The Diner

With almost no warning, rain drove at me from the side, and picked up from below. Lightning razzed the sky and electrified the air. My instinct was to run into the centre of the street. My common sense told me to go indoors and fast. confirmed, I heard an alarm go off as a car caught a bolt and jumped halfway onto the sidewalk like a scarred rabbit. I ran for the nearest entrance through the inch of water streaming down a road that had been dry just a moment before.

The door gave a gentle jingle as I entered a restaurant, or rather, I realized with a start, a diner, a diner with an atmosphere I hadn’t thought existed north of Vermont. Old fashioned silver napkin dispensers, a bottle of vinegar, squeeze bottles of ketchup and mustard, salt and pepper and a single plastic red flower in a plastic vase were grouped on each table with an orderly and comforting regularity. A dry erase board hung above the order counter announcing the days specials. The place smelled of burnt coffee, deep fried grease, vinegar and chlorine bleach, all that was missing was the sour warm odour of cigarettes. Little circular burn marks on the tables assured me that those days were not long past. The light was glaring, fluorescent lights bathed the scene in their whitish confusion and made it’s customers huddle that much closer against the high backs of their nooks and cubbies. those unfortunate enough to score exposed wooden seating looked lost and isolated, sitting self-consciously like Barbie dolls posed by unimaginative children.

My internal critic noted that the coffee tasted like last weeks dish water with just a hint of burnt toast…The food must be more than passable. I wasn’t just surprised, I was shocked: this kind of coffee doesn’t exist in Quebec where coffee snobbism pervades every level of the class system from sewer scrubber to society kingpin. Still, on another level it satisfied a part of me that remembered my mother’s hand embroidered curtains, and the smell of tar on my fathers hands coming home from work, the coffee pot still simmering from breakfast. I knew immediately that this would be home base while I stayed in Quebec.

This would be a haunt of regulars, people with time and insufficient will not to wax expansive on local gossip. The restaurant owner’s mischievous wink as he came to refill my coffee confirmed my suspicions. He was clearly curious about me but had the discretion not to ask questions, yet. He glanced nervously around him, taking the pulse of his establishment, a sensitive man naively trusting of the basic goodness of friends and strangers alike…and, like many in Quebec, an aspiring artist. His name, glistened in red paint at the bottom of most of the paintings in the establishment. A peculiar exception was a small, lunch-box size reproduction of a Tom Thompson, undoubtedly a hiding spot for something.

His paintings were pretty good. Good enough to sell but not likely to be putting bacon on the table. He’d already slipped me a business card boldly announcing 'Hubert Tremblay, Artist'. It occurred to me for the second time today that it might not hurt to pose as a buyer. He would, without doubt, spread the word. The gold band on his ring finger placed him as married, his sly wink and quick glance away spoke volumes. He wanted to be seen as a player but I was certain that somewhere in the back his wife ran the accounts, counted out tips and kept her dreamer husband from doing anything beyond exercising a healthy imagination.

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