Åsa

I first met Markus not long after the law and I split up. It was a warm Fall day at a grocer on du Parc in Montreal when he came up to us as we were loading the cart with beer for the festivities that lay ahead that evening. It was 10% off for students Monday and we were getting ready to celebrate another warm October night. The coming of Markus was what you might describe as the beginning of my Sweden life. Markus had arrived in Montreal weeks before to study law and he approached me that day to ask me a question about that day's lecture. Classes were the furthest thing from my mind right then but Markus had the energy and we saw it right away. Before long he was helping us cart the beers down Main and over to our walk-up in the Plateau and after that sitting on the back balcony listening to records and chasing the sun and the beer to the horizon.

Markus took straight to Montreal life. We drank Ginger Ale and Crown Royal when we were flush and Wiser's when we weren't; bartered down to $20 Habs tickets and booed the referees from the Molson Ex section; in Winter, when Coffee House was closing up and the walk to Mile End felt too cold, we'd hit the Couche Tard at Dr. Pen & Stanley, get a case of Molson Dry, and ring on Carolina's buzzer who was always up for taking a break from the books and joining the party. His French Canadian girl Yvette couldn't stand our crew but she stuck by him and his Swedish blonde curls. Markus got the whole gang hooked on Caviar paste and we ordered our drinks at the pubs on Bishop in Swedish slang. Markus liked Abba as all Swedish people do and that was the one thing we'd bother him about that actually seemed to get to him.

This blog post is the most forced thing ever but you've gotta play with style and format my friend or you're never gonna evolve. Even Dean Moriarty knew that.