He started the BMW and pulled out to go around the block. He didn’t want to risk attracting attention.
At 9:57 a.m., he parked a hundred metres from his previous observation post and resumed his watch. The police car had disappeared.
Still no sign of the young woman. Something was wrong.
10:20 a.m.
It had all happened so fast!
He had seen Simone Fortin come out of the building. She’d held the door for an elderly woman and stepped out into the street. She had searched for something in her purse.
Without pausing to think, he’d driven straight at her.
He banged repeatedly on the steering wheel, enraged. He’d knocked her down!
With that single act, he had wrecked the plan that he’d put together so patiently. What had gotten into him? Why hadn’t he been able to control himself?
He replayed the scene in his head.
It was the young woman’s smile as she crossed the street that had provoked him.
That intolerable smile.
He breathed deeply to calm himself and stop his hands from shaking. His mind was racing. He needed to improvise, to put together an alternative plan. Above all, he had to act fast.
Time is always the decisive factor. He knew that.
You can’t fight against time and hope to win.
He’d have to go back to the scene and blend in among the bystanders.
As long as she’s still alive!
In his fury, he hit the steering wheel again.
What had he been thinking?
He parked the BMW on an intersecting street, Forest Hill Avenue, across from a pharmacy. He grabbed his coat from the back seat and put it on. He pulled a toque over his grey hair and put on a pair of sunglasses. Finally, he took his knapsack.
Had there been witnesses? How long could he leave the BMW unattended?
He got out of the car and locked the doors.
He saw an Asian man in a lab coat standing at the pharmacy entrance, smoking. Despite the situation, he couldn’t help thinking that it was inappropriate for a pharmacist to be smoking.
It sets a bad example for young people.
He made an effort to walk at a normal pace, to avoid attracting attention. He melted into the group of gawkers standing around the ambulance.
The group included a mother holding her child by the hand; two students on their way to the University of Montreal, one of whom had covered Simone Fortin with his coat; and an old man with a dog on a leash.
A reverential silence reigned over the scene. From where he was standing, he couldn’t see his victim’s face as the gurney was loaded onto the ambulance, but he heard the old man tell one of the students that she was breathing.
He let out a long sigh of relief.
All was not lost!
The ambulance sped away, its siren blaring.
The bystanders were going their separate ways as he wrote down the ambulance number in his notebook.
------------------------
I let myself drift for a few seconds.
Then I heard something. Indistinctly.
A voice? Yes. It was a voice.
Someone was speaking to me.
Lying on the ground, I opened my eyes. I saw an opal sky and, upside down, the face of a stranger bending over me.
A man.
I felt the touch of his hand on my arm and a tugging sensation as he raised my body toward his own. In a moment I was on my feet, facing the man who had just saved my life.
The street was as quiet as a broad desert of white sand.
I looked him over quickly: late thirties, black hair, brown eyes, short beard, fine features. Quite an attractive guy, actually.
I heard that overlay of sound once again and saw that the man’s lips were moving.
I had to make an effort to concentrate.
“Pardon me?” I said.
“Was it your cell?”
“My cell?”
“That you were trying to find in your purse …?”
Suddenly, everything cleared up. I remembered starting to cross the street, looking into my purse and freezing when I saw the car. Clearly, the man had grabbed me by the coat and thrown me to the ground.
“I was going to buy a cup of coffee and … it’s so stupid. I was searching for my wallet.”
I began to feel dizzy. My legs gave out. The man caught me as gracefully as Humphrey Bogart in his prime.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” I said, trying to steady myself.
The man smiled, revealing straight white teeth.
“Let me buy you that cup of coffee. I know a place not far from here that’s perfectly quiet.”
As we walked, we encountered no pedestrians or cars.
It was a little surreal to be walking in silence with a stranger. Now and then I’d sneak a glance in his direction. He didn’t seem at all bothered as he strode along with his hands in his pockets.
The rain had left a fine film on my face. Because of the unseasonable warmth, I opened the collar of my coat. Exhaling threads of mist into the humid air, we turned onto Blueridge Crescent.
I couldn’t tell if it was the rain, the blackened snow on the sidewalk, or the day’s pale light making the whole city seem sleepy, but as I walked beside my guardian angel, I felt disconnected from things, as though I were frozen in a Riopelle painting.
I took a few deep breaths, trying not to give in to the sluggishness that was overcoming me. Something was troubling me. Something I couldn’t put my finger on.
The man lifted his chin toward the façade of an old building decorated with carved stone gargoyles. One of the winged demons caught my eye.
“I love the gargoyles,” I said.
They reminded me of the time my parents had taken me to visit Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, long ago, in happier days.
“They’re pretty,” he answered. “In the old days, craftsmanship mattered.”
He pushed open the wooden door and led me inside. A circular counter stood in the middle of a narrow, dimly lit room. Chairs were upside down on the tables. Other pieces of furniture were covered in white sheets, as though the place were just emerging from some kind of hibernation.
“If it isn’t Miles Green!” a heavy-set man exclaimed as he came toward us.
I suddenly realized that my good Samaritan and I had never introduced ourselves. So his name was Miles.
The proprietor had slicked-back hair and a thin moustache that crossed his plump, shining face. His shirt was too tight around the waist.
“Hi,” Miles said.
The two men hugged briefly.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me?”
“Oh, sorry. George, this is …”
Miles turned to me, wearing the desperate expression of a schoolboy who doesn’t know the answer to the teacher’s question.
“Simone Fortin,” I said.
“It’s a pleasure,” the proprietor said, kissing my hand ceremoniously.
“Some maniac almost ran her over a few minutes ago. A black car. The driver didn’t even stop.”
“That’s the trouble with this damn city. They’d give a driver’s licence to a donkey if it could squeeze behind the wheel of a car.”
The joke hit me like a whiff of laughing gas.
“Have a seat. I’ll get you some coffee.”
We took off our coats and went to the only table that was set for customers, to the left of the bar. Miles sat down facing the window. I still couldn’t figure out what was bothering me.
“Do you work in the neighbourhood?” he asked.
“Right in front of the spot where the car almost hit me.”
George came back and placed two cups of steaming coffee in front of us.
“I added a finger of cognac, to boost your spirits.”
He went behind the bar and resumed wiping glasses with a dishcloth.
I took a sip and made a face.
“George must have awfully thick fingers,�
� I said in a low voice.
We both laughed.
“What do you do for a living?” Miles asked.
“I’m a web designer for Dinar, an advertising agency.”
“What does that involve?”
“Basically, I design and build websites for our clients.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“More or less. What about you?”
“I’m a horticulturalist. I work not far from here, at the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery.”
George approached us once again, walking like an old cowboy with hemorrhoids.
“Need anything else?”
“We’re good,” Miles replied.
“I’ve been working in the neighbourhood for several years now,” I said, after George moved away, “but I never noticed this place before.”
“It’s a well-kept secret. An oasis of peace for those of us who know about it.”
Suddenly, something clicked. I realized what had been troubling me.
How could I have forgotten last night’s dream, in which I was being run down by a car? I told Miles about the dream.
“Did you wake up before the impact?”
“Yes.”
“Strange,” he murmured.
“I’ll say.”
Without noticing, I had torn my paper napkin into shreds.
“Do you believe in synchronicity?” Miles asked.
“You mean Jung’s notion that coincidences are sometimes more than mere chance?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. You?”
“I find the idea intriguing.”
I put down my cup. Its white bottom was visible through the thin film of remaining coffee.
“Simone … would you spend the rest of the day with me? Who knows … maybe synchronicity brought us together.”
2
I preceded Miles onto the porch of his apartment, a red-brick duplex on Côte-des-Neiges. I climbed the half-dozen stairs cautiously, leaning on an unvarnished wooden handrail. A splinter went through my woollen glove and lodged in my forefinger. Shit!
“Go right in,” he said, joining me on the porch. “It’s open. I never lock the door.” I pulled out the splinter with my teeth.
Stepping into the apartment, I glanced around at the décor: white walls, dark hardwood floors, galley kitchen, circular table, several chairs, and a couch covered with a sheet that Miles hurriedly pulled off to reveal an aging chestnut leather surface. There was no sound system, no sign of a TV. Later, I would discover an austere bedroom and an immaculate bathroom.
He took the coat that I held out to him and hung it on a hook. I went to the only window. Beyond a rusty overpass, I saw the cemetery, with its bare trees, its headstones emerging from the blanket of white, and a single red bouquet lying like a bloodstain on the snow.
I thought with sadness of my mother, who’d been struck down by a ruptured aneurysm twelve years ago. I still caught myself occasionally thinking she was still alive, in her garden, surrounded by her flowers. As for my father, that was a whole other story. Our relationship, already strained after my parents’ divorce, had been snuffed out forever at the very moment when I needed him most desperately. He’d only ever thought about himself and his damn company.
“Have you been living here long?” I asked, still gazing out into the distance.
“Quite a while, yes,” Miles answered.
His voice made me jump. He was a couple of steps behind me.
“Victor Depocas lies buried there,” he said, pointing at the bouquet of roses. “He was an architect. A woman comes and lays flowers on that spot every morning.”
“Do you know things like that about all the graves?” I asked.
“No!” he exclaimed, laughing. “There are nearly nine hundred thousand people buried on those grounds. But when my workday is over, I like to walk along the paths. A cemetery is like a library. Every resting place contains a unique human story.”
Ever since my childhood, I’d always been fascinated by cemeteries. Whenever I visited my mother’s grave, I ended up wandering through the grounds, trying to imagine the lives of the people whose names were carved into the stones all around me.
“Hey, do you like jazz?” Miles asked out of the blue. I said yes without thinking, although my knowledge of the subject came from a single second-hand album purchased in a drab bookstore. Miles took a broom out of a closet and banged four times on the ceiling. Almost instantly, I heard the plaintive wail of a trumpet coming from upstairs.
