Five Roses (25 page)

Rose didn't realize, until he told her, that he was almost ten years younger than she was. But what did that matter? She stroked his face, touched his eyelids and lips, and under his locs, the soft nape of his neck, hoping with the gentle brush of her fingers to anoint him with every tenderness she could offer.

The wind that swirled around the tower was cooler than on the ground along the canal. The walls exuded cold, and the open side with its penthouse view, was frigid. Rose had found a spot where they didn't lie too close to the wind but she could still see the Five Roses sign past the edge of the platform, and behind it, the congested sprawl of city buildings.

“You like your sign, don't you?” Leo teased her. “We can go look at it close up if you want.”

“No, I like it like this.”

“It makes you think of your mom's story.”

“Yeah. It makes me wonder if she lived around here. If she knew about the sign.”

“How would you find out?”

“I don't know.”

His hand, under her sweater, shaped her nipple, made it hard. His mouth puffed moist heat as he nuzzled her ear and the flat lozenge of her earring. She shifted against him and turned her head, mouth parted. They could have waited until they were in her studio where it was warmer. From Leo she'd learned the luxury of patience. Except that, sometimes, the right time was now.

Traffic careened along the curve, racing to beat the stoplight. The long-angled rays of the setting autumn sun spotlit the clock tower of the market. The pumpkins heaped around the stalls affirmed their own orange rotundity.
They
were their own suns, thank you.

Fara waited at the curb to cross to the market. That morning they'd run short of coffee and Frédéric had made half cups. Cute, but no cigar. She needed a full dose of caffeine to withstand the upstream jostle of the subway, the standing-room-only bus ride to the hospital, the first sight of her desk buried under every colour of requisition used in the witchcraft of medicine.

She bought half a kilo of French roast and held the tightly packed bag of beans — her favourite perfume — to her nose as she threaded past shoppers. A woman cradling a huge paper cone of flowers, friends having a delighted, isn't-this-incredible reunion over a mound of kale.

Her steps slowed when she glimpsed a woman waiting for a vendor to root through his leather apron for change. Where did she know her from? The stalwart back and shoulders, yes. The serious young woman who delivered tube feeding. Fara tapped her arm. “Hi! Remember me from the hospital, Twelve South?”

The woman didn't answer, but Fara saw the shutter-click of recognition on her face. “You live around here too?” Fara asked.

“No.” She hesitated, then lifted her chin in the direction of the canal. “I have a studio in an old factory.” She'd spoken with such gravity the words sounded like a confession.

“You're an artist.”

“That's what I keep telling her,” a skinny woman with spiked hair interjected. “She's got a loom. She weaves.”

Fara arched her eyebrows as if impressed, though she knew nothing about weaving. The skinny woman looked familiar. “Do you work in the hospital, too?”

“Making stew for four hundred patients? You couldn't pay me.”

But the woman didn't explain what she meant and Fara wasn't about to start guessing.

As a loose group they strolled past the stalls, to the end of the market. Fara, flipping through the kaleidoscope of faces in her head, suddenly said, “I know where I've seen you before. At my neighbour's — out on the deck. You know Maddy.”

“Maddy.” The woman smiled. “Yeah …”

“I'm Fara.”

“Yushi.”

Had she said Yooshi? Or Looshi? Fara didn't want to ask her to repeat her name and get branded as an ignoramus white person who could only say Susan and Mary.

Yooshi, if that was her name, turned to her friend. “I have to get back to work. If I see you at home later, I'll see you. If I don't, have fun.” She glanced at Fara as she left, which Fara supposed was a curt version of goodbye. Not overly sociable, was she, this Yooshi?

The tube feeding woman still stood next to Fara. “You know,” Fara said, “I don't think you ever told me your name.”

“Rose.”

“Ha!” Fara pointed into the distance at the Farine Five Roses sign. “You should take a picture of yourself with that sign behind you.”

Rose glanced over her shoulder, but her expression stayed indifferent.

Fara had thought it funny. An interesting coincidence, if nothing else. “I guess I'll let you go. See you at the hospital.”

