Il Fait Chaud
I don’t remember it ever being this hot in Canada. I’ve had to adjust again to this
archaic standard of measurements. Feet, yards, miles and Fahrenheit. I think we stopped
using them up in Canada around 1980. When the British abandoned their own system,
we figured it was time to get sensible too.
It was almost nine in the morning and I spent the night at my girlfriend’s
apartment. She lives in a village called Oak Park, which is directly ten miles west of the
giant buildings that make up the skyline of downtown Chicago.
I stepped outside in a fog. The fog is in my head. I tossed and turned all night. It
was way too hot and too humid to get comfortable enough to sleep. I tried freezing my
sheets and taking a cold shower, but that only helped for a little while. If I slept, it was
fleeting and felt as though I never descended to that deep level where you dream about
sitting on a teeter totter across from Abraham Lincoln. I kept looking at the digital clock
and listened to the ceiling fan make a clicking sound at one second intervals. My
girlfriend slept like an angel in my Québec t shirt with the phrase underneath that reads,
“Je me souviens”, which is I remember my French heritage. She is African-American or
black and I am a blend of French and Irish. I have difficulty sleeping in extreme heat
even if I’m naked and she has no problem sleeping in a t shirt.
The roof of the eighty year old apartment building, is flat and is covered with
black tar and tiny rocks. When the temperature exceeds ninety degrees Fahrenheit, the
roof heats up like a hot plate and makes life on the third floor inhumane. My girlfriend
doesn’t believe in air conditioning. She thinks it ruins the vintage feeling of the
apartment. She tells me constantly that there was no air conditioning in apartments or
homes in the pre-Depression era. I have asked a few people old enough to remember that
era and they told me on extremely hot nights, they would go to Lake Michigan and camp
out near the water. With crime being what it is today, such a thing would not be safe. I
told my girlfriend this and she just shrugged her shoulders. She smiled at me, well rested
and a bit frisky and I told her that I would not be spending the night again until the
weather gets better unless she gets air conditioning. We separated this morning a little
cold towards one another on the hottest day of the summer.
America, just celebrated it’s independence from Great Britain last week and since
then the weather has been beastly. The air conditioning stopped working in my minivan
and so even though I showered less than an hour ago, I already have that not so fresh
feeling.
I checked my voice mail and had three messages before nine in the morning. My
job is to face people who are angry and disgruntled. I work for a developer who buys up
old apartment buildings and converts them into condominiums. My job is to answer
complaints of new owners who have discovered shoddy work.
Call number one. First message was from an irate homosexual named David who
left me a message at 6:15 this morning. If I had not turned off my phone, he would have
been the first voice I heard this morning.
David was able to marry his partner in Boston a few years back and refers to his
partner as his husband. David is a stay at home wife.
“Listen, Luc! I need you to come by this morning and look at the damage to my
walls! I have mold growing in my closet and I am highly allergic to dust and mold. I
have been suffering all night. If this is not taken care of today, I will be spending the
night in a hotel of my choice and I will send you the bill via certified mail. My husband,
who has to work early, was up with me half the night due to my asthma … My walls are
alive with living spores. If I do not hear from you today, I will be going to the village.”
Message two from a trust fund child who has never worked a day in her life and
calls me on a weekly basis to complain about everything. Today it was about noise.
“Luc? This is Mrs. Watkins… Look! Something has got to be done about that
woman upstairs and her two goddamn racing dogs. She owns two greyhounds which she
bought from a society that attempts to save former race dogs. Well I have news for you;
they’re still racing. They chase each other around all night and she is a night nurse and
has no idea what is happening. I have asked her to buy oriental rugs and she just tells me
that she prefers the look of hardwood floors. I’m at my wits end. I’m not getting sleep.
I cannot concentrate during the day and I’ve had problems with migraines and ulcers. I
need to know how you will resolve this.”
Message three. Somebody removed someone’s lock and then took out all of their
belongings from a storage locker in the basement. The man who called happened to be an
attorney.
“This message is for Luc! I have called twice now and the next correspondence
will be through the courts. My belongings are scattered all over the laundry room floor…
Okay… This has to be resolved one way or another… Okay. You were supposed
to mark all the storage lockers and it was not done… Okay. Our board specifically asked
to have laminated placards, 3X3 in size, stating clearly who’s locker is who’s… I need a
call from you today… Okay. I would really appreciate it.”
Um… Okay.
My first stop was at a Jiffy Lube. I stopped there for an air conditioning recharge
and they told me that my system won’t hold the Freon. The smallish blue collared man
with really yellowish teeth and a tattoo on his neck of a spider, seemed almost pleased to
announce this. He looked like a transplant from the deep south and had a twang to his
voice that one finds as soon as you reach Chicago’s southern suburbs.
“My best advice to you is to sell this thing… Better yet, hang on to it. It’s a
collector’s item. They stopped making Plymouth a few years ago. You can fix this up
and sell it in like twenty years,” said the man with a foolish grin as he picked at his
yellow teeth with a toothpick. His hands were very dirty too. I was thinking that a good
strep infection would take the smile off his face.
