With more and more Americans moving to Canada seeking a kinder, gentler country, smarter leaders and better health insurance, my last trip to our nice neighbor nation to the north becomes even more compelling:
My best friend,”Palestrina,” and I are sipping white wine on a plane headed for Toronto. This is a last-minute trip, more than a decade ago. We’re dressed all in black like Italian widows. Perhaps with good reason. “Hadrian,” her older, mysterious Australian-by-way-of-England boyfriend, has just been nabbed by cops at the Canadian-American border, detained, then clapped into immigration jail.
Naturally, that didn’t deter her from wanting personally to deliver his birthday present, a very understated but expensive watch. Understandably, these aren’t their real names. Somehow, a routine computer check has revealed a major black mark against “Hadrian,” such the wheeler-dealer in his salad days, and they capture him just as he’s coming into the country to make good on his promise to marry “Palestrina.”
She, of course, was desolate. “I’m going,” she insists, snatches of her story punctuated by chain-smoking Kools. “I don’t care what happens. I have to see him. I must!”
“Not by yourself you’re not, Toots! Look, remember that movie ‘Midnight Express’? You’re young, pretty and very vulnerable all by yourself. If you don’t watch out, they could accuse you of being his drug ‘mule,’ rudely strip-search you, then plant something stupid like poppy seeds in your purse’s secret compartment. If you’re not careful, you’ll never return,” I reply, rattled at the thought of my dear friend jumping on a jet just like that for a dangerous adventure – without me!
So we cancel our respective plans. Hers, with her flamboyant family of origin that can usually be counted on to provide some dramatic episode of emotional excess, promise to be much more predictable than mine, with an ex-husband, oddly enough, among my closest friends.
The flight takes an uneventful 45 minutes, the airfare a small enough price to pay for almost instantaneously leaving the country. Our arrival in Canada was marred by my slight paranoia that even carrying so much as an accidental vitamin will be confiscated at customs as dangerous contraband. “We’re here for one night. Where would you suggest we stay?” we ask our cabdriver “Yves,” who finds us a totally acceptable hotel “bargain” convenient to “Hadrian’s” prison.
Within an hour, we’re camped out at the immigration jail, more like a chicken-coop plopped down in the middle of an anonymous stretch of forlorn tundra. There’s not even a waiting room, so I sit outside on the sidewalk in the chilly winter wind while “Palestrina” conducts her negotiations with the guards inside. If she has a teary reunion with her boyfriend through bullet-proof glass, I don’t get to see it, so he remains a myth to me.
The gift wristwatch, however, is another matter. A guard informs “Palestrina” that since she’s forbidden to hand anything directly to “Hadrian,” she can’t give him the watch herself. The guard promised he would do that later, though it was against prison policy. Truly an innocent abroad, the thought never entered her head to offer a bribe, insuring her gift reached its destination.
Forty-five minutes later, she joins me on the sidewalk and somehow we soon end up back into town at a restaurant that serves us a complete home-style dinner. Yum. Then, we hit the street to meet the citizens. We marvel how clean and well-lit the streets are. The people are so friendly! Downtown is not deserted at all! As we saunter along, we are viewed with an apparent mixture of curiosity and openness. Though it is a Saturday night, fewer people are coupled up than back in the States, and we receive appraising glances from a surprising number of very attractive men. “I could imagine living here,” I say, “couldn’t you?”
Our 5:30 a.m. flight back was uneventful, and we seamlessly re-enter our lives. If “Palestrina” is brokenhearted, she does not show it. Presently, “Hadrian” gets deported, either to England or Australia – “Palestrina” is not quite certain – and she doesn’t hear from him for a very long time. Only once does she attempt to interest me in emigrating to Australia – suggesting it would be good for our social lives because the men there are rather rugged, reminiscent of our cowboys, the country resembles the American frontier, and Women Like Us would do well there. I am still trying to figure out what she meant by Women Like Us.
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