Sidequest pt. 1 – The Object

The pillars of a highway overpass cast pale blueish shadows on the Montreal streets beneath it — long bars of cool darkness in the yellowish-orange morning light. The square pillars are half-covered in colourful graffiti. Some of them are cracked, too, cement chipped and broken off, revealing the metal reinforcements within. Attached to the side of the overpass, a wide screen displays the time as well as some weather and traffic predictions (in both French and English) for the absent pedestrians below.

A young punk rides a rusty old bicycle, speeding through the shadows under the overpass. Her skinny legs pedal steadily to keep the bicycle moving — faded jean shorts, torn leggings underneath, and scuffed combat boots with silvery star stickers on the heels. The front wheel is a tad crooked with a visibly-patched tire; it spins with a relentless metallic ‘TICK-TICK TICK-TICK TICK-TICK…’

On the corner of a nearby street, a homeless older woman, in a long coat and long multi-coloured skirt with pants underneath, is pushing her shopping cart full of plastic bags, cans, and bottles. The shopping cart is rusty too. Attached to it with a few zip-ties, a small wind turbine spins slowly in the breeze. Connected to it is a battery pack of some kind, and plugged into that is a smartphone with a cracked screen. Music, barely audible, dances through the air around the homeless woman.

When she sees the punk girl approaching, the woman smiles and waves. Her round face seems less lined as she smiles; she is more middle-aged than elderly, tanned skin with smudges on her cheeks. Her hair is dark, in two braids, one on either side of her face. There is a four-coloured medicine wheel pin over the left breast pocket of her coat.

“Allo Judy!” she calls out to the girl.

The bicycle hisses in a muffled ‘SHHRRIIIHHHH’ as hands in overlong sleeves squeeze the breaks and the vehicle comes to a halt.

The girl on the bicycle has short black hair, a long plain face, a small round nose covered in freckles, and washed-out makeup around her eyes – she seems to have slept in it. She is wearing a roller derby-style helmet with something scribbled on the side of it, the aforementioned overlarge sweater over a fishnet t-shirt, and a backpack. She smiles awkwardly.

“H-hey… Hi, Sheena.”

Sheena’s head bends over the cracked-screen smartphone in her hands but her eyes peer up at the girl with a mischievous smile. She taps the screen and the music stops.

“Ton show last night – le fun?” she ask in a broken English, heavy with Quebec French. She leans on her shopping cart, still smiling with half-moon eyes.

“Yeah. Everyone did good,” Judy replies, rubbing at her tired eyes (further smudging her makeup). She often volunteered at local festivals and shows — free food and good music was worth a late night sometimes. “So, em… good hull this morning?” She herself seems to be carrying very little by comparison. Her backpack, decorated with marker-drawn doodles, seems mostly empty: its main pocket is half-open and there is nothing inside. The bicycle has a blue milk crate tied to it at the back, also empty save for a dented metal water bottle.

“Ah, pas pire so far. It’s Sunday, alors… lots of beer bottles from last night, t’sé?”

“Aw, good. I should get started on that too. Gonna go meet up with the gang.”

“Ah, dans c’cas là, I have a tip for you…”

…

Half an hour later, in a completely different neighbourhood, Judy rides up to the steps of a condemned apartment building with a graffitied stone railing and boarded up windows where three younger street punks have been waiting for her — two teenage boys (a little younger than Judy) and a girl no more than eight or nine years old. One of the boys is wearing a t-shirt with the logo of a classic rock band on the back, the other, a long sleeved shirt with dark and light grey horizontal stripes. The girl wears a short silvery ballet skirt over a pair a jeans, a puffy yellow hoodie, and aviator goggles on her head (doing their best to hold back the mess of her light brown hair). She waves to Judy as she approaches on her bicycle.

Judy halts in front of the building, signaling for them to hurry up and join her.

‘Someone’s posted on the Network that a bunch of electronics got dumped on the curb when a company moved out of town…’ Sheena had said. ‘If you get there ben vite, you can probably find some good stuff.’

And so, soon enough, Judy and her friends are racing at high speed down a busy main street, bright billboards flashing by on either side of them. The girl rides on the bicycle seat behind Judy, while the two boys share a scooter being towed by the bicycle with a sort of magnetic bungie cord. The girl and the boy with the rock band t-shirt are laughing at the speed and the feeling of the wind in their hair, while the boy in the striped shirt seems nervous that they might crash into something. But Judy is doing all the work, face tense and sweaty with effort and determination.

…

The gang eventually stops abruptly in front of a large pile of electronics (including a satellite dish and a few broken computer monitors and television screens) sitting unattended on the overgrown grass in front of an abandoned warehouse.
“Awesome!” the girl exclaims. She ceremoniously plants an improvised flag in the grass: hand-drawn, with crossed bones, stars, and a rainbow. “I claim this here booty for the Space Magic Pirates!” she proclaims, obviously delighting in her choice of words.