Now on top of the problem of my vehicle’s incapability to keep Freon, I got into
an accident a year ago and my fan got crunched. On hot days in heavy traffic, I would
have to run the heater on high to relieve some of the heat from the engine. Picture the
nearly hundred degree temperature Fahrenheit and then a heater blowing full blast while
the traffic is dead stopped. I was praying that this would not happen but low and behold
there was a ten foot patch of street being repaired on Harlem Avenue. The cars queued
up for over a mile. When I got up to the spot where they were working on the street,
there was a black man with a shovel while three fat white men stood around watching. I
wanted to scream at them. I was sweating profusely now. The back of my shirt was
soaked and I had wet rings under the arms and a line running down the middle of my
shirt. I was already crabby and it was 9:30 AM.
I stopped at the hardware store and listened to a cashier talk on her phone for
nearly five minutes. She had huge thighs and was wearing polyester pants with an elastic
waist band. I could not imagine being so fat that conventional pants with zippers and
buttons, would not fit. She had a face that was so bloated that her eyes disappeared when
she smiled. She pulled back her hair like a Sumo wrestler and had mutton chops. She
had a pretty strong moustache going on too. I must note that her nails looked flawless
though. She hung up the phone and looked at me as if I had been eavesdropping.
“Is there something you need, sir?”
“Yeah, I could really use some air-conditioning. Do you have any window units
left?”
She laughed and slapped her enormous thigh that looked like two of mine put
together. Her eyes disappeared and the skin under her chin shook like Jell-O. I have to
point out that Americans are the most obese people in the world. We have Tim Horton
donut shops on every corner and yet the people in Canada are not so grotesque. I wanted
to snap at her for being so insensitive and rude. Instead I just looked at her blankly.
“You people never do the smart thing and buy something like this in the winter…
You’ll probably need a shovel during a snowstorm… I think we got a few left but the
BTUs are low. You’re gonna have to sleep right on top of it to stay cool…” she said as
she giggled.
By 10:00 AM, I had to deal with two really ignorant human beings that find
humor in discomfort. I could only hope one day to be nearby in a lawn chair with a six
pack when misfortune hits them. It would bring me great pleasure. It is but a fantasy.
I got to the first building where the homosexual called. He was waiting at the
door with his hands on his hips. His hair was bleached white until it was blue and was
spiked every which way as if squirrels had wrestled upon his head. He had really hip
horned rim glasses that one could tell were just glass, no prescription. He had a smart
assed comment too.
“Were you running in your work clothes? Your all sweated up. Do you want
water or a towel or something?”
“Um… I’ll be okay. Can I see the damage?”
There was a tiny bubble on the ceiling that had a tiny blotch of spores. This spot
was the size of those fifty cent coins with John F. Kennedy’s face on it or a two dollar
double loony coin in Canada. This is what was causing this person to have asthmatic
conditions? There are people living in shacks in seventy percent of the world with no
heat, air-conditioning or in door plumbing and this guy is crying about a spot on the
ceiling. I called the janitor and had him clean the spot with bleach and then called a
heating and air conditioning guy to look at the unit on the roof. The man insisted I take a
bottle water with me and so I did.
Without boring you with the details of problem solving little insignificant things
that mean nothing in the larger scheme of things. I went back to my girlfriend’s
apartment to put in the unit. I carried it up three flights of stairs. I continued to perspire.
I fought with the old window that had probably been painted a hundred times in the past
eighty plus years. I had to hit it with a hammer to get it to open with the humidity .
I placed the unit in the window and held it with my right hand and pulled on the window
which was stuck in the open position, with the other hand. The hammer was on the bed
and I could not reach it and hold the unit in place. I needed another two inches to reach
it.
I kicked the bed until it fell to the floor. As I was stretching to reach it, the air
conditioner started to slip away and fell three floors to the cement path below and broke
in numerous pieces. I didn’t know if I should cry or punch a hole in the wall. I almost
began to cry in frustration. I just lost $200.00. I got downstairs and the janitor was
stupidly looking up at the sky as if a bird possibly shit it out. I walked by as if I didn’t
know what happened. I really wanted to just stop everything I was doing and just go to
the beach.
I got to the car and realized that I had locked my keys in the apartment. I was
really ready to punch the window of my car but instead I asked the janitor to let me into
the apartment. He gave me a bit of a hard time.
“Are you on the lease?”
“No, it’s my girlfriend’s place but I stay with her half the week… You’ve never
seen me before?”
“Oh yeah… Oh yeah… That one girl… On the third floor, right?”
“Right, right. The tall girl of African descent.”
“Right, right.”
Oak Park is overly politically correct. It has the highest percentage of
homosexuals per capita in the country and I think for that reason, everyone is very careful
to not say anything to offend or discriminate. Between two white dudes, saying that
someone is black should not be too difficult. At any rate, I got my keys. The janitor
stood in the doorway and shook his head up and down while making a frown with his
mouth and squinting his eyes. The apartment was spotless.
