The road trip was my idea. There was no real destination, just a direction: east. I had a vague idea about recreating the vacations of my childhood, the long days spent in the backseat listening to my father cursing out my absent mother as we drove closer and closer to the ocean which would make everything alright again. Not my most cherished memories but ones that had been swirling around in my sewer-mind since Anne left me just over a month ago.

I’m not sure why Sarah agreed, but seeing as how I don’t drive, she was an integral part of a plan put together after a few too many double vodkas.

I hadn’t been this far east since I was a kid and Sarah had never been past Montreal. She was a Toronto girl, Rosedale pedigree with all the perks that go along with that including Daddy’s car, cottage and left over cash. We had met in University, lived in the same student slum and studied French New Wave and CanLit together.

She was a beautiful girl, if a bit aloof, hard to read. Her face was saved from being too pretty by a bump on the bridge of her nose, which, like the gap between her otherwise perfectly straight, white teeth, gave her character, and made her far more interesting than she would have been without it. And she was good. A good person who saw good in people and somehow never became disillusioned when that wasn’t the case. Nothing serious had ever developed between us except for her motherly instincts when it came to me.

From the beginning, I was never her type. She preferred her men a lot more oblivious, and probably a little taller, maybe blonder. She dated a series of Ken dolls while we were in University but none of them ever stuck. None of them had anything on Sarah. She’d never really met anyone who could live up to her. Still, she watched over me like a mother hen. Especially when she found out my own mother was long gone. I remember the look on her face when I told her that. It was obvious from that look that sex with Sarah was going to be permanently off the table. A look like that can take the sex out of anything.

Anne was the first woman who didn’t give me that look when she found out about my mom. She got it, saw it for what it was, a part of the repertoire, a little black spot barely worth noticing. So she ignored it and it went away. Like that. And then she went away, but those two things have nothing to do with each other besides both being a very strong lesson in the limitations of denial.

We left Toronto early to avoid traffic on the 401, which was more of Sarah’s positive thinking, because that stretch of freeway was never empty, and on the Friday before a long weekend I knew we would be sitting at a standstill for the better part of the morning. As we moved at a steady crawl, Sarah’s arm draped out the side of the window and tapped the side of the car. She had her aviator sunglasses on, the ones that made the world look rosy and good.

I watched her quietly from the backseat where she thought I was sleeping off my hangover. I could see a small mole on her neck that I hadn’t noticed before. I was trying to work out how we had gotten here, if I had made any promises, if maybe I was somehow making a move on her without even realizing it. The night before I had drunkenly called Anne from the bar, said some things that I knew I would regret when I eventually remembered them. Sarah found me crouched by the payphone and told me I needed to get out of there and she would drive me. I thought she meant it was time to go home, but then here we were, heading east.

She caught my eye in the rearview mirror and smiled, barely moving the muscles in her cheeks. Her face was often unreadable, she kept all emotion out of it and it was hard to know what kind of judgments she was making about me behind her bland expression. I felt guilty, like I had been caught out leering at her and I was some pervert in a tan trench coat.

"You’re awake."

"Yeah," I pulled myself up and rested my arms on the passenger seat.

"I was just thinking about when you called me." Sarah adjusted her seatbelt so it sat perfectly between her small breasts. The strap of her tank top had slipped and she straightened it again to cover her bra. "I didn’t even know it was you at first."

I winced. This was becoming one of her favourite stories – how we had reconnected, how I had reached out for her when I was at my lowest point. It wasn’t one of my proudest moments and every time she brought it up it felt like she was doing it to put me in my place. Not that she would do that, but it stung to be talked about, even in the past tense, as a crying, cockless, helpless child. Who would let a woman turn him into that?

Sarah sighed and continued. "There you were. I mean it had been five years, right? And you call in the middle of the night and it turns out you were only ten minutes away that whole time. We probably passed each other on the street and didn’t even notice."

Again, it felt like a swipe, but not important enough to bring up directly, obviously, so I didn’t need to repeat the apologies of the past month about why I had drifted out of her life. I didn’t have any answer besides the fact that I was with Anne, not her, and less generously, that she hadn’t come to mind.

"I was the first person you called. That means a lot, Robbie."

Something in me felt contrary. I can get that way around too much kindness and attention. She was creating her own little mythology around the fall and rise of Robbie Barret, a fairy tale of sorts and it needed to stop. Not that her version would be wrong, it would probably even paint me in a far kinder light than I deserved, but the whole thing, the break up with Anne and what happened afterwards and everything since, it was mine. Not hers.

"No. You weren’t the first."

Sarah raised a single eyebrow above her aviators. "That’s what you said."
"Well, I’m sorry but you weren’t."

