered a business relationship and if he fucked all his clients. She was such a firecracker. A lot of their interaction was amusing wordplay. But one particular exchange always makes him smile.

After a morning of playful banter, Daniel said, “You are always making fun of me. We are not leaving this hotel until you say something nice about me.”

Patricia looked at him for a second, and in English, said in her heavy German accent, “I think you speak English very well.” He loved her for that kind of quickness. He thought of her as a kind of Franco-Allemande noix du Brésil. Like a Brazil nut, she had a tough shell on the outside, and a pleasant surprise inside. She also had a fierceness about her. “Je suis très fier. Je suis très fier,” she would say. She was indeed proud and nobody’s plaything.

Sometimes Daniel is a very slow learner. He realizes now that he should have known that he was more than a dalliance with Patricia when she took him home to meet her parents after instructing him on what he should do. She is how he learned to bring flowers when he visits. She told him to do that and he did. She told him he should buy a bottle of Armagnac for her father. He did. He didn’t even know what Armagnac was. He quickly learned that he was not the man-of-the-world-sophisticated-guy he thought he was.

Patricia’s parents were effusive in their thanks for the flowers and the Armagnac. One in German the other in French. They called him Monsieur Lehmann. He asked them to call him Daniel. They called him Monsieur Lehmann. He did his best with the tu and vous thing. Vous for the parents and tu for Patricia. He could tell by the way Patricia twitched if he was making a grammatical mistake or sounded like a complete idiot. Daniel imagined he sounded like he was speaking a sort of pidgin French. “Likey likey food food. Girl daughter I likey very much.” He expected Patricia’s parents to have some concerns about the difference in age between him and Patricia. They didn’t appear to. Daniel thinks now that perhaps they saw him as good thing for a pistol like Patricia. He thinks maybe they thought he was strong enough to keep her from dropping out of school and running off to make movies somewhere.

He spent the night in the guest room of Patricia’s parents because the two of them were going to visit her aunt in Troyes the next day. His linguistic retardation did nothing to reduce Patricia’s interest in him. She came to his room that night wearing just a tight white undershirt paired with white panties and wanting to make love. No makeup sullied her smooth white skin. Her breasts pushed her nipples out to say hello. She was all youth and energy and didn’t give a damn about her parents in the next room.

It was hard for Daniel to say no, but it wasn’t about her parents. He wanted it to be wonderful, not ok, not good, but truly wonderful. Their lovemaking in his hotel had been good, but not great. She accused him of being a froussard. Daniel wasn’t chicken. He just didn’t want to have her father or mother walk in on them, or bang on the wall. He didn’t want either of them to have to be quiet. He wanted noise and talking. Kissing and talking. Talking and kissing. He wanted to create a night neither of them would ever forget. They could not do that while trying to be quiet in a tiny bed in her parents’ apartment. Her aunt’s place in Troyes would provide a good setting for the scene he wanted to create.

Daniel and Tina arrived at her aunt’s three-hundred-year-old, half-timbered house in the old town and as they stepped out of the car, they were instantly seduced by the smell of chicken stuffed with morels. Before they went in, Patricia told him she did not know what the sleeping arrangements would be and that he might end up in a bed by himself. He told her that it was her aunt’s house and it was her call.

As Patricia explained on the drive to Troyes, her aunt, Marie, was someone she admired. She was her idea of a real rebel who stood up for herself. In the 1950s, Marie chose to live with a man without the benefit of marriage. It was a scandal of major proportions in her community, but Marie was not about to yield to public pressure and antiquated notions of the role of women. She created more community consternation by making it clear not only was she not going to have children, she was going to have a career just like men did and would not depend on anyone for her financial wellbeing. At the behest of her aunt, Patricia had begun reading Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. It was clear Patricia was not going be defined by any man either. Her nascent feminism did not create any issues between her and Daniel. He had no trouble understanding why women wanted social and economic equality. And he too thought traditional marriage was a trap for women.

Daniel also wanted a real partner not a dependent disguised as one. During supper, Marie held court on a number of subjects and peppered Patricia with questions about her studies and her plans for the future. Daniel had trouble following along the more complicated the discussion became. But it was clear that she was asking Patricia just how the man she was with fit into her life. At one point, Daniel caught the eye of Marie’s partner, Jean-Luc. Without saying a word, he told Daniel that Patricia was a lot like Marie and he had better understand what that would mean to him.

After Jean-Luc had finished feeding them, Marie said they were no doubt tired and could use their bedroom. Daniel and Patricia protested, saying they did not want to inconvenience them. But her aunt told them that they were young and in love and that is where they must sleep. After saying that, she looked at Daniel and sent a message that said he better be in love and not just messing with a young woman. At that point, it occurred to Daniel that Patricia had already talked to Marie about him and perhaps he was more important to her than he realized. And certainly, more important than he should be.

Her aunt’s bedroom was a thing of romance novels. Big, soft, four-poster bed. Fireplace giving the room a warm glow, shadows dancing on the wall. The two of them snuggled under a duvet. Her giving him a part of her she had given to no other. They spent that evening making love in that big bed stopping only to feed the fire when it started to get low. They kissed. They laughed. They communicated without words. They fell into each other. And eventually they slept. The next morning, Jean-Luc fed them breakfast and soon they were back on the road to Strasbourg.

Patricia was strangely silent during the return trip. When Daniel asked what she was thinking about, her answer was, “Rien.” Daniel knew that “nothing” was rarely “nothing” and he realized that their time together was coming to an end and that was probably occupying her thoughts. It was occupying his as well. He liked being with her and wished he could just stay in France with her forever.

The last few days of his visit flew by. They went to bed together. They woke up together. They ate together. Every day was magical. Every day except the last day. The last day makes him feel like shit as he remembers it now. He took the rental car back to the train station and bought a ticket to Frankfurt. They stood outside waiting for the bus that would take Patricia back to Kehl. She had tears in her eyes. But she did not ask the question he did not know how to answer.

Earlier that day, Patricia had asked him if he had seen ET, which had not yet been released in France. She was all a twitter about ET and wanted to know if he had seen it. He had. She asked him if he liked it. He had. Daniel told her he would do something that would make sense to her when she finally saw the movie. As the bus door closed and she stood there watching him before it pulled away, he took his finger and touched his heart and said “ow” loud enough for her to hear through the door.

Each letter he received after his return indicated that for Patricia his second trip to Strasbourg was the beginning of their story not the end of it. Distance and time were not lessening her attachment to him. In his last few letters, he has tried to nudge her toward the realization that they had a moment, and that moment had passed. That caused her to redouble her efforts at getting him to see they had a future together. And that produced the lines he has been reading and rereading.

“In your last letter, you told me you did not want to be the thief of my youth. Maybe it is not that you steal my youth, but that I give you back yours and we can walk a new path together. All you have to do is believe that and we can make it happen.”

That revision of his would-be exit statement reminds Daniel of how sharp and quick Patricia is and how fast she can turn a phrase. It makes him smile. Quick, sharp, and funny are things he values in anyone he spends time with. Patricia is the embodiment of those traits.

Daniel gets up and returns his whisky glass to the kitchen. He begins to pace about his living room. In his head, he can hear Patricia’s voice telling him she will give him back his youth. He lets warm thoughts of her wash over him. He sits back down on his couch and looks over at the letter he has started. He rereads Patricia’s letter and then begins to write.