“Singing in the shower is the best!” she said, before correcting herself. “Singing and drinking beer in the shower is the best!”
That’s how we got back to Maiden. I went off about Bruce Dickinson. At that time he was my idol. I started explaining how, during the recording of Chemical Wedding, he’d ingeniously replaced the low E on both guitars with bass strings, for a heavier sound. Then I got going on the overall album concept. It was based on William Blake’s poetry. I went track-by-track through the entire album, with extravagant hand gestures to drive home my point. Bonnie listened, sort of paying attention, perhaps more out of politeness than genuine interest in what I was saying. But I just couldn’t stop. The alcohol was going to my head. At the end I could actually hear myself getting carried away, and feel Bonnie inching away as friendly mockery took the place of the genuine enthusiasm that had been there moments ago.
“Have you seen Maiden live?”
“Two times, oui.”
Her eyes widened. Then she opened her mouth when I told her I’d been there for Dickinson’s return to the stage, in ’99. They’d pretty much stuck to their early stuff.
“I’m so jealous.”
On that tour she’d tried to go see the Toronto show, but the guy she was going out with hadn’t been able to get tickets.
“We should’ve tried for another city, Montreal, even Quebec City. Man, I would have killed to see that show.”
I took a sip of beer. My excess of enthusiasm was dissipating. Steven and Bébert were playing pool. Bébert was striding around the table like a hunter, deciding which ball to pounce on next.
“Why’d you move to Montreal?”
She took a final puff of her smoke and stubbed it out in the ashtray. She scrunched up her eyebrows, gave a serious look.
“To study. I wanted to get into journalism, at Concordia. But I dropped out. You know Montreal: too much drinking and partying.”
“Journalism. So you like writing?”
She pointed at her glass.
“I like booze more!”
She started laughing again, and shot me a knowing look. At that moment you never would have guessed that the girl beside me and the cook who shoved aside everything and everyone in her path were one and the same person. I had never seen her so happy. I was about to ask her what she liked to read.
“Ahh, young love.”
It was Nick’s voice in the distance. Bonnie turned to him.
“Yo bitch. What’s up?” she said by way of a greeting. “Why are you still wearing that suit? You look like a fairy.”
She was pulling on his too-tight shirt. He yanked it back, with an annoyed look. Nick reminded me of the hockey players I’d gone to school with, who wore clothes two sizes too small so their polo-shirt sleeves cut into their biceps.
Bébert was holding court on the pool table. Anyone who challenged him was swiftly sent packing. It never took more than three or four turns. Steven was watching, and commentating his shots. I checked out Bonnie, discreetly, as she talked with Nick. He went up to order a round of shooters.
Bébert came back to the table with a pitcher of ale. Behind him, Steven was playing against two guys around my age. In their immaculate white baseball caps they looked like they’d been teleported in from a suburban nightclub. Steven had them up against the ropes.
I was gently slip-sliding into drunkenness as my exhaustion caught up with me. I could feel the layer of grease coating me from head to toe, except of course my hands, scrubbed clean by abrasive soaps and steel wool.
Bébert turned toward me and asked if I was okay. I gave him a thumbs up. He came in closer.
“I know it was a rough night, man. We’ll deal with Christian, leave it to me. We’ll find you a real partner.”
I shrugged my shoulders and told him again that I was fine. Though the signal was still weak I could feel something welling up inside me, a hint of that fever that always preceded a relapse. I caught a glimpse of Bonnie’s white neck through her purple tresses. She was digging for a smoke. I looked away.
Nick came back with the shooters. He handed them out, one apiece. We shot them back, screeching like banshees. The booze hit me like a fist to the jaw. The fever dissipated, the noise drowned out the signal. I was numb enough to be out of the danger zone.
The pace they kept was a far cry from the drinking I’d done as a teenager, or the crash-and-burn style of my Cegep friends. I was having a hard time getting used to my new friends’ bottomless thirst and the pace at which they raced full-speed ahead to oblivion.
