by John Brooke
“You mean, depending on the situation.”
“Doesn’t your wife — your new wife, I should say — ”
“We’re not married.”
“Doesn’t she have a group of French ex-pats you could tap into?”
“Not really.”
“What about neighbours? You’ve moved, right?”
“My neighbours…” Bruce lets it drop. As far he can tell, his neighbours are not the kind to call a broker. He returns to his new cubbyhole and tries to carry on.
Next morning, heading out, Bruce is feeling he should quit. If not that, then kill himself. Just stop in the middle of the Cartier Bridge and… He is taken unawares by Pacci waiting at the corner.
“You come with me.”
Bruce nods like a prisoner and goes along. The men are arriving. A reedy man steps out of a pickup with Projets Placide Tremblay hand-painted on the door, says bonjour to Pacci then looks at Bruce. “C’est toi, Bruce?”
“C’est moi.”
“Placide…” extending a hand; “you got a floor to fix in your garage, monsieur?”
“Maybe…maybe this summer.”
“Alors, me, I got a truck with a mixer.”
“Right.”
“I can give you a good price. Pour l’ami de Pacci…” It’s guaranteed.
“I know.”
“Placide is good people,” assures Pacci.
Favio and Maxim arrive. The men file into the barber shop. Except Pacci. He makes a “fungu” in the direction of Favio — who stares him down — then slips into Thu’s.
Bruce is beside the man with the Bentley again. He murmurs, “You don’t live around here.”
The man shakes his head. “Nope, but Fav and Max are the best in town.”
Then she appears at her window, towelling off from her shower. Then she dresses. When she is dressed she turns and looks out — maybe right at them, maybe not. The April sun is shining dead on and this time Bruce believes he can see the colour of her eyes. Grey blue. She seems to ponder something — that expression on her mouth, as if to speak — and feels her hair. Yes, they have to be grey blue…Then it’s over. She’s gone from sight, into her day like anyone else.
They begin to leave the shop. Except Placide, who needs a cut; he takes his place in Maxim’s chair. “You call me,” he tells Bruce. Max spreads a smock under Placide’s chin.
Bruce dawdles on the sidewalk, looking up, wondering. Schoolchildren are walking past with no idea as to the hearts of men. How could she let it happen? What is she? Because there’s nothing brazen or eccentric there — not that he can see or feel. A symbol. A connecting spark. That’s what Bruce feels. “Salut… salut,” as they disperse. She must know it. How could she not know it? Pacci steps out of Thu’s with a litre of milk. Bruce notices Thu behind his cash register, still staring up at the window across the street.
Pacci says, “Is to remember to be alive, no?”
“Something like that.”
“Is good for Montreal men.”
Bruce is about to head off when the guy with the Bentley asks, “Going downtown?”
“Yeah.”
“I can give you a ride.”
“Sure…” climbing in to the sumptuous smell of leather. Could a rich man’s reason be the same as these others’? Bruce becomes a regular at the shop and begins to find out. He gathers information. He begins to understand these men, if not the woman in the window. When he feels the time is right, he lobbies to have Pacci reinstated — at least for those two or three wondrous minutes in the morning.
He doesn’t push it, though; Favio’s high-strung. And you can see her just as well from Thu’s.
Bruce’s goodwill brings a bonus, albeit a bonus à la Pacci:
Three months later it’s a beautiful July night and he’s sitting on the balcony with some beers on the go, his music just inside the door. Gen has gone to the beach in Maine with a girlfriend. It’s a little break for the two of them after a month together in France, and he’s enjoying it…beer, sweet jazz, the poplar boughs waving sublimely beneath the stars: happy to be alone. Pacci whistles at him through the quiet. It has an up-note at the end, wooo-wo, wooo-wo; like a bird, like Indians in movies or the Hardy Boys, like it was their secret code. Very silly. And always just as Bruce is settling in. Always then.
Bruce raises his beer, salut, but remains silent, refusing to move from his solitude.
