by John Brooke
She has a bite of lunch and goes up to her office. She sits in front of that day’s job. She is translating an appointment notice. It will take an hour, she’ll bill $100. Good money. Easy money. But she feels no satisfaction. An appointment notice about a new V-P Communications is news that someone else’s life is in motion and it only serves to heighten her frustration, this sense of being stalled at exactly the wrong moment.
Her desk overlooks the lane behind the house. Geneviève stares out the window.
The poplars in the lane remain frozen in death.
More snow begins to fall. It falls like a horrid revelation.
Her response is to get up from her desk, put on her coat again, and head for the corner store.
Thu’s wife is watching one of her melodramatic Vietnamese videos on the small TV beside the cash register. She barely acknowledges Geneviève, who purchases a can of beer, a package of Gauloises and a Hershey bar with nuts. Unhealthy. A waste of money. A waste of time. But the season has backed her into a corner. She lights a cigarette and heads back, morose, fingering the ring on the beer can. It’s one of those large ones, the kind Bruce drinks when he listens to his music.
Rue St. Gédéon is deserted at two in the afternoon. Geneviève sometimes comes upon it like this, an empty street, all hers, and sometimes it brings a special feeling: let corporate V-Ps conquer the world, her prize is to be alone in the middle of the day, far from the strain downtown, communing with the squirrels in the branches, meditating on the simple architecture of her neighbourhood. She can cherish that feeling. It has something to do with the freedom of being freelance and surviving. It’s about the quiet independence of the life she has built in Montreal, so far from those roots in the south of France. But today the street is merely bleak. And so filthy.
Approaching the corner of rue Godbout, the cul-de-sac where she lives, Geneviève becomes aware of movement under a car parked at the curb. And a voice. “Fuck it…fuck, fuck, fuck!” It’s Miko, the drug dealer’s addicted son. The car, a rusted-out Japanese thing, is up on a jack with one rear wheel removed. Tools are scattered on the snowswept pavement.
Everyone knows the drug dealer. Not personally; neighbours steer a wide course. But year in, year out they have watched as the taxis stop, the shady men or bedraggled prostitutes knock, enter, then come back out and the taxis drive away. The police tell anyone who calls — and Geneviève has — that they know too, but there is nothing they can do. It’s an ongoing shame. And Miko, with his habit and his language and his bottom-of-the-line women friends, rubs it in their faces.
“Fucking stupid thing!” Loud and incessant, with no regard for anyone. What if a mother were passing with her child? Or one of the old people from the maison de retraite? Geneviève listens to Miko spit his oaths. He’s the worst kind of person, the lowest of the low. A blight. And on a day like today, it is the last thing she needs — this wretched man.
“Oh, ta gueule,” she mutters, blowing thick French smoke. Which means: Shut up!
Miko rolls out from under his car, greasy and scowling. “Fuck off! Mind your own business.”
Geneviève turns. “Is that all you know how to say?”
Miko brandishes his tool. “Fuck off or you’ll get this wrench straight up your damn pussy.” With a leer, he slides back under the car.
She stands there with her cigarette smouldering, her chocolate and beer in a brown paper bag. Looking around: An empty street. No one to witness her suffering this man’s crude bile. No one to understand the feeling of being stranded in nature’s void. No! It echoes inside her like a chime on a clock that’s stuck in the dead of night. This scene at the corner of Godbout and St. Gédéon is a travesty. And, as Bruce would say, the last straw. Geneviève takes another puff on her Gauloise as she steps forward and places her foot against the fender of Miko’s crappy car. A car that spews smoke. That should have been scrapped years ago. A junkie’s car.
“Fuck,” he curses again.
A disgusting man… Geneviève leans her weight on the fender. The jack cannot support it; the car collapses on Miko. She hears a gasp and a sort of groan.
But he doesn’t have a chance to say fuck again.