Bonnie had moved her chair next to Bébert’s and they were setting in on Renaud, clearly well-trod common ground. She kept touching him, sometimes on the shoulder or even the thigh. The alcohol she guzzled seemed to have no effect whatsoever beyond adding a dash of colour to her cheeks.
Nick was chatting with Steven now, about some guy named Gaétan—or maybe Gates?—a Champagne-and-amphetamine-fuelled restaurant boss who slept no more than three hours a night. The kind of boss who’d bust into the kitchen and do half the rush, throw some pans and make the servers cry, then go right back out to the floor to lay down the red carpet for friends who’d show up out of nowhere. They’d both worked for him before. Nick still had nightmares.
“I spent three months in that kitchen, man,” Steven said, “and lost fifteen pounds. Fuck, we were always understaffed, doing two hundred covers a night. As if that wasn’t enough, dude would show up at the last minute and grab stuff for his other events. One time a line cook told him he couldn’t just take off with the batch of brochettes, we were running out. So Gates, man, he throws them in the garbage, right in the kid’s face. Says all he has to do is make more tomorrow.”
As they fleshed out their portrait of this guy I wondered how Séverine stacked up in the ranking of slave-driving restaurant owners. I still hadn’t seen enough to get a proper sense of her character. I hoped she wouldn’t turn out to be a wingnut like this guy.
“Yo Bébert. You in?”
Nick held a little chunk of hash hidden in his palm. Her eyes shining from the alcohol, Bonnie said she’d join them, then got up to go pee.
“Who’d you get it from?”
“Greg,” answered Nick.
“Okay, I’ll have a puff.”
I turned toward Bébert to ask him if Greg was really just a busboy.
Bébert laughed a bit, as if he was remembering an old joke.
“Isn’t he a little old to be a busboy?”
“What’s it to you, man?”
“Uh, I don’t know. Just seems like something’s off. What is he, thirty, thirty five?”
Bébert wasn’t smiling anymore. He leaned toward me.
“What exactly do you want to know, man?”
I leaned back a bit, putting up my hands.
“Nothing. Just seems kind of weird, that’s all. I was sure he was a boss or something.”
The bar was getting noisier as three a.m. approached.
“Let me give you two pieces of friendly advice. One: If you got questions about Greg, ask him yourself. Don’t go around asking other people. Two: Don’t ask any questions. Greg really hates people asking him questions.”
That sobered me up a bit. Bébert was staring at me. Clearly, I’d said something wrong. I didn’t really see what the problem was.
“All I wanted to know is if he’s really a busboy. Nick said he was a busboy, but it didn’t seem like it. He makes me kind of nervous, that’s all.”
Bébert leaned back now and took a sip of beer. Bonnie was telling an intense story that involved lots of punching in the air; Nick was listening to her, falling over laughing. I got up to leave, and tried to pay Bébert for my share of the pitchers, but he wouldn’t let me. He told me to have a good night, and not to worry about Greg.
I staggered out of the bar. The cold caught me off guard. I walked a while
up Mont-Royal, which was quiet except around the doors of the bars closing one after another. I hailed a cab. It stopped and I sacrificed one my twenties for a ride back to Ahuntsic. Replaying my conversation with Bonnie, I hoped I hadn’t come off like too much of a kid. For a pathetic second, I imagined she was in the taxi with me, and we were on the way to her place. In your dreams, man. But I let myself dream. Sometimes you’ve got to. For sure I was sad that our conversation had dead-ended right when Nick showed up. I guessed they’d known each other a long time, there was no way I could be as comfortable as they were with each other. I lacked their confidence, their comic timing. The taxi rolled north, sometimes catching three green lights in a row, the car seemed to be sailing on water, swept along by a powerful swell through a white city sleeping frozen under amber, and I let myself drift off to sleep, on my way toward the end of it all, to the very end of nothing at all.
