Between two rushes Jonathan came back to the dishpit for a smoke. He was gloomy, and his jaw never unclenched. He seemed to be elsewhere.
“Was it that bad, the other night?” he asked between drags.
“It was hell,” I said. “I hope I never have to go through that ever again. As long as I live. Still though, Renaud had no business. . .”
I couldn’t go on: I was trembling, distraught. I got back to work. Everything was all mixed up in my head. On the outside my body was fulfilling its orders. I put away clean dishes with precise gestures, barely slower than usual. I breathed through my mouth. Basile loaded the racks for the machine, methodically and silently as ever. From time to time he flashed me a look, not daring to ask any questions. Jonathan was on a milk crate, with a rounded back and slumped shoulders.
“It’s definitely won’t be as much fun. With Vlad,” he said.
I didn’t answer. He tossed his smoke out the door and got up. He put his chef’s hat back on over his dishevelled light-brown hair, and got up with a sigh to head back to the kitchen. I thought about Greg. Now that would be one more situation I’d have to handle on my own. I was already dreading the moment he’d come back with another errand for me. Even if Bébert was gone, it seemed important not to break my promise to him. Bébert was right, the whole thing was a sham. That was no life for me.
Toward the end of the shift, as I mopped the dishpit, I thought I heard Bébert’s loud laugh ringing out in the dining room. But when I went out with a big grin to see for myself, I realized my mistake. It was a customer sitting at the bar, a massive fifty-year old guy with a bushy grey beard. I stood there clutching my mop. Bébert’s words on New Year’s came back to me. I would make a lot of friends in the kitchen. “Thing is, you never keep them long. Take it as it comes. Turnover’s high.” It happens so fast, every time. You blink and they’re gone. Bébert had been my guardian angel, my friend from the other side, from the night. Now he was gone. All I had left was my messed-up life, my debts, my lies, and a shrinking group of people I could turn to for help.
Chapter 37
After my shift I stopped by an ATM to deposit my cheque and get some cash. My mind was blank. It wasn’t one a.m. yet. I walked down Ontario, and stopped by Chez Maurice to see if Marie-Lou was working. Her silence had become too much to bear. I needed to see her again.
The place was practically deserted. Benjamin was chatting with a regular, a big salt-and-pepper bear of a man in coveralls. The walls were still decked with Christmas lights that cast cheerless light on empty tables. I took a seat at the bar. Benjamin interrupted his discussion and came over. He had a faded black eye.
“Unruly customer?” I said, with a forced laugh.
I pointed at my eye. It took him a minute to catch on.
“Not here. In the ring. At the gym. We got carried away a bit. Yours isn’t too shabby either. You take up boxing too?”
My face was a little swollen, and visibly bruised.
“Not really. It’s nothing.”
Now it was his turn to let out a forced laugh.
“You just get off work?”
“Yup.”
“What can I do you for?”
“I’ll have a beer.”
He placed a glass on the cardboard coaster in front of me, then went over to punch in the beer and came back with a bag from the Archambault bookstore.
“Here. Marie-Lou left these for you.”
I looked in the bag. My Sandmans were all there. I felt a pang in my chest. I put the bag down next to my beer.
“I was wondering when she’s working? I thought she’d be here tonight.”
Benjamin looked a bit surprised. It was a strange look on a guy who was usually so stone-faced.
“Marie-Lou doesn’t work here anymore. She went travelling.”
The ground shifted beneath my feet. I must have made a face, because he immediately asked the obvious question.
“She didn’t tell you?”
I looked at my beer and didn’t answer.
“Are you okay?”
“Just tired. Rough shift.”
Benjamin lighted a smoke. He asked if I’d ever thought about moving to the floor, and told me about some of his first jobs in the restaurant business, bussing in the clubs on Prince-Arthur. He was in an unusually talkative mood and full of stories from his former life. But my heart wasn’t in it. I wanted to ask him about Greg again, but the news about Marie-Lou had thrown me for a loop. I made up an excuse to take off after my second beer. It was two a.m. on the big Molson Export clock. I had my full paycheque, in cash, in my pocket.
Maybe it was the certitude that I was on my way to losing everything I had, or the realization that winning and losing had lost all significance, but something broke my momentum. I could easily have bet everything I had. I wouldn’t have felt a thing. But I didn’t. Not out of any strength of will, but sheer fatigue. I walked away from the machine and went to sit at the bar.
“Another Bud, dear?”
I nodded.
On the stage, a blond girl with a boob job was sliding up and down the pole, head down, curly hair undulating like seaweed, her legs flexed and spread out like the branches of a compass tracing the parabola of a nonsensical calculation.
I looked all around. Torn carpet. Tables sticky with beer. The stubborn smell of mothballs. The holes in the wall. The streaked, dusty mirrors. The black lights weren’t enough to mask every sordid detail, but they helped. Though she was probably white as milk in the daylight, in here the dancer’s skin had the copperish hue of good crema.
Everything about this place was fake, hollow, and meretricious, contrived to transfer money from one set of hands to another as efficiently as possible.