She strode to the pedestrian bridge, which was painted the bright green of oxidized copper she thought of as Montreal green — the colour of gables and cupolas. The water in the canal had a dark, oily flatness. The nights had been cool enough lately that the trees had started turning. Someone had stuck posies of gold and crimson leaves between the slats of the picnic tables near the canal. Every time Fara crossed into the Pointe now, she felt the drop in bustle, money, and upscale edginess. At the market, you bought duck breasts and bluefin tuna. In the Pointe, you stopped at the
dépanneur
for canned food and beer. Though, sure, with the advent of people like herself and Frédéric, the Pointe was changing. Brick was being repointed, old windows and doors replaced. The air smelled of tar. Cement mixers sat on the sidewalk. The new residents complained to the city about the hookers, the graffiti, the garbage rotting in the alleys. She and Frédéric had gone to the community meeting with the mayor to demand more police presence. They'd met others who'd also recently moved to the Pointe.

The old Pointe was still here. Witness the man in his crooked pose on the chair outside the
dépanneur
on the corner, the guys who played horseshoes, the elderly man hobbling along the alley with his cane, looking for gossip. He'd accosted Fara one day and asked if she knew about the crime that had happened in the house. Were there still people who thought suicide was a crime? I work in a hospital, she'd said coldly. I'm used to death.

As she unlocked her front door, she eyed the grimy beige panelling of the entrance. She'd washed it, but decades of city dirt had fused with the paint. She'd debated stripping the wood the way Maddy had, but boy, oh boy, what a lot of work for what they only saw when they were coming home or leaving.

She stooped to pick up the mail from the mat. A pizza flyer and an envelope from the bank. The hallway was dim in the dusk. She kicked off her shoes and hollered up the stairs. “Frédéric?” No answer.

The French doors were closed because they'd had the heat on yesterday evening. She'd stained and varnished the wood and Frédéric had added a scrolled brass handle. The gleam of wood and glass changed the look of the downstairs, made the hallway elegant. And yeah, in whatever bizarre way the mind worked, she no longer saw the body hanging. She thought of the boy in the house less often. The reawakened memories of Claire's suicide were fading, settling into the old hollow sense of loss she would sooner leave undisturbed.

She slung her knapsack on the table in the kitchen, unlocked the back door, and stepped onto the deck. The fence paraded the patient innocence of wood that had withstood rain, sunshine, and snow. The man who used to stand out there seemed to have disappeared.

Over on Maddy's deck, her orange cat huddled next to the basket-weave chair, as if waiting for Maddy
there
, where she often sat, would make her appear. Fara clicked her tongue. One ear swivelled in her direction, but otherwise he ignored her. Cats, she smirked. So unto themselves.

“How about …?” Anouk stood as if undecided before the shrink-wrapped mounds of ground beef. Then she winked at Ben. She hadn't forgotten how he loved her
pâté chinois
. She'd already hefted potatoes, apples, celery, and a head of iceberg lettuce into the cart he was pushing.

A few days ago he'd opened his door and there stood Anouk. My bag's downstairs, she said. He'd tripped down on light feet, couldn't get back upstairs fast enough, lugging the huge and heavy suitcase. She showed him the bruises on her arm where her boyfriend had grabbed her when he heard she'd had some fun for a change.
What a total
a-hole
!

She was so upset — and Ben so keen to show off that she'd come
to him
for refuge — that he'd taken her out for smoked meat and spaghetti. She'd had four Bloody Marys. Back in his apartment, she threw a blanket over the scratchy upholstery of his sofa and straddled him with all her clothes on. He knew this game, where she didn't get undressed but squished her breasts out of their cups and twisted her skirt up her hips. He had to finger aside the crotch of her panties to get in. Sex with no clothes was easier, but Anouk was always wilder when he had to wrestle with elastic and lace to get at her good parts.

The next day at work, Mathieu asked if it was true Anouk had moved in with him again. News didn't take long to get around the Pointe. Ben shrugged. He didn't know what Anouk meant to do and didn't dare ask her.

That evening, when he came home, she had pork chops frying and a can of mushroom soup open on the counter. That was her trademark fancy dish: pork chops in mushroom sauce.

He went to the bedroom to change his oil-streaked shirt for a T-shirt. Anouk had glared when she'd seen the teacup on the window ledge. Who's is that? she demanded. He thrilled at the snap of her jealousy — but didn't want her to smash the cup to the floor. My mom's. Her eyes narrowed. He wasn't sure if she believed him. Then she pulled him to her. You poor baby.

Today the teacup shared the ledge with her grandmother's shepherd girl. The light from the window made the china crook gleam like the handle of the teacup. He looked around the room, but Anouk's huge suitcase had disappeared. He eased open the top drawer of his dresser. His underpants had been pushed aside to make room for shiny twists of frilled nylon and lace.

