It's a Monday evening, at dusk. Well, just after dusk really — the sun has already disappeared to Mile End, leaving only a brush stroke of apricot. The other way, the lights of the buildings, skyscrapers to a non-North American, barely more than normal office blocks to anyone from this side of the Atlantic, are already piercing white in the navy blue rectangle of sky. Behind, the cross of Mont Royal stands up straight, standing out from the trees, looking over what once were its devoted followers, and now are a tangle of believers and non-believers, worshippers of marijuana, tattoos, and off-beat bicycles.
The breeze has an edge to it, the city breathes again after the spongy, drowsy weekend of sweaty brunches, the coffee burning from the inside to erase the effects of last night's sweaty midnight sangrias and it's-too-damn-hot-to-sleep. And the city is beautiful. Past the two little boys, ball in hand, arguing over who is right, the three old men in a row on a bench taking a break from the wives to gossip about them, and their languidly swaggering younger versions, telling tales of the carretera and rolling the r's extra long for dramatic effect. All talking the same language, not either of the languages that belong here, but belonging just the same.
And on, over the fast cars, cyclists with a death wish, the bright lights and never-quiet of the Main, through the smells of Portuguese rotisseries, past the white girl folding laundry in the draining square of light, next to the closed, dark car parts shop. Round by the mural sprawled across a bare wall, its reds and yellows bold and determined and not quite threatening. Down the street of trees and plants, still somehow green after this long long summer that has left cracks in the ground and dead corn down south, the black staircases extricating themselves from the urban jungle below to reach up cold and hard to the apartments on top.
It's hard to remember now the satisfying snap as your snow boot breaks through the frozen layer on top and sinks down through the soft swathes of knee-high Christmas cake icing. Hard to remember the flash of adrenalin as you decide that walking on the pavement might be quicker than all the stomping and knee lifts, and fail to notice it has that ominous glassy sheen and not the secure but boring roughness of grit.
Those anchors in time on which this year has spun and spun back round the other way now seem so long ago, now that it's nearly the end of summer. Remember that day? The last time it snowed? When -5 seemed like freezing-to-the-skeleton cold, the banshee wind pushing us up Park from the restaurant to the bar, swirling the memories of just that morning into an unrecognised knot in the middle of your brain. That morning was the tired, orange-tainted morning in the train station, the train to New York, the not quite tears kept back by the concentration needed to find the way out. But, for the head-down hood-up 50 metre walk between the train to the New York and the exit, you were completely alone. Seconds earlier you had been two, one with bags and tired eyes, the other with just a bike helmet. Then you were one. The other just one floor down, walking the same path you were now but already a lifetime away.
And before that, the lazy Sunday mornings, sitting up and reading the paper in bed, jazz playing from the laptop and breakfast on the way. The easy companionship of chopping apples up small, brushing smudges of pancake mix off borrowed t-shirts and arguing just for fun. You negotiated agreements you didn't think yourself capable of, discovered parts of yourself you didn't know existed, started to believe in your right to function in the world as everyone else does.
And do you remember too the weekend just before the non-exclusivity clause was agreed on? The snowball fight on the walk between parties, the is-the-melting-snow-frizzing-my-hair worry, the awkward conversation with the best friend of the man you accidentally treated really badly, when he told you it was good to see you and you replied with ‘yeah', and the gaps between the words of the conversation with the man himself saying things that no one else could hear. Then remember being accused of stealing the ‘most exotic' title from the owner of the only British accent that you've heard lately and not laughed at. And the poke in the ribs as you were running down the corridor from the Mexican who charmed you while partying outside in a snow storm. What would have happened if the sequence of party followed by acceptance of non-exclusivity had been reversed?
But closer now, that week in March, when mounds of snow sat next to girls lounging in t-shirts with ice cream in hand, was a premonition, a pre-cursor of what happens when the city melts, and plays, and fills up with people. It really is beautiful, this city. Viewed from the river, on a patch of straggly grass and cigarette butts underneath a highway, the city stands tall and proud, resting on the water in front and held up by the hill behind. Viewed from above, from the bridge that brings you back home from the weekend of best-brunch-ever, sunburn, and alternating insecurity and peace, the city is like a postcard, lights gently glinting in the dusk. And down in between those buildings, on the grimy disordered streets, the music plays and you move from a lonely introverted evening with a one-man-Blues-band to a journey to Brazil with someone who has future anxiety as much as you do, but quietens it with weed and sleepless nights rather than endless constructions of possible scenarios, all objectively better than the fleeting awesomeness of right now. Catch it, file that picture away for future reference. Because you will look back and see a series of those fleeting moments so close they're almost connected.
And now three ish weeks and no time at all is left to collect all those moments, the perfect chewiness of a warm bagel, fresh out of the oven at Saint Viateur, or the tension between just wanting to skate a bit longer and oh-my-god-my-toes-are-going-to-fall-off. Tipping your head back to watch the stars while drinking beer in a pedalo. The hot mornings at the market that hasn't yet been burnished to a shine, could be a Latin American market without the bartering. The stomach in your mouth swoop down towards the buildings, feeling like you're going so fast you'll take off and freewheel right into them. Bouncing hard off the waves in the little shuttle ferry that seemed like an excellent alternative career choice. Collect them and store them and keep them and treasure them. And nurture this new streak of steel that you can't quite feel but know is there. You know what you want and who you are and what you believe in and you're not to be messed with. The fingernail edges may be a little bitten down, but that steel is there and will hold you together. Trust it. And as the aeroplane carries you from Montreal across the ocean, unravelling that careful weave of moments and people and places, and takes you back where you belong, trust it. This city has shaped you back into yourself.