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Le Vieux Europe is a place I used to like to go but not buy anything, only window show. I didn’t have much of a disposable income back then—although I did dispose of it plenty of ways I probably could have done without. I probably could’ve bought more there—but I would just go in and bask in it. Lots of specialty meats and cheeses, an entire wall of coffee beans from around the world behind glass screens and ready to be taken home. European Chocolates. Panettone. It lives up to its name.

 

I’m only in town for a couple more days and so can’t load up on bounty—otherwise, I would be loading up. I would be leaving here with two full bags minimum. But, I’m just here for a sandwich—their deli sandwiches are apparently fantastic. I didn’t know that when I lived in Montreal, and I can’t remember where I heard that since. But they’re famous, I think. So I’ll try them.

 

I go up to the counter, tell them that I’m in town for the week and have been told I have to try their sandwiches. (I don’t know why I keep emphasizing to vendors that I’m only in town for the week, but I do.) I also ask a recommendation on what the must-have sandwich is, because I’m only in town long enough to try ONE. They recommend one with three kinds of meat, I forget the name of it, and that’s what I order.

 

I’m told it’ll take a few minutes to wait, and then I can pay and pick it up from the counter by the exit. I take an espresso to sip in the meantime: I need caffeine after so much running around and getting tired out. Holding the little European cup, I wander around the store sipping and dreaming of what I would buy if I was in town for more than a week. So many years later, here I still am window shopping.

 

Sandwich in hand, I go back to the apartment. I drop all my bags, take off my coat, sit down to eat my sandwich and then finish the movie I’d started the night before. Tokyo Drifter: I’d watched half of it, and regretted starting it when I was so tired. But that’s how I am with movies.

 

I expect to hear from Matvey soon: he’s supposed to arrive sometime today. The exact time had never been defined. I never asked.

 

I hope it’s a little earlier rather than a little later, because I have to head out to Verdun and I had it in my head that I could meet up with him before I go, have something to eatat Else’s maybe, and then I could head out to Verdun and come back. I was operating under the assumption that this would be possible: not something based on evidence, I had just assumed.

 

I finish my movie, get to working on some writing (some of this, I promised people I would finish and post the sections they’re in and I’m messaging them about it as I go), keeping one eye on the clock. But time marches on, and I hear nothing. I read a chapter of my Israel/Palestine book. I hear nothing from Matvey.

 

It’s dark out already; I’m supposed to be in Verdun around seven. I feel silly for having assumed what time he’d arrive by, on no evidence. I’m tired of sitting around in the apartment being antsy about waiting, so I call Anae, because it’s her birthday and she lives in Verdun. I had been planning to go by tomorrow, because I was for some reason under the impression her birthday was on the 6th, but I found out today I was wrong—and ask if I can come by and drop off her gift right then. I’d rather head out now and not sit around here.

 

She says sure. So I get putting my coat back on, and etc.

 

That’s about when Matvey messages to let me know he’s arrived in town.

 

He invites me to join him right then and there and go get some ramen at the place on Rachel I went to the other day. Which I would love to do, but no matter: I’ve made my promises, and those come first. I tell him I’m on my way to Verdun and will see him when I come back as I make my way out the door and start my way down the Main to the Green line that’ll whisk me southwest to that borough. He messages me and says there will be a pub crawl with some friends of his starting around 830. I say great, and I will let him know when I’m on my way back and I can meet them where-ever they happen to me.

 

(No: the ramen invitation comes later. He invited me to that when I was already in Verdun, and I don’t check my phone until I am already on my way back again. But the story seems more elegant if I make it the other way around, doesn’t it? … need to resist that impulse.)

 

I take the metro to de L’Eglise, walk down rue Wellington and pass the restaurants and the shops, the lively neighbourhood I wish I knew a bit better—I think I read somewhere that its one of the hippest streets in the world, even though everything is shuttered before midnight, and I remember reading about it in one of my old books about the city I bought when I was just getting ready to move here the first time—and then turn up what I still remember is the correct street. Their apartment is in a three story plex just before a felled branch, which the footsteps in the snow walk carefully around. (I am not from here: when I walk out again and continue onwards, I step out in the street to avoid it).