“Very clean! That’s a nice surprise.”
“They don’t live in trees anymore… They’re much cleaner than they used to be
when they were barefoot in the bush or picking cotton.”
“Oh no! I didn’t mean to insinuate nothing… I’m really sorry sir.”
I felt bad then. This guy was going to spend the rest of his day worrying about
whether or not I would call his boss to report race discrimination. I couldn’t let him think
that was going to happen. He was nice enough to let me in.
“Don’t sweat it, I’m just having a tough day. I just dropped that A/C unit laying
in the courtyard… I have no air-conditioning in my car and I didn’t sleep last night.”
“I have some at one of the other buildings that someone left. I’ll give them to
you… No problem, sir.”
I always feel sort of sad for old men who call me sir. I’m under forty and he’s
over fifty. He should call me kid or son or dude but not sir.
My brother remained in Canada. He lives outside of Toronto and runs the
Zamboni at a rink. He plays hockey six days a week and sits up in the bar above the ice
rink and watches other hockey games. He has a really pretty wife that was his high
school sweetheart. They have a little boy and my brother is so happy. He told me that he
secretly wants his son to play for the Habs ( Montreal ) instead of the Maple Leafs. That
had more to do with the fact that we loved our grandfather. My mother’s parents
lived in Quebec and spoke only French to us. We spent nearly every summer with them
up in a small town called Chicoutimi which is about two hundred miles north and east of
Quebec City. Nobody up there speaks English. My mother got a job after college with
Air Canada since she was bilingual. She met my father in Toronto where she was
working at the time and the rest is history. In any case, I bring up my brother because he
is happy and not hurried. He never went to college and never wanted to. He coaches ice
hockey, plays it and works at the rink. His whole life is hockey and he loves it. His wife
loves it. They live very simple. If my brother were here he would commandeer the car
and drive straight to Lake Michigan. My grandfather, who was exactly like my brother,
would have done the same thing. He loved to fish. He fished everyday after retiring.
Grandpere would wake in the morning and give my grandmere a kiss and say, “Il fait
beau…” and she would say in her grouchy way, “Non. Il fait chaud…” My grandfather
always said it was beautiful and my grandmother would declare that it was too hot. I
found myself mumbling a few times to myself the same words that my grandmother used.
“Il fait chaud.”
I ran around the rest of the day like any other worker ant does. I did my part for
society and worked hard to keep the wheels of the giant machine moving. I dealt with
hornets, squirrels and rodents inside of units. I dealt with mold and dog shit. I mediated
between a woman with two racing dogs and a woman who hates animals. I watched
plumbers unclog drains, toilets and sewers. I went up on hot roofs to find the source of
leaks. Nothing unusual and the same sort of complaints will come tomorrow. The
difference is that on no sleep, it is difficult to face the world. I don’t know what would
be worse, to not sleep or to not eat. I know now know vividly what no sleep is like with a
good dose of frustration.
I finished my day at a condominium board meeting where people without much to
do, agonized over the cost of cleaning the carpeting in foyer versus new carpet. I needed
clothes pins on my eyelids to make it through the hour meeting with people who
averaged eighty years of age. I felt like getting up and saying something very frank.
“Listen! You are very old and have very little time left on this earth. Worrying
about replacing carpeting versus washing it, should be a minimal thing in your lives. Go
to the zoo. Go to a museum. Go see a play. Look for people you used to know sixty
years ago and stimulate your memories with things you haven’t thought about in ages.
Enjoy each day as if it were your last because one day really soon, you will be gone…
But the carpet will remain.”
I didn’t say that. Instead I looked at an old woman who instructed me to get three
estimates for new carpet and three for carpet cleaning and they would discuss and choose
the best course of action. I thought about all the things going on in my life and hoped to
heck that mundane things like carpeting, would never stir passion within me. With global
warming, wars, nuclear proliferation and starvation in the world, how could we be
worrying about carpeting, air conditioning, mold spores, dog shit and storage lockers?
When you don’t have to worry about survival, you can turn your attention to many things
that mean very little.
I was too tired to go to my apartment across town. I was going to take a cold
shower and go to sleep before my body heated up. I walked in to my girlfriend’s place
and there was a window air-conditioning unit in the living room and another in the
bedroom. It was in the sixties in the apartment with very low humidity. The janitor found
two units and installed them for me, free of charge and without killing them in the
courtyard below. It was the nicest thing to have happened to me all day. I owed the guy
a huge thank you and a gift card to Starbucks or a local restaurant.
I went to bed that night and my girlfriend put on flannel pants and socks to go
with my Quebec shirt. She pulled the comforter up to her chin around her head and
poked her nose out. I laid there in my hybrid underwear that is neither a boxer nor a
brief. It is neither 100% cotton nor 100% spandex. I laid there smiling ready to sleep
like I had not slept in a long time because I had not. I was almost excited. My girlfriend
whispered to me.
“It’s cold…”
I whispered back in French.
“Non. Il fait beau…”
