Mirror Lake

by Andrée A. Michaud

  Picard was giving me the same look that Robbins, Jones, and Winslow had when I said “aleatory,” a day not so long ago but that seemed to belong to the last century. It was the same way Bill and Jeff had glanced at me the night before — in other words, as if I was crazy. After which, Picard repeated his sentence in its entirety, but this time without the disingenuous pause between “I need you” and the rest. “I need you to get that gun,” he said calmly, and, unable to control a fresh burst of laughter adding itself to the first, I answered like a madman, “What, so you can pepper our old hides with gunshots? No way.” “No way” was the only part I said in English, but nevertheless he understood the gist of my answer and, giving as good as he got, picked up the knife lying on the counter (proof that you should never leave a knife lying around) and then grabbed Jeff and held it to the poor animal’s throat — and Jeff, thinking this was all part of a game, actually carried on wagging his tail!

  But Picard wasn’t playing, I watched as his murderous nature raced to the surface and furrowed his face with deep, worrying grooves. I swear, there’s no better remedy for uncontrollable laughter than seeing someone you love being threatened by a bloodthirsty brute. And there’s no better way of sobering up than to feel your own suppressed killer instincts brewing. “You touch this dog, you’re dead,” I said authoritatively in a voice I didn’t recognize, hoarse, hard, risen from the misty depths of archaic worlds imprinted on our genes.

  I could see from his Cossack’s expression that he knew I wasn’t joking, though he also knew he’d guessed right by going for Jeff. I’d have done anything for my dog, and the shit knew it, he’d guessed it the minute he’d set foot in the cottage. I thought, Well played, Picard. If this were a movie, I’d have been Humphrey Bogart. And how would Bogie have reacted in such a situation? He’d have lit a cigarette and muttered, “Don’t worry, doll” — because Jeff would have been a girl — and then Bogie would have laid his cards down and won with a straight flush. And that’s exactly what I was going to do, out of love for Jeff.

  “Okay,” I said at last, lighting an imaginary cigarette and repeating that if he touched a hair on this dog or any other he was dead. Satisfied with my answer, he asked for a pencil and a piece of paper, on which he wrote down the address of a bar in Bangor. That’s where I was supposed to head, where I’d ask for Jack and say Jack had sent me. I also had to bring him some dough — some green, some dosh, some moolah, he added — cognizant, as Roger Waters had sung to the world, that money is a crime.

  I was getting ready to leave when the noise of a toilet flushing caught our attention: Winslow, we’d forgotten him. He’d have been John Wayne or Bruce Willis, and I could have expected some help from that corner, but I’d filed him more under the category of Bozo the Clown, just bigger, so didn’t waste any time on that score. Picard had also understood he had nothing to fear from Winslow, and ordered, “That other bozo, tie him up real tight before you leave.” The way he said “that other bozo,” as if there was more than one bozo in the room and the other one wasn’t him, might have shocked me, but I didn’t rise to it, the hour was approaching when I would lay out my straight flush in front of his stunned mug, and then we’d see who the other bozo was. When Winslow came out of the bathroom I was waiting for him with a rope, and he had the surprise of his life when he realized what was happening. “What the fuck,” he started, seeing the knife being held to Jeff’s throat, and then another “what the fuck” when I sat him back down on his chair and tied his hands behind his back and his feet to the bars. “You’re crazy,” he panted, his breath stinking of vomit. “You’re not leaving me alone with this insane man?”

  At the time, I’d forgotten that, unlike me, Winslow had read Morgan’s novel all the way through, and that he knew what he was talking about. I had to make do with whispering to him that I wasn’t crazy, I was Humphrey Bogart and would get us both out of this jam if he just stayed calm. I could see he had his doubts, but right then only one thing mattered to me: saving Jeff. So I picked up my car keys and, before I left, repeated to Picard that if any of the characters shut up in this room — including Bozo the Clown — were injured or worse when I got back, I’d give him the same treatment as the chicken he’d just stuffed himself with. I told Winslow to shut his trap, “Shut up Bozo!” and then said “Don’t worry, doll” to nobody in particular, just as another voice, come from my distant childhood, echoed between the walls of my skull: I’ll save ya, Olive!

