Miss Montreal (22 page)

When the door slammed shut behind him, she grinned and said, “Someone hasn’t changed a bit.”

“His marriage is over,” I said.

“I know.”

“He says he’s okay with it but he’s not.”

“He shot anyone yet?”

“Not for lack of interest.”

“And his leg?”

“Nothing serious.”

“He hurt it in the car?”

“You could say that.”

“Jonah … was there mayhem?”

“A little.”

“Because there is one thing I promised Sierra when I left. And promised myself too, if I’m honest. I’m here to help out. Support you however I can. But I’m not ready for anything crazy, okay?”

“I know.”

“I’m not sure you do. I talk a good game, but when I said I was ready for action, I meant helping out on the computer. Making phone calls. Research. Maybe batting an eyelash or two. That’s about it.”

“I get it.”

“Things get crazy, I’m staying on the sidelines.”

“Of course.”

“So what happened in the car? The truth, please.”

I told her. I told her everything that had happened from the time we’d arrived.

“So you think one of these two stories led to his murder,” she said. “This family of politicians or maybe some kind of arms deal.”

“Yes.”

“Obviously, I don’t know anything about the Afghans and Syrians,” she said. “But I can shed a little light on the Lortie side of it.”

“Go ahead.”

“As soon as Ryan’s done. It’s too long to tell it twice.”

When he got out of the bathroom, he lay on his bed, Jenn sat on mine, and I took one of the chairs by the window. We were all hungry by then, so we called room service and ordered hamburgers and fries all around, then settled in to hear her story. I was so eager to hear it, I didn’t ask Jenn how she knew Ryan’s marriage was over.

A
rtie Moscoe was nineteen years old in the summer of 1950. Still living in his parents’ cold-water flat on De Bullion Street, the rent forty-two dollars a month, and still there were months when the family couldn’t pay. Cold months, winter months, when bailiffs piled their furniture in the snow at the curb and Artie had to check all the different clubs above shops on St. Lawrence where his father might be playing pinochle, to pry out that extra ten or twenty dollars his mother needed to pay the landlord. He was still sharing a room with his two brothers, Abie and Bernie. And despite being engaged to be married, still a virgin.

He was working two jobs then. Five days a week he was a shipper at the Dominion Dress Company, owned by his mother’s first cousin, Irving Schiff. Dominion was a going concern then, selling its wares to the big department stores: Eaton’s, Simpson’s, Morgan’s and Ogilvy’s. Like most of the garment companies on St. Urbain, the Main and surrounding streets—in their case, in the new Peck Building—it had a number of different divisions: Miss Montreal for higher-end fashions; Stay-in-Style for everyday wear; Working Woman for business suits; and Parapluie for raincoats and other outerwear.

Mr. Schiff had promised to move Artie into sales once he had learned the back-room ropes, knew every model number in
every line, how they were made, from what fabric, with what pattern. That summer, he was still in shipping, laying dresses in cartons, sealing them with tape, making sure the orders matched their packing slips. He worked eight to six five days a week and on Saturdays from eight to noon, when the factory opened its back doors and sold seconds for cash to customers who couldn’t afford to buy the items in the stores. His mother gave him grief for working on Shabbos, but always relented when he put eight extra dollars in the kitty. On Sundays, he worked noon to nine at Hammerman’s soda fountain on Park Avenue, corner Villeneuve, scooping ice cream into cones and mixing various flavours of syrup with seltzer water, mostly for rich kids who drifted over from Outremont, along with the neighbourhood kids who’d saved their pennies all week.

His older brother, Abie, had been accepted to McGill University in medicine, despite the quotas that had been established to keep Jewish students to a minimum. Bernie was still in high school at Baron Byng. What was going to be with him? He was a
vilder
, a wild one, smoking and drinking and skipping school to play pool on Rachel with an older crowd. It was up to Artie to help keep the family afloat, and his resentment sometimes burned in his gut like a cloud of gas on fire.

His fiancée was Esther Felberbaum, one year his junior, a girl from a slightly better neighbourhood—Rue Jeanne-Mance, just two streets in from Park. Her father worked in his father’s fur business and was making a good living, so good the Felberbaums were planning to move to Outremont themselves. Esther was a pretty girl, with auburn hair and dark eyes and a cute figure under the sweaters and plaid skirts she wore. But eyeballing was about as far as Artie was getting. Esther was very firm—emphatic—that there’d be nothing hot and heavy until they were married. Oh, they kissed, they petted, they rubbed against each other. And he’d practically limp home after, his groin aching with frustrated desire. Sharing a bedroom with
two brothers, afraid he’d be caught in the act and endure endless teasing and shame, he’d sequester himself in the bathroom to relieve his burning need. In his mind, everyone was having sex but him. Abie for sure, being two years older. Probably Bernie even, given the crowd he ran with. Artie thought he loved Esther. He was going to marry her, for God’s sake, once they had a little more money saved. She was working as a secretary in her grandfather’s company and didn’t have to help her parents with rent and groceries. Her salary was going toward her future—their future—which meant their own flat in the area or maybe, if her parents kicked in something, a semi-detached bungalow in Ville St-Laurent.