Geneviève stays calm, if empty, and walks away. She turns the corner. Fifty more steps to her door and she is safe inside. She heads upstairs and sits in front of her computer. She opens her beer, the chocolate…she lights another cigarette. Finally some thoughts come into her mind: He was lying there working on his car. I came along, he started insulting me. Anyone would have done the same thing…It was an impulse. Un crime involontaire. An opportunity of sin, as the Sisters at school used to tell us…You have to understand. “You” is the police. She tastes the beer. Bites into the chocolate. Now she puts on some music and fills her lungs with smoke. Now exhaling… She repeats it: The police will understand. And then, anger surging: Je peux me justifier! And again — now shaking? You have to understand…
Sipping, munching, smoking, forgetting her work, vaguely aware of the music, Geneviève watches the street. Three cars come by, otherwise St. Gédéon remains empty for another half-hour, until the children begin arriving home from school. Then she hears the sirens.
They have taken Miko away by the time she ventures out, slightly wobbly from the beer and full of bewildered surprise as she beholds the crowd and the flashing lights on the squadron of official vehicles surrounding Miko’s car. “Oh, mon Dieu,” breathes Geneviève when a neighbour tells her. “I thought they were doing a raid or something. I thought finally they’re going to do something about those people.”
The neighbour shakes her head, unclear as to where her sympathies might lie. Maybe the neighbour is one of those who believe that when someone is dead you forgive them.
Not Geneviève; she needs to keep her anger. That evening she reminds Bruce of the times they’ve looked out their bedroom window to see Miko, parked under the streetlight, injecting something into his arm, then passing the needle to one of his horrible putes. And about having to listen to their coarse laughter. Or his car radio blaring at 2:00 in the morning. Bruce — who has even seen Miko having sex with one of them in the yard of the maison de retraite one night last summer…like two dogs! — always affects an amused curiosity whenever the subject of the drug dealer arises. He will watch Miko; or his mother, out on the porch surveying the street with her dark eyes; or the daughters and their boyfriends washing their expensive cars; or the constant stream of unsavoury clientele, and he’ll say, “What a life they must live! I’d give good money to be a fly on the wall in that kitchen.” Geneviève has never found it the least amusing. “Stop it, Bruce. It’s disgusting, and if you ever go anywhere near any of them, that will be the end of you and me, I promise.” He has asked, “Aren’t you curious?” And she has told him, “No.” He has teased her. “So bourgeois.” She has replied, “Oui — and toi aussi, and don’t you forget it, monsieur.”
That evening, absorbing the scattered details, Bruce is again drifting away from the crux of the matter. Sipping wine, he asks, “Was he shooting up? Were there needles sticking out of him?”
“Bruce…of course not!” Getting up, taking his plate. “He was working. I mean, that’s what they said. They said he was working on his car. It’s who he was. Always so dirty and despicable.”
“So which one found him?”
“Fadi.” A Lebanese boy of about eleven or twelve who lives at the foot of Godbout.
“Poor kid,” muses Bruce. “Can you imagine? He’ll have nightmares for years.”
Geneviève prepares coffee. She does not feel that Bruce is angry enough to confide in.
No… Her Bruce doesn’t see it the way she does and never has. She is alone with the thing.
2. Witnesses
Next morning, Geneviève finishes up the appointment notice. She could e-mail it in half a minute or fax it in one, but she thinks she will take it downtown and present it in person. She needs to be away from the house. And that day the sun is at least tr
ying. Putting on her makeup, she sees that despite fifty-one years and a faltering cycle she can still look good. Yes…she still knows how to do it. She wonders if a little eye shadow might have made the difference. If Miko might have smiled instead of daring her to kill.
She buys a new bra in Place Ville-Marie, eats chicken salad in the art gallery café, then rides the metro home at three. Being in motion holds Miko at bay. Geneviève watches herself in the car window as the train speeds through the darkness from one station to the next. She has an urge to start talking — to everyone. Her accent would be plain. They would all know she’s from France. Perhaps she’s visiting. They would be glad their Montreal has finally given her a decent day. None of them would place her anywhere near the scene of the crime. No connection. No motive.
She gets off at Jean Talon. Five minutes later, walking up St. Gédéon, there’s Fadi, coming home from school. She hurries and meets him at the corner. “Bonjour, Fadi.”
