(Stories from Montreal and Vermont)


I've seen the sad-faced girl leaning against the wall of the liquor store on Pearl Street, with tears in her eyes, leaning hard against the wall, with the sting still fresh in her mind and dust from the brick of the old wall under her nails, leaning her hips, a sad face, a song on her lips.

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I've seen the car door open on a sunny afternoon as I walked down Atwater towards the canal, the cry lost in the driver's shaking hands, the asphalt dry and hot under the younger one, and the young paramedic's assistant kind and firm as he guards against them moving her body.

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I sat inside Barouf on St-Denis when the crowd spilled onto the street to get away from the slurring saxophone player and his two soldier friends who kept winking at the drunken girl from New York, the one my friend calls the lesbian, while she pushed the phone to her ear and
told her daughter she was going to be late.

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I have stood under the Corona Theatre's awning in Little Burgundy watching the university students hop the dimly-lit puddles on their way home from their last night class, the papers pulled down over their heads dripping from the rain and blowing across the grey street.

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I remember when Sally Floyd was dancing outside the Oxford on Manhattan Drive at 3:30 in the morning, the same night that we saw the girl she was rooming with who disappeared and was later found shot in the old mill by the Lachine Canal.

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It's too much to deal with right now
Frances love-- the lawyers will never stop--
Oh please just shoot me
An email and we'll talk about in the morning.

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