 

I go up and ring the buzzer. I check the time—because I now am clearly going to run a bit late, because of this extra stop. That wasn’t the intent. No matter: I wanted to be here on Anae’s actual birthday. I don’t need to stay long.

 

The buzzer ringers back. I don a mask (they’ve been sickish), and start up the stairs. (Steep stairs: I remember making the joke two or three times when I was here last May that I’d fall and die if I ever tried to walk up them drunk.) I make myself tedious, but my point is how fast I felt at home here, like I had at their old place in the Plateau. I get up the stairs. She’s wearing a mask too. I take off my glasses because they fog up immediately with the mask on, say hi to Sean and Jukka as well, set down my stuff and plug my phone in to charge.

 

I take the gifts out of my bag—a three-part poetry collection about Verdun, which I got for her at expozine because she lived there—the circumstances of them moving there had not been the best, and I remember her telling me about how she had trouble feeling settled there. So, I get her Verdun-related art. I also have some books for Sean, because I forgot his birthday this year. Books by my expozine friend, Mary. She’s signed one of them, and when he sees this Sean asks if I really want to give it to him. I say sure, but let me read it whenever I come over.

 

I linger there longer than I probably should, seeing as I’m already running late, but it’s good to see them. Then I continue onwards.

 

It’s around eight now. I have to stop a few doors before his while some people take a picture in front of an outlandishly over-decorated Christmas yard, and then I continue, and I go up the stairs to his number. I remember this door too.

 

It’s a good visit. I linger, we talk for awhile. Eventually it’s time for me to go, and I’m back out and on the way to the metro. Feeling lighter and more able to breathe. But also also extremely hungry. I’m almost angry at myself that I let things get this late without a proper meal: I very badly want to eat.

 

I had been thinking of ubering, but I would only save a few minutes if I make the next train, so I decide not to bother and head for the metro, texting Matvey as I go. He tells me where they are; I check maps, and then send him an ETA.

 

I rush towards station Verdun and then down to the platform—it’s one of those stupidly deep ones, with long corridors and vast spaces traversed by escalator—in the hopes of not just missing a train… and arrive to the gates just in time to see the one I need just leaving. I sit down at the platform and sent Matvey an updated ETA. I sit there watching the timer go down.

 

I felt like I’d barely eaten anything all day: a couple slices of toast with an egg at breakfast; that sandwich, which wasn’t huge, and some figs already hours and hours ago.

 

The metro eventually come. It takes me back, slower than I feel it ought to, back to St-Laurent.

 

(The texture of this day feels so different, as you read it, doesn’t it? Especially since Le Vieux Europe. That’s because I’m writing this weeks after the fact. The finishing touch of polish I’m adding now is from January 2024. … One’s past is so different from one’s near-present, once events really do begin to recede. I feel like I’m reciting events in bullet point more than recording events with any life left in them. Nothing feels organic; its like describing the memory of a reflection.

 

I’ll try my best.)

 

I remember rushing out of the station and then up the slope of St-Laurent as it rose to eventually meet Sherbrooke. I hopped over snow banks, I dodged people. Repeatedly checking the address I’m headed for as I go—a micro brasserie along Prince-Arthur. Slowing only for that and to send and receive texts—to and from Matvey, making sure he was still at the place I was going when I got there, because I knew they might move on on me. He said, around the time I was passing Eva B, that they were about to move on to Bar Suzanne, which left me was trying to figure out where I should be heading.

 

When I get to the corner of Prince-Arthur, I stop and try to find out where he is at that instant. I don’t want to go to the address I have and find him gone, I don’t want to walk ahead and find out he hasn’t left yet. So, I wait. The snow is crunching under my feet and the people are passing around me—I’m looking around at them in case Matvey is one of them, headed up the Main as part of a group of people who he has been having an evening with.