“Bonjour.”
“How do you feel today?”
The boy shrugs. “Ça va.”
Geneviève prompts him. “About the man?”
A cloud passes over Fadi’s eyes. “Mama says he had enemies.”
“Enemies!” Geneviève is intrigued. “But why?”
An eleven- or twelve-year-old cannot respond to that. He whispers, “They killed him!”
Geneviève demurs. “I heard it was an accident.”
Fadi shakes his head, quite sure of it — no, they killed him.
She steps closer. “And you found him.”
“Yes.”
“Were you afraid?”
“I’ve seen dead people,” declares Fadi, bristling with a child’s defiance. “There was a lady in the park — before we came here. Everyone else was running but I stopped and looked at her. Now I’ve seen two dead people…They just lie there.”
Geneviève asks, “And was it you who told his mother?”
“No, I told her.” Fadi points.
Miko’s latest girlfriend is suddenly there — across the street. She’s pacing back and forth, emaciated and distracted, mumbling as if trying to decide whether to approach the drug dealer’s house. It’s clear the poor creature is caught in something more than grief; maybe on the verge of a seizure? Geneviève stares, amazed to see her. “What did she do?”
“She looked at him and then she ran.”
“So then you went to tell his mother?”
“No,” groans Fadi, losing patience; “then I told him. Le monsieur…là.”
And now here’s Vic, skulking at the entrance to the lane, thirty steps away. Vic’s back porch is on the other side of Geneviève’s garden fence. Bruce has managed to establish basic contact, but Geneviève refuses. Vic is sullen, unfathomable, often drunk. He walks around alone, leering at people. He’s leering at her.
Fadi says, “He was looking out his window. Then he came out and I showed him.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Oui, but I couldn’t understand.” Vic is Italian.
Geneviève needs to confirm something. “He was looking out his window?”
Fadi shrugs again, restless. “Oui.”
And Geneviève is beginning to shake again as Fadi’s mother appears at her door and calls him in. He runs off. Fadi’s mother waves to Geneviève.
Like any good neighbour, Geneviève waves back.
3. A gesture
Geneviève waits through that evening staring at the television, now far removed from Bruce. She sits through the following morning, suspended, watching from her perch above the lane. But there are no police cars turning into the street in a convoy, coming to take her away. There is nothing to see except Vic, talking to himself as he shuffles along the slushy lane. He keeps peering into the sky and taking off his cap — one of those Scots motoring caps, pinned at the peak — and rubbing the top of his bald head. Why does he do that? Checking for signs of sun? Around noon she becomes aware of cars beginning to arrive along St. Gédéon. For the wake, she guesses. She throws on her coat and goes out. She’s thinking Fadi was right, the dead just lie there; it’s everyone else who must make a move, a gesture…step forward, offer a word. Geneviève turns the corner and approaches the drug dealer’s house, drawn by the influx of death.
Miko’s bereaved pute-lover is there again, moving in the same direction along the opposite sidewalk, and Geneviève cannot avoid connecting with the girl’s needful eyes. As if on cue, she hugs herself, exuding pain and confusion, then trips on a crust of lingering ice. What would this woman bring to Miko now — now that he’s an empty space like a puncture mark in the middle of his mother’s salon? The daughters’ two boyfriends are outside greeting guests. When Miko’s girl comes near, one of them says something. She turns away. She’s not welcome. She’s just another customer: Sorry, we’re closed today on account of a death in the family.
Geneviève also passes by. Is she really going to approach those men and attempt to enter the drug dealer’s house? And with what — her apology? Staring gauche and trembling at the two men and the house, she feels no apology forthcoming. She continues on to the corner, where she buys more cigarettes from Thu’s wife. No contact there either; she’s glued to yet another gothic video from the homeland depicting a terrified woman scrambling through a moonlit forest, two steps ahead of a very evil man. Stepping out of the depanneur, pausing to light a cigarette…looking up: Vic is standing there. It occurs to Geneviève that had she been a Vietnamese maiden, she would have run. Instead, she offers him a cigarette. He accepts as if this happened every day. He stays beside her as she starts back.
