Henri

Henri and I have been friends for more than forty years. Those years have not been continuous, though. There are gaps. There was a gap towards the end of high school. There was a gap after college. There was a gap shortly after he left contracting at Kidd for contracting at Kinross Gold. He got married. He had children. He bought a trailer and then a cottage. Our interests diverged, as interests sometimes do. That said, fortyish years of acquaintance is unparalleled in my life.

We met at the Schumacher pool, that gross, smelly old beautiful concrete and cinderblock building. We were enrolled in Beginners together, otherwise we’d probably have never met. He was French, fated for Theriault, I was English, ordained for O’Gorman. He lived spitting distance from the city core, I lived out on the northern edge of town, such as it was then. It was unlikely we’d have ever met had it not been for swimming lessons. Beginners became Intermediates, then Juniors, and then Seniors. Most people stopped talking lessons there. We continued, enrolled in Bronze Cross and Bronze Medallion ad Instructors. Our older sisters were helpers and guards and instructors, so I suppose we were both destined to follow along in our sisters’ wake. Such is the way of hero worship. The elder forges a path, the younger following in their footsteps.

In many ways we grew up together. He introduced Dungeons and dragons to me, we shared a few of our first beers together. We paced one another on ten-speeds, haunted arcades, crossed paths on the steps of McDonalds, and reeled drunk together at the Mattagami.

I recall his having collected me after Afternoon shift, closing bars, pooling together our small change for cigarettes, pooling together for cab fare to get us as close as that loose change allowed and still left enough for poutine at La Chaumiere. Some of those rides were torture, the centre lines diverging wildly from the hood of the cab, my mind unsure which lane the cab should follow.

He was the only person I wanted to accompany me on the Casey’s Blue Jays trip to Detroit and Toronto. He endured my browsing far too many leather shops on Yonge Street in search of the perfect leather jacket that refused to present itself, until it did, and I wrestled with whether I ought to spend that much for it.

And then there was the night at the Legion. Henri wanted to do something different. “Let’s go to the Legion,” he said.

I was unconvinced. I wanted to go someplace where girls were. But Henri was driving and I bowed to the prospect of a few games of pool over a like number of beers before moving on.

We parked and shuffled across the icy lot to the rear entrance to the basement pub below the hall. The leather jacket I’d bought was unequal to the task of warding off the bitter cold that lay across the night, pressing the smoke issued from the buildings back to the ground.

“Take your hat off,” he said as we descended the steep stairs into the pub proper.

“Why?” I asked, never having been in a legion before.

“To show respect to the soldiers who died in the War,” he said, “and if you don’t, you have to buy everyone in the place a round.”

I pulled the cap off as we passed through the door into a dry warmth of silence.

I didn’t like not wearing a hat when out of the house then. I was already tired of the less than well-meaning jokes about my failure to hang onto my hair. But I had visions of having to empty my wallet in the early hours of our evening, so off it came.

I took a good look around as we crossed the floor to the bar. A full sized snooker table dominated the space to the right, columns of brass plates etched with the names of members and the fallen behind it. A single television hung from the corner north of the table, dark then. Two ancient vets nursed a beer mid pub; otherwise the place was empty.

A pretty girl manned the bar, brunette, curvaceous. I liked her straight off. Marbled glass behind her, a wide and deep expanse of polished stainless steel before her.

We ordered glasses of draft and began to play a few games. I hate playing on a snooker table. It’s so long. I lose sight of the far pockets when I lean over the cue, and what looked straight and true is invariable off by a mile by the time the cue ball crosses its length, a humbling display of a lack of skill not apparent on the smaller billiard table.

We asked for music, but the girl said that the old guys didn’t like it, preferring the quiet for whispered conversations. We accepted that, although I was far from pleased. It was a Friday night and I wanted to listen to some music. Before long our presence filled the pub. The balls clacked together. We tried to keep our voices down out of respect for the vets and their quiet conversation and their memories and the ghosts of their long passed comrades, but boys will be boys, youth will be young. Our voices notched up a peg or two, and then a peg or two more. We were having fun.

Our pretty barmaid hushed us when delivering our next round, smiling at us while she did it. “The old guys are complaining,” she said.

“Jesus,” I whispered, casting my annoyance at the two old guys, wishing them on their way.

I got my wish an hour later after the vets shrugged on their coats and wound their scarves around their necks. And I got my music too. There wasn’t a proper sound system, but there was that little TV overlooking the pool table. She turned on Much Music and turned it up as loud as its speakers allowed before buzzing and crackling. We asked her to join us. She said she shouldn’t but she did after a while. She brought us our beer. We bused our own tables. She flirted and we flirted back. She kicked our asses at pool.

It was last call before I knew it and we had to go. We helped her clean up and waited for her halfway up the stairs as she locked up.

She hugged me out in the lot. She kissed me too.

And she kissed Henri too. He kissed her for far longer than I had, as long as I wish I had.

I thought about her from time to time, but I was not a member at the Legion so I didn’t go back. The Legion is not a place to linger in alone. Not to my mind, anyway.