  The bar I had to go to, the name of which I won’t reveal so as not to harm tourism, might have been a nice place to hang if you’d switched out the barman for a barmaid and the five or six drunks lurking in the darkness thick with remorse with customers able to stand upright. Its status would also have improved if they’d washed the floor, changed the furniture, replaced the carpet, polished the counter, added a couple of decent lamps, and given the tables a once-over with a damp cloth. From the minute I walked in, I felt as if I’d entered a world that long ago became impervious to the call of the swift outside. I’d have to be tough.

  “Double bourbon,” I grunted in English to the guy standing behind the bar before I’d even sat down, but apparently that wasn’t the way they did things there. He let me sit and stew for several minutes before he deigned to look in my direction, pretending to read the previous day’s newspaper that had been crumpled by the five or six drunks behind me fermenting in their shitty lives, as flies did what flies do and deadened the atmosphere with their buzzing.

  “I’ve come to see Jack,” I said in my new hoarse voice and, noticing a slight lift of his left eyebrow, I felt something had shifted in the brain of a guy who’d initially decided I wasn’t worth wasting any time on.

  “Which Jack?” he asked, still staring fixedly at the filthy newspaper — a response, I’ll admit, that I wasn’t expecting. Which Jack, which Jack indeed, how should I know? Jack Jack, LE Jack, ZE Jack, whichever Jack might get me out of this fix and allow me to return to my peaceful existence, to be back with my dog, my lake, my moose, my rock, and my Winslow, for fuck’s sake.

  “Jack Jack,” I said with a hint of annoyance. “I have to talk to him.”

  “And what do you want with him?” the guy shot back.

  “It’s private, I’ll only speak to Jack,” I continued, wanting him to see I wasn’t the kind of guy to be impressed by any old Jack. “I’ll only talk to Jack.”

  “Which Jack?” the knucklehead repeated.

  Before the most high-performing of my nerve cells decided to either self-destruct or mutually slit each other’s throats, which would require a certain amount of skill, I said, “Jack Rabbit, for fuck’s sake,” because I have a tendency to say stupid things when the complexity of everyday life annoys me. Evidently this wasn’t the right answer and, as I could immediately see in the eyes of the knucklehead walking confidently toward me, wasn’t even a good joke. I had just a few seconds to redeem myself, because otherwise this affable bruiser would throw me out like a piece of trash, Jeff would die, so would Bill, so would Winslow, as would I, Picard having no intention of leaving a witness to his carnage, and when Robbins pulled up in a squeal of tires, it would be too late: the blood would have dried on the kitchen floor where hundreds of flies would be busy doing what flies do.

  “If you throw me out, my dog will die,” I shouted before he grabbed my shirt collar, which made the drunks start before immediately slumping back over their respective tables. But my instinct had aimed true: Artie liked dogs. As I would learn later, he was called Artie — at least one woman had been a little more original in the choice of her godson’s name — and he’d had a dog when he was a child, a little fox terrier called Bing who’d been the only light in his existence, just like Bambi and Bamboo had been for Anita, a dog two street kids named Jack Ryan and Jack Bryan had unfortunately chosen to attack, the first Jack consequently having his balls cut off and then the second one losing his too. Artie didn’t mess around when it came to do
gs, you could tell that right away. So my revealing the threat hanging over Jeff allayed him somewhat, but it wasn’t enough, he had his orders, I needed to be more precise about which Jack I wanted to talk to. In the stress of the situation it didn’t occur to me to say that another Jack, Jack Picard, had sent me, which would have solved the problem immediately. Instead I asked if I could make a call, and Artie pointed at the grimy telephone hanging at the end of the bar.

  As I dialled the number, I prayed like never before for Picard to answer, despite believing even less in God than I did the last time I’d invoked his name. I was even so fervent as to promise to the Almighty — that’s what I called him, hoping to flatter — that I would commit to a novena if Picard would just answer the fucking telephone. But God, no fool, didn’t appreciate the word fucking, didn’t believe me about the novena, so didn’t grant my prayer. After twenty rings I hung up, redialled, tried the thing with God again, flattering him though promising nothing, but God wasn’t stupid, and it didn’t work. The third time, I didn’t even bring God into it — pointedly ignored him — and focused really hard on Picard, calling him every name under the sun, and on the thirty-second ring, Winslow answered.

