“Cool. I do live modelling sometimes.”
I rested my elbows on the table, bringing my chair closer.
“Do you draw too?”
“What? No, I’m terrible at drawing. I just pose.”
I imagined Jade, naked, in the middle of a drawing class. My earlobes were getting warm. I was a bit taken aback, couldn’t help it.
“It pays well,” she went on, looking around the crowded room.
I didn’t ask whether she was embarrassed to get naked in front of strangers, since the way she said it made clear she wasn’t.
“What about you? What do you do besides working at the restaurant?”
“Uh, lots of things.”
She started telling me all about it. She seemed to be sinking into her chair, with one hand between her crossed thighs. She was a little older than I’d thought—twenty-four—and was part of a Brazilian dance troupe. She also sang in a jazz group.
“That’s what’s cool about working on the floor: you can concentrate your hours, and still make decent money. It leaves me time for other stuff. Especially since the band is getting serious. We might go on tour this spring.”
“On tour?”
“Yeah, a few shows in Quebec and Ontario. A couple of dates in the States, on the East Coast.”
“Wow. How long?”
“Three or four weeks.”
Her talk of touring reminded me of Deathgaze and the EP, which they’d need in time for their shows this winter. I chased the thought from my mind. My beer was going down fast. Jade was looking at me with a coy smile, like she was waiting for me to say something dumb.
“But . . . what’ll your boyfriend think about you being away so long?”
She laughed.
“I don’t have a boyfriend.”
The place kept filling up. Despite the noise and swelling volume of the conversation we could understand each other perfectly. It must be getting close to twelve-thirty. She was eyeing the people coming in. One was a regular at the restaurant, but not with the woman he was with now. Another had once pulled a dine-and-dash. And there was a guy sitting near the back who Maude had once slapped because he pinched her ass.
I asked what it was like talking to people you didn’t know all the time, being trapped behind the bar and always having to be nice.
“It gets automatic. It’s really not as bad as you think. The bar is like a stage. It’s your show. The customers just want your attention. They’re there for you.”
More beers showed up. She paid the second round too.
“Think you’d like working on the floor?”
The prospect seemed about as realistic as mastering telekinesis.
“At the restaurant?”
“Maybe not La Trattoria, but somewhere. It’d be even better than cooking.”
“I’ve never done that, I don’t have experience.”
“You’ve gotta try it. You’re all-right looking, you can handle yourself, and deal with unexpected shit. I’m sure you’d make a good busboy.”
I listened as if she was talking about someone else. Working on the floor could be a good financial move, she said, especially while I was at school. I admitted I’d never even thought about it, especially since Marie-Lou made me think there was just no way without experience.
Jade asked me if I had a girlfriend. I seemed to hesitate a minute, then said no. It made me nervous again. My head was spinning. Jade seemed even more attractive away from the restaurant, just kicking back having a drink after work. Gone from my thoughts were Marie-Lou and Bonnie. Jade’s cheeks were getting flushed from the alcohol. She took off her turtleneck, revealing a green tank top underneath, tight against her breasts. She was showing her shoulders again. A feeling of weakness shot through my whole body. I felt uncomfortable in my chair. I could feel my temperature rising. Jade was telling me about the places she’d worked before La Trattoria, and I was having trouble focusing. My beer was almost done. A long nervous shiver ran down my back; I tried to supress it. There were at least two good sips left in my pint, enough to keep her from ordering another round. Her beer was still half full.
“Sorry, I have to go to the bathroom.”
I got up and slid between the tables, and took the pager out of my pocket: 1:11. There was still enough time. I emptied my bladder and then came back and sat down, with my pager. I pretended to check my messages. My eyes focused on the screen as I talked to Jade, as if an urgent message required my attention. Mainly I was trying to avoid making eye contact.
“I’m really sorry. I have to go. My roommate is locked out and his girlfriend is out of town.”
“No way. That sucks. I can wait for you here if you want.”
I rubbed my face.
“No, don’t wait for me. I live far away. On Henri-Bourassa.”
When I looked up from my pager, I could see that Jade was still smiling, as if the situation amused her. She put a hand under her arm.
“No worries. Next time.”
She picked up her turtleneck and put in on in a smooth movement. The outline of her breasts disappeared under the thick wool. I was burning up inside, feeling something akin to muffled pain. There was only one thing on my mind.
To leave we had to fight our way through a disorganized group on their way in. I immediately hailed a cab, and purposely didn’t offer to drop Jade off. She said bye with a long kiss on the cheek. I unleashed a flurry of excuses and promised we’d do it again soon. As I slid into the back seat I thought I heard her swear I wouldn’t get away so easily next time.
I gave the intersection to the taxi driver. I spent the entire cab ride rubbing my knuckles, pulling off flakes of eczema-dried skin with my nails. In an attempt to calm myself down I closed my eyes, but it wasn’t enough to chase the image obsessing me from my head.
I entered the establishment, repeating the ritual. The bouncer shot me a fluorescent smile and a “Long time, no see.” I was wound up too tight to even answer. In the mirrors’ reflection I could follow what was happening onstage. I floated along between the chrome chairs and the tables. The bartender recognized me and uncapped two Buds before I had time to order. I slid her a twenty, and left the change as a tip.
Without taking off my coat or even sitting down I positioned myself in front of the machine. I slid a twenty into the slot. I was burning up in my multiple layers of clothing. I selected my game: Crazy Bells.
For the first few rounds I bet big but won small. The electronic tic-tac sound of my rising and falling credits sent pins and needles shooting up my fingertips. It felt fantastic. My head was spinning. I was flying, five inches above the ground. In under twenty minutes I burned through almost $100. Still no win. But losing meant nothing to me. Playing was the only thing that mattered, the one thing I needed.
I bet the maximum and spun the spindle. Reds, yellows, oranges, yellows, greens, purples, and oranges blinked before my eyes. For a few hundred, or maybe a few thousand years, it spun. Something was crushing my chest. Finally the spinning slowed to a crawl. Sevens all over the shop, in eight of the nine boxes. A series of shivers made my eyelids shake and relaxed my every muscle, one at a time. The effect was amplified when, next round, six sevens turned up in the boxes. After my earlier losses I’d just won two-hundred-thirty dollars. It wasn’t much. Next to nothing, really. But I’d had a winning sequence. I’d be leaving with more than I came with. I printed the ticket and headed to the bar to collect my winnings.
I was still kind of dazed when one of the girls came up to me. She said her name was Angélique. She had big thighs bulging under her miniskirt and heavy breasts stuffed into a neon-yellow bra. The smell of hairspray filled my nose. A few minutes later, we were in the booth. She was rubbing up on me lasciviously as my hands wandered clumsily over her ass and tits. I was still stunned by my lucky run. I wasn’t thinking about Jade any more. I wasn’t thi
nking at all anymore.
I got forty-bucks’ worth of dances from Angélique, then went back to the machines.
Two-thirty a.m. I’d already burned through half of my winnings. I bet aggressively, in paroxysms of a nervous, electric euphoria. I was sure that sooner or later I’d hit the ultimate combo, bells in a cross formation. It never arrived. I got another run of sevens, five out of nine this time. My credits jumped up a notch. For a moment I was blind. I imagined myself a pitiful, haggard figure. I had to get out of there. I looked around. There was nothing but shadows dissected by phosphorescent rays and black lights. A group of customers in hockey jerseys were whistling at a black dancer who was kneeling on the stage with her ass thrust out toward them.
I had to get out of there.
The one truly terrifying prospect was the possibility of losing so much I could no longer play. I hesitated. I was riveted to the machine. I set the spindle in motion for one last round. The fruits started spinning on the screen. My eyes were dry and burning. I closed them. When I opened them again, nine gold ingots were blinking before me. The entire kitty won by the players before me would be added to my credits. I was thunderstruck. I drained my third Bud like a Gatorade, while the machine printed out my wins.
I counted and counted my tickets. I was too dazed to see them as money. It was pure potentiality, that precious substance that would enable me to keep playing. That was why I didn’t want to use it for anything except gambling. Even with hundreds of dollars on me, a taxi to Vincent’s felt like an unconscionable waste, worse than a sacrilege.
At Berri I took the night bus up Saint-Denis. I was slowly coming back down to earth. The fever that had taken hold of me when I was with Jade burned less searingly now. Gradually, calm was returning.
When I got off the bus, Henri-Bourassa had a sad nocturnal gleam, like a recently deserted outpost. I walked to Vincent’s, the sound of my footsteps in my ears, impervious to the cold and the wind blowing on me from Ahuntsic park, an empty white expanse broken only by the occasional leafless black tree. Low clouds choking the yellow night. I was the only human being.
In front of the apartment door, I went through all my pockets twice. No keys. Suddenly I was stone sober. Luckily the lobby door wasn’t properly locked. I went inside and rang Vincent’s bell. No answer. He was probably at Janine’s. I’d have to call him. There was a phone booth fifty feet from his place, but I couldn’t bring myself to go outside. I might be cast out for good. Feeling lowdown, at the end of my tether, I slumped down in front of the heater and fell asleep, my head tucked into my knees and my earbuds in my ear.
Chapter 25
Idozed off in ten-minute snatches troubled by a recurring dream where someone caught me sleeping in the hallway like a bum and kicked me out. Around five-thirty a.m. I fell into a deeper sleep, only to be rudely interrupted by the sound of the building’s front door slamming shut. Whoever had entered the lobby crossed it in a hurry. The taste of Bud lingered in my mouth and I reeked of cigarette smoke and stripper’s cheap perfume.
It was almost six-thirty. I got up, twisted in knots, limbs numb with fatigue. Though I was exhausted, more sleep was out of the question. And I was too hungry to wait for Vincent.
I went outside. It was still dark out. I spent a minute in the doorway. The cold easily located the chinks in my lumberjack shirt and creeped down into my bones. My Walkman batteries were dead. The wad of cash I’d shoved into my pocket had taken on monstrous proportions. I took it out and stared at it for a minute. I’d count it later. I put the money back into the pocket of my jeans and started walking again. Boulevard Henri-Bourassa was black and orange in the streetlights. Silhouettes paraded along the sidewalks, mummified in their winter parkas. Already crowds of cars and buses were making their way toward real life. There seemed to be no one driving them. The cottony opaque sky gave no hint of the coming dawn. The landscape was rendered illegible by my exhaustion, as if the habitual cycles of day and night had come permanently uncoupled.
I took a bus, I don’t know which one, it was crowded with sleepwalkers reeking of aftershave, sweat, deodorant, and hair mousse. My eyelids closed of their own volition. I prayed for a free seat.
In the Metro, I slept from Henri-Bourassa all the way to Berri-UQAM, with its ambient odour of pizza and French Vanilla coffee. It reminded me of the beginning of the last semester, when I used to get up at the crack of dawn to make sure I didn’t miss a class.
At a Dunkin’ Donuts I had breakfast, staring off into space, taking a thousand chews on each bite of a greasy croissant stuffed with eggs, cheese, and ham. Then I wandered around the station, past people scarcely older than me with bruised faces and quaking voices begging for money and smokes.
I loitered a while in a Jean Coutu drugstore at Place Dupuis. Bought fresh batteries to coax my Walkman back to life, then dragged myself to my Cegep where I could lay down on one of the couches in the student union café.
Sprawled out on a battered old couch, unnoticed by the student hordes passing through the café, with my headphones in to drown out the conversations around me, I finally drifted into a deep sleep that erased everything I’d been through the night before, as if an evil spell had been lifted.
I spent the entire day hiding under my coat so I wouldn’t bother anyone, sleeping an hour or two at a time, until late afternoon when I finally worked up the courage to call Vincent. I wanted to ask him to stop by the restaurant to drop off the keys to the apartment and clean clothes. After a few tries I finally reached him. He said he was sorry about what had happened, as if it was his fault, and asked what time he should come by.
