My October

by Claire Holden Rothman

  There were also tools that Luc had taken from Laporte Street: a hammer, a wrench, a screwdriver with exchangeable tips in the hollow interior of its green plastic handle. At the age of two, Hugo had vomited into this implement. Luc couldn’t remember the details of how this had come about, but all these years later the screwdriver still reeked.

  Vien picked up a CD from the desk and read the name on the front cover. “David Gray?” he said, breaking into a smile. “Since when do you listen to British pop?”

  Luc didn’t smile back. “It belongs to a friend.”

  Vien lifted his eyebrows twice, Groucho Marx–style, his stray eye magnifying the comic effect. Luc ignored him, turning his focus instead on the photograph of the rugged blond man on the CD cover. The shot was in black-and-white, with David Gray—Lost Songs printed in purple across the singer’s chest and shoulders. He was unshaven. Not an actual beard, just a couple of days’ growth. The hair on his head was the same length as the bristles covering his chin. He looked like a thug.

  Marie-Soleil was wild about David Gray. She’d played the album for Luc the previous evening over dinner, making him listen to the lyrics and singing along in an accent that was worse even than his own. She’d played it after dinner too, which had been a shock. He’d never made love to music before. It had never occurred to him. Or to Hannah, for that matter. He didn’t like it. There was something juvenile about it.

  Vien was still reading the cover. To distract him, Luc opened the brown envelope. He pulled out the pages and skimmed them: several copies of a document entitled “Contrat social.” An echo of Jean-Jacques Rousseau? He groped through the pile on his desk for his reading glasses.

  When he got to the end of the document, where he was supposed to sign, he stopped short. “What’s this?”

  Vien looked up guiltily.

  “Hugh Stern?” Luc’s voice was hard with anger. Only he tripped over the pronunciation. Did one enunciate the H or not? You Stern was how it came out.

  Vien shrugged. “We had to get him on board.”

  Luc frowned. Bonnaire used this metaphor too. As if they were a bunch of sailors.

  Vien regarded him meekly. “He wouldn’t have signed otherwise,” he pleaded.

  Luc stared at the unpronounceable first name. Part of him felt like raging. Another part whispered to let it go. Marie-Soleil’s smiling lips floated into his thoughts. His breathing eased. One thing about infidelity was that it left little room to dwell on other things. Things like his infuriating son, for example, or his wife. The rabbit hole of his marriage opened in his mind, but he turned away before he could fall in. All that remained was the wobbly-sick sensation he used to feel as a boy, spinning on the tire in Saint-Henri Park. He turned away from that too, and closed his eyes.

  Marie-Soleil’s face was still there. He pictured her body, the delicate red rosebud tattooed on the small of her back. Half an inch below her panty line, in fact, just above the crack of her fine, shapely ass. He released his breath and turned, smiling, to Vien.

  Vien’s head bobbed. “You’re not mad at me?” He looked like a character in a Chekhov tale, a former serf who couldn’t break the habit of servility.

  Luc waved as if the whole thing were a joke, youthful folly, something unimportant and excusable.

  “We’re good to go, then?” said Vien, looking hopeful. “You’ll sign?”

  Luc signed the sheets with a flourish. “Keep a copy,” he advised, handing them back to Vien one at a time. “Maybe one day it’ll be worth something.”

  There was a noise below. Vien didn’t hear it, but Luc did. He hurried down the stairs, leaving Vien sitting puzzled on the chair.

  Marie-Soleil was standing in full sunshine on the doorstep, smiling her luscious smile. She was in pink again, her favourite colour. Luc had watched her get dressed that morning, pulling on little white boots, ankle-high, with heels that made her pelvis jut. He loved her choice of clothes. Loved her smell too, which he breathed in hungrily whenever they embraced: spicy and sweet all at once. His balls clenched inside his gym shorts.

  “Come in,” he said recklessly, pulling her by the hand. She resisted at first, saying she had to get back to the office, but eventually allowed herself to be led into the little house, down his green corridor, and up his stairs. Her laughter was like music, her hand so soft it made him giddy.

  It was only once they were upstairs that he realized she’d thought he wanted to make love again. When she saw Vien, she stopped short and turned to Luc, her smooth brow creasing in surprise and displeasure.

