by John Brooke
“Thanks.”
“I am Pacci.” Brown, short, powerful — a man whose body has been his basic tool. Gen said he said something about cutting marble for corporate foyers.
“Bruce,” says Bruce.
“I see you.”
A warning? A challenge? Bruce smiles. “And I see you.” Or maybe that’s the idea.
Introductions over, Pacci isn’t shy. Here comes Bruce, slouching home, rumpled, flat, weighed down by a briefcase with nothing worth anything inside it. His net value has dwindled steadily since the first exodus carried off the better part of his clients…since Black Tuesday left the rest of them too petrified to make a worthwhile move…since Parizeau started talking about another referendum and a second exodus began. Pacci is on the corner with his cigarette. The old Italian marble cutter takes the measure of this ragged Anglo broker and tells him, “Is no good you look like that.”
Bruce has no polite answer, so only stares.
“You no make any money?”
“Sure, lots of money.”
Pacci laughs at Bruce’s joke, then, in a suddenly hushed voice confides that he knows a tailor, retired like himself. “My friend. Is to make good job. Good price. You no pay tax.”
Bruce hasn’t felt the drape of new material since 1987. He listens, but declines.
One Saturday, at the end of his errands at the end of another worthless week, he stops and goes into the Thai grocery on St. Denis for about a minute. He comes home with two spring rolls in a paper bag and a traffic ticket stuck under his windshield wiper. It flaps in his face like another flag telling him he is a man who does not belong in Montreal. Pacci is there; he grabs the ticket as Bruce turns into the lane. Bus stop zone: a hundred bucks plus court costs. He says, “I know Deputé for quartier. My friend. Is good people. You come with me.”
Numb with anger and futility (“It was one goddamn minute!”), Bruce goes. Advised by a weary man with a fixed smile to forget about the ticket, he does.
Geneviève laughs. “Like Brigitte Bardot. All those VIPs, they will park anywhere in Paris and someone always takes care of it.”
Bruce doesn’t laugh. “I hate that. I would never…it’s just I’m really stretched this month with Char and James’ tuition. I wish their mother wasn’t such a…” trailing off in a muddled sigh.
“Tu veux que je paie?”
“No! Just don’t say a word about it to my father. I’ve put him through enough already. I mean, it’s not how we were raised.”
“Oh, mon pauvre,” sighs Gen in sympathy.
Poor Bruce indeed. But soon he has become an active player in the underground economy. Brakes. Body work. A rebuilt transmission. TV repairs and rebuilt speakers. All taken care of by Pacci’s “friends.” Even a cordonnier to keep Bruce’s old boots from disintegrating, to keep a few extra bucks in his fraying pockets. Cigarettes straight from the Mohawks to his back door and concentrate for wine are also available, should he desire. Worse (somehow), when the roof needs retarring Pacci recommends a man and Bruce calls him at Gen’s urging. Now he’s the slimeball middleman; it’s her roof. Gen doesn’t pay tax either. Then a painter, a plasterer… And the separatist government will rub his nose in it: A television ad appears, showing a baby crawling blithely on a table, while underneath it muttering people surreptitiously pass money back and forth. It’s meant to make you feel like scum for undermining the future of Quebec. The sentiment will not be lost on Bruce. So his own two kids might have to emigrate. So? They can follow the path he should have chosen. He continues to pay cash, all transactions sealed with the vaguest kind of smile. There is no joy in it. He knows his defiance is petty. Each encounter with another man with an unmarked service to sell — hidden away, retired, unregistered, even elected but unnoticed — feels like another step into oblivion, the life that doesn’t matter.
No, not at all how he was raised.
Four weeks after the ’95 vote, Gen (who voted but without much passion) rents a table for the rummage sale in the parish basement, rises early on the last Saturday of November and leaves. Bruce is not required. He reads his Gazette — more commentary about Bouchard’s now officially confirmed return to lead Quebec into the future. Around noon, too full of politics, he heads over to the sale. The crowd pores over box upon box of 3-D hockey cards and Barbie doll accoutrements, table after table offering cassettes by long-forgotten idols, obsolete sound systems, typewriters… Someone has a table devoted to typewriters that will never be used again. Random dishes, unmatched juice glasses. Skates, picture frames, stacks of mouldering books and piles of woollens and shoes. A statue of Elvis made of faux alabaster is going for $8.00. Bruce is uneasy. The dusty nether region of a church is apt: surely purgatory must be jammed floor to ceiling with trinkets and junk and second-hand crap, all of it for sale.