Pacci sits on his step and smokes, gazing up at Bruce. That look: You gotta problem?
Bruce retreats inside. The Expos go into extra innings against Atlanta, but any remaining pleasure in his bachelor evening is blunted. He has a speech he has never found the right moment to give, and he practises again: “Pacci, when I have my music on and I’m drinking a beer, it means I don’t want to talk. It doesn’t mean I don’t like you, it just means I want to be by myself and I’ll see you tomorrow. Why the hell can’t you figure that out?”
The Expos lose it in the fourteenth. Bruce falls into a large sleep, the whole bed all to himself…The phone is somewhere inside it, shrieking: Car crash! Tragedy at the beach! Death in the family! Bruce breaks through the bonds of his hoppy slumber and grabs it. “What! Who is it?”
“Bruce,” calls Pacci. Pacci always yells into the phone, as if he’s just arrived from two centuries ago, unable to believe or understand the concept. “I am Pacci here!”
“What, Pacci…what? I’m sleeping!”
“Is to go to balcon en arrière. Is to hurry.” Then he hangs up.
The abruptness of it makes Bruce obey. Stumbling back through Gen’s office and out onto the balcony. Oh Lord, maybe someone’s broken into the garage.
It’s Miko, the drug dealer’s son, who is addicted to his mama’s product. He is over the fence on the other side of the lane, in the yard behind the maison de retraite, down on the lawn, naked with a woman underneath him. Underneath and attached — dog style, frenzied and oblivious in their passion. Unbelievable. Bruce gapes.
Everyone knows about the drug dealers. They see their customers come and go all the time: a quick knock at any hour, in and out, gone. Many are clearly prostitutes, obviously addicted. Several times Bruce and Gen have peeked out at two in the morning and watched Miko and one of his wretched ladies shooting up in his disgusting old car. Gen is not the first neighbour to have called the police. The answer is always the same: “Yes, we know about that house, but there’s nothing we can do.” Still, you’d think Miko’s mother would do something about him. His behaviour couldn’t be good for business, much less the fine line she must walk with the law. Another one of the street’s mysteries.
It’s horrible but Bruce can’t not watch. Here is further information about his new life. Together he and Pacci bear witness to Miko’s assignation on the lawn, Pacci waving from his window, pointing like a big-top clown. Huge grin. Funniest thing in the world! The thing that rankles deepest (still) is the sharing of the scene. I mean, watching two people when they’re —
But sharing the scene is something Pacci believes in. And Bruce is getting over it. It’s not so bad.
Look: Miko, losing control — and now crying out gracelessly through the night to God!
Look: Bruce, laughing along with his new friend.
Les belles couleurs (3)
By the end of September, Marcel Beaulé’s producer Sylvain Talbot was worried. It seemed the feisty morning man, upon returning from his usual six weeks, had turned complacent. Some listeners were even daring to comment on a certain something lacking in Marcel’s usual swift pounce. And Marcel was taking it!…letting them get away unmarked by his famously sharp tongue. What was worse, an Anglo gossip columnist had jumped over from print to morning radio. He never shut up about partition and language and schools; and he was starting to creep up on them. Sylvain told Marcel, “It would be very embarrassing if he passed us. We would never live it down. I mean the man sounds like Donald Duck.” And, it was English.
Marcel sipped his coffee. “Can I help it if my
people want to talk about jobs and hospital waiting rooms?”
“No, you can’t,” admitted Sylvain, “but you could become a little more involved.”
“Health care is important,” allowed Marcel, “but it is not the thing that should be on people’s minds. Did Napoléon’s troops complain about health care? Or did they fight on?”
Sylvain sighed. “Marcel…it’ll come back. It always does. Go with the flow and be ready. One of those idiot politicians in Alberta will make some comment that will play right into your hands. They always do. Bide your time and keep your people with you. I know you can.”
Marcel said he appreciated the kind words and that he would try.
Yes, Sylvain Talbot cared. It was his business to care. He asked, “What is it, Marcel?”