  He made the introductions, telling Vien she was his agent.

  “Fortunate man,” said Vien, staring like a boy.

  “I’m the fortunate one,” she said, and illuminated Luc with her perfect white smile. “He’s our brightest star.”

  Luc’s face went hot. A pleasurable heat.

  Vien couldn’t stop staring. He blinked his unmoored eyes and grinned a loopy grin. The three of them stood there, flushed and happy, buoyed by the waves of sex filling the room like a rising tide.

  They conversed politely about books and the fate of the publishing industry in an increasingly digital age. Vien said that kids today were illiterate. But Marie-Soleil disagreed: they were literate, just in a way that was different from the past. Usually, this kind of talk bored Luc silly, but he was so busy attending to the happy sensations of his body that he didn’t feel irritated. There was a lull in the conversation and Marie-Soleil turned to him.

  “I brought you something.” She reached into her handbag and rooted among its contents. The bag was large, the same shade of pink as her dress. “Ah,” she said after a moment, and pulled out a promotional flyer. “I knew it was down there somewhere.” She laughed and handed it to Luc. “My bag’s such a bordel.” She stood quietly beside him, almost like a child, while he took a look at it.

  “Oh, this,” he said. “Lanctôt.”

  “You hadn’t forgotten?”

  He had forgotten, as a matter of fact. Completely. Since the move, he couldn’t keep the days straight. Earlier in the week, he had missed an interview with an arts reporter from La Presse. Wiped the rendezvous clean out of his mind. His publicist had had to phone the guy and sort it out. Now Marie-Soleil was double-checking his bookings and phoning to remind Luc before every event.

  “Jacques Lanctôt?” asked Vien.

  Marie-Soleil nodded and plunged a hand back into the bag. She extracted another copy of the flyer and handed it to him. “You might find this interesting too.”

  “Marie-Soleil used to work for him,” Luc explained.

  “Several years ago,” said Marie-Soleil, lifting her lovely thin eyebrows as if she herself could not quite fathom it.

  The skin around Vien’s eyes crinkled as he laughed. “Several? Did he hire you when you were in primary school?”

  Marie-Soleil beamed at the compliment and shook her dark curls.

  Vien opened the flyer, then looked at Luc. “Hey. You’re the main attraction.”

  “Hardly,” said Luc modestly. “It’s a fundraiser,” he explained. “Lanctôt’s publishing company is on the verge of bankruptcy.”

  “So his friends have gotten together,” Marie-Soleil said. “Everyone’s chipping in.”

  “Marie-Soleil organized the whole thing,” Luc said, smiling at her.

  She shrugged. “He was good to me. A generous man. Several distinguished writers are attending. Including our friend here.” She took Luc’s hand and raised it as if he were a boxer, as if she were showing him off. “He’s reading from the new novel.”

  “Thank God you reminded me,” said Luc. He really was grateful. His agenda was back at Laporte Street, a place he wasn’t about to visit.

  “That’s what you pay me for.” She winked at him, and the wink was so laden with sexual innuendo that Luc had to avert his eyes.

  Marie-Soleil did the same, shifting her focus to Vien. “Would you like to come?”

  She sounded so young. Like a Gi
rl Guide selling raffle tickets. She began to read the list of “celebrity authors” she had persuaded to take part.

  “When is it?” Vien asked, searching the flyer for a date.

  “Tonight.” Marie-Soleil gave Luc a meaningful glance. “I’ll swing by after work and pick you up. We can get a bite to eat en route.”

  “I like Lanctôt,” Vien said suddenly.

  “Oh,” said Marie-Soleil. “You know him?”

  Vien laughed. “No, no, although I did have the pleasure of interviewing him once.” He was wearing his serf’s smile again, bobbing his big hairy head. “And of course I’ve seen him often enough on TV. He hasn’t given up. It’s inspiring.”

  Marie-Soleil nodded, smiling. “So come,” she said. “The event starts at eight, but you should come earlier if you want a seat. We can save you one, if you want.”

  The two men followed her down the stairs to the door. Her telephone hummed. It was Frédéric, she said, checking the caller ID. She would be in serious trouble if she didn’t get her ass back to the office.

