All Dressed in White

The moment I saw my phone fly out of my hands I knew something had gone wrong. Next thing I knew, I started to feel my thighs becoming colder and colder.  “Fuck! I slipped on the ice. And we’re almost halfway through February” I said to myself. I had hoped to make it through the winter intact. No chance. Everybody had warned me though, it was bound to happen; there was no way of avoiding it. Of course I was wearing my boots! We’re in Montreal for crying out loud, it’s both steep and icy, that’s the challenge! I started to look around, trying to figure out whether my butt or my pride hurt more. My pride, definitely my pride, and that’s not just because the many layers I was wearing cushioned the fall.  Oh, right, I was texting that joke to my friend. “Shit. Where did my phone land?” I thought. I scrambled around the sidewalk looking for it. Sim-card, battery, cover, and snap, the age-old ritual. Funny how my reflexes led me to protect my phone instead of breaking the fall.

I looked up to the surprisingly blue sky, as if looking for an answer. Instinctively my brain raced back to my school years, looking for advice. All I could hear was my history teacher saying, “Rodrigo, we can always blame the French”. Yeah, that’s what a British education does to you. But maybe it applied here. I’m pretty sure Monsieur de Maisonneuve decided to found this city in the middle of summer. Though, actually, the Mont-Royal does look beautiful covered in snow. Or maybe he liked falling. Maybe nobody ever fell down in France and he came across the ocean to a land where people could fall flat on their butts in all liberty. If only history had that kind of sense of humour. I then thought about the sheet of ice that made me slip, “why is it that we don’t like global warming? Oh right, the polar bears, they need the ice.” I reasoned quietly. Or something like that, I guess. It’s a shame I don’t remember the details, but if anybody ever asks I guess I’ll have to blame France.  At least my school teachers would be proud.

The cold was urging me to stand up, but sitting on the frozen sidewalk made me feel oddly peaceful. A forced pause. Mother nature reminding me that, in the end, I’m actually her bitch. For the first time in ages my mind was blank, trying to capture everything around me. There were no midterms, no homework, no unwashed laundry, no unanswered texts, no projects, no things I needed to tell someone, no nothing. I could think about what was around me. Even though I had walked through that very same block every day for the past six months it was the first time I realized that the building opposite me had something strange. Once I had noticed that it had a beautiful polished stone façade, each window framed in the delicate strength of sculpted rock, but only this time I saw how Victorian sobriety and French elegance were playing with each other like young lovers. Even though the forms and styles were kept ruthlessly equal within one storey, subtle details grew more and more elaborate as the building went up. The two styles flirted and approached each other stealthily, but then retreated to themselves. Kind of what happens in the library when someone catches your eye so you spend the rest of your time trying to catch them looking at you, and when it happens, suddenly both have to look away, as if those equations had suddenly become interesting.  Neither had I noticed how the dépanneur* on the ground floor was using the half-moon windows to display its selections of beer and wine, creating streaks of light that gave the illusion of colourful stained glass. I wonder how many people had noticed this, or if it just served its purpose as a clever way of showing students that abundant alcohol was sold inside.

I saw the bus coming one block away so I got on my knees and then stood up, brushing the snow off my jeans. I started to run. I couldn’t afford to miss it. There was so much I needed to get done!

*In Québec: Convenience store, corner shop, tienda de barrio