The Good Luck of Right Now(53)

You, Richard Gere, would certainly have been able to act your way through that situation with ease and grace. You, Richard Gere, would have charmed the border patrol and had a much easier time. But the truth is this: you wouldn’t have had to do any acting at all, because the border patrol would have instantly recognized you as a famous movie star—he would have welcomed you into Canada without asking a single question, except maybe a request for your autograph or for you to appear in a photograph with him, arms around each other’s shoulders, smiling like you had been friends for decades.

Why is it that the people who are very good at answering difficult questions never get asked difficult questions, while people like me are always being forced to do things that are seemingly impossible?

The worst part was knowing this to be true: if Father McNamee wasn’t with us, the border patrolman wouldn’t have let us into Canada—he probably would have arrested us and thrown us into jail, because Max, Elizabeth, and I would have choked and freaked out during the question-asking part of the border-crossing experience, and the border patrolman would have not been able to understand why we were acting so—what he would call—strangely.

Idiot! the tiny man yelled, and I believed him this time.

Nothing else really happened until we arrived in Montreal.

Father McNamee had booked us into a fancy hotel where we parked underground and could swim on the roof, because there was a heated pool that was half outdoors and half indoors. Max and I scouted it out, but we didn’t swim because I don’t know how to swim—I’m actually terrified of water—and neither Max nor I had a bathing suit.

Standing on the roof deck, watching the heat rise up out of the pool and into the winter air, Max said, “How the f*ck are we going to pay for this? Elizabeth and I are broke! This hotel has to cost a lot of f*cking money! What the f*ck, hey?”

“Father McNamee said God will provide,” I said.

“You really f*cking believe in God?” Max asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Do you really believe in aliens?”

“Fuck, yes,” Max said.

“What will you do after we visit Cat Parliament?”

“Don’t f*cking know,” Max said. “We brought all our clothes. Left our f*cking keys in the apartment. Skipped out on the last month’s rent. We’re f*cking homeless.”

“Aren’t you worried?”

“Fuck,” Max said, nodding and lifting his eyebrows.

“I’m worried too.”

“Why are you f*cking worried?”

“Because I don’t know what to do without Mom. I’m not even sure how my bills are getting paid. Like electricity and water and cable and all of the other bills Mom used to take care of.”

“You don’t pay those f*ckers?”

“No.”

“Someone’s paying those f*ckers. Or they would have shut you down by now. Fucking nothing is free.”

“Who would be paying?”

“How would I f*cking know that?”

Every time I had thought about this in the past, my head started to hurt.

Just as soon as I knew who was paying my bills, I’d owe a real person money. Since I had no money, I wasn’t exactly eager to end that mystery, truth be told.

I turned around and gazed out over the city of Montreal.

“It’s pretty remarkable, our being here together. You have to admit,” I said. “Extraordinary, even.”

Max nodded.

“I never thought I’d see Canada.”

“Me f*cking neither.”

We were standing on a shoveled concrete deck of sorts with our backs to the pool, looking over a five-foot wall.

“I guess for many normal, regular-type people, this wouldn’t be any big deal,” I said.

Max nodded again, and then he said, “Why the f*ck do you think we ended up being so f*cking different from everyone else? Do you ever f*cking think about shit like that? People like you and me and Elizabeth—why do we even f*cking exist?”

I thought about it and then—after searching my entire brain for the answer to Max’s first question and finding none—I answered the second by saying, “All the time.” After a minute or so I had a thought, and so I said, “Maybe the world needs people like us?”

“What the f*ck for? We don’t f*cking do anything! I just rip tickets at the f*cking movies! Anyone could do that!”

“Well, if there weren’t weird, strange, and unusual people who did weird things or nothing at all, there couldn’t be normal people who do normal, useful things, right?”

“What the f*ck, hey?” Max squinted at me.

“The word normal would lose all of its meaning if it didn’t have an opposite. And if there were no normal people, the world would probably fall apart—because it’s normal people who take care of all the normal things like making sure there is food at the grocery store and delivering the mail and putting up traffic lights and making sure our toilets work properly and growing food on farms and flying airplanes safely and making sure the president of the United States has clean suits to wear and—”

“Little help?” a voice said. “It’s too cold for me to hop out!”

When we turned around there was a beach ball at our feet.