The bouncer was chatting with the DJ. Isolated men of indeterminate age, each alone at his table with a beer in front of him, stared at the stage with hollow eyes. Two strippers were chatting away at the end of the bar.
I counted what I had left on me. I checked out the machines. A foul taste filled my mouth. I got up without finishing my beer. I marched toward the door, dizzied by the paralyzing shakes the thought of gambling gave me. I started an awkward shuffle, like someone running to the bathroom to throw up. I ended up on the sidewalk with my coat in my hands.
Saint-Denis was practically deserted. I hailed a cab. A Taxi Coop car pulled up in front of me. Not a single speck of slush sullied the car’s gleaming doors. The car looked like it had come straight from the car wash. I slid inside. It smelled like fresh mint. In the large rear-view mirror, two gentle eyes stared at me from under bushy eyebrows.
“Hello, my friend. How are you?”
The driver’s deep voice rang a bell. The car interior was comfortable and scrupulously clean. I relaxed. The dashboard lights gave off a warm, amber glow. The compartment under the radio held a stainless-steel Thermos and a little well-thumbed Koran that looked like the one Malik’s mother had.
“Where to?”
I gave him an intersection near Vincent’s house.
“Off we go, my friend.”
The driver headed down Berri, then turned onto Cherrier to take Saint-Denis northbound. I could barely hear the dispatcher on the radio. The interior was padded against outside intrusion. When we got to the Métropolitain Autoroute the driver winked at me in the rear-view mirror.
“You look tired, my friend. I’ve told you before: night is for sleeping. You have to take care of yourself.”
That was when I recognized Benjamin’s friend Mohammed. The cab driver who’d picked him up after he fell off the balcony.
“I just had a bad day,” I said. “Nothing’s working out.”
I couldn’t see the lower part of his face, but his eyes tensed up and wrinkles appeared. He was smiling. There was a deep wisdom in his face, an abiding compassion.
“Things have a way of
working out, my friend. Don’t worry.”
Under other circumstances, this commonplace would have irritated me. But at that precise moment it was just what I needed to believe. We didn’t exchange another word for the rest of the ride. Through the windows I saw rows of buildings unfurl, each alike with darkened windows, cornices, snowy staircases and Christmas wreathes still nailed to the doors.
Mohammed dropped me off in front of Vincent’s building.
“Goodnight, my friend. Go sleep now.”
I thanked him in Arabic, the way Malik had taught me.
Vincent was still at Janine’s. I went to bed the moment I came in the door. But I wasn’t able to go to sleep until I’d gone and taken back the hundred-dollar bill I’d left on Vincent’s desk.
Shokran.
Chapter 38
The album cover was supposed to be finished and printed the next day. I hadn’t worked on it since the night Marie-Lou caught me gambling at Chez Maurice. And it wasn’t like I had the money for the printer. If I’d once entertained the notion of sending in the files for printing anyway, to buy a little time, I’d long since gotten discouraged and given up. The images weren’t done anyway. I was caught in my own trap.
I got to work, scared to death. I knew it was only a matter of time before I ran into Greg. And I also knew when I did he’d send me off on a job that I couldn’t refuse.
I changed slowly. I was struggling to get motivated. Renaud showed up with a bag of clean laundry. He was separating the kitchen rags from the service cloths, leaning over the jute bag.
“Hey Renaud, think I could take a couple of days off next week?”
He looked up at me. A big vein traversed his pink forehead.
“Next week? We’re training you for the kitchen next week, remember?”
He leaned back over his linen.
“Yeah, I know, but. . .”
The way his body stiffened made it clear I was pissing him off. He was about to say something when Séverine came out of the office. Her face had clouded over with a strange weariness I’d never seen on her before.
“Renaud, I need to talk to you” she said.
Her voice was muffled. She looked like she might have a cold.
Renaud made a gesture indicating that he was tabling our conversation for later, and they shut themselves in the office. I didn’t go out of my way to listen at the door, but for a second I thought I heard Séverine crying.
I went up to find Basile. He had put on some French rap, IAM’s L’École du Micro d’Argent. I listlessly started giving him a hand. It was pretty dead. He’d been doing just fine without me. We wouldn’t start feeling the rush for an hour or so.
Nick came back for cutlery. I was a little surprised to see him.
“Wasn’t Greg working tonight?”
“Nah, man. Greg’s not coming in.”
Nick was standing in the middle of the dishpit with the clean cutlery in his hand.
“Is he sick?”
I didn’t have Greg pegged as the kind of guy to miss work for a sore throat or the after-effects of a good party.
“I heard he got taken to the hospital last night. Séverine says he’s in intensive care.”
I stared at Nick. Even Basile came out of his bubble to listen.
“A bullet in the lung. And two more in his chest, not far from his heart. He lost a lot of blood. Apparently it’s in the paper.”
Then Nick set off into the dining room, as if he’d just told us the score in the hockey game.
