Archibald Samuel - Arvida

I knew that Bezeau, in the back, was getting on his nerves. That retard had brought along a whole kit just to turn coke into crack while we were on the road. He had a funny old spoon shaped like a ladle, a little medicine bottle full of baking soda, and a big bottle of distilled water. He put four parts of coke, one part of Cow Brand into the spoon, two or three drops of water, then he heated it from underneath with his lighter, while stinking up the whole car.

América said over and over, “ Están locos, están locos .” Where she came from, that was enough to get thrown in the hole for the rest of your days.

I wouldn’t have wanted to be sitting beside him either, especially in her place. Smoking, it’s not like snorting, it puts you to sleep sometimes. If you can call that sleep. Bezeau was having bad dreams right beside her. Rock dreams. He grabbed at his cock through his jeans, raging, murmurous, through his teeth:

“Here, my cunny. Here, my muffin. Here, my coochie.”

We didn’t quite know what he was talking about. Lévis would have put him up front with me, but the only time he’d tried to do so, after the dinner when he’d stayed in the car to smoke, he’d insisted he wanted to drive, and América had almost had a nervous breakdown.

I know that was more than enough to spoil a trip, but his mood had altered even before Bezeau had started freaking out.

I wanted to talk about it to Lévis that night, while he was having a smoke out on the terrace in front of the motel, but before I could open my mouth, he said:

“She’s not his wife.”

“Of course, if they were married, we wouldn’t have to be doing this.”

“No, what I mean is, she’s not his woman at all. Maybe she was a vacation fuck in San José, maybe he owes her a favour, I don’t know what, but she’s not his woman and she’ll never be his woman.”

I agreed with him. Bezeau had told us all at least a dozen times that América had offered to suck him off the day before at Cindy’s. It wasn’t true, obviously, but you didn’t need a sign as clear as that to see that América was nobody’s woman. You could just tell, I don’t know why.

I agreed with Lé, but I still asked him:

“Why are you saying that?”

“Because if I loved a woman and I wanted her to join me in the States, I wouldn’t give the job to a couple of clowns like us.”

He cleared his throat and spat a large gob onto the ground. He added:

“And if I loved a woman and some clown offered to set her down on my doorstep for two thousand dollars, I wouldn’t say, ‘Once you’re over the border, do whatever you want with her.’”

Lévis got a text from his girlfriend at three in the morning. The money had arrived.

He told me to wake up América and to load up the car and wait for him outside. He woke Bezeau, who was sleeping like a log, and told him, “You’re not coming with us to the border.”

He gave him three hundred bucks to take a taxi to the bus station and a bus to the Saguenay in case we didn’t come back. Bezeau kept shouting, “I can’t even speak English, for Christ’s sake!”

The voices got quieter, and Lévis came out by himself. We got in the car. He turned to América to say, “ Todo saldrá bien, guapa .” Then he looked at me and said, “Let’s go.”

The following Friday, Bezeau went to see Lévis at the bar where he was the doorman, to ask him when they were going to split the money.

“There’s no more money. I gave it all to the girl. You, you got three hundred bucks worth of coke out of me, you didn’t drive for two minutes, and you cost me a bus ticket. In my books I don’t owe you a fucking cent.”

Bezeau went off, cursing.

“Anyway, the next time you come up with a plan like that, don’t call me.”

“We won’t call you, that’s for sure.”

*

Our fifth mistake was to go through Detroit.

If we were to do it again, I’d choose a little border crossing in Quebec with one sleepy guy and say, “We’re going shopping in Plattsburgh.” Back then we thought that passing through Detroit would give us a head start if Luis ever gave us the OK to push on all the way to California. In particular, we figured that the Ambassador Bridge had the largest volume of commercial traffic in the world, and that gave us a better chance to get through.

They had the traffic, yes, but they also had the means to manage it. Especially in the summer of 2002.

When we drove onto the bridge early in the morning, the cars were flowing freely. But the line-up was still two or three kilometres long. It was already hot, and I had no air-conditioning in my car. We were in a sweat when we arrived at customs right in the middle of the bridge. The guy looked at our passports.

“So you gentlemen are from Quebec and the lady here is from Costa Rica.”

“Yes.”

“Why are you coming to the United States?”

“To visit. She’s never been here.”

“All right. And why here?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Why travel this far to cross the state line?”

Lévis thought we were already fucked when the customs man saw the Costa Rica passport, but I think we were fucked right there. We had no answer for that. Lévis made one up on the spot. He gestured to the back with his head:

“Oh, she loves Detroit.”

If we’d been less dumb, we’d have known that that was not an answer to give. Nobody likes Detroit, because Detroit is a shithouse.

He had us pull over and park, and escorted us inside. They took América aside and kept her for a long time. The two of us waited a good hour before a guy in a tie came to talk to us. My ears were ringing and my hands wouldn’t stop sweating.

It’s strange, because today I still remember what the guy said as if he was speaking French, even if that’s impossible. Lévis tells me that it’s the same for him.

The man said right off that we were welcome in the United States, but not the young woman who was with us. He said there was no formal accusation against us, but he thought he knew what we were up to. He said, “If you try it again, at any border crossing from the Rockies to the Adirondacks, today, tomorrow, or in six months, you really won’t like what’s going to happen to you afterwards.”

We waited for an hour to get América back. She’d been crying. Lévis said to her, “ Lo siento, guapa .” We went back on the 401, and I saw he was taking a detour to pass by the motel. I asked:

“Do we really have to pick up that fucking retard?”

“I’m not going back for Bezeau, I’m going back for the coke.”

Bezeau had already left. Lévis went to see the Pakistani at the reception. He convinced him that he needed the keys to the room because he’d left something behind. That son of a bitch had hidden two grams between his mattress and the box spring.

“And the maid?”

“Does it look to you like the rooms here are cleaned very often?”

We headed straight back to Montreal, taking turns at the wheel, and sniffing coke off a key from time to time. América didn’t say a word. Lévis never tried to find out what was behind it all. He didn’t talk about what Luis had said either, but I think she knew. She didn’t once ask to call him on the way back. Not once.

We arrived at Cindy’s dead on our feet. I think we slept twelve hours straight. The next day we looked into how to get América to Costa Rica. She’d bought a calling card, and she spent her time talking to people in her country. She talked with Cindy, too. I don’t know how they understood each other.

Lévis gave the girl almost all the cash. A thousand bucks. Back where she was going, that would be a lot of money.

The first night, we tied one on with some buddies at the Sainte-Élisabeth. The second night we left América with Cindy again and we both went to flame out the rest of the cash at the Solid Gold. We had three hundred dollars, but Lé wanted to save some money for gas, to get back to the Saguenay.