 

He used to live just around the corner from here, on St-Dominique. In an old building, scrappy, I remember it well. I’ve set stories in that apartment. I will show him one of those stories before the night is out.

 

…

 

There’s something uniquely disorienting about trying to latch yourself onto a night out that’s already been ongoing, you know. It’s fine once you’re latched on, but when you’re trying to dock—

 

Still waiting for a confirmation of where I need to go, I start east along Prince-Arthur. I scan the windows, unsure of which window I should be looking into, no matter how many times I look the place up on Maps—of course, I’m rushing to much to look carefully) and then suddenly he’s in one of them.

 

(Prince-Arthur was a place to be at one point, but its sadder now. COVID decimated it, I know, but it was already sagging before that. The real prime was before me: I didn’t see it, nor most of the decline, so I don’t have the sentimental fuel to feel what I know some feel. I never spent much time here when I was actively a Montrealer, but I enjoyed walking along it now and then, stopping nowhere, going to or coming from somewhere else, usually Sherbrooke metro. I did a lot of that when I was here last May, when it was beautiful in the late spring heat even considering all the shuttered storefronts.

 

It had always been somewhere I assumed I’d be spending more time “later,” in the mythical someday of true adulthood I believed in back in those days.

 

I don’t have a lot of specific memories of when or why I passed along this street. Almost none. I have one: I remember coming east through here with my cousin Emily, who was studying at Dawson at the time, after we’d had dinner at the Lola Rosa in the Ghetto. I think that was about the only time we ever met up and really saw each other when we both lived here. I was rushing back towards home because a fight between myself and my boyfriend that had been simmering all day had blossomed over text while we were at the Lola Rosa, and I decided I should be getting back home. I remember that she was rushing too, although I can’t remember what the reason had been. I remember thinking to myself that downtown Montreal at night was the most gorgeous thing in the world, and, having been the cousin who was there first and who could show it up, was proud of being its representative. I reassured her that everything was just fine crossed Carré St Louis and despite the tension in my life felt exultation at being there.)

 

I recognize his face, the glasses on it, and the way he holds himself, but I also recognize his hat. I think it’s the same hat as he had seven years ago, or else it’s an identical hat—he would have replaced it with one exactly the same, if it came down to it. An enormous, fur-lined Russian winter’s hat. It suits him; it matches everything else about him. Seeing him after so many years feelings like seeing him after only a matter of days or weeks. I wave as I come closer, crossing the pedestrian mall, but he doesn’t look up until I’ve stopped the waving and am nearly close enough to tap on the glass. I think I do tap on the glass. He recognizes me. I go inside.

 

He’s with two others, neither of which I’ve met. No introductions there, mostly because it’s last call and so time to leave—I can’t get anything there, and they are done. They’re surprised I actually made it there before they left, and the two of them rib Matvey for having invited me to the place past last call. It’s agreed we’ll head on to somewhere with food, because I haven’t eaten. I say I wish I could have joined them for ramen. Bar Suzanne is re-affirmed as the next stop, and we’re on our way.

 

We start the walk north along the snowbound sidestreets of the lower Plateau. I haven’t walked them at this hour for along as long as it had been since I’d been having a night out with Matvey. A part of me felt like it was back there again, sometime in 2015—but it didn’t, not really, and I couldn’t sustain the thought. I can’t believe the lie now, as I write it. Or… not a lie. More nuanced than that. Some broken thread from then had been reconnected. You could put it that I was more aware than I had been in a very long time that I was still living the same life that I had been.