My breath still smelled like stale cigarette and eau-de-stripper. It was disgusting. I went to wash my face in the bathroom. Two kids were talking about the strike that was on its way, surely in the spring. One wore a keffiyeh and hobo’s hat that read “DEATH TO THE EXPLOITERS.” They went out again without noticing me.
The day crept by. It was time to go to work, a prospect as tempting as jumping into the blades of a snowblower. I would rather disappear from the surface of the world, lay out on Vincent’s sofa, and never get up again.
“Should have come in earlier. You’ve got a new guy to train,” said Renaud, by way of greeting, as I walked into the dishpit.
He was smoking. I said he’d never said anything about training. He told me to fuck off. He was in foul mood and looked as exhausted as I was. His pale brown hair looked grey. There was something tense in his bony features.
Bébert was in the staff room, putting on Old Spice deodorant. He looked like he’d just woken up and the staff room was his bedroom. He swallowed a chalky white capsule.
“You doing wake-ups now?” I asked.
I went to get a clean shirt.
“Yeah, sort of.”
“Working tonight?”
“Always working, man,” he answered. “Three doubles in three days. Be like that until Steven and Vlad can run their own kitchen.”
The guy I was supposed to train showed up while I finished getting dressed. His name was Lionel, and he was well over forty. Before we’d properly introduced ourselves he was already talking to me like we’d grown up playing street hockey together. Two missing teeth transformed his “sh’s” into “s’s.” The guy followed me around like a puppy, laying his hands all over everything like a kid in a store.
“You guys make pizza here? Oh yah, I worked five years for a Greek guy made pizza, best pizza in town. I’m tellin’ ya, we’d throw out six hundred pizzas on a Saturday night.”
He told me he’d done a little time, the way you might mention taking a trip around the world. Now he was looking for a second job, he already worked days in a warehouse.
“Don’t worry about me, I gots a degree in washing dishes. Should’ve seen the shit-ton of dishes I washed back when I was working for the Greek, eh.”
Lionel reminded me of some of the guys I’d
worked with as a construction labourer. His jokes were getting old fast, but his enthusiasm was enough to make you forgive pretty much anything.
I showed him around and explained the work we had to get through as efficiently as I could. He agreed with everything I said, with a smile of wonderment, as if I were a wizard with astonishing powers. I let him start on the lettuce, and went up to punch in.
In the service kitchen, Bébert was riding the two new guys hard. Vlad responded with mere nods as he organized his workstation. Steven was caught in the middle. Bébert didn’t let up for a minute, just kept on laying into him, all, “Who showed you to do it that way?” and “That’s not how we do it here!” I walked over to the order computer. Bonnie didn’t seem to be there. Jade either. That was some relief.
In the dining room three tables were occupied. At one, two men in jackets and ties were chatting, papers spread all around their wineglasses. Apparently they’d been there since noon. As I punched in my employee number I asked Sarah if she could get me a coffee.
“Short or long?” she asked, placing the cup on the machine.
I could hear Nick’s mocking voice.
“So, how about Jade? Good lay?”
Sarah stood there frozen with an espresso cup in hand, almond-shaped eyes wide open.
“What the hell, Nick?”
She looked at him like a three-year-old shouting out swear words.
Nick wasn’t done.
“Did you at least get to suck a little tit?”
I turned to him, jaw clenched. His sentences were ringing in my head. I felt a mix of shame and rage. My hands were shaking. I kept everything inside and just stood there, unable to move. All I could do was glare at him, but that wasn’t enough to wipe the bratty smile off his pretty-boy face.
“Well, that’s none of your fucking business now, is it, Nick? So how about you shut your trap and polish your little spoons.”
Bébert’s voice rang out like a thunderclap from his perch leaning over the pass-through, next to the biscotti jars. I took a final look at Nick and, when Sarah handed me my coffee, went wordlessly back to the dishpit. Images from the previous night came flashing back: Jade walking down Mentana toward her place. Me slumping into a taxi. I knew replaying the scene in my head wouldn’t change a thing.
The Dishwasher Page 27