PART OF THE FABRIC

I'm not looking to be friends with our local drug dealers, just to live and
let live. Not so my wife.

We are having an ongoing debate in our kitchen. It concerns the local drug
dealers -- whether to greet in the street, or not.

They are a family: mom and dad (getting older), two daughters, two sons,
and their spouses. Make that one son. The older one was having a problem.
We would wake up at 2 a.m. to the noise from his car radio, look down from
our window and see him shooting up with his girlfriend, under the
streetlight. But suddenly last summer he was no longer around. (Nor his
girlfriend.) We speculate, but we don't miss him.

As for the rest, they don't make noise and they do not appear to indulge in
the product they purvey. They wear jogging suits and wash their expensive
cars. One goes to play hockey on Thursday nights.

They make money.

No one would call our quarter affluent; but on a quiet Montreal residential
street, our neighbours own three well-renovated homes. Yet the elder
daughter is the only one who can be seen to go off to some kind of work in
the morning. The others make short outings.

Ma and Pa Drug Dealer run the shop from their place. Their customers make
it obvious. It's those fleeting, surreptitious visits from emaciated women
whom we occasionally see strolling the corners along St. Denis; or the
jittery men who practically bounce out of the back of waiting taxis; some
suave, jewelry-laden types straight out of Central Casting, casually
knocking on that door; and the others nondescript but needing, at any hour
- -- in and out, always far too quick for a social call. Otherwise, you'd
never know.

But everyone does. My brother-in-law, who lives on the street, went to the
police. The officer told him, yes we know all about that house, but there
is nothing we can do. End of discussion.

So we could be discussing the legalization of drugs, and especially the
"hard" kind our neighbours sell: the control of processing, distribution,
quality, prices, the inevitable market-induced end of our neighbours'
livelihood. But let that remain a subtext. This argument begins and ends
with the fact that they are in business on our street, and the debate in
our kitchen has to do with the fine balance between morality and reality.
Because if the cops know and are doing nothing, then you could say we're
talking about a kind of "natural law," and how to live accordingly.

My wife takes the hard line. She deplores what they do. She says they are
getting rich trading in misery, and laughing at the rest of us who struggle
honestly to make ends meet. They are pariahs, non-citizens, and she refuses
to acknowledge their existence.

My own stand is less rigid. No, I do not avoid eye contact. Standing in
line to pay for my beer at the depanneur , sitting in the next chair at the
barber's, passing by while they polish their cars in the sun: If it
happens, I nod my bonjour . They usually respond in kind. And that's the
extent of it. I am not looking to be "friends," and neither are they. Live
and let live.

They deal in destruction; they don't belong on this street!

They were here when we arrived. They are part of the fabric. The ones they
supply are not. My compassion and sympathy departs with them. . . . My
neighbours remain.

And I work at home. The boundaries of my world, from one week to the next,
are small. If I screen out the drug dealers, it will become even smaller.
My instincts go against reduction.

I was raised on solid middle-class propriety -- yet I'm not outraged?

My curiosity is the stronger impulse. These people are "bad" and they're my
neighbours. I believe I can learn something from the simple act of
wondering, and occasionally looking them in the eye. I wonder what it's
like being a part of that family -- something any neighbour wonders.

My wife, although she may not permit herself to wonder, does not stop
watching. She is, and will be, a neighbour too. There is no moral high
ground here; only relative points of view.

Yes, but in the jungle, do the monkeys smile in passing at the local snake?
Or do they pretend the snake is not there, and hurry on? Does the snake
care if he is snubbed? Conversely, does a friendly smile from a monkey make
the snake less dangerous? Or only more snakelike, with a little more room
to move?

Moral relativism is another modern crutch -- like drugs, and I'm a victim.

No, I'm a monkey . . .

The debate in our kitchen continues. The neighbours buy another expensive
vehicle.

Peter Morrison is a pseudonym.

Copyright (c) 1998, The Globe and Mail Company

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski