And he didn’t speak to Charles for the rest of the day.
His office-mate, Régine Allaire, a flirtatious thirty-year veteran of the theatre wars who in her time had dropped anchor in more than a few harbours, took a different approach, one that paid better dividends.
“My dear boy,” she said, after giving him a hard, penetrating look, “you’ve just been dropped, haven’t you? I’m right, aren’t I?”
He couldn’t deny it, and during their coffee break he told her the whole story, which brought on another shockwave of anger and resentment. By way of consolation, Régine suggested they go out for dinner to the Piémontais, where they washed down their meal with two bottles of Salice Salentino and countless apéritifs. By eleven o’clock, without quite knowing how it had happened, Charles found himself in her apartment, with Régine ardently trying to continue her consolations but not having much luck, since his youthful virility seemed to have been left behind in one of the bottles they had emptied and didn’t catch up with him again until the wee hours of the morning. He did his best to make up for lost time, although his pleasure was somewhat mitigated by his having a head like a football. Seasoned trooper that she was, she compensated for her fading charms with a wealth of technique and gentleness, and with a philosophical attitude towards the vicissitudes of life. The combined effect acted on Charles’s battered heart like a salve.
“If you find yourself feeling sad again some night, my love,” she told him as he was leaving, “just let me know. We’ll see what we can do about it.”
Charles told himself he would be over Stéphanie in a week. It took him two. One morning he woke up with the kind of dazed sense of well-being that follows a migraine. However, there then began a spell of bitterness that threatened to harden his attitude towards all women. Blonblon, completely tied up with his antique store and still head-over-heels about Isabel, had difficulty understanding his friend and therefore wasn’t able to be of much help.
“Women are only good for one thing,” Charles declared one night, thinking he had reached the summit of wisdom.
He continued to have adventures. His work at Artist’s Life provided several opportunities. Some of them were not exactly uplifting. And one of them could even be considered downright seedy.
A colleague at the magazine told him about a special establishment on Sainte-Catherine, at the corner of Saint-Laurent, where people going through a dry spell in the love department could go to satisfy their thirst in an original and not very expensive fashion. The place was called the Bird in Hand, the owner being a great admirer of puns. For the sum of thirty dollars, clients could sit in the intimacy of a private booth, in the comfort of an easy chair, and admire the sexy dancing of a naked young woman, and they were free to express their enthusiasm in any way they chose, however crude, provided they did not touch the dancer. It was all above board and completely safe.
One night when he was bored, Charles decided to visit the Bird in Hand and satisfy his curiosity.
There was a discreet sign on the street indicating that the establishment was above a shoe store. Charles mounted a narrow, dirty staircase and found himself standing before a pink door with a small window cut into it on which hung a sign that read, in blue and pink letters:
PRIVATE DANCERS
to suggest, no doubt, that the dancers in question were women.
He went in. A large woman standing at a cash register behind a counter welcomed him with a friendly smile. To her right was a bank of television screens, each one connected to a camera in one of the booths. The woman explained that the cameras were there to protect the dancers in the event of aggressive behaviour on the part of a dissatisfied client, as well as to allow the establishment to keep a check on the dancers themselves. Feeling intimidated, Charles paid and indicated a booth. Two dancers would take turns beguiling him with their charms; all he had to do was indicate which one of them pleased him the most.
The whole place seemed so sordid to him that whatever thirst he had felt abandoned him immediately; he would have asked for his money back, but the cash register had already swallowed it and there were no refunds. Charles advanced down a hallway lined with doors, behind a few of which he could hear snippets of music mixed with sighs and groans. A few minutes later he had chosen a pretty little blonde with a forthright air about her. She couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, if that. What was she doing in a place like this? Charles thought. Still talking, she took off her clothes and began dancing to music coming from her cassette player. Sitting in the chair, Charles watched her without moving. He felt like an idiot, and an ignoble idiot at that, and wished with all his might he were somewhere else.
The dancer soon noticed his disinterest.
“Just sit back and relax,” she told him, smiling.
He understood her words to be an invitation, but his modesty held him back. She was gently insistent, like someone coaxing a friend to do something she knew he would like very much. He eventually gave in and she started dancing again. After a few seconds, however, when she realized her client was distinctly lacking in enthusiasm, she came to his aid with a remarkable dexterity and a charming simplicity, even though such administrations were not included in the price.
“Thank you,” Charles said, doing up his belt. His face felt red and he wanted nothing more than to leave as quickly as possible.
She winked at him.
“Don’t mention it. You’ll be back.”
He left, filled with a curious sensation that was part sexual satisfaction and part sickness in the pit of his stomach.
Several weeks went by. One night, after working late at the magazine, he went into a restaurant on Sainte-Catherine, not far from his apartment, to grab a bite to eat before going to bed.
The blond dancer was there, sitting alone, with a large glass of Coke in front of her, and wiping her nose. She looked exhausted and unhappy.
Without thinking, Charles went up and asked if he could join her. She recognized him, told him he could sit down, and gently reproached him for not having gone back to see her.
“I’ve been swamped with work,” he told her, out of politeness.
They began to chat. Or rather, Charles chatted and she listened, still wiping her nose. She was greatly impressed to learn that he worked at Artist’s Life, and began questioning him about the singer Lola Malo and other stars of the stage, in the naïve belief that he was on a first-name basis with everyone in the entertainment world. Charles found her as pretty as he remembered, with lively, candid eyes, a small, delicate mouth, and skin of an exquisite pink that made him want to reach over and touch it; even her nose, though reddened and slightly swollen from her cold, was pleasant to look at. She spoke simply and without vulgarity. Her work tired her out, she said, because the hours were long and the clients not always very nice to her. This monster of a cold had kept her home for the past five days, but she was going back the next day.
“Why?” asked Charles gently, the good Samaritan moved both by charity and by a sense of lust. “Why do that kind of work?”
“Why not?” she replied, surprised by the question, “ft pays well.”
He found himself unable to refute her logic. He also found himself wanting to spend the night with her, and, after hesitating, told her so.
She laughed. “You’ll catch my cold.”
“I never catch colds.”
“Where do you live?”
“Just around the corner.”
She thought about it for a moment. “All right, because you are kind and a nice guy. Normally I’d have to say no. I’m not supposed to go with clients. If they ever found out, I’d be out the door in two seconds flat.”
As they walked to his apartment, Charles wondered if he should offer her money. We’ll wait and see, he decided, not out of pettiness but because he didn’t want to treat her like a prostitute. Blonblon would try to save her soul. And he’d probably succeed, poor guy!
At the apartment she toured all the rooms, r
emarking on how nicely he’d decorated them. Charles smiled, thinking she must come from a fairly modest background. She was most impressed by his new computer, which he’d just taken out of its packaging. She asked him to boot it up and sat at the keyboard while Charles bent and kissed the back of her neck, and handed her more Kleenex, as her nose was still running.
“In a year, maybe two, I’m going back to school,” she said, wrinkling her brow with a determined air.
“That’s a great idea,” Charles said, kissing her more fervently.
In bed she was a connoisseuse. Charles could hardly believe that someone with such natural delicacy could be so good at what was essentially a degrading occupation. If he weren’t careful, he’d fall in love with her, which of course would be pure folly.
He awoke early the next morning, because he had an interview to conduct. She was still sleeping, lying on her side, her head resting on one arm, in such a fetching, childlike pose that he couldn’t bear to take his eyes off her.
He placed his lips on hers. “Do you have to get up early?”
She shook her head, keeping her eyes closed but with an easy smile on her lips.
“I’ll let you sleep, then,” he said. “Lock the door when you leave. You can lock it from the inside. Can you give me your phone number?”
“I’ll leave it for you,” she murmured, moving her head slightly and kissing his chin.
He dressed, ate a hasty breakfast, trying not to make too much noise, and went out to do his interview. He thought about her the entire day.
When he arrived home early that evening, his computer was gone, along with a small sum of money he’d kept in a dresser drawer. Nothing else had been touched.
He went to the Bird in Hand and asked to see her, but the owner, as affable as ever, informed him that unfortunately she no longer worked for the establishment.
Charles called her a liar and a thief, banging his fist on the counter. A huge man weighing two hundred and fifty pounds appeared in a doorway. His head was shaved, his moustache hid his mouth, and he flexed his biceps suggestively, inviting Charles to leave on his own steam.
For three days nobody could get a word out of Charles. His colleagues at Artist’s Life, rebuffed one after the other, began to tease him behind his back. Only Bernard Délicieux, generous to a fault as usual, brought Charles out of his funk, by offering him his old computer, which he had just replaced with a more up-to-date model.
Charles became a full-time writer for Artist’s Life in a way that was as sudden as it was original.
One morning, when he was in the office to deliver his column, he was chatting over a coffee with Bernard Délicieux when a sudden change in atmosphere descended over the editorial section. Silence fell like a trap door, and all movement ceased.
The editor, sporting a new haircut and an impeccably knotted tie, had just entered the room with a visitor. Vanier was all over the man, smiling and practically bowing before him: the visitor was Pierre Péladeau, the founder of Québécor and the Journal de Montréal and the owner of Artist’s Life, which was one of the more modest members of his vast empire of newspapers and magazines.
The journalists set to work at their desks with a zealousness that would have earned them the Nobel Prize had they been able to keep it up. Charles merely turned pale and stared at the two men talking as they walked towards him between the rows of desks. An idea had come into his head, and only fear would keep him from putting it into action. Suddenly, under the awe-stricken eye of Délicieux, Charles strode up to the tycoon.
“Monsieur Péladeau,” he said, his voice rendered abnormally loud by nervousness, “could I have a word with you, if you have a minute?”
Every eye in the office was on him.
The businessman interrupted his conversation with Vanier and turned to Charles in surprise.
“And you are …?”