Meanwhile, the rest of the gang begin rummaging through the pile, looking for reusable parts and items. The boy in the striped shirt cleans off the satellite dish with his sleeve. The other boy throws a remote control dismissively over his shoulder. Judy sorts through a stack of CD-roms.

After an hour or so, Judy finds an intriguing object: a glass ball connected to a piece of solar paneling by a round metallic frame with some wiring sticking out from under it. The glass catches the late morning light and shines, reflecting the light onto her clothes. Among the usual bickering dialogues of her friends — a ‘Careful, that looks sharp,’ from the striped-shirt boy followed by a sarcastic ‘Yes, moooom,” by the other boy — Judy holds it up, puzzled.

Almost immediately, though, the girl takes notice. “Hey, look what Judy found!”

They all approach to take a look at the object, curiosity and excitement easily overwhelming their attempt to work.

“Awesome-sauce!” the girl decides, looking up at the thing with sparkles in her eyes.

“Oooh, a doodad?” the rock band shirt boy asks.

“Naw, it’s more of a gizmo…” the striped shirt boy corrects him. “So, what is it, Jude?”

Judy looks up from her examination of the object, frowning. “…Don’t know.”

The boy in the striped shirt takes on a thoughtful and intensely serious expression, stroking his (beardless) chin. “Shiny. Seems heavy, too. Must be expensive.”

The other boy shrugs. “Guess you’ll bring it to ‘pawnshop guy’ with the rest?”

Judy’s face turns suddenly nervous at the mention of him. She was the only one of them who dared meet up with the man, but she did not like it any more than they did.

The girl also seemed a bit scared. “Less awesome,” she muttered.

…

By noon, Judy is standing nervously in front of a pawnshop in a shadowy side street or alley, milk crate full of collected scraps in her arms. A variety of second hand items are on display in the window. The window’s glass is (along with the door) protected from break-ins with a dark metal grill, the place a prison-like aura. There are, however, some brightly coloured signs lit up in the window. ‘ANTIQUES’, ‘ELECTRONICS’, ‘COMPUTER REPAIR’, and ‘BUY & SELL!’, the signs say — the last one with blinking lights around its frame.

Inside the shop, the lighting is low and it takes her a while to get accustomed to the contrast from bright daylight to electric gloom. Most of the light comes from the lamps and other devices for sale, since the daylight is blocked by the signs and the objects on display in the window. The walls are lined with shelves full of items. There is also a table of items in the center of the square room, a low coffee table about knee-high — intentionally not tall enough to conceal someone if they were trying to pocket something while hiding behind it.

The entrance to the back office is covered in a curtain made of plastic filaments with red and blue blinking lights running through them. Another ‘COMPUTER REPAIR’ sign is displayed next to it, as if to emphasize that there is nothing more interesting going on back there.

The man behind the counter has spread out the contents of the blue milk crate on the counter next to it. He is tall and muscular, wears a metallic black muscle shirt, with sunglasses perched on his gelled hair. On the other side of the counter, Judy waits for his verdict. Standing awkwardly, leaning on one foot, her right hand gripping her left sleeve at the elbow, she is clearly not in her element here.

After a few interminable minutes, the pawnshop guy exhales a puff of white smoke from an e-cigarette, leaning casually on the counter with his free hand. Judy attempts to cover the bottom half of her face with her sleeve so as not to breathe in the smoke. She is trying not to be too obvious about it, though, as if she does not want to seem rude.

“Big load of cheap useless stuff, as usual,” he decides, seeming unimpressed.

Well that’s disappointing, Judy thinks, though she is not particularly surprised. “What about the glass thingy?” she inquires.

The pawnshop guy looks down at her, inhaling from his e-cig. He is getting mildly annoyed, as if her standing there were an inconvenience, wasting his time.

The glass and metal object, still sitting on the counter between the two of them, does nothing except reflect and amplify the light from the various lamps in the shop onto a small area of the counter. It does not seem to have an opinion on the matter.

“That, I can’t sell. Not even sure what it is — probably useless.”

Judy hesitates. She wants to protest, or ask a follow-up question, but she doesn’t say a thing. Eventually, too irritated by her awkward silence, the pawnshop guy rings up an amount on his cash register and slaps her card back onto the counter.

“Ahhr! Just go try one of those MacGyver types in St-Henri. They like that kind’a junk.”

He dismisses Judy with a lazy gesture of his hand without looking at her (and continues vaping with his other hand). Judy quickly snags the glass object and her card from the counter, avoiding his gaze.

Back outside, Judy walks next to her bicycle through the softer grey shadows of the alley. She looks back towards the shop once in resignation, then heads for the boulevard (Sainte-Catherine) at the end of the alley, crowded with cars and people walking on the sidewalk, and bathed in bright, colourful daylight.

…

Part 2 – The Bricoleur can be found here.