Gen has used Bruce’s four-by-six-foot laminated map of Canada as the centrepiece of her display. Allowed one final sweep through what is now his ex-wife Denise’s domain, he brought it with him to his new home. The thing supplied a certain meaning to the panelled study back in Westmount when the kids were young. They explored it together, finding places to report on at school, giving context to Bruce’s stories of summer jobs in Banff and other travels. Now his George Bush golf cardigan is draped over Baffin Island, his abandoned formal Gucci loafers wait in Vancouver (not many soirées lately); she has placed a Moody Blues tape inside one, a Smokey Robinson inside the other. Her mauve blouse — very attractive when she’s tan — is dangling over Alaska. Why is she selling that?
She ignores him. A Haitian woman, barrel-shaped and grim, has zeroed in on a pair of Gen’s unwanted earrings. A gentleman of North African feature is asking about the old vaporizer.
“Bien sûr, il marche,” grumbles Geneviève. “…Quinze.”
The man offers three.
Geneviève snorts her contempt.
The Haitian woman offers one dollar for the earrings.
The French heats up and Bruce is quickly lost. He drifts away.
Pacci’s in the café area sipping coffee, waving Bruce over, a shrewd half-smile breaking across his mouth. “Oh sure,” he replies to Bruce’s greeting, “go ev’ry time. Lotsa people. Take coffee, sit, talk, maybe buy if find something is to need. Is to always make good deal at paroisse.”
“Life shouldn’t be like this,” ventures Bruce.
Pacci isn’t listening. He’s looking around with an eagle eye; doesn’t want anyone to see as he pulls something from his pocket. Then he leans close, proffering it under the cover of his other hand. “Looka this.”
A jackknife. So?
“Table juste là,” mutters Pacci, eyes shifting to indicate the one. “I buy this knife, one dollar, good deal. Man tell me wait a minute, I give you box. He take box, no open it, and pass to me. I take box. When I open, is to find other knife. Look…” Pacci surveys the room again, checking every vantage. Certain no one’s watching, he opens the box to reveal another jackknife reposing on blue tissue. His tone is dark, conspiratorial. “I get two knifes for price of one.”
Bruce flinches. Pacci is slipping something into his coat pocket. He whispers, “Here, I give one knife to you. I know is tough for you with money. Is to always need a knife.”
“For God’s sake, Pacci!”
“Is to take.” Pacci sits back and draws on his smoke. He tilts his head, unsure, as Bruce abruptly walks away.
On his way out Bruce hurries past Donald’s lovely pure-laine wife; he should stop and ask where Donald is but he can’t, he’s reeling, he has to get away. Bruce leaves the parish basement, head spinning with revulsion at the tawdry nickel-and-diming, feeling physically soiled by the knife in his pocket, complicit, Pacci’s accomplice. Stepping out at street level, stopping to breathe and get his bearings…a legless man in a wheelchair is parked there, gnarled and battered and sucking a beer. He’s peering at everyone who passes in and out of the church — suspicious eyes appraising Bruce like maybe it’s Bruce who stole his legs and sold them
at the parish sale. As he turns away to check the next one, Bruce sees the sign on the back of his chair: Last Days of Montreal… Bruce nods in grim affirmation and wanders desolately home.
Geneviève returns at supper, happy with $193.50 for her efforts. She slides Bruce $65: for his shoes, his old turntable and speakers, sundry shirts and ties. No one wanted the map of Canada so she has donated it to the parish. “The curé says it will be perfect for bingo — the other side, of course. They will paint it.”
“Do you talk to Pacci about my business?”
Gen sniffs. “Don’t be ridiculous.” With the same deriding look she gave that North African.
The story of the knife catches in Bruce’s throat. If the woman can wheedle thirty bucks for those old shoes, he figures she’ll take Pacci’s part. He drinks some wine, then some beer as he watches the hockey game, brooding. It’s that thing about not having anything against others, only against himself.
Pacci waylays him on Monday morning as he leaves for work, wants to know why Bruce walked away from him like that in the parish basement. “You gotta problem?”
“This place is making me sad,” mumbles Bruce, elusive. He can’t hurt an old man’s feelings. It’s how he was raised.