She scratched the mole on her neck as if it was a pesky fly and then pressed her palm against the red scratches on her skin.

"Well who was it then?"

"It just wasn’t you. That’s all you need to know."

"Hmm." She wasn’t convinced.

The truth was almost too humiliating to say out loud. My whole body clenched against saying it.

"Her mother, okay? I called her mother."

"Oh no. You didn’t. Why?" Sarah stared at me passively. She wasn’t blinking and wouldn’t look away.

I slapped her arm and flopped back into my cave in the backseat. "The road, Sarah, watch it."

"Seriously?" She swung herself around in her seat and interrogated me through the rear view mirror instead.

"I wanted to tell her first. She always liked me." I tried to say it like it made sense, that it wasn’t an odd thing to do. Faced with a three line note from Anne and an empty apartment, I really had no idea what to do at the time, but calling her mother seemed a good a choice as any. I thought she deserved to know what her daughter had done, maybe even take some responsibility for it in a weird way.

"Oh, of course," Sarah said. "But she already knew, right? Anne would have told her."

"You women can’t keep anything to yourselves. I have no idea what the fuck she told her. She hung up on me before I could say anything."

"I’m sorry."

"So, you were second, not first."

"Right."

Traffic began to move again.

We stopped somewhere in Quebec. The town’s name was unpronounceable, but it had all the usual amenities we had come to expect from the villages lining the TransCanada in this part of the country – the obligatory cinderblock strip club with blacked out windows and matching run down motel, the empty mall and the Mom and Pop Italian diner complete with tarpaper, faux brick front. The only sign of life was a few cars parked in the strip club’s lot and the old woman at the motel’s front desk who took our money and frowned at me when I tried to use my grade school French to thank her.

I threw my old duffel bag on the bed and flopped into the room’s single chair. From the diagonal striped bedspread and drapes to the matching wood veneer furniture, the room was frozen in 1973, and added to the feeling of déjà vu I had been floating on all day.

"Dad always stopped in New Brunswick." I picked up a paper-wrapped glass next to the ancient bulbous television. "He hated the god-damn Quebecois as much as he loved the Linkletter Inn."

I closed my eyes and recited from memory with my best Newfie accent for effect. "Fourth exit after you cross the border. Just before Woodstock proper. You can’t miss it."

Sarah was digging through her bag, pulling out perfectly folded t-shirts and jeans, setting them aside. She seemed agitated. "So you’ve said. But this is fine, right? I’m just too tired. Anyway, the Linkletter might not even exist now. It’s probably a parking lot."

"Oh right, and they’d keep this museum open and knock down a place with an in-ground pool and mini golf? Makes perfect sense."

"Well, what do I know, Robbie, it is New Brunswick, maybe they aren’t as kind to their national monuments."

She was definitely tense. I pulled a bottle of Jack Daniels from my bag and held it out to her. "One for the ditch?"

She pulled her running shoes from her bag, and began working at the laces. Running was her thing. Back in University she was the kind of girl who would do fifty sit-ups after the sin of eating a single Oreo cookie and then run ten kilometres out of guilt. Sure it kept her thin, and I had no complaints about her body, but the voice in her head that made her do it was an asshole who could not be reasoned with.

"I thought you said you were tired."

"We’ve been sitting in that car all day. I need to move." She bounced on her toes and shook out her arms. Somehow she had changed in front of me without revealing anything. She had shrouded her naked body in an old t-shirt and manipulated her bra and shorts underneath it. The t-shirt had a Rosedale Cemetery logo on the front. I recognized it immediately. I had given it to her years ago when she had referred to my smoking as a death wish. I had stenciled the words "You are here X" on the back.

"Just watch out for the big trucks." I dug around in my bag and pulled some cigarettes. I waved the pack at her so she could see what I was doing. "And hurry back. I’m hungry."

"You should join me." Her arms were folded across her chest. Her eyes flitted quickly, maybe nervously, across the two double beds and then she turned her back to me.

"Crisse de Tabarnak!" I poured some Jack into my glass. Day of rest, Sare, okay?"

Sarah was marching in place at the open door. She rolled her eyes at me, and then glanced down at her watch. "Your French is getting better already. You’ll be ordering fancy drinks in no time."

***

With an hour on my hands, there were two options. Sit on the orange plastic lawn chair and watch the sun set behind me or wander over for a drink in a blacked-out room in the company of naked women and air conditioning.

The club was called Panthers, which, it turned out is the same in French and English. The usual weightlifter types were hanging around the corners and the exits and a dancer prowled the stage in a leopard print catsuit, so there was some truth in advertising. I settled into a seat front and centre.