Marcel lowered his eyes, much like he did when he was on-air and his reflection in the glass enclosing the booth overpowered him. He told his producer how he’d spent his summer vacation roaming Montreal and its environs, cruising through the heat in his Eldorado with his ragtop down, using all the bridges and tunnels available east and west along the south shore to connect him with the island and points north.
Sylvain Talbot folded his arms across his chest, trying to be patient; Marcel spent all his summer vacations roaming the streets in his car. “And so?”
Marcel looked up. “Research.”
“For a show?”
Marcel met his producer’s eyes. “For all my shows.”
His producer asked, “What kind of research, Marcel?”
“Flags. I wanted to see where the flags have gone. To see who’s listening. To see if anyone is listening.”
“B’en, what are you talking about? You know they’re listening. You’re number one. The numbers don’t lie, my friend.”
Marcel said, “I don’t care about numbers. I want flags!”
Sylvain Talbot said nothing. A producer is a businessman. His focus was the ratings.
While Marcel pouted, “It’s as if I go in one ear and out the other. There’s something missing and I guess it must be me.”
“Marcel…”
“One day…it was one of those heavy, sickening days in the middle of August. I should’ve had the roof up and the air-conditioning on, but I didn’t. And I didn’t have a hat or sunglasses either. And I had my two flags on my bow like I always do, very visible, and I’m lost in one of those labyrinths of planned cul-de-sacs in one of those cookie-cutter subdivisions up in Laval. And I just stop. You see?”
Sylvain was unsure. “Well, yes…I mean I’ve been to Laval.”
Marcel told him, “These are supposed to be my people — where my numbers come from. And it was a Oui from Terrebonne to Deux Montagnes.”
“It was pretty tight in some of them, Marcel.”
“The swing vote,” said Marcel. “God, I hate the swing vote.”
His producer let the comment float.
Now Marcel sighed. “It was as if I’d run out of gas. I stopped and sat there…suburban mothers walking past trailing children, teenagers hanging around making noise… Not one person knew me. And there wasn’t a flag in sight.” He sipped coffee, more rueful than his producer had ever seen him. “I had to wonder if anyone within the sound of my voice has been moved to reinstate their flag. That was a hard moment. I’ve been trying to work through it. To understand what it’s really about.”
Sylvain reached across the table and patted Marcel’s hand. “Summer is always the worst time for politics. You know that.”
“It’s more than politics,” said Marcel, suddenly petulant.
Sylvain knew what was coming and didn’t want to hear it. He pushed back his chair and stood. That was the end of the meeting. “It’s not a war, Marcel. And we are in the entertainment business and I expect you to be the professional I know you are and get your act together. There’s just no excuse for a squirmy Anglo gossip columnist to be stealing your thunder.”
Marcel sipped coffee and sat there for a long time, alone.
That autumn, partitionist rhetoric again heated to a boil. Patrice Painchaud, an unrepentant FLQ adherent who had served time for mailbox bombings during the October Crisis thirty years before, emerged to publicly promise renewed violence if the Anglos tried to section up Quebec. Marcel Beaulé’s famous bite was revived for one heady week when they invited Monsieur Painchaud into the studio to take some calls. Sparks flew. Great radio! Marcel pleaded with his producer to sign the man on as a sort of sidekick, a straight man who would help orchestrate the daily give-and-take with his public.
“But he’s not a straight man,” argued Sylvain Talbot, “and neither are you. Picture de Gaulle and…well, Napoléon, trying to work together. It would never fly, Marcel.” Besides, Patrice Painchaud had been publicly repudiated by the Premier — who was no longer “new.”
“This Premier is a suck-bag,” snarled Marcel.
“That could be the premise for a great show,” noted Sylvain; “but we’ll never do it, my friend.”
Marcel fell back into his funk, uninspired.
People in the industry were saying le pauvre Marcel.
