Remnants of Old Montreal. Part II

(www.bears.co.nz)

Mr. Skirts lived in his office with a teddy-bear named Peanut. He leased a small apartment on the West Side, but never bothered making it a home. There were showers on every floor of the municipal building, and a cafeteria on the third floor. The soft peanut brown teddy-bear was a friendly face at the end of each night, warmth waiting beneath the covers on the matress below his desk.

The teddy-bear was also a colleague, of sorts; though Mr. Skirts tended to work silently and alone, he sometimes found it useful to verbalize ideas and bounce them off Peanut, a compassionate and attentive listener.

Mr. Skirts returned from the restaurant and eagerly knelt down below his desk.

“We have a new project, my friend!” he announced to his teddy-bear.

“C’est quoi?” Peanut only spoke broken French.

“We’re to resolve some traffic issues. It’s all very mathematical, you wouldn’t understand.”

It was true, Peanut was very bad at math.

“Grrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaa,” Peanut grumbled as he stretched out his arms.

The teddy-bear was slow recovering from his afternoon nap. He rubbed his eyes and scaled up the counter, furry paws kicking frantically as he pulled his weight over the ledge. He stumbled over to the espresso machine and hit the magic red button. Remnants of last night’s double espresso still stained the bottom of his mug. He pushed the mug aside and laid down on his back as precious caffeine trickled directly into his open mouth. When the trickle ceased he pulled out his last Lucky Strike and smoked it on his back, moment of perfection.

“Ah oui, c’est ca,” he mumbled between puffs.

“You’re a ridiculously addicted bear,” Mr. Skirts warned. “You’re going to get cancer.”

Mr. Skirts scooted under the desk, sat crouched and cramped on his mattress and began counting obsessively on his fingers. Peanut eventually joined him, refreshed, awake; he picked up the letter and read meticulously, forwards, backwards, upside down, trying his best to translate the strange symbols into something he could understand.

“It’s more complicated than it first seems,” Mr. Skirts thought aloud. “Impossible to change the size of people’s cars. The auto industry would kill us if we set limits on car ownership. The oil companies would kill us if we set limits on car use. Repainting the parking spaces wouldn’t solve the overall congestion issue. Public transport is already swamped with commuters. … Where to start this math problem, that’s the question …”

“Non, non, non!” Peanut interjected. “Mais la!, c’est une problem philosophique. Donne-moi une minute …”

Peanut scratched the three day stubble on his chin and worked through the problem with his eyes shut. After a few moments he raised his arms and exclaimed, “Oui! Il y’a une solution. Je suis sur. Il faut exploser la ville!”

Mr. Skirts picked up his teddy-bear and shook him vigorously. Peanut felt the espresso unsettle in his stomach.

“Goddman, Peanut! Blowing things up isn’t a solution!”

They both worked silently for the remainder of the afternoon, a white-collar man and his eccentric bear. The two had been inseparable since childhood, but in the past years ideology crept between them as they drifted further and further apart. Mr. Skirts would still cling to Peanut in his sleep, but something of the tenderness they once shared was gone.

Mr. Skirts spent the evening in the Municipal Records Library on the seventeenth floor; he worked his calculator furiously and sketched bell curves in a notebook. Peanut sat on the windowsill; he watched the sun disappear behind tall buildings, and pondered the inevitability of having to bring them all down.