The Love of Her Life

 

Darcy had never believed in love at first sight until that day in the bank when it hit like a freight train to the chest. The blond guy, two ahead of her in line, turned to look at the fly-speckled clock and: kaboom caboose! She was knocked off the tracks. She knew she was deeply in love with this man. She knew they were meant to be together forever, and even though she was starting university in September she knew their relationship was strong enough to withstand any distance.

She also knew he’d think she was nuts if she ran up to him in the bank and declared any of this, so she waited, watched, and listened. Try as she might, she didn’t hear the teller refer to him by name, couldn’t see his signature or recognize his pay stub, and couldn’t determine how much money he withdrew. Instead, she watched silently as he sauntered past her, out the door and made a left onto Lynx Avenue.

That’s ok, Darcy thought. Banff is a small town and I’m here all summer. I’m sure to run into him again. We’ll talk. We’ll laugh. We’ll have three children. Boys.

Darcy wasn’t the silly romantic sort. The opposite. A straight-A student, excelling in math and sciences, she’d enrolled in the engineering program at the University of Waterloo, one of a handful of women in the class of 1979. Darcy looked at life pragmatically, sorting, measuring, making things fit. She had her heart set on a career as a structural engineer, building cutting-edge bridges or innovative edifices. When her heart was stolen that day in the bank, she simply made the necessary adjustments to her plans. She’d be a world-renowned structural engineer with three sons named Jesse, Jake, and Julian, and what’s-his-name, her adoring and supportive husband.

That summer, though, was all about having some fun and making some cash. Darcy had been waitressing at the Banff Park Lodge for about week, but she didn’t think she’d seen the blond guy there. She looked eagerly in all the common staff areas before deciding that, no, he didn’t work at the lodge. She dismissed the thought that he might be a tourist – what guy her age could afford a vacation in Banff? What kind of tourist deposits a pay stub in a bank?  Similarly, she dismissed the idea that he was a hitchhiker passing through town. She was destined to meet him, and so that just couldn’t be true. Plus, the pay stub thing.  

By mid-July, Darcy was on a mission to find her blond beloved. She talked her coworkers and newfound best friends, Carla and Liz, into exploratory excursions all over town. By mid-August, they’d had cocktails at nearly every bar, a budget conscious meal in every restaurant, and had spent hours poking their heads into every knick-knack shop, drug store and back country outfitter. Yet, there was still no sign of “the guy.” They hiked halfway up Rundle Mountain to the hot springs and trekked all the way to the Hoodoos on Tunnel Mountain where they spotted, respectively, a mountain goat sunning itself on a rock and a bear snuffling around the campground. No nameless man of Darcy’s dreams.

One night they put on their best outfits and walked up to the Banff Springs Hotel to bluff their way into a fancy wine and cheese do. No joy. Having come all that way, they spent a couple hours loitering near the employee entrance, the staff accommodation, and even the greasy patch by the dumpsters where workers came and went sneaking cigarettes and other combustibles.

By the end of August, they were not only missing a future husband they were also down a boyfriend. Carla had come to Banff with Rick. He dumped her and stuck her with his rundown Volkswagon bus, named Isabella. The girls decided they would save some money by driving Isabella back to Ontario, since all three were headed that way the following week. 

They had bonded during the quest for Bank Guy and heartbreak over Rick the Dick. Darcy spent as much time as she could with Carla and Liz, and not at the apartment that she shared with four other employees of the lodge – three guys and a girl – who squabbled, smoked, played music at full blast, left dishes in the sink, overflowing ashtrays in the bathroom and hosted parties every Saturday night.

Despite the disappearance of her future husband, Darcy was relieved and ready to leave Banff behind when September arrived. The three girls plotted their trip east, including a quick tutorial for Liz, who’d never driven a standard vehicle. They decided she would only take the wheel over the long flat stretch of the prairies. Carla wasn’t all that comfortable driving a stick either, so Darcy, who’d had plenty of practice with her brother’s Love Bug, would take the first shift, including the round about outside of town and the busy streets of Calgary.

They packed Isabella with the suitcases they’d brought with them, all the stuff they’d collected over the summer, and Liz’s sewing machine which she’d had her mother ship all the way from Sarnia because she couldn’t imagine spending two months without. Isabella was fairly bulging and, by the time they’d finished, there was just enough space for two of them to sit up front while the third stretched out on the thin foam mattress in the back. There would be no stopping during the three-day journey.

The plan included a last night on the town at one last bar where they might find Darcy’s mystery man. The King Edward Hotel, a dive, known as “the Eddy,” was frequented only by the lower echelons: chambermaids, dishwashers, laundry boys and hitchhikers.

“D’you really want to marry a guy who comes to this place?” Carla asked, priggishly, before settling at a table and ordering a Brown Cow. Darcy pointed out that they were young, carefree, and not yet the serious, stable career women they would eventually become. “Its possible that my future husband isn’t ready to settle down yet either,” she said. “Especially since he hasn’t met me.”

Anticipating a night of drinking before departure, they’d left the van, safely parked in the staff lot at the lodge where they could retrieve it in the morning. When Liz suggested they try tequila shots, Darcy and Carla shrugged their shoulders and asked, “Why not?” 

Shot after shot, they toasted Banff, the Banff Park Lodge, Bank Guy, Rick the Dick, Isabella, and the Eddy. It didn’t take long before all three were slurring their words and wobbling on their feet. After sloppy hugs, Darcy set off up Tunnel Mountain Road, and her apartment building located about halfway up the mountain. She giggled, realizing that her strappy, high-heeled platform sandals were the perfect footwear for such a steep incline, because they kept her feet flat and level.

Stopping only once to puke in the bushes, Darcy smelled her roommate’s party before she stumbled up the driveway. Empty bottles lined the stairs down to the basement apartment. She noted with amusement that her roommates were also dabbling in tequila that night. It was her last thought before she folded her clothes in a corner and crawled under the covers wearing only her panties.  

She was abruptly roused from a deep sleep by the sound of rushing water. She bolted upright then quickly covered her bare chest when she saw a strange man standing in her bedroom. What was that smell? Ammonia? No!!!

One of her roommate’s drunken friends had mistaken her bedroom for the bathroom and her neat pile of clothing in the corner for the toilet.

“Oh my God, what are you doing?” she cried.

The stranger shrugged without looking at her, zipped up his pants and shuffled toward the door. Darcy screamed until her roommates came, smelled the problem, and hoisted the stranger by his belt loops, up the stairs and out onto his butt on the front lawn. Darcy followed, wrapped only in a sheet, crying, “You assholes! All my clothes are in a van downtown. He’s peed on the only thing I have to wear!”

The pissed-to-the-gills pisser finally looked up. It was him. The guy from the bank. The guy she’d looked for all summer. The father of her three fantasy sons. He struggled to point either of his eyes in her direction and spoke the only words she’d ever heard him say.

“F-f-flawck off.”

In the morning, Darcy chucked her urine-soaked clothes in the trash, including her now ruined strappy sandals. While her roommates slept, she stole a pair of track pants and a T-shirt, and then headed downtown barefoot and braless. She and her friends put Banff in Isabella’s rear-view mirror, nursing hellacious hangovers, and forever cured of the notion of love at first sight.