Chapter 14
I awoke, puffy and swollen, from unrestful sleep. My back was even more bent out of shape than the night before, as if I’d been beaten. I checked the time on my pager: 10:53. With Herculean effort I pulled myself from the sofa and started pacing slowly around the apartment, to get my creaky bones moving again. I wandered aimlessly from room to room like a person who’s forgotten what they’re looking for. Vincent’s room was empty and the mess was piling up. As always it smelled like deodorant and shampoo.
The cupboard was dolefully bare as always, the kitchen depressing as ever. I recalled my parents’ kitchen, with bread set out on the counter alongside a basket of fruit and a fridge full of eggs and bacon, jam and fresh-squeezed juice. I used to love frying up toasted sandwiches with eggs, bacon, and mayo. I told myself I’d have to buy at least the basics—milk, bread, peanut butter, coffee. Another time: it was already late and I had to get moving. I had to meet Malik at Henri-Bourassa Metro station in less than an hour.
I read the note Vincent had left on the kitchen table, tucked under my Walkman to make sure I’d see it. He asked if I thought I’d be staying through the holidays, and whether I could help out with the rent and Hydro if I was. Whatever I could afford.
I took a shower, still hoping to chase the stench of cooking oil clinging to my hair and body. I hurried out of the bathroom and packed my bag with all the stuff I’d need for my shift, then ran out the door to the bus stop. I just barely caught the No. 69.
It was a beautiful December day. For a week now the grey grass had been covered over with a blanket of white, dazzling against the blue sky. It squeaked under my footsteps.
I got to the station ten minutes late. In my current state that felt like a triumph of punctuality. Malik’s Golf was parked in the lot beside the station. I opened the door. The epic riffery of the latest Nocturnal Rites greeted me. I got in and leaned back in the passenger seat. Malik was reading over his class notes. They were full of equations.
“Nice. It’s a change from Rhapsody.”
I just couldn’t get one hundred per cent behind bands who dressed up as knights and posed for photos holding Claymore swords.
Malik admired their chops, but I balked at the lyrics. When it wasn’t a pale imitation of Middle Earth, it sounded like the debriefing after a scintillating game of D&D, in rhyme. Malik turned it down a bit.
“Where we going?”
I suggested we take Berri, then Saint-Denis. We could go somewhere close to the restaurant since I had to work at four.
The sunny streets, low sun, and people taking over the sidewalk made me nostalgic for the holidays. I wished I could go ten years back in time and recover the excitement I would feel as a kid when December rolled around. Malik had turned the volume back up and was tapping along with the beat on the steering wheel. I could almost imagine I heard myself asking him to take me back to Trois-Rivières, and was worried the conversation might take a sharp left turn. It wasn’t a good time. He had exams to study for, and it was dawning on me that my college semester was more or less a write-off. Since I preferred not to think or talk about it, I kept quiet. I wiped the steam from the windows and watched the parade of facades, already darkening in the winter sky. “Hell and Back” was playing, the only Nocturnal track that had made it onto any of my mixtapes.
We took a seat in one of the booths along the window at the Fameux. Malik ordered a club sandwich and coffee. I had an Italian poutine and a Coke. I had to fill my stomach. I was getting dizzy.
“When are you leaving for Cuba?”
“The 21st,” Malik answered, rolling up his sleeves. “I’ll be back the 28th or 29th.”
The waitress brought our drinks. I took a long swig. The sugar helped. The place was two-thirds empty. A few customers stared at the Journal de Montréal. A student sat at the booth across from reading a thick collection of spiral-bound notes. Outside, across the street at the entrance to Bily Kun, guys in navy-blue jumpsuits were drinking coffee, smoking, and chatting.
“You’re gonna spend the 24th and 25th with your parents.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“It wasn’t a question, man. You’re gonna spend Christmas with your parents.”
He took a sip of coffee, gingerly. Frowned, added sugar.
“I don’t really want to.”
“And that matters because. . . ?”
His elbows were on the table, fingers interlaced. Despite the dark circles under his eyes Malik looked good. He was freshly shaved. He turned and looked me in the eye.
“Your mum keeps telling my dad she never hears from you. Make a fucking effort, man.”
