A phone call from Paris.
"Monstre we all really miss you."
Awww....
"Monstre, I need you."
Oh...?
The short form is that a friend of mine made a dumb mistake one drunken evening, and cheated on his girl.
The other woman, got pregnant.
And flipped.
And trundled along to the police station and charged him with rape.
She's not the stablest at the best of times, I'm trying to imagine what that sort of shock would do to her.
An hour later on the phone, and suddenly he's as worried about said poor girl and how hard this must be on her if she really believes it, as he is about his reputation.
Nobody can talk to her right now, not even her closer friends. I only met her once, but I promised to drop her an email.
I wrote her and told her how I remembered that one evening where we sat huddled in the grass and sang old showtunes together.
Maybe she'll remember just enough to breathe.
In the meantime, everytime my inbox bleeps my heart skips in time.
In a year this will be a horrific story, there will either be a child or a miscarriage or the memory of an abortion, there will either be a criminal record to live with and cookies to send to a corrective facility or there won't.
In the meantime, I can hear him hurting.
I spoke to his girlfriend as well. We spoke of indian spices and what I randomly made for lunch, spoke of her friends in Toronto and how one of them might know of work for me.
Then she cried for a bit when her boy went outside for a cigarette, and told me that all she honestly wants
is for him to stop hurting.
She believes in him the way too many people have forgotten how.
I told her that.
Then we spoke some more of the polishness of this neighbourhood.
We spoke of the round streets that I should be blading along more often.
We spoke of the things I would show them when the police allow them to leave the city.
We spoke of the camping weekend that the gang is going on for Thomas' birthday.
She promised to hug each one of them for me.
Everyone needs it.
I'm six thousand kilometres away, and the only thing I can do is remind them to hug each other.
At least there is that.
sigh