Monday, October 31, 2005

Saint Martin Caballero, we give thee thanks.

The warm, fuzzy feeling you get while acting as a good samaritan can quickly be overshadowed by threat of death.
Or so my good friend C and I discovered the other morning while having coffee on my porch in Parkdale.

A slight woman with a large dog appeared in my driveway and called for help.
A- "Can you guys help me? I'm leaving my boyfriend because I think he's going to beat me! Help me!"
B & C- "Certainly!"
A- "I'm waiting for a cab. Just stay with me while I wait for a cab--he doesn't like other people around."

We dropped our coffee and went to her aid streetside, though I felt no self-respecting abuser would try to hit a woman with such a big, man-hungry dog like hers.

B- "Where's your boyfriend?"
A- "He's in my apartment--I'm afraid he's going to do something to me--he's got a tomahawk!"
C- ". . .a what?!"
A- "You know, it's like an axe on one side, and a hammer on the other--"
B- "A tomahawk?!"
A- "Yeah."

I felt a sinking feeling. A feeling I get, in the pit of my stomach, that reminds me of all the times my mother told me Toronto was a big, dangerous, scary place in which I would surely have my life taken from me in a violent, un-Godly way.

C- "What's your boyfriend's name?"

Good. We would at least have something to scream while he removed our scalps.

A- "Gord."

Gord? Gord:The Last of the Mohican? Gord sounds more like some dude who would be carrying a rolled up copy of the Toronto Sun as a weapon.
I made a quick glance at my recycling bin to take stock of wine bottles that could possibly be used to slow Gord's progress on his tomahawk rampage. As usual, there were plenty.

A- "I'm leaving him today. I don't have any homework due tomorrow, so I'm leaving him today. Can I have a smoke?"
C- "Sure."

As C passed her a smoke, she grabbed his hand, looked at it, and said:
A- "You're an actor."
She grabbed my hand, while C stood dumbstruck, and said:
A- "You're an actor, too. He's the successful one."
Dead on. We stood completely speechless. C is an actor. C is much more successful than I.
C- "How did you know that? From our soft hands?"
A- "I just felt it."

In Parkdale it may not seem like too grand a leap of faith to identify two handsome-ish, well-groomed young men as actors; I would, if playing mystic, be more likely to guess 'singer-songwriter' more often than actor, mind you.

The first taxi pulled tentatively towards us, wound his window down, and told our friend that he would not accept the dog in his car. Her response was quite out-of-step with the occupation she had just told us she was training to enter: social worker.
A- (to the cabbie as he sped away)"Fuck you, you Muslim asshole! My dog is likely cleaner than your dirty cock!"(to us)"It's likely true, too, Bastard."

The second taxi wasn't far behind, and as our mystic friend who was taking the first step to safety, she turned to C and told him that she would see him later--paused, with a glance skyward--and said, "Christmas. She you at Christmas." Then, in an effort to help her dog get in the taxi she kicked him in the ass, and rode out of our lives as quickly as she had entered. No sign of Gord and his tomahawk; but a little unsettled by her show of some 6th sense.

For the record, neither of us were wearing 'Les Mis' tee shirts.

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