 

(Matvey Panov: we’d been extremely close friends, when I lived here. We still are, but long distance and more intermittently: we message each other and have good conversations and get along and say we miss each other and should talk more and should see each other again someday. We miss the proximity. He lives in Vermont, now, which seems to fit him like a glove. I met him while he was at the tail end of a Master’s degree he was doing at McGill—he was a friend of a friend at that friend’s apartment, this is how we met—and I was starting my second semester of my undergraduate there. So, there were a few months we were living there at the same time. We clicked fairly fast: he showed me the good restaurants of the Plateau, gave me an idea of what he nightlife here could be like, although I couldn’t afford most of it, and we talked about books and films and beautiful things. We would pick up good wine and beer at deps along the Main. and appear at friends’ apartments. I just realize now that the dep I’m thinking of when I write that is the same dep that’s underneath the apartment I’m staying at for this visit. He moved out of Montreal that summer, following a good farewell party at his apartment near Prince-Arthur, but we kept in touch; we saw each other every time he visited town; I met his mom, when she visited; he developed a friendship with my boyfriend, when we were together, and he stayed with us once. Those were chaotic times, at that end of things. I won’t get into that. We’ve had our ups and downs, like all humans do, but it’s always been important that we keep in touch. Even if it’s not that often. And then just a couple weeks ago, we’d found out we would not only be in Montreal at the same time but we’d even be staying just two blocks from each other. We called it Fate.)

 

While walking, I’m introduced to the two friends. Tim, the Vermonter who drove up into Quebec with Matvey, and then another friend, a local whose name I no longer remember because he parted from us soon after, to go home to bed, and I never saw him again. (If you’re reading this, I am sorry! Hopefully I’ll fill in that blank at the next opportunity.) Matvey and I catch up a little, I get to know Tim a little. At Pine, Tim and I wait for the light a few seconds before Matvey jaywalks (reminding us that he was a New Yorker), and then we follow suit. We pass Else’s, and agree we want to go there some other night. Another block, and we’re there. We turn and go up the stairs.

 

Bar Suzanne is not as quiet as it was the last time I’d been in it, but not quite as busy as it had been the first time. But its busy enough. We go to the bar, sit down at the same spot I’d sat myself that first night. (Which is also, apparently, where Matvey had sat the last time he was there). Tim gets a beer, Matvey gets a cider, and then I follow his lead because I know Quebec makes good cider and I haven’t had any yet this week. (It’s good, consistently about as clear as water and delicious; it’s most of what I drink from here on out.) And even though I’ve been distracted from my hunger, I’m even more starving so I get something to eat. Not a ton, because Matvey mentions that we’ll be going for poutine later and also because this a small plates sort of place anyway. I get different dumplings than what I tried before and a plate of Chinese vegetables. Matvey, though he has already eaten, considers getting oysters. (The man loves oysters—I have never tried them, and he’s been wanting to rectify this for years.) He almost does, but while chatting with the bartender he finds out that tomorrow is all-you-can-eat free oysters day—and so an excited Matvey decides he’ll wait and come back tomorrow. The bartender warns him to shop up early, before opening, because there will be a long line and there are never enough oysters to go around.

 

I also want to come back for that: I do want to try oysters, and this seems like the setting. And he seems like the right person.

 

Once we’ve ordered, I pass Matvey the book I bought for him at expozine. It’s a guide to sex and kink in the Holy City (Jerusalem). The city of his birth, which he loves. He appreciates it—tells me that Jerusalem might be a holy city, but it’s kinkier than its reputation. It sounds like a good place. Unfortunate political situation. “They’re both wrong,” Matvey says. The book is passed to Tim, he flips through it to an interview with someone providing sex ed in Gaza. The book’s a few year’s old; things have changed. I look at the picture of the man and wonder if he’s still alive. Then the book disappears into Matvey’s bag.

 

The food arrives; it is delicious. The dumplings are even better than what I got last time, and the veggies are crispy and perfect. I have that, we stay for a couple more drinks and then settle up, move on.