My first reaction was panic. I couldn’t move an inch. I figured it had something to do with the setup in the housing project. I sat down on a milk crate, and wondered whether I was hallucinating, or had maybe missed something.
“Are you okay, man?” Basile asked me.
I gave him a wave that was halfway between, “Yeah, I’m fine,” and “Leave me alone.” Everything was mixed up in my mind. I had a flash of the big bald guy who’d come in looking for Greg at work the other night. I saw Séverine standing in front of him. Snatches of the story came back to me. A name, Kovacs. Greg making threats in his Monte Carlo on the way back from the Stereo.
It finally sunk in just how deathly serious Bébert’s warnings had been. Greg was literally dangerous. I sent Basile to get us Cokes. I felt suddenly drained, devoid of willpower. From where I was standing I could see the bar. Sarah was smiling and chatting with customers. Jade, more beautiful than ever, was drying glasses, hips gently gyrating as if she were swaying to a beat. The din of the room reached me. Unconsciously, I sought out Bébert’s voice rising above the ambient hum. I was sick of it all. Basile came back with our drinks. I asked if he’d mind closing for me.
Chapter 39
I left as soon as Basile gave me the okay. Several hours later Vincent came and met me. He’d gotten the dozen messages I’d left. The last five were slurred, but he got the gist. After work I’d headed straight to Café Chaos to get blind drunk. Vincent showed up just before the bartender threw me out. I’d emptied four pitchers. Though I could no longer stand up, I was irately demanding a fifth.
I remember the blurry figure of Vincent coming into the bar. In baggy pants and an oversized Nautica jacket he stood out among the studded vests, torn-up jeans, and bullet belts of the crowd here. As soon as I saw him I threw my arms wide open.
“Finally. You’re here!” I managed. “Do you have money . . . one more pitcher?”
I slid off my barstool. Vincent leaned over and grabbed me, to try to stand me up. He looked at the bartender.
“I’ve got this.”
He put his hand around my shoulders and dragged me outside. I vaguely remember throwing up in front of the bar, and slipping on the icy sidewalk.
I woke up the next day unable to move, disoriented and raw as if I’d woken from a cryogenic coma. Vincent was there. He didn’t ask a single question about how I’d gotten so wasted the night before. I wouldn’t have known where to start. Everything was a jumble in my mind. He went to rent some movies, old favourites that never let us down: Menace II Society, Fight Club, Payback, The Blair Witch Project, The Abyss. We just watched one after another until night fell. Vincent made us Lipton soup and went to get me Gatorade from the corner store. My pager informed me that I had new voice messages. Two. The first was Alex. In a strained voice he was telling me off, until a psychopathic-sounding Mike broke in mid-message to let me know in no uncertain terms that he planned to break every bone in my hand, so I wouldn’t waste anyone else’s time with my scribbling. I could hear the two of them arguing in the background, followed by a crashing that sounded like a phone coming into contact with a hard surface. Then the line went dead. I listened to the message with a grey face and a throbbing skull, then erased it. The second message was Malik. He wanted to catch up. He was sorry he hadn’t called when he got back from Cuba, he’d been swamped. He said we should get together, he’d be in town in a few days.
I called him around eleven at night. He was happy, almost excited. We set a meeting for the next day, after my shift. This time I was scheduled to get off before the other dishwasher.
Malik was waiting for me at the bar. He was the one who’d wanted to meet me inside, to see where I worked, what kind of place La Trattoria was. He stood up when he saw me coming out the back. Maude was surprised to see he was my cousin. She had good things to say about me. Malik was smiling, taking it all in, visibly out of his element in such a high-end restaurant.
We drove around for a while, while he told me a little about his trip. He asked how I was doing but didn’t push for details the way he usually did. Good thing, too; I was in no mood for a lecture. He took me to a pool hall on the South Shore, where we’d hung out a lot my first summer before Cegep.
After a few games of pool we took a seat at a table. Malik went to get us a second pitcher and bowl of peanuts. The beer wasn’t going down right. He
asked how the Deathgaze job was going. I wasn’t sure how to answer, so I told him that the drawings were basically done, and there were just a few technical details to iron out. Then I told him some restaurant stories. Mostly about Bébert, and how he’d gotten fired.
“Sounds like a real piece of work, that guy.”
Malik couldn’t see what was so compelling about Bébert. A couple of women were playing nine-ball at the table we’d left. Malik watched them for a minute. He was in a good mood. The trip to Cuba and the time off had relaxed him. I sniffled.
“Do you think maybe you could lend me two hundred bucks?”
Malik snapped back around and stared at me. His expression had grown troubled. He didn’t say anything right away, just stared at me. I could see he was thinking hard, and trying to keep a hold of himself.
“My paycheque isn’t coming for a week, and I’d like to help Vincent with the rent.”
Malik set his glass down on the table and pulled his chair in closer. He looked me in the eye.
“Are you asking me for money to go gambling again?”
“I just want to pay Vincent my share of the rent.”
I’d put on a half-outraged, half disappointed look. When I saw his reaction I immediately regretted it.
The Dishwasher Page 37