Thanksgiving and I'm in Edmonton. Stuffed with turkey and mashed potatoes, dressing, turnips, olives and pickles, pumpkin and blueberry pie, visit with family, later to the Sugarbowl beside the High Level diner to visit with old friends, but there's one I can't seem to track down.
I'm looking for Milan.
The Bistro has burned down, vanished, there are rumours of a new one but he probably won't be there and it's not open yet, and so I speak to mutual acquaintances to try and find him.
"He's working in St. Albert" says one...
"No, that didn't work out, you'll find him making espresso across from Bar Italia" says another.
Things haven't gone well for him. I always presumed him to be solvent, but through the grapevine I find out it isn't so, that the Bistro, far from being a hobby, was a necessity, that his affairs weren't as well organized as he suggested, implied, that he'd had a tough time finding another job, I'm concerned as to his well being and his whereabouts....
On Sunday I set out to surprise him. It's been a couple, three or four maybe, years. I've been a poor friend. I've found his website, got his phone number, but it'll be a surprise.
I drive down to Bar Italia.
It's been years, decades even since I've been in this neighborhood and I've forgotten how rough and run down it is. It's sunny, cold, the trees are bare, winter has come a few weeks early here, the light by degrees is colder, more northern, and as I drive through dilapidated and decrepit streets, past Chinatown, pawn shops and the 25 cent peep shows, past old churches of every denomination I realize that this is the Edmonton of my dreams - that odd, can't-put-a-finger on it place where so many of my dreams have been set, it's a peculiar sense of dejavu, and I've never hung out here, been here so much, not this neighborhood, yet so often in dreams when I realize that I'm in Edmonton, this is the Edmonton I'm in.
Across from the Bar Italia there's La Dolce Vita, and inside it's rough, gangs of men drinking whiskey and coffee and playing cards at too small tables, no money down but there's a tab being kept somewhere in the back room, and I order an espresso and ask for news of Milan.
This is a big come-down in the world for the celebrity waiter who presided over Bistro for 30 odd years, the fate of all waiters in the end who don't open their own place (and many who do), to end up working the saddest neighborhoods and bars in the outlying slums of the city, grateful for the work, and I imagine he won't be too glad to have me find him here...
"He used to work next door" the bartender tells me, and when I finish my espresso I go next door but where there was a restaurant there are now only for lease signs and I find a pay phone and give him a call.
It's a wrong number. I confirm the number I dialed, it's the number, but they know nothing of Milan.
I drive home, looking for him on the streets, it's Sunday afternoon and he's around, somewhere, hopefully tucked into a warm cafe or studio, it's bleak outside and I know he's not far but I'm not finding him....