I looked away to hide my irritation. I decided to pay him back his eighty dollars before he mentioned it. I put the ATM envelope down on the table. He reacted exactly the way he did when I made a reckless move during our chess games.
“Good,” he said.
“See. I’m not a lost cause.”
I took the straw out of my drink and drank from the can.
“I never said that.”
He didn’t touch the envelope. He was holding his cup to his lips, taking small regular sips.
“Sure you don’t need it anymore?”
“No, it’s okay, they’re paying me now.”
“Already?”
“Yeah, I started right in the middle of a pay period, so the chef paid me my first week in cash.”
“Seriously? They’re paying you under the table?”
“Nah, it’s not like that. The rest of the hours will be on a normal paycheque.”
I was fiddling with the plastic straw as I talked. The sky was already darkening, and the dry electric heat made me feel better. You could tell it was a bone-chilling cold outside from the way the people walking by were retreating into their coats. Malik’s coffee cup was already empty. He’d always drunk his coffee fast. He liked it boiling hot.
“I’m getting it together, slowly,” I said. “I’m paying Vincent my share, too.”
The waitress came by with a coffee pot. Malik cleared his throat, with the same sound our grandfather made to invite us into a conversation.
“How’re your classes?”
“I’ll be fine, I’m pretty sure. My job is helping me stay organized.”
“Seems like a whole lot of progress in just a week.”
“Yeah well. I’m getting my shit together. It was time.”
A car horn honked repeatedly. We turned around. A beggar was doubled over on in the middle of the road, as if he was looking for his glasses, while cars angrily drove around him.
“You don’t think it might be too much for you, both at once?”
“No, it’ll keep me away from the machines. Keep me busy.”
Our food showed up and we dug in. I asked him how the end of his semester was going. He said he already had an internship lined up for next summer. He was working on armour for bomb-disposal units, a big project that would stretch over his fall and spring terms. I imagined
the Power Armour used by the Enclave forces in Fallout 2. I wanted to see it. He asked how my projects were going. Now that I was digging myself out of my hole I’d be able to get to work on them again. Alex was super excited about my drawings, I told him, and was talking about it to all the other groups he knew. Malik lifted up his cup, with a proud look on his face.
I ordered coffee after my poutine, and we had a good long talk that stretched out a couple hours. We made plans for spring, shows we could see, and he gave me my Iced Earth ticket. In Flames was coming to town soon, too. We talked about going to spend a weekend at his dad’s place in the Eastern Townships, maybe going out snowshoeing. He kept saying it would do me good to get out of the city, spend some time in the woods. These faraway projects opened a door to a happy place in my mind, where I could imagine a future free of worry and untroubled by the need to gamble. He asked me if there were any girls in the picture. I said not really.
“Wouldn’t hurt, hey?”
“Yeah. It’s not that, though.”
The homeless guy who’d been out in the street was back. Now he was climbing on the roof of a parked car. You could see he was yelling something. No one paid attention. I turned back toward Malik.
“Anyway, I don’t want to talk about girls. . .”
The waitress brought our bills. I felt a momentary panic. There was no way I could pay without exposing my wad of money, grown fat from my recent winnings. But before I was forced to attempt some sleight-of-hand Malik paid for us both.
He dropped me off at the restaurant and kept going up Mont-Royal, on his way to Papineau and the bridge. The sky had turned deep indigo. People’s breath formed little frozen clouds. I shivered and took out my pager to check the time. I had a message. I went to phone booth in front of the Second Cup and dialled my voice mail. I recognized Alex’s voice. Suddenly my saliva turned acidic and I could feel my heart rattling around in my chest.
“Hey man, we wanted to know when you were planning to show us the drawings. We want to see how it’s coming. Mike’s getting a little sketched out, especially since you didn’t show up last time. It was a lot of work to talk him down, man. I can keep them calm but you’ve gotta do your part. C’mon. I know you’ve got this. Give me a call. We’re out of town this week, come by the practice space next week. Okay? Bye, man.”
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