  At the door, Vien shook Marie-Soleil’s hand a moment longer than absolutely necessary, telling her what a pleasure it had been and wishing her good luck with the soirée. Luc stood by and watched. Men must shake that hand a lot, he realized. Anything to touch her.

  Luc’s gaze slipped unconsciously to her chest and he pictured the breasts nestled beneath her blouse inside an expensive lacy bra. She liked good lingerie, a fact that he found surprisingly exciting. Aesthetics mattered to her. The rituals of arousal. She had a whole drawer full of fine underthings. Unlike Hannah, Marie-Soleil would never dream of wearing torn panties. She kissed him goodbye, two chaste pecks, her lips barely grazing his whiskers. It lasted only a second, but the effect on Luc was incendiary. He stepped backward, and she walked away. He and Vien watched in silence as she picked her way down the cracked front walk.

  “Whooo,” said Vien when she was well down the street.

  Luc laughed, but a bit of dust from the street caught in his throat.

  “That’s some girl.” Vien turned back to face him. “So, you two are …?” He didn’t finish. He’d seen his answer in Luc’s eyes.

  For a moment, neither man spoke. Luc could see his friend was envious, but his expression was also sad.

  “I’d be careful if I were you,” Vien said.

  Luc laughed again.

  “Seriously. I’ve been on the other end. And it was hell. Believe me.” He began again to recount the story of his marriage, or at least the end of it. It had been someone at his wife’s office. Someone they’d both known for years.

  “There’s no going back once it’s done,” Vien said, shaking his shaggy head. “We tried, believe me. You don’t throw out ten years of marriage just like that. She broke it off with the guy and we started going to counselling. For months in that therapist’s office, she talked about her father, who’d also been unfaithful. She wept over him. I wept over her. I took her to Italy, a trip she’d always dreamed of. Venice, Rome, the works. None of it made the slightest difference.”

  Luc listened in silence, his sympathy not quite equal to his irritation. He felt bad for Vien, sure, but he had nothing to learn from the story of his silly ex-wife and her middle-aged gropings. This thing with Marie-Soleil wasn’t like that. It wasn’t just a piece of mid-life craziness. Luc looked out over the vacant tracks. It was far more elemental.

  The word tolled inside him like a bell. It sounded dramatic, but now that he had allowed himself to formulate it, he knew it to be true. What was going on between him and Marie-Soleil was elemental. It went to the core of him. It had to do with language and culture, with his identity. He’d felt a profound and instant kinship with the girl, a feeling he had never experienced with Hannah.

  Vien was making an irritating snapping noise, flipping the buckle on his briefcase with his thumb. Luc cleared his throat and the noise stopped, but Vien didn’t look at him. He kept his eyes resolutely down. Even when they said goodbye, he didn’t raise them.

  17

  H ugo made it to the classroom on time for once. He was tired today, fed up with these after-school meetings. He wanted to go home and sleep. He rapped loudly, three decisive knocks, to show Vien he meant business. The sound of his knuckles striking wood reverberated through the empty hallway. He knocked again, then tried the door, but it was locked. He knew how to open it; he carried a small flat comb in his knapsack for just such occasions. All you had to do was slip the comb in the crack below the bolt and jerk upward. They’d done it hundreds of times last year, tormenting Madame Martel, the art teacher, stealing her art supplies and writing obscenities on the board, until finally she took sick leave. He felt bad about that. She’d been too nice, really, to teach in a high school.

  The comb would stay in his knapsack this afternoon. Hugo couldn’t afford any trouble. He leaned against the wall and slid into a crouch. Goddamn Vien, late himself, after all the times he’d lectured Hugo on the subject.

  He reached into his knapsack and pulled out a ball of Kleenex. It opened like a flower when he gave it a poke, exposing a plastic dime bag stamped with a seven-pointed leaf. Bought today from a kid in his class who had a junior grow-op in his basement. Death if he was caught. Hugo was on parole. Carrying a dime bag of dope into a meeting with your supervisor was courting disaster, but some part of him needed to do just that. Fuck them all.

  The door from the stairs opened and Vien stepped into view, huffing and looking more dishevelled than usual. He’d obviously just run up the stairs. He raised his hand.

  “Sorry, sorry.”

  Hugo stuffed the Kleenex back inside his knapsack and zipped the pocket shut as Vien came striding up.