  For a moment I thought I’d been too quick to judge Winslow, believing that he’d somehow managed to free himself and knock Picard out and tie him up in turn, but I was overestimating Winslow’s capabilities, God not having answered his call either, even if the jerk had been praying for three hours straight in the hope that the hostage situation was all just a bad dream. “Thank God,” he sighed, hearing my voice and unaware of the indifference of his God who had nothing to do with Picard, at the end of his tether, finally pushing Winslow’s chair over to the ringing phone and advising him to keep totally still — if he misspoke a single word, Picard muttered, he would sink the sparkling kitchen knife longing to be used on fresh flesh into his big paunch. After a brief exchange I realized Winslow was no Bruce Willis, that I had to accept him as he was, and told him it was urgent, he needed to put Picard on the line.

  “Picard, it’s Moreau,” I started.

  “I know,” he said. He was furious.

  “There are three Jacks in this fucking bar,” I said, imitating his tone, this to let him know he wasn’t intimidating me, though I didn’t yet know if there actually were three Jacks in the fucking bar. I chose the number randomly to make him take me seriously. “Which Jack is the right one?”

  Silence.

  “Which Jack, Picard?” I repeated, omitting to ask him for a physical description of the guy in question, which might have helped me.

  “Which Jack? Which Jack? Jack Jack,” he said, concluding with: “My Jack, THE Jack!”

  Circumstances had changed while Picard had been enjoying his stay in the slammer, and clearly he was unaware that the Jacks had multiplied in the meantime. As for his Jack, he was simply Jack, Jack Jack, that was all I needed to say — and that Jack Picard had sent me. Had I at least mentioned that Jack Picard sent me?

  Silence at the end of the Bangor line I was holding in my sweaty hands. “Of course,” I exploded, breaking the silence. “What do you take me for?”

  Then I hung up, after pleading with him to stay calm, that I had an idea and would quickly sort this out. To be honest, I was a little shame-faced when I turned back to Artie, to whom I explained that I’d been sent by Jack Picard — who only knew one Jack, ZE Jack, the first Jack.

  “Who are you?” Artie muttered, put on his guard by the mention of Picard’s name, and The Who’s hit song “Who are you?” started playing in my head at the same time as the credits for CSI: Las Vegas started rolling, though it wasn’t really the right moment, even if I did want to watch an episode. I settled warmly into my armchair, with Jeff at my feet lying on my slippers, the comfort of which I was sadly missing. Seeing that I was slow to react, Artie came closer and, casting his enormous shadow over where I was sitting in the single patch of light in the bar, again asked, “Who are you?”

  Who are you? Who are you? Like it’s even possible to answer that question without getting bogged down in metaphysics. Who are you? Nobody, some dumbass, an idiot who fled to the woods trying to get away from it all, thinking he might be able to disappear into nature, be like a mole or a shrew, for God’s sake. Who are you? What a question! Was I asking who he was? Then, noticing that Artie was showing signs of impatience, I ended up blowing off the metaphysics and saying “Robert Moreau,” though I could as easily have said Denis Labranche and it wouldn’t have made a difference as he had no idea who I was and, besides, a name has never defined the fundamentals of anyone’s identity, as his answer proved: “Robert Moreau . . . never heard that name.”

  “I’m a friend of Jack’s,” I said, which was a barefaced lie, but who cares.

  “Which Jack?” the idiot said.

  “Picard!” I yelled, which made the five or six drunks jump; Number Five even knocked his drink over.

  No need to be upset, said his eyes stretched wide, and then he disappeared behind a moth-eaten curtain, exactly like in Bogart movies, which I’d forgotten during the journey from Mirror Lake to Bangor.

  To kill time as I waited for him to come back, I stole his newspaper, which was full of blood, dreadful crimes, exploding bombs, ripped-apart bodies, run-over dogs. Which made me think of Jeff, who must by now have realized things were going badly, even though he didn’t read the paper. This gave my courage a boost and I put the newspaper back in its place and started reading the labels on the bottles arranged in front of me, a little less depressing than the rag Artie was clearly enjoying. I’d reached the end of the first row of bottles when he came back to tell me that Jack wouldn’t be long. I nearly said “which Jack?” to be funny, but kept quiet, laughed a little to myself, scratched my nose, my forehead, my ear, tilting my head to one side, my eyes half closed, because a hysterical laugh was bubbling up inside me. And then I ended up pinching my thigh: this had to stop.