 

Big in Japan BAR next. (I feel silly writing it like “BAR,” but that’s how they write it. I think I’m going to stop, though. Just now it’s actually all caps like that.) We go in, and it’s not crowded. (It’s somehow always deserted when I go in, and I don’t know why because I’ve seen lines out the front and it often gets crowded once I’m inside. Divine blessing, I guess.) We go deeper in, facing the back curtains--the place does not end in walls, only curtains—and find seats on the opposite end as where I had been before and facing the other way. We can see the door and any and all who enter. Matvey and I both get champagne. Tim, despite Matvey’s urging, gets a beer.

 

We talk more, the three of us, now that it’s quiet enough to really talk intimately. I learn more about life in Vermont; I learn more about Tim, how they know each other. He lives just outside Burlington in a place called St. Johnsbury. I was a little drunk by this point, and it’s nearly a month ago now, so forgive me if details are lacking. I remember them talking about how they are, neither of them native New Englanders, to live in New England. I remember that I brought out my laptop and showed them both the story I wrote set in Matvey’s old apartment. (“Balcony” is the name it’s going by right now. I made it into Gene’s apartment for this draft; in previous drafts, it had been Brandon’s, but I switched him out for Gene so the collection could have better symmetry.) Matvey is impressed: he says he remembers the specific night that inspired the story. I don’t remember a specific night in question, I only remember the space, but I believe him—it was his apartment, after all. I do remember his farewell party, and we talk about that. I mention the pile of garbage that had been under his balcony—it had belonged to his neighbour, he said. I point out the place where I had been sitting when I had met Justin and Diane, which is directly in front of us. It’s been less than a week since then, but it feels like a year.

 

We have a few more glasses of champagne. Tim gets the plate of chocolates that Matvey had recommended me my first night here. Matvey asks if I’ve had a chance to go by the chocolatier’s in Pointe-St-Charles. I say no, and that I don’t think I’ll have time. He’s a little disappointed, but I say next time. We talk a little about Vancouver. He wants to visit, he says; well, I want to show him.

 

The tail end of the night is here behind a veil of inebriation. We exit the place around 2:30 it must’ve been, getting near closing time, and go a couple doors over to Patiti Patata. I point out the apartment I’m staying at as we pass it, feeling pleased about being in such a wonderful spot. We go into the fry shop, my second visit of this trip, and each get a take out poutine with extra curds. Tim gets another pint to have while we wait. I refrain—Matvey has mentioned there’s a bottle of Rhone waiting back at their place.

 

We get our orders, Tim drinks down the rest of his pint, and we start walking down to their AirBnB. A block and a half or so below mine, under the watchful eyes of the Leonard Cohen mural. Not far from where I had mistakenly believed my place was when I’d mixed it up with the parking lot.

 

I was getting tired, but did want to go over for a bit. It’s not often I’m up this late with anything to do or anywhere to be—I wanted to embrace it. We go up and inside, I get a small little tour of the place. Which is bigger than mine, and cozy. I meet Tim’s dog, Maki. A big quiet greyhound. We sit around on the couch (Maki too), and open the bottle of wine, sit around sipping it while watching the British Antiques Roadshow. I am getting tired past the point where I want to move; but I know I need to go, and know I need to sleep—I still have a full tomorrow ahead of me. Nothing definite until evening, but full… plus I do want to start packing and getting ready to check out, and I want to be awake with time to do that. And I remember that I wanted to make that return trip to Wilensky’s. Plus, I wanted to go by Beauty’s Luncheonette. Etc.

 

I need to sleep.

 

So, at about 3:30, I leave. With plans to meet Matvey for the oysters at Bar Suzanne at 5 the following afternoon. He wants to join me for the trip to Verdun to see Anae as well. I’ll fit in another visit to X in the afternoon before that. Go to bed at four, wake up at nine: that’s five hours, just enough sleep and plenty of time for everything. I think about this as I progress along the dark, deserted and snowbound Main and then let myself into the apartment. I sit down and begin to write this. Such a full day that it’ll be the last day of the year before I write this sentence and am finished.

 

(Here we are on the morning on January 2nd, having having taken nearly a month to finish this labour. Forgive the repetitions, the gaps and the inconsistencies.)