In the fall of ’96 Bruce’s English Rights group got down to the business of consolidating its beliefs. This involved debating fine points and drafting briefs, presenting those briefs, consulting and coordinating with other municipalities and regions, and holding press conferences to announce resolutions, and then holding votes to pass resolutions. Bruce remained at arm’s length, not at all positive about this direction. He even missed a few meetings. “Oh, concentrating on business, economy’s really picking up. It’s new. Global, you know? Needs more attention…” was what he claimed when anyone happened to ask where he’d been.
The Woman Who Got Dressed in the Morning
“Today,” said Jane, “I want to hear about unsung heroes. It’s been a hard autumn. Still a lot of tension around Montreal these days — politics of course…all the talk about partition and retaliation against partition, and there’s the economy — this new economy they keep telling us about, a school system in crisis, our ever-battered loonie, the price of gas…the usual things that try our souls. The other day I even saw a man down on my street with a sign that said Last Days of Montreal…Ouch! We have to rise above these things. So I want you to call and tell us about someone who’s made you forget all that, someone who’s made you feel good about life. And please: we all know about the rock stars, the TV people, the athletes. We’re going to give them a day off today. And we’re not going to say a word about politicians. No, I want you to call and tell me about someone in your life who you think deserves some credit. Maybe he or she lives in your neighbourhood. Or in your home. The main thing is, they do something good. It could be just a little thing...” Here, Jane’s mellifluous radio voice rose a touch; “but it’s something that makes a difference. So give us a call. That’s unsung heroes on today’s phone-in. Now the numbers. If you’re calling from inside Montreal…”
Bruce had seen that Last Days guy too. And he knew someone who deserved credit for helping him beat the feelings the guy had made him feel. Bruce picked up the phone…
The first caller was someone they called to get the show going, always an expert or someone with a bit of a profile. That day it was the former Mayor of Westmount. Bruce met her once, when he used to live over there. Denise, his ex-wife, had dragged him out to something about water rates one night. The former Mayor was telling Jane that everyone involved with Meals-on-Wheels was certainly an unsung hero and Jane was agreeing that volunteers were the backbone of society when Bruce got through. The production assistant who answered took his name and number, then prepped him. “So Bruce, who’s your unsung hero?”
“My neighbour.”
“And what does your neighbour do?”
“She’s a volunteer,” said Bruce, “definitely a volunteer. Of the highest order. You should see her.”
“For any particular organization?”
“It’s a neighbourhood thing. Well, o
ne guy, Alvie, he comes from TMR. We just call it the group.”
“This isn’t political, is it? Jane wants to stay away from politics today.”
“No, no, no,” Bruce assured him, “I go over to NDG for that.” His English Rights group. “No, this group’s just meant to provide people with hope, a new outlook, that sort of thing…I guess you could say she’s the focus point. Catalyst.You know?”
The production assistant said, “OK, Bruce, turn your radio down and hold the line. You can hear the show through the phone. We’ll get you on with Jane in a minute.”
“Right.” Bruce turned his radio down and listened. He felt excited as he waited to talk to Jane. He loved to listen to her voice and she was a regular part of his day. Now she was hearing about a gas station owner who pulled old people’s cars out of snowbanks for free each winter. Then a woman praised her son-in-law who’d been so helpful since her husband had died. They both sounded like heroes to Jane, and who could disagree? Not Bruce… Jane was a hero, when you thought about it. She helped you vent. She allowed your thoughts and feelings to escape into the air of Montreal.
Then Jane said, “Let’s go to Bruce, calling from his office. Hello, Bruce.”
“Hi.”
“How’s business?”
“Oh, God, you don’t want to hear about it.”
“You’re right…you’re absolutely right. Not today. Who’s your unsung hero?”
“The woman at the corner — up where I live. North end.”
“OK. Is this a woman you know personally?”
Bruce told Jane, “Not exactly. Although it’s very personal — what she does. She lives at the corner, top floor. But I’ve never talked to her...never even seen her on the street, for that matter. But she’s there every morning, 7:45, ten to eight, standing at her window after her shower deciding what to wear. If anyone makes a difference, it’s her.”
