Janine

Janine wore self-made gingham dresses and thin silver bangles that moved up and down her wrists. 

One day, when my parents were out, she turned up at my house with pizza and we talked about stuff. We got on to the subject of Mike and her partner Ed for a while. We talked about the previous summer when Mike and I had driven to Montreal to meet her when she was with Ed and Mike had really wanted to impress her. He really fancied her, despite the fact that Ed was there. 

He had brought along an expensive green liqueur of some kind in his small black Toyota, but things had not gone according to plan. I should tell you that Janine was of the same cultural group and age as Mike, but I'd had a sense that our drive to Quebec was doomed from the moment we set off.

Janine used my telephone to ring someone. I think it was her dad or her mum.

"Yeah. Okay. Just leave it and I'll deal with it tomorrow. I'm at a friend's house. Okay. Yep. Good night."

"Are you close to your family?" I asked, sitting awkwardly on the other side of the dining table. I tried to make my question sound casual.

"Dunno. What does close mean?" Her bangles moved around as she reached for the pizza box. I loved it when people asked questions about the meanings of words, so I sat back and observed. 

Janine had slightly dreaded hair and her eyes seemed not  to meet yours when you were talking to her. She sat a bit hunched - a compact sitter with her red gingham dress and Rajistani bag nearby with mirrors sewn into it. She was a cool dresser. 

"I guess we communicate alright." her ringed fingers fished for a slice, "but we don't always agree on stuff."

I admired her jewelry and poise. I thought she was as insolent with her parents as I was with mine. Did they fight? Were we alike? Was this a sign of our being of the same tribe? I trembled. Then the terrible reminder of our age differences crashed in on me. Did I seem tame to her? I don't know what I did, maybe squirmed and tried to maintain a smirk while she ate her pizza sphinx-like across the dining room table, all jaw and no eyes. 

"What do you want to do?" she said.

I was afraid to say. Words for initiating a sexual encounter escaped me, and I thought for a chilling moment that my inability to speak properly meant I was frozen. What the hell?! My parents weren't back for a while, but my insecurity willed them to be there. I wasn't ready. She was wearing Patchouli. 

"Uh."

"C'mon - let's drive to St. Jacobs."

"Uh, I'm not..."

"Come on, let's check out the millrace." 

She had a car of course, and that made me admire her ever more. The independence, the authority. I thought then of Ed, who seemed to be the master of all situations cool and hypothetical to me at that moment.

The summer before, Janine and Ed had done a cross-Canada drive which included the maritimes. They'd had to rough it at times, sleeping in the small blue Honda, eating just a loaf of bread. I imagined sleepy careless days, lots of hitch-hikers and adventure. The stuff adults did when they were old enough to get away with it, but young enough to enjoy the freedom. I wanted to be an Ed somehow.

So,the previous summer, the other guy Mike in his queer Gothy way had concocted the idea that Janine liked him. There once might have been something there, a date or two, I don't know. I didn't exactly trust his chain-smoking Goth logic which reeked of K-W. He was hell-bent on sweeping her off her feet and had proposed - it must have been one night we were listening to Nitzer Ebb in my room - that we rock up there unannounced and find her. 

He was stupidly infatuated. However, knowing this wasn't going to get in the way of a few days' partying in Montreal with a free ride thrown in, so I said yes. I'd guessed I'd keep Mike company - be his wing man, sort of.

When he picked me up in Waterloo Town Square parking lot, he already looked disheveled.

We listened to Ministry and Front 242 all the foggy way to Quebec. He kept turning it to full volume and relentlessly smoking, so we didn't talk too much and shared cigarettes as well as some of the driving.

This was my first time meeting Janine. When we got there, I was pleased that another extra person was around, a Montreal punk who skateboarded and we rapped for a bit. She had a fish living in her sink that was miraculously still alive after her and Ed's long trip. The flat was comfortable and I couldn't believe anyone lived a life like that.

Sagacious Ed came along and suggested we get a few flats of Laurentide, the low-cost tinned beer, and head out to a river to go swimming.

With the skater Guy, Ed and Janine, I was having the time of my life but Mike was starting to show signs of strain. He could see the chance of him sharing Chartreuse with the object of his affections in anything like a romantic setting waning fast.

The river was well away from the city, more in a suburban area that was very leafy. We all stripped down to our underwear except Mike who perched up on a rock like an indie gargoyle and watched us. I can't swim but tried to cross the river anyway and came back quickly. The beer went down fast, and we walked through some allotments to get back to her flat.

That night, Mike and I dossed on Janine's spare room floor. I could tell he wanted to leave asap. It had gone beyond goth and cigarettes - Mike's soul was falling out.

Next day, my buddy Mike sort of evaporated. He said he wanted to go somewhere and took off. I accompanied Janine to a second-hand shop where she bought an old treadle sewing machine and humped it into the back of her blue car. She was going to make her own clothes. None of this surprised me.

That night, Mike and I drove back to K-W, him smoking relentlessly and determined not to stop for any breaks. It was foggier than before and we had to crank the tunes to stay awake.

He dropped me off in Waterloo Town Square parking lot, dishevelment a permanent feature on him now. We didn't speak for a long time afterwards and I sensed that he was wounded.

Now I was walking with Janine along the towpath of St. Jacobs. When we walked, we walked neither close nor far away from each other. Once, we had hugged but never kissed. She had said then that I gave good hugs. I didn't know what that meant but I didn't think it meant we were going to have sex.

It was clear and bright from the moonlight as we picked and slid our way along. Joking about Mike, I felt a bit bad for my little betrayal. The blackness of the branches around seemed like a canopy. I was glad we were there and we were friends for that spontaneous moment.

As we ended up behind some sticks of shrubs and looked through into a well-lit clearing, we squatted and looked in silence - like two ice-fishermen, the light shining off the snow and I trusted her reticence. Just sat there like that for a long time without saying anything. I didn't need to be home yet.