“Is not so bad,” shrugs Pacci. “Who knows what happy is?”
Bruce can’t answer. Not anymore. “It’s everything. The situation…”
Pacci says, “Is not to cry over Montreal. Is not to be angry. You, me, we make our life anyhow. Is just a question to have some friend, to find good people. They tell you secret, then you know, then you find good people, tell secret to them, c’est comme ça. But need good people.”
Bruce is flummoxed.
“Tell you what,” says Pacci, lighting up a smoke. “I show you something — you feel good.”
It’s a shimmering autumn morning. Pacci inhales, exhales, squinting into a low sun illuminating the street with biblical brightness and declares, “Is to be perfect!” He leads Bruce north, a hundred steps or so, to the corner. Other men are there, gathering in front of the barber shop — F&M Coiffeur Pour Hommes. Few words are spoken, yet everyone seems familiar, regular, as if arriving at the tavern to watch the game. Maybe Bruce has seen some of them before, here and there around the quarter. But not the one who rolls up in the $100,000 Bentley: Magnificent. Midnight blue. Bruce doesn’t get it. Pacci indicates with a raised finger that he should hold his questions.
Favio and Maxim arrive at quarter to eight. Maxim goes into Thu’s depanneur next door while Favio unlocks the door to the shop. He holds it open and the men go filing in.
“I have to go to work,” says Bruce. But he lets Pacci lead him into the shop.
Favio’s setting up. Max comes back with the morning papers. The men stand in a tight clump by the window. A few murmurs. Bruce is beside the Bentley owner. He looks into Bruce’s face and whispers, “I’m English too. Nice to see you.” He turns back to the window, looks up, glances at his watch. “Right on the button.”
All the men are hushing and turning, eyes fixed on something across the street. Bruce peers over Pacci’s shoulder. Inevitably his eye climbs three stories to a window bathed in gold. It frames a blonde woman. She is statuesque and excellently shaped. This is absolutely clear as she discards her bathrobe and lingers over a dresser drawer, apparently choosing that day’s clothes. The sun plays along her noble back and Bruce believes he can feel it. The sun, the nobility, then the shape of her breast and belly as she turns and steps into her pants. Bruce is lost in the sight of her, far past any breach of propriety or the illicit tingle of a lecherous thrill. Standing there and seeming to look right at them, forehead broad like a moonstone, mouth half-open but not in surprise; mask-like…for one suspended moment she appears to be the inner unseen side of each face he encounters along this unknown street; for a moment the sight of her carries his uncertainty beyond it all. He thinks —
Bruce comes out of it panicking, feeling he must be the only one.
But no, it’s why they are here, all of them stock still, heads raised, weirdly prayerful; except Favio, who’s fetching towels from the closet, and Maxim, frowning as he studies something in La Presse.
Bruce flees, almost knocking over a school-bound child as he runs, face burning, from the barber shop. He keeps running, two blocks north to the Jarry metro station, then turns his eyes away, hiding in the farthest corner all the way downtown, seeking refuge in his office on the eleventh floor of the Bourse. Work! Make some money!…trying to settle in, rattled, slopping coffee on his shirt cuff. What was that supposed to be, the north end chapter of Masturbators Anonymous? It seems Pacci is there to oversee the complete downgrading of his life.
Although the only movement he’d been aware of was one man’s plaintive humming.
Henceforth Bruce makes a point of leaving early. And heading south to the Jean Talon station.
He survives another winter in Montreal, but only just: record snowfalls mean slavish shovelling till his spine is collapsing; plus dormant markets, political bullshit, feeble Canadiens… Now here they are on a Saturday in March of ’96, moving along St. Gédéon, because you couldn’t call it walking or even plodding: this squat, placid Italian on tree trunk legs, a cigarette between two huge fingers, face winter-pallid under a full head of silver hair, grey eyes steady behind perpetually dusty lenses, fleshy nose-of-ages probing the air for signs of spring; and this West Island Anglo with the hawk-like features, green eyes darting with impatience. Bruce carries two large cans of beer in a paper bag. It’s cold, from Thu’s cooler, and he’s thirsty. The sudden thaw left eight inches of water in the garage. He has been chopping away at ten-inch ice for three hours in a desperate attempt to fashion a trench system across the lane through which to drain the flood. Pacci watched the operation carefully, tracing lines in the slush with his toe for Bruce’s system, while pointing out faults in the construction of the garage and its foundation. Pacci thinks Bruce could do with a new floor. He has accompanied Bruce to Thu’s depanneur under a blatant pretence. “Need some milk.” Pacci bought cigarettes instead, while going on and on about the garage floor.