He walked into the kitchen, brimming with a sense of great, good luck. He gathered her close in his arms, feeling how perfectly she fit against him, smelling the perfume of her hair. We should get married, he murmured. She pulled back her head to look at him. For real? You can get a white dress, he promised. And walk down the aisle. She snuggled her head under his chin again. Don't be silly, she whispered. I don't need the jokers around here laughing at me in white. Let's do it fast at city hall. She gripped her arms around his waist tighter. Let's do it, Ben.

Since then, because he'd been at work all week, she'd made the phone calls and booked a date. They had to wait three weeks, but three weeks was okay if he thought that, a week ago, he didn't even know he was going to be married at all.

Anouk wanted to visit her parents in Shawinigan to tell them. He'd already met them when he and Anouk used to live together. He didn't care for her old man, a short bully with a mouth on him. Hard to believe he hadn't had his face broken yet. Her mom looked like an older, more tired, fatter version of Anouk, but Ben bet that even when she was younger, she didn't have Anouk's spunk.

Ben hadn't decided yet if he was going to tell his dad or let him find out — the way Ben had found out about the house. It would serve him right to miss his own — his only — son's wedding.

Anouk had asked about the house and swore when he told her.
Crosseur!
What a bastard, your dad!

Yeah, he was. But now Ben had Anouk on his side — soon to be his wife.

They talked about Xavier, too. She said she'd always thought Xavier was over the top. A bit crazy. Had she told him Xavier tried to get her in the sack once? His own brother's girlfriend, what did he take her for? Ben already knew the story — she'd told him before — but he let her tell him again. He remembered how Xavier was like a firecracker that could burst in your hands at any moment.

He didn't tell Anouk about sneaking into the house where the new people lived now. He hadn't been back since the hippie caught him. It didn't feel safe anymore — especially now that he had Anouk to think of and was about to get married. No way did he want to get into trouble.

Still. He should go back and fix the boards on the deck. He could look through the gaps in the hippie's fence and check if her bike was there. He would walk through the house one last time, then throw away the key.

Anouk pinched his arm, recalling him to the important task of grocery shopping. “Ben! We're not even married yet and you're not listening. I asked if you wanted crackers.”

He leaned forward and pecked her on the mouth. She turned her face away but he saw how she'd made dimples. She liked finding fault and bossing him around. He, too, felt content, pushing the cart down the aisle with Anouk beside him. She dropped a box of Special K onto the cans of creamed corn, peas, soup, foil wrap, and other necessities she claimed were missing from his kitchen.

He had a good job and a credit card. She radiated that wifely, proprietorial air that would have made him feel shoved into a corner a couple of years ago, but that warmed him now from head to toe. If he hadn't already asked her to marry him, he would ask her at this very moment in the aisles of the grocery store.

Spanish guitar plucked from the CD player. Fara sat in one corner of the sofa with Frédéric's feet in her lap, massaging them through his thick socks. She had her head tilted back, eyes on the ceiling.

Suddenly, she frowned. This was the first room she'd painted. When she'd bought the paint, she'd thought all whites were white — and that words like
ecru
,
linen
,
ivory
, and
eggshell
were marketing gimmicks. In the store she'd grabbed cans of white, regardless of their fanciful names, knowing only that she had to paint coat upon coat to cover grim brown, green, and grey. Only after she'd finished the front room did she notice how the light from the street picked out stripes in the paint.
What the …?
She looked at the cans again. She'd begun with Linen and finished with Du Jour. Weren't they all
white
? What a dumb lesson to learn the hard way! She had had to repaint the room in a single tone of white. She hadn't bothered with the ceiling because who looked up there? Well, she could see it now. A brighter swath across a more sedate white.

Head still tilted back, she swallowed, wondering if she was getting a sore throat. She swallowed again. Definitely an itch there. She could use a couple of days away from the Alice-in-the-madhouse circus at work.

And what was that noise? A light, intermittent scratching through the mournful music. She looked at Frédéric, who lay with his eyes closed. It was coming from behind him — behind the sofa along the floor. “Do you hear that?” she whispered.

“A papaya.” He sounded half-asleep. “It's trying to get in.”

“A what?”

“You don't remember?”

She had no idea what he meant.

“I'll get a trap.”

“Is it a mouse, do you think?”

“Or a papaya.”

“Stop it.” She gripped his toes. Whatever the joke, she could tell she was the butt. “I saw Maddy today. She wants to start a business in her house — making cakes and delivering them to restaurants. She's got a friend who's a pastry chef.”