The words were spewed out, jumbled and nearly unintelligible, since Pierre Péladeau always spoke quickly, in a hoarse voice, and always mangled his words. With an ambiguous smile, he waited for Charles to reply. Charles, however, was struck dumb, trying to put his best foot forward; then, deciding to go for broke, he added in his most deferential tones, “Monsieur Péladeau, if it’s at all possible, I would really like to meet with you.”
“You’re meeting with me now.”
Checked, Charles merely stared at him.
“So, what can I do for you, young man?” the businessman asked in a slightly friendlier voice.
“Er … It’s about… I mean … I’d feel a lot more comfortable talking to you in private … But of course you must be very busy…”
“I am. But I have both my ears with me today, so … Go ahead. What is it? I don’t have all day.”
“It’s about… I would like to work here at Artist’s Life full-time.”
“I know a lot of people who would like that, my boy,” Péladeau said with a curt laugh. “But there are only so many jobs available, and that’s a fact. I can’t go adding pages to the magazine just because I like the cut of your jib, can I?” He turned to the editor. “Is he any good?”
“Not bad,” Vanier replied, ticked off at seeing one of his employees going over his head, but treading carefully because he could also see that Charles’s audacity was making a favourable impression on Péladeau. “He does the ‘Letters to Maryse’ column.”
“Really? Then he is good. Would there be a place for him?”
“I could take a look.”
“See what you can come up with. If there’s room, we’ll take him on. If not, he’ll have to be content with ‘Letters.’”
Charles thanked the man profusely. Péladeau gave a quick, irritated nod of his head, patted Charles on the shoulder, and moved off hurriedly with the editor.
Bernard Délicieux was blown away by Charles’s boldness. He advised the young man to send Péladeau copies of his best pieces from the Siren, along with a copy of The Silent Rip-Off and a very well-crafted letter, as soon as possible. It was well-known that Péladeau always answered all letters that were sent to him, even those from ordinary citizens. The next day, Charles mailed off a package to Quebecor’s headquarters on rue Saint-Jacques. Two weeks later, Artist’s Life took him on as a staff writer, and the editor of the Villeray Siren lost his only journalist so suddenly he didn’t even have a chance to chew him out.
It did not take Charles long to excel at his new job; the editor, who had secretly been hoping that Charles would fall flat on his face, changed his attitude towards the young man. After two weeks of trying, Charles succeeded in landing an interview with the singer Lola Malo, who was reputedly inaccessible behind her barricade of cash; the interview made quite a splash, was printed on the front page, and aroused the jealousy of some of his confrères and a note of congratulations from Pierre Péladeau himself. The next week, his touching tribute to the aging humorist Pierre Lapierre drew an avalanche of letters to the journal and twenty-two offers of support to Lapierre.
From then on, Charles Thibodeau was a force to be reckoned with — at least for as long as he kept bringing in the stories.
Blonblon’s antique shop on avenue du Mont-Royal, however, was going through a rough period. On its distinguished wooden sign, with carved letters that had cost Blonblon a fortune, could be read:
THE OLD ARMOIRE
ANTIQUES
BARGAINS — CURIOSITIES
WE MAKE REPAIRS
Blonblon was working twelve, even sixteen, hours a day, repairing and restoring furniture, dishes, and sundry other items as long as they were old, in the hope of reselling them at a reasonable profit. Sometimes it worked, but not nearly as often as he’d hoped; he also sold furniture and other objects on consignment. Opening his shop had been, in some ways, a return to the repair business he’d begun during his childhood.
“Blonblon hasn’t changed,” his friends and acquaintances would say, smiling broadly.
And everyone seemed happy that he hadn’t.
To sav
e money, he was still living with his parents, who helped him out as best they could, but he was hoping with all his heart to some day share an apartment with Isabel and raise three or four kids. For some obscure reason he had, for a long time now, felt an urgent need to father children, and it had intensified the love he felt for Isabel. In her, on the other hand, the pro-creative desire was vigorously tempered by practical considerations; she was close to getting her nursing certificate, and she had firmly declared to Blonblon that he would have to get his shop on a solid footing before she would even contemplate popping a succession of babies.
“And don’t expect me to spend the rest of my days up to my neck in housework, either. I am a modern woman. I love children, but I want a professional life. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, yes, that’s all very normal. No surprises there. My mother is exactly the same. She always had an outside job.”
“That’s because your father is an invalid.”
“She would have worked anyway, believe me. Modern women, as you call them, weren’t invented yesterday.”
These days, when he visited his friend, Charles felt as though he were entering a different world, more and more distanced from his own. He reacted to this sense by adopting a cynical attitude towards love and women, always being careful to make sure that Isabel was either absent or out of earshot, because in truth he was ashamed of his views, even though he thought they were realistic and sensible.
Blonblon listened to him with a patient smile and a slightly saddened sympathy. His friend was going through a difficult time; eventually he would return to his old self. It was important to let him express his pain, to expel the poison that was eating away at his entrails. Charles would have liked to discuss his private concerns with Blonblon, even if it meant arguing with him, but he found he could not. After a while, he came to feel that he no longer had much to say to the one person who had been his confidant for so many years.
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