Pacci stops with each point he makes. “You need make floor little bit more higher in back…”
Bruce only wants to get home and drink his beer. “I’ve never been much of a builder, Pacci.”
Pacci takes three steps and stops again. “Little hill, you know?” His hands describe a slope against the flooding water.
“Thanks, I got it.”
Pacci holds his thumb and index about three inches apart. “You need justa little bit…like this.”
“I’m going to think about it.”
“You need cement truck, not too much, maybe one hour. I gotta friend. You make time for rendezvous, he come. But,” warns Pacci, “you no ready, he charge you.”
“But no tax,” says Bruce, snide. He thinks he’s being obvious enough and takes purposeful steps to underscore it.
Pacci stands there. Bruce is compelled to halt. “First, is to clean garage floor. Then my friend come, he make cement, you leave cupla hours, then you shine.” Pacci bends and mimes a buffing motion. “This make nice like new.”
Bruce reaches into the paper bag, pulls a metal flap and gulps some beer. “Mmm!” Warmed and jostled, a lot of it spills into the paper bag. “What if you get stuck in it?” he asks. “Horrible damn mess…” lifting beer foam from the bag in his fingers, licking them; then, “Screw it…” removing the cans and turning the sodden bag on end, he drains spillage into his eager mouth. Why waste good beer?
“You no get stuck.” Pacci pulls another smoke from his pack. “Need machine. I gotta machine. I show you.”
“Great,” belching, standing there with two king-sized cans, hoisting the opened one; “Pacci, we’ll talk about it when it gets warm.”
“One day, all finish.” Then Pacci blows smoke. It seems settled. Bruce walks.
But Pacci stands there and remembers: “The man before Geneviève come in this hous
e, he make cement in garage one time. I come over, I say I help you, no need to pay. Me good neighbour, you know? I work all day with man…no truck, justa me and him we make cement, and after while I tell him I gotta soif, because it’s hot and lotta dust when make cement inside garage. I tell man, take a break, cupla minutes, you gotta drink? He tell, you need drink, you can go home, I don’ mind. Me, I laugh, and when finish job make secret crack in cement to tell fungu asshole, I work for you, you don’ give me one bière. No one bière or glass water. This man is no good people.”
Bruce gets the message, but tells him, “Sorry, Pacci, this one’s for me.” And the other one, too.
Pacci watches Bruce drain more beer and mutters in his native language. The notion of “no good people” leads him to the issue of Favio. The barber has banned him from the shop.
“You mean in the morning?” It’s been half a year but Bruce is wary.
“For all time. I like go in, have a smoke, see some people, have a talk. I don’ bother no one. But one day he tell to me, you go from shop, you don’ come back! Me, I tell fungu!” This is punctuated by that scary fist-arm punching motion; like flipping the finger but ten times stronger.
Bruce can see the barber’s side of it: Pacci ensconced in the barber shop trying to get in on everyone’s life. “Pacci, the man is trying to work. It’s a place of business, not a social club.”
Pacci won’t hear of it. “No good people!”
Bruce opens his other beer. Should he feel guilty for siding with Favio? He sips, listens to Pacci complain about loyalty. The walk from the corner takes an hour, the beer gets into his brain and he toasts anyone who happens by. Salut les amis!…and isn’t this such an excellent goddamn street! The drug dealer, emerging from her front door, looks askance. The Zairan couple, arriving home with their beautiful child, look away. Ah, well, don’t mind me. I’m new around here. (hic!)
On the last weekend of the month, which is the end of the fiscal year, Bruce’s firm moves to a smaller suite on another floor. Arriving on the first Monday of April, Bruce is no longer in possession of the window he enjoyed for fifteen years. “Bruce,” he is told when he complains about the younger brokers, all Francophone, bright and smiling with contacts galore, who got what he’s just lost, “they’re carrying us right now and you know it. It’s not personal, it’s to optimize the current situation. We have to be real, don’t we? Come on, Bruce buddy…” the arm around his shoulder, “don’t worry, you’ll always have a place here. I mean, I hope you will.”
