FREE TRIP TO MONTREAL

Thanks to the Sun Queen, who commutes to his job as an evening wear designer in Canada, I got a free trip to Montreal this weekend. Handsome young investment bankers carrying binders marked "Project Latte" surrounded me in the departure lounge, shooting the breeze about the flooding that delayed their taxis (and my city bus) to LaGuardia and their residential migration to the Upper East Side so that their children could more conveniently attend private elementary schools.



Students protesting the Quebec's government lifting of a tuition freeze clogged rue Saint Catherine, snarling traffic downtown. A trip that should have taken less than half an hour on the shuttle bus lasted twice that long. I finally reached the central bus station a little after noon. The surrounding blocks recalled Times Square of the 70s, with lots of sex shops, strip clubs and single-room occupancy hotels. In fact, the city doesn't appear to have done much sprucing up since Expo '67 and the '76 Olympics, perhaps because those events exhausted city planners and drained their coffers. The Quebecois separatist movement can't have helped, either. Why should the federal government invest in a province that keeps wanting to secede?

A poster advertising a production of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi caught my eye as I walked east toward the hotel. The Blue Light Special played a much cuter (and younger) King Wenceslas in a student production at HB Studio so I took a picture for him, sorry that he wasn't with me.

I arrived at Loew's Hotel Vogue shortly before 1 p.m. where I was given a key to the Sun Queen's posh suite and immediately chowed down on the fruit and biscotti that the hospitality staff had left for him the night before. After giving him a call at work, I decided to go to Mount Royal Park, one of the few sights he already had seen, and one at the top of my to do list because it had been designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. I entered on the western side of the park because it wasn't too far from the Notre Dame Des Neiges Cemetery , giving me a convenient opportunity to indulge my obsession for photographing cemetery tombstones.



A hive of activity awaited me inside the cemetery gates. With Mother's Day on Sunday, a lot of loving or guilty children were busy clearing away the detritus of their Christmas visits and decorating the graves with fresh or fake flowers. The French Canadians apparently go all out when burying their dead but as in life, you definitely get what you pay for. Some sections reminded me of the hotel were we were staying, immaculately tended and landscaped with the afterlife equivalent of 300 thread count sheets, while others offered no-frills accommodations, marked by a single wooden cross.



I don't know what it is about these places but I find them very relaxing and take great delight in their random collisions of elegance, tackiness and sentiment. Owen McGarvey, furniture maker for Montreal's 19th century middle class, built for himself alone a mausoleum high atop a hill, all but forgotten except for its size and location. Nevertheless, these were enough to make me Google his name a century later so maybe he knew exactly how to assure a kind posterity with no direct descendants (he could not have imagined, however, that a local labor union protest vehicle, postered with day glow CSN signs, would roam throughout his final resting place). Other more recent and much more modest burial sites revealed the passions of the deceased or sentiments of living family members with charming little details such as a miniature Boston Red Sox cap sculpted in marble or a row of stuffed animals that still looked cuddly despite their exposure to their elements.



In comparison, the metal cross that towers above Montreal in Mount Royal Park seemed decidedly ho hum. Aside from the spectacular views of downtown and the St. Lawrence Seaway from the summit, where I learned that Montreal is a French contraction of Mount Royal, the park itself disappointed me perhaps because only the gently curving road, built for horse carriages, was built according to Olmsted's specifications. Oddly enough, I spotted more wildlife in the cemetery, including a red fox and a disoriented raccoon.

Two hundred steep wooden steps helped me to descend quickly from the Park. My route back to the hotel took me down the steep hill on which McGill University sits. Surely a goat must be the school mascot with all the climbing flip-flopped students must have to do. I found the Sun Queen watching Dr. Phil. We spent 90 minutes or so catching up but the afternoon's exertions, the feat and the familiarity of my host's whine about not being adequately compensated left me nodding off more than once.

How rude! as the Encyclopedia of Camp, the Sun Queen's first choice for a weekend companion, might say if he weren't in Italy.

I perked up in time for dinner. It gave me some real insight into the Sun Queen's life away from New York. Our evening began just like the Cheers theme song in the hotel bar where everyone, including Francine, the bartender with curly blond ringlets and stylish eyeglasses, greeted the Sun Queen by name.

O'Blahnik, a zaftig woman whose long hair recently had been streaked in a way that recalled Farrah Fawcett, and the Misogynist, an emigre from Holland, were engaged with another woman who soon vacated her seat after giving me a look that I interpreted as No point of sticking around with these two homos.

A tall gin and tonic assisted me in making some excruciatingly dull small talk with the Misogynist who kept referring to the women he was dating as "bitches" as if he were a rap star instead of a balding, middle-aged white guy with a stutter. Although he claimed his father had been a member of the Dutch Resistance he never had heard of Black Book or Paul Verhoeven. Fortunately he went out for a smoke after that conversational dead end.

Meanwhile O'Blahnik seemed to be crying on the Sun Queen's shoulder. She cheered up when he invited her to dinner without telling the Misogynist although he must have known what was up when the three of us left together. O'Blahnik drove us to Joe Beef, the restaurant where the Sun Queen had made reservations for two lobsters. Lobster is right at the bottom of my preferred dish list so I was glad O'Blahnik had accompanied us if only because her taste for it left me free to order steak frites, the meal I had been craving ever since the Sun Queen invited me along for the trip.

The selection of a suitable wine from a blackboard dinner menu consumed most of the pre-dinner conversation once one of the restaurant's partners, an attractive young blond woman who thrust her breasts forward as expertly as she made our mouths water with a description of the day's specials. These included oysters that must have had a travel agent before they were consumed by us. Born in New England, but flown to Washington State where they were happily raised in clean, temperate waters, they had made their way northeast for our delectation. My fries were too big but I enjoyed the savory gravy on the hanger steak and cleansed my palate afterwards with the pannacote citron, topped with lemon sorbet.

O'Blahnik returned from a trip to the bathroom to report the fat, tattooed chef had warned her that he just had taken a dump. Imagine that happening at Per Se. She had the restaurant's artist-in-residence in tow who used a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer as a conversation prop with what he probably thought were a couple of American cash cows. He enchanted us with his easy masculinity and didn't seem to care which team we played for. Think Aaron Eckhart in Erin Brockovitch when he played Julia Roberts's sensitive biker boyfriend. Flirtation in combination with a $65 bottle of wine can be a powerful sales tool. If it hadn't been too dark to see the installation hanging above us, I just might have played along.

I didn't offer to help with the tab, which came to $375, figuring it only would complicate the Sun Queen's laissez-faire negotiations with O'Blahnik.

You are the most generous person I know she said, handing over some cash and insisting that we come to her house for brunch the next day. The Sun Queen threw the invitation into my court.

I definitely believe the only way you get a true feeling for another country is to see a native in their home I said when I realized there was no polite way to refuse.

As we left, O'Blahnik whipped up some drama when the chef, greeting new customers at the door of the nearly empty restaurant, declined her offer of a peck on the lips.

Don't be silly we chorused, getting into her car for a lift back to the hotel. Now that we've paid our bill, he's simply moved on.

O'Blahnik didn't stop complaining, however, a characteristic that came to define her by the time brunch was over on Saturday.

Ten minutes after returning to the room, I fell asleep on the couch, fully dressed. I awoke to find the Sun Queen already in bed with a radio softly playing what sounded like a combination of baroque and new age music. I climbed into the far side of the bed that we shared despite having separate bathrooms, marveling at the cocoon-like softness of the sheets.