The room of lost souls
Twenty-thirty hours, in the lost steps room of Berri-Uqam station. I’m with a friend, waiting for another one of his friends. We’re sitting. Coffee is obviously terrible. My friend eats a dry potato flour doughnut. In front of me, the flashy ticket office of the STM and, sitting on the benches, not impatient customers, but haggard beings.
Just ten minutes ago, even more of them did nothing, waiting for boredom, like a ghost, to decide to haunt another wreck. In the donut shop, the employee, rather cute, fake diamond in his ear, small like Robert Redford, is in a bad mood and seems to have eyes sincerely only for me because he looks so much in my direction.
Customers don’t like his derogatory remarks; my friend didn’t like him, whereas I thought he was rather nice. When he asked me at the counter what I put in my coffee, I told him I only wanted coffee. He replied that it would make the company even more profitable. I laughed heartily.
As we became the only customers, he approached us by gently moping and started talking, how much he hated his job, how he should never have left his other job as a clothing salesman. And that if it continued like that, it would be better to sell his body while he was still in good shape (thirty years old). These probably advances that I hastened to divert by suggesting that he could go back to school. Defiant, he replied that he was waiting for a job at Via Rail and that he would rather have $19/hour to serve customers than wipe the ass of the sick. And the passion for doing something you love doesn’t ring a bell?
He wouldn’t answer, his lips suddenly very stiff.
A handsome little man, though. I have to make myself a card. I wish I could have taken a picture of this guy. He would not have sold his body, and I would still have had my very pure pleasure to admire him. I could have naively given him back a little self-esteem. How will this boy end? From what’s he running? Why is he not succeeding? Amazing existence of failures.
For my part, I redeemed myself, as a New Year’s gift, some equipment for my studio. The old one, programmed obsolescence obliges, starts to let go. Everything makes me want to tell stories, including that of my friend who, in need of love for a friend who couldn’t make it, and reluctant to appreciate the boy from the Dunkin Donuts, ate his dry donut in front of me.