  The atmosphere immediately lightened after Artie went behind the dirty curtain and then appeared in front of it. I was even granted my shot of bourbon — on the house — and a grunt that could have passed for a degree of politeness. I picked up the glass, and while I waited for Jack to arrive — the Jack I hoped would be the right Jack, ZE Jack — I carried on reading, very slowly, so I didn’t miss any bottles out. My mind started losing itself amid the different lettering and gilding decorating the labels and I became nothing more than a decoding machine that understood zilch about what it was decoding, as is true of all machines, no matter what we say about their intelligence, so much so that I didn’t notice Jack arriving. He sat down next to me, in the shadow, waiting for me to react, which I wasn’t about to do since I was in machine mode. It was Artie who pulled me out of the coma I was in by entering my field of vision to pick up the Smirnoff vodka, the name of which I was spelling in my head. I blinked and the first thing I saw was Jack and, colouring his entire left arm, a tattoo of some kind of Shiva whose own multiple arms were unfolding around his twitching biceps. I also noticed that he was quite small for a Jack, though not for a moment did I believe this to be a measure of his ferocity. Generally, in movies, the smallest guys are the meanest, and I decided to believe in the plausibility of fiction.

  “Are you Jack?” I asked, as a way into the subject, which wasn’t very subtle, but I wasn’t used to this kind of situation and had to start somewhere. As the other man didn’t seem to think my question was very appropriate — Shiva’s frenzied squirming was a sign he was about to get mad — I quickly added “Jack Jack, are you Jack Jack, THE Jack, ZE Jack?” After a couple of seconds, Jack Jack nodded his head, Shiva calmed down, one of the drunks burped, and we were ready to talk about serious things.

  So I told Jack Jack why I was there, all the while staring Shiva straight in the eyes, Jack Jack keeping his profile to me, and when I’d finished he asked why he should believe me, since there was nothing to prove it was really the fre
ak Picard who’d sent me. He had a point there, although it was really only half a point, because how would I even know he existed if Picard hadn’t told me about him? I thought I was being pretty intelligent when I put that out there, but Jack Jack didn’t exactly share that opinion — he wanted tangible proof. Running out of arguments, I told Jack Jack I’d just been on the phone with Picard, which seemed to be tangible enough proof for him, because immediately he shouted for Artie (which is how I found out his name), who’d discreetly left to look for Jack. Right then, I thought, as any sensible person would, that there were only two Jacks, otherwise Artie would have asked “which Jack?” But no, I have to think they knew instinctively which Jack they were discussing, that they would recognize one or the other by their tone of voice, or that there was a certain Jack hierarchy according to which they always appeared in the same order.

  Ten minutes or so later — during which time, following Jack Jack’s example, I hadn’t opened my mouth except to put the edge of my bourbon glass to it, Artie refilling it every time it threatened to be empty — I was surrounded by two Jacks, a Little Jack, and a Big Jack, the second surely pushing six foot six. There we sat, arranged in order of size, with Big Jack on my right, me in the middle, and Little Jack on my left, like the Dalton brothers minus one. Little Jack’s mean expression immediately led me to think of him as Joe Dalton, and of the big one, who looked stupid, as Averell. As for me, to avoid any confusion I decided to be William. It was right at that moment that a kind of kaleidoscopic stripe lit up the mental space I was moving in, and Joe Dassin, wearing a ridiculous white suit, appeared in front of the Smirnoff bottle. I realized immediately what was about to happen, but before I was able to repel the singer’s image, he was humming “Tagada, tagada, voilà les Dalton, tagada, tagada, voilà les Dalton,” and I knew I was in for it: for the next few hours I would be saddled with the most desolate song in my endless repertoire. I downed my freshly filled glass in one go, hoping the alcohol would erase Dassin and shut him up, but the results were diametrically opposed to what I’d counted on. The unexpected powers of memory, which I sometimes marvel at, sought out the rest of the lyrics in some deep fold of my brain, and they flowed out onto the bar like a thread of foam and bile, just as the two Jacks were talking with their heads down, drawing abstract shapes with their fingertips in the sticky ring-marks left by their drinks and around which the thread of foam and bile was spreading.