  “Sorry,” he said again, wiping sweat from his brow. Pathetic. “Give me a minute.” He fished in his pocket for his keys, found them and fumbled with the lock. He was a clumsy man, prone to flusters, not at all like Hugo’s dad, the master of smooth. Vien grunted and muttered, forcing the key repeatedly until he realized he was using the wrong one.

  More apologies. Inside, all the windows were closed; with the radiators blasting, it felt like they’d been closed for months. Vien swore, yanking at his tie. Then he did a quick striptease, ripping off tie and jacket as if they were on fire, picking up his hair to air his neck. His face had turned red. He instructed Hugo to pull up a chair and spent long minutes struggling to open all the windows.

  “Bon,” he said, coming back to Hugo’s side. He sat down, heaved a dramatic sigh, and smiled. “So,” he said, “how are you?”

  Something had changed. Vien’s eyes actually looked interested.

  Hugo shrugged.

  “Everything okay today?”

  Hugo averted his gaze uncomfortably. The tree in the yard out front was clinging to the last of its leaves.

  “It’s not an easy time, I know,” Vien said, his eyes big and receptive. To Hugo’s astonished dismay, he reached out and touched his forearm.

  Hugo jerked back in his chair. The door was ajar. His whole body tensed, ready to bolt.

  Vien withdrew his hand and put it safely on his own knee. “I know what it’s like. My dad walked out too, Hugo. I told you about it, remember?”

  Hugo stared at him in surprise. So he knew. His father must have talked. Who else had he told besides Vien? Was it common knowledge now?

  “I was just about your age,” Vien continued. “It was the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. Worse than when my wife left me.”

  Hugo shifted in his chair. Too much information, but Vien kept right on talking. His eyes were slightly unfocused, as if he were in a trance. “I woke up one morning,” he said, “and he was gone. Just like that. No warning, no note. He just left.” Vien removed his glasses and started rubbing them with great thoroughness.

  “That’s when I met your dad,” he said after a pause that had grown uncomfortable. “But you know all that. We talked about it.” He put his glasses back on. “Fathers.” He sighed. “They can
be complicated.”

  Hugo was looking at Vien’s hands. He’d never noticed how ragged his nails were. The skin between the top knuckle and the cuticle was bumpy and red on nearly every finger. Close-bitten. What a sad, sad man.

  “Any more thoughts on your paper?” Vien asked.

  Hugo didn’t reply.

  “I hope you’ve opened Vallières,” he continued. “Nègres blancs is critical. Anyone who wants to understand the 1970s in Quebec has to read it.”

  The air in the classroom was still hot. It pressed in on all sides. And it smelled stale, as though his classmates’ lungs had been recycling it all day. Hugo was overpoweringly sleepy. And hungry. His stomach was making noises.

  He had opened Vallières. He’d stayed up late again last night trying to read it. But he wouldn’t admit it to Vien. Thinking about it made him sleepier. He didn’t want to discuss Vallières or anything else. When this sad man and Hugo’s father had been boys, they had stood by each other. But they weren’t boys anymore, and as far as Hugo could tell, neither of them was making any effort to stand by him.

  What Hugo wanted right now was food. Nachos and cheese, to be exact. He could picture the melted cheese, which bubbled and then turned rubbery when you poured on salsa from the fridge. Not that the fridge at home usually contained anything half as good as this. Still, he salivated thinking of the salt and spice.

  Vien stood up, jolting Hugo out of his reverie. He reached, with some difficulty, into the pocket of his too-tight grey flannel pants. “Here,” he said, pulling out a flyer of some sort. “Someone just gave me this. It’s a happy coincidence. I thought immediately of you.”

  It was an invitation.

  “It’s a benefit event,” said Vien, beaming. “For Jacques Lanctôt. He’ll be there tonight. So will your dad, by the way. He’s one of the readers.” His smile widened. “We could go together if you wish. I could talk to your mom, tell her that I’ll drive you.” He paused to take a breath before pressing on. “Your dad could introduce you to Lanctôt. It’s a great opportunity, Hugo. I bet he’d give you an interview, if you asked. The son of Luc Lévesque? For sure he would.” He stopped suddenly and frowned, struck by a thought. The frown cleared. “We’ll let Luc know you’re coming. Best to avoid surprises.”