“Four knocks is our signal,” Miles said. “My neighbour, Jamal Cherraf, is a talented jazz musician.”
I felt suddenly unsteady. Trying not to be conspicuous, I put a hand to my forehead.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“A little light-headed.”
“You’ve had a shock. The adrenalin is wearing off.”
I groped for the right words. “Miles, what you did this morning … you were very brave. That car could have hit you, too.”
“My instincts took over. When I shoved you aside, I ran the risk of hurting you very seriously.”
“I don’t see how.”
“If I’d pushed you too hard, you might have broken your neck or fractured your skull against the pavement. Luckily, I didn’t have time to think about it.”
“You did the right thing. If you hadn’t intervened, I’d have probably been killed.”
He gave me a wry smile.
“I was lucky. The line between a good decision and a bad one is sometimes very thin.”
Upstairs, the trumpet fell silent.
I went back to the window while Miles made coffee.
The street outside was deserted.
It occurred to me that I should call Ariane and ask her to cover for me at the office. I hesitated between two possibilities: pretending to be sick or simply admitting that I had agreed to spend the day with a complete stranger.
I settled on the first option. I had no desire to face the prying questions Ariane would be sure to ask if I told her the truth.
But when I pulled out my cellphone, it didn’t work. It had probably been damaged when I fell.
I asked Miles for permission to use his phone and was hardly surprised to learn that he had neither a cell nor a landline.
Oh well.
Ariane might worry a little, but she’d understand. It isn’t every day you come within a hair’s breadth of getting killed.
My life had been stagnating for too long. I was going to live this day intensely.
I can’t say how long I was standing there, lost in thought, but when I turned around, Miles wasn’t in the room.
He had probably gone to the bathroom.
I waited a few seconds before advancing quietly along the hallway. I stopped to listen, but heard nothing. I knocked on the bathroom door. When no one answered, I opened it.
Without giving it much thought, I noticed that the white-tiled space was entirely bare. There were no toiletries, no towels, not even any toilet paper.
I came back out of the bathroom and walked to the bedroom, where the door was ajar.
“Miles?”
Hesitantly, I stepped through the half-open door. The room’s only contents were a mattress on the floor, covered by a white quilt; a wooden chest of drawers; and, pinned directly to the wall above the chest, an unframed painting. I stepped closer and opened the drawers. They were empty.
The painting was of a stone wall covered in graffiti. I was able to make out six words written in red: Run, late, elapse, lid, me, tee. One of the stones had come loose from the wall and fallen to the ground. Through the gap, the staring eyes of a man were visible.
Fascinated by this morbid work of art, I gazed at it thoughtfully.
The creak of the apartment’s front door startled me. I tiptoed out of the bedroom and crept back along the hallway.
“Did you find the bathroom?”
I wasn’t about to admit to Miles that I’d been searching his bedroom.
<
br /> “Yes,” I lied.
“Sorry for leaving you here all by yourself. I went up to Jamal’s place to get some milk.”
“No problem. He plays really well, by the way.”
“We’ll pay him a visit a little later, if you like. He’s quite a guy. Sugar?”
“Just a drop of milk.”
He handed me a tiny cup. I brought the steaming coffee to my lips and took a small sip. The liquid had a gently calming effect.
We stayed where we were, at the counter, and drank our coffee in silence. When we were done, Miles rinsed the cups and put them in the sink.
“Feel like taking a walk?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll show you around the cemetery. There’s something I want you to see.”
“You can point out the graves of famous people,” I said, with an eager note in my voice.
We entered the cemetery through the Côte-des-Neiges entrance, a wrought-iron portal flanked by twin gatehouses topped with verdigris.
We walked up the path, skirting the central island, which, Miles pointed out, “is covered in hydrangeas in the summertime.” A monumental cross and a pair of smaller angels stood in the middle of the island. As we went by, I noticed the inscription carved into the white marble — O crux ave spes unica — which, if I remembered my spotty high school Latin correctly, meant “Hail to the Cross, our only hope.”
Miles led me along a path that bore left. We passed a chapel and were soon walking west on a rising slope.
Apart from a few sparse mounds of snow, the paths were clear. The rain had stopped and the air was mild; the temperature must have been fifteen degrees Celsius. Miles took off his jacket and knotted it around his waist. We came to the top of the rise.
Stepping forward among the gravestones, he guided me to a black granite monument that wasn’t visible from the path. On it, in white letters, I read:
Alice Poznanska Parizeau
1930–1990
“Do you recognize the name?” Miles asked.
“Yes,” I said. “She was a writer and the wife of a former Quebec premier.”
“Clearly, you’re something of an expert.”
“I hardly deserve any credit. My mother was the one who loved literature. I’ve read one of Alice Parizeau’s novels: The Lilacs Are Blooming in Warsaw.”
We stopped at the grave of actor Guy Sanche, creator and star of the much-loved children’s program Bobino, and we stopped again at the resting place of famed composer and pianist André Mathieu. Then we turned our steps eastward. I gazed up at the trees that lined the path, the filaments of their branches stretching across the sky as Miles pointed.
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