The darkness of the place pulled me in. The catwoman with her patent leather heels and breasts like helium balloons pointing to heaven, swayed and gyrated directly in front of me. She smelled of coconut and her skin sparkled green and gold under the lights.

I lost track of time, I lost track of the watered down drinks. I began to think the dancer, who was amazingly flexible, looked a lot like Anne. Not a good sign.

"Excusez." My waitress was back with more drinks. Her name was Monique and she had been flirting with me all night. She was small and compact with black hair done up in a ponytail like "I Dream of Genie". She wore lots of make up but still came out looking more like a kindergarten teacher than someone who spent most nights selling drinks in a windowless cinderblock. I liked her. It had gotten to the point where she played with her hair and managed to touch me somewhere, my arm, my leg, every time she walked by. Her tips were getting bigger with every order and in return she spoke to me in one word sentences.

With a crooked smile, Monique touched my wrist and said. "Votre femme. A la porte."

I looked back at Anne the stripper. "Femme? Non, Monique. Ici la femme." I pointed at the woman’s ass on the stage in front of me as she bounced in a perfect splits. I grinned at Monique and patted the chair beside me. "What are you doing after work?"

She sat down and shook her head. "Non, non. Elle vous attende. Elle est faschee."

"Fasche?" I couldn’t remember what that meant. "She’s fat? I blew out my cheeks and curved my hands out in the air above my stomach. Monique laughed and shook her head again.

"Non," She scowled and scrunched up her face and wagged her finger at me. "Faschee."

"You’re beautiful when you’re angry, Monique." She shook her head again and seemed to turn a little pink. I took her hand and she tried to pull me out of the chair. "Vite. Afore she catches you." She tugged on my sleeve again and this time I rose to my feet.

"That’s very good English. Vous est tres belle, tres, tres belle." I slipped my hand around her waist and she secured it there with one hand and put her other arm around me, as she marched me to the back of the room, away from the fache espouse at the door, who could only be Sarah, back from her run and pissed off.

Monique stopped at door marked "Prive". She pulled my hand off her waist and laughed a little before she leaned forward and kissed me. She looked at me slyly and kissed me again, longer, deeper. She pushed me into a backroom which happened to be a dressing room. Three women sat nearly naked smoking cigarettes and drinking cans of Pepsi. I automatically covered my eyes and the room filled with laughter. When I opened them again, I apologized in my bad french. Monique giggled behind me. The women eyed me up and down and spoke as if I wasn’t there.

"Regarde le timide."

"English"

"Tabernak."

"Il est beau, cependant."

"Oui"

Monique pushed me forward some more. She grabbed a cigarette from one of the women, who playfully swore at her but didn’t seem to mind. She took my hand again and walked me to another door, this time it led outside where the sky was now completely purple.

Propped beside the door was an old black leather couch. Monique jumped on it and I followed her.

"Votre femme," She pushed her fingers under my t-shirt and rubbed my chest. I kissed her and we fell down on to the couch both of us breathing heavy. She turned her face away to keep me from kissing her and grabbed my chin in her hand playfully. "Your wife." The way she said it, it sounded more like a turn on than an accusation. She said it a few more times, like a mantra, teasing.

"She’s not my wife. She’s just a girl."

"Tres belle."

"Not as belle as you."

She got on top of me and slipped the straps of her shirt off her shoulders. She kissed me again and bounced on my lap. My hands slipped into her hot pants but she wouldn’t let me fuck her. She just kept shaking her head the whole time smiling, laughing and making little sounds that, even though they weren’t words exactly, still sounded French.

"When are you done work?" It was a stupid question but I couldn’t think of anything else.

Monique shrugged her shoulders. "This is my first time."

"What? With me?"

She laughed and put her hand over her mouth to stop the sound. "Non, non. At Panthers, it is a new job." She shrugged again. "I’m not sure?"

I leaned forward and kissed her again. There was something familiar about her. I needed to see her naked. I needed to jump up and down on the motel mattress with her and then bring her on the road with us, take her to New Brunswick and then Nova Scotia and eventually Newfoundland if Sarah’s driving would get us that far. There was no logic to the plan but nothing I had ever done had sounded any better.

"You should come with me." I pretended to hold a steering wheel in my hand. "I want you to come with me."

Monique sat up and looked at me like I was crazy. She kissed me again and without a word walked back to the door of the club.

"It’s okay, I’m not crazy. I’m serious, really." I knew I sounded nuts, I couldn’t think of how to sound any more normal to her. Speaking French would only have made me sound even crazier. "I just want you to come away for a while, like a week maybe and then we’ll come back and you can go to work. We’ll have fun, we’re going to the ocean. We can make love on the beach." I decided to try French anyway. "L’amour sur la plage."