Geneviève begins to natter banalities about the weather. Vic ignores it. He puffs smoke and studies the drug dealer’s house. The sisters’ boyfriends continue solemnly greeting guests. Miko’s mother is somewhere inside, ready to receive information that might help her locate the killer. “No, an April like this would just never happen in France,” says Geneviève, “never in a hundred years. Absolutely never. It’s something you never get used to, don’t you find? I take it you’re not from around here either. Are you? Hmm?”
By way of reply, Vic touches her arm and directs her down the lane. So she falls silent and lets him lead her past her window and the poplars, a hundred steps into the small park at the corner of rue Chateaubriand. He stops in front of a bench. It’s empty on a bitter day. He bids her sit. Geneviève stares at it, panic rising. She can see the park from her office window… This bench, it’s where Miko sat, in his pain, his joy, in whatever it is a drug addict feels, he would sit there; and through all seasons, glaring, laughing, hugging himself and shaking, cursing dogs and telling anyone who dared look at him to “fuck off!” She has seen people (and dogs) jump away.
Now Vic speaks. “You will sit here for Miko.”
Vic, alone with his wine on his back step, often sings to himself; and Bruce has noted that although weird, the man possesses a true, if oddly delicate tone given the size of him, not at all unpleasant on a summer’s eve. Likewise, his speaking voice — reedy, cracking — does not fit the bullish Picasso form that stands before her. He sounds as if he’s just finished crying.
She asks, “For Miko?” To be certain she has heard correctly.
“B’en, yes. When I saw you from my window…” shrugging, “I know you are the one.”
The dam bursts. Weeping, Geneviève sits and pours forth her confession. Vic stands there, implacable, pensive, flicking his lower lip with his index finger. Only when she has talked past her paranoia and let her tears run themselves dry, when it’s far too late to fudge the hard truth of her story, does it occur that at first Vic didn’t seem to understand.
There’s no question he understands when she is through. “Yes…it’s good.” Now considering her from ten paces back, like a photographer setting up a portrait. Taking off his cap, feeling that constant spot on his pate, he adds, “The weather will be fine.”
He has her. She bows her head, knowing it’s what she deserves.
>
He repeats his wish. “You will sit here.”
Geneviève is already sitting. After several minutes she asks, “And so?”
It’s simple. “If you steal something from me you must replace it.”
“What did I ever steal from you?”
Vic lifts his face toward the ugly sky. It’s a face infused with an ecstatic sorrow. He begins to walk about in front of her, gesturing in priest-like way at a forsythia bush, still barren…at the swings and the slide, still empty…at a dog sniffing the cracked surface of the basketball court…and at the young girl who waits for the dog. This mute oblation ends back at the bench. “This is my park,” says Vic; then her strange neighbour explains in surprisingly fluid French: “He used to sit here. I set this bench aside for him. He wasn’t worth much, a rancid sight, hunched in his withdrawal pains, snarling like an animal if anyone or their dog came near. I found him most grotesque in his euphoria, hands rubbing at himself obscenely, his rotten eyes thick with pleasure. I don’t care a damn for his murder. Good riddance. But I want a replacement. This is why you will sit here.”
Something isn’t right. Even for a murderer. “Your park?” Is she pleading with this man? She feels she is. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you will sit here. You will replace him. This is what I want.”
“How can you ask for such a thing?”
“Because it is mine and you owe me.” Then gently, but with a slyness that is now plain, Vic says, “How can you confess and not give yourself? Confession cannot be a hollow gesture.”
No. Geneviève stands, refusing with an absolute shaking of her head, and walks away.
Not home. Not to Miko’s wake. She walks out of the park, across Chateaubriand and along Villeray to St. Hubert. She goes to her bank. She picks up the laundry. Then she heads south to the grocery store and buys cereal for Bruce, then over to the library on Christophe Colomb for a Simenon and back issues of Paris-Match. Continuing down to Jean Talon, she goes west to the market for bread and olives. She does it all without her tote bag, and Vic follows her every step of the way.
