Evening Walk

Lemon-yellow, white almond-eyes: pointed leaves slick the dark sidewalks and pattern the windshields of the parked cars. We walk up the street, my arm in yours, past the lace-curtained doorways, the night glow of late suppers, readers, bedtime stories. The car wash is buttoned up, the grey concrete rinsed and swept, hoses hung in wide arcs on the wall. A doorway; hunched knees of a long-haired girl smoking a joint, and here, past the seminary-now-condos, a grey kitten interrupts our stride with sharp cries for affection. Autumn vines twist on wrought iron; a mother descends, the child stops, coughs.

After the dark, tree-lined side-streets, lights glare on Mont-Royal. In the Jean-Coutu, the smocked cosmetic-girls head for the back exit, leaving a window of plastic pumpkins leering beneath oversize, flying masks. A blonde girl in pink sateen walks a black dog. Lunettes sleep in their glass cases; rattan baskets hang empty beneath white-lettered chalkboards: “asperges”, “champignons”. In a café, a final patron cradles his coffee, the stools already on their backs for the evening, legs in the air.

Back onto a side street: the dull red of overgrown begonias cascading from a windowbox, a tree encircled by a knee-high forest of nasturtiums. On a third floor, a girl bends forward, straightens up against warm beige walls, making a bed. We look down the empty alley, past the chainlink fence and its sign: terrain privé.

Your hip sways against mine, our walk a familiar dance, a little slower tonight. No need to speak; we see the same things.

Comments

[Sara]

Mmmm...pretty. :)

[dale]

(o)

[leslee]

Ah, lovely. (Note the brief comments: nobody wants to spoil the scene!)

[Martine]

Gorgeous.
The last line gave me goose bumps.

[Dave]

None of the above adjectives will do. It was darkly radiant with the light of the marvelous, keenly observed and suffused with affection. Also, it kicked ass. Thanks.

[zhoen]

Comfortable familiar love is vastly underrated for it's romantic qualities. Deep, it has lost it's surface shininess, like the Velveteen Rabbit. It has instead become real.

[connie]

Thanks for letting us tag along on this most intimate stroll. It was lovely.
hugs

[Marja-Leena]

zhoen said it for me - lovely and warm and intimate.

[p.]

That WAS lovely. Beyond that, it evoked a warm childhood memory that has nothing to do with Montreal or the companionship of well-married couples--

After doing the Relatives Tour of their hometown of a Sunday, my parents would drive home at dusk through the little city streets they knew as shortcuts, and all the while my mother would watch the lighted windows. She would point out the interesting and the outrageous, and we kids would scramble to peek in before we left the place behind.
She never failed to say, as we climbed one street that also pitched steeply to the right, that it was the street where everyone on the right was heavier than the folks on the left.
Sometimes my sister and brother and I would stand on the floor in the back seat and tumble over one another when the car went around a corner. As we rolled out of the city, it would get truly dark and Dad would drive faster. There wasn't much to see then, but the radio would come on -- fading in and out among the hills and buzzing loudly under power lines.
I don't remember much about what happened when we got home -- no doubt I was mostly asleep. But I can't forget the sense you prompted, of friendly darkness and a day well spent among people I loved.

Du

[beth]

Thanks all. I'm glad you liked this.

p. - I sent you a note but it bounced - it said "thanks for your comment and for sharing this memory. I especially loved your mother's comment about the people being heavier on one side! Thanks for writing."

[moose]

Lovely.

I'm still trying to figure out why, before I'd finished the first paragraph, I felt like I was back in Paris.