Monique gave me another crooked smile. She opened the door wide and the music from the club filled the air around us. She pointed behind me."Votre femme."

I turned around and Sarah was standing there with her hands on her hips. Her face was disguised in shadow. I turned back to Monique.

"Not my wife. Non." I stepped closer and propped the door open with my shoulder. "An adventure, Monique. Have you ever been to the ocean? Tomorrow morning." I kissed her neck before she pulled away and walked into the building. She turned and waved once and then disappeared back inside the dark club.

***

Sarah locked herself in the motel room and even the offer of fresh pizza from the Italian restaurant across the street didn’t phase her. I leaned my ear against the door and listened but everything was quiet. The only noise I could hear was the sound of Sarah’s electric fan. She couldn’t sleep without it.

"I’m sorry, Sare. I lost track of time. I’m sorry. Open the door. I’m cold."

The door opened slightly and Sarah peered out over the chain. Her eyes were puffy and red from crying. The sight of her that way was a shock. I had never seen her in any state of distress before. I wasn’t prepared for bruised eyes and hateful looks. Obviously, I had let her down one too many times now and this was the result. I couldn’t look her in the eye, it was too hard.

"Sare."

"I waited for two hours."

"I know, I’m sorry. Let me in. I’ve got pizza. I’m really sorry."

Finally, she opened the door. She was still wearing the Rosedale Cemetery t-shirt. I was getting a good view of the back of it as she refused to look at me. The marker had faded but you could still see the imprint. "You are here." And where was that exactly? Not where Sarah wanted me to be, that’s for sure.

"And then you wouldn’t even come out. I had to chase you down in that place. I could hear those women laughing at me. My French isn’t that bad. I know what they were saying about me."

"I had too much to drink. I’m sorry. Here. Have something to eat." I held out a slice of pizza and she took it from me. Our hands touched and I tried to make it mean something, but she pulled her hand away like I had burned it and started crying.

"Jesus, Sarah, I’m sorry. Next time I’ll stay in the room. Okay?"

"And then you fucked her. Why the hell did you have to do that?"

That caught me off-guard. "Shit, Sarah." I sat down next to her and waited for her to stop crying. "

Finally, she looked up at me through her hair. She took a deep breath and it came out of her again, ragged and heavy. "I was waiting for you."

I stroked face and tucked her hair behind her ear. "You don’t want me, Sarah."

She laughed at that and then put her face in her hands, another sigh and she seemed to be coming back to herself. She took my hand and held it firmly next to her leg.

"And you want her? What’s wrong with me, Robbie? What’s so wrong with me, huh?" She looked at me blankly. "You know I love you, right?"

Now it was my turn to put my head in my hands. "My fucking wife just left me."

"I’ve been here for you."

"Where? Here? I don’t need a goddamn caretaker, Sarah. I can take care of myself. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. Christ, you wouldn’t even let me kiss you last week and now, now, you want to fuck?"

That unreadable expression was back again, joined by red eyes and blotchy skin. Her cheeks were still wet. She leaned into me and kissed me. So I kissed her, as hard as I could, and it felt like a punishment. I kissed her again and our teeth connected. For a second I was a little kid waiting to get his hand slapped for touching what he’s not supposed to. She removed her t-shirt and then mine and pressed her breasts against me. Our bodies felt good so close together, the way she looked at me, the softness of her and the sadness of the whole fucking situation. I closed my eyes and her skin felt just about like anybody else’s would. Her kisses weren’t so different than Anne’s or Monique’s or anyone else. I had thought somehow, because it was her, it might be different, but it wasn’t.

In the morning, she was quiet. She didn’t say anything about the night before. She changed into her running gear in the bathroom and was preparing for her morning run by six am.

"So, I think we should be getting back to Toronto today." She leaned into her stretch, pressing her knuckles against the mauve carpet. "I’d like a few days before I go back to work."

Sarah opened the door and there, curled up on the walkway half asleep, with a pink knapsack for a pillow, was Monique. She stretched herself out and smiled sweetly up at both of us from the ground. "Allo. Bonjour, mon amour."

I immediately bent down and kissed her. She tasted like cinnamon toast and rubbed her face into mine like a sleepy cat. I had the sudden urge to lay down there with her on the pavement. "La mer," she whispered and caught hold of my hand.

Sarah gave me a quick look but her face betrayed nothing. She nodded politely at Monique and quickly stepped over her.

I followed her into the parking lot and watched her run slowly down the old highway. When she reached the fork in the road, she hesitated for a moment, bouncing on the spot, before she made her choice and headed North, away from town, back toward the TransCanada Highway, back the way we had come.