Later on he wondered what would have happened if Esther had been more forthcoming. He wasn’t expecting her to go all the way, but if she’d at least given him maybe a hand job once in a while, in the darkness of Fletcher’s Field at night, away from the lights of the street, the touch of a hand that wasn’t his own to take the edge off. Wasn’t he responsible, working the way he did to help support his family? Day in, day out, seven days a week—didn’t that entitle him to more than necking and a feel outside the bra? But always she refused. “When we’re married,” she’d say, “you get the whole package. Until then, only the wrapping.”

In the factory there were girls who flirted with him. French-Canadians who packed dresses under his direction, who wore light cotton dresses in summer and called him Ar
-tie
, laughing at the French he tried to speak, correcting his pronunciation so he sounded more like them. One girl named Francine—he was sure she’d go to bed with him if he asked her out. Sometimes when they worked side by side he’d smell a musky odour coming off her body and he’d get an erection and have to lean against the shipping table to hide it. She had jet-black hair, shiny and straight, and a round, pleasant face. Lousy teeth but that was par for the course with the Frenchies back then. A little bit plumper than he liked but if she were naked
underneath him, God, he’d take that extra flesh, take it in his mouth and—and—Jesus, he had to stop thinking about it. Sometimes had to disappear into the dingy little bathroom at the back and masturbate as fast as he could.

If he and Esther didn’t set a wedding date soon, he thought his head or his body would explode, maybe both in quick succession. So on a Friday night in July, at her parents’ dinner table, all the windows open to get a cross-breeze going in the heat, the white lace curtains hanging limp, not moving an inch, he spoke to her father, laid out his financial situation, and it was agreed they would get married the following April. Not the 20th because that was Hitler’s birthday and who wanted that as an anniversary, but the 27th, at the Chevra Kadisha synagogue. Nine months to go. He had waited this long, what was nine months more?

Nothing. A blink of an eye in the long run. But a week later, Francine called him aside to say one of the other girls was quitting, moving back to Lac-St.-Jean to care for her father, an asbestos miner who had some kind of lung cancer. Was it possible, Francine asked, that her own sister Micheline could take her place? She was eighteen and a hard worker, Francine said. A high school graduate who was good with numbers and writing, who’d even make a good secretary once she improved her English. Artie said it wasn’t up to him, he’d have to speak to Mr. Schiff. Couldn’t he just say hello to her, Francine asked. She was right outside. Just a quick word and he would see what a good prospect she was, someone he could recommend to the boss. So Artie said okay, just for a minute because they had a big order to get out to Eaton’s, and the truck was already at the loading dock and you
never
wanted to be late for Eaton’s because they might refuse the order, and then their buyers wouldn’t take your calls anymore.

One minute, he told her. No more. Francine thanked him and went out to the loading dock and came back in, leading her sister by the hand.

Micheline had the same dark hair as her sister, shiny like the mane of a coal-black horse. But her eyes were blue, her cheekbones high, and when she smiled her cheeks dimpled, and her teeth were white and straight. The dress she wore was a vivid flower print, sleeveless with a V-neck. Nothing plunging or untoward, just low enough to reveal a fine gold chain with a small cross that hung above her breasts. Her legs were bare and her feet visible through white sandals that looked like wicker. She held out her hand and Artie shook it. He smelled something light and floral, what he imagined rosewater would smell like. He felt his heart beat faster. He knew he should say something but couldn’t think what that should be or what language it should be in. The floor might just as well have opened like a trap door and sent him plunging to the basement. Or somewhere farther down.

“Wait here,” he said. He turned and walked out the door that led to the front office and showroom and told Mr. Schiff a girl was quitting but he had found a fitting replacement.

Micheline proved to be as good a worker as Francine suggested. She was prompt, polite and precise. A little shy, compared to her older sister, never one to make jokes, but when she laughed, Artie laughed too, even if he didn’t get the joke. He started shifting his work in ways that brought him closer to her. He’d ask her to help him prepare orders so they could stand side by side at a table, lost in the light scent of roses. To put her hand on the seam of the box as he wet the thick, fibrous tape they used to seal it. To come down to the basement to help load bolts of cloth into the freight elevator to take up to the cutters.

He asked everything but what he really wanted to ask, which was whether she’d go out with him sometime. He couldn’t; he was engaged, for God’s sake. And she probably had a boyfriend. How could she not, as pretty as she was? He thought of roundabout ways he could find out, like asking her what she was doing on the weekend, seeing if she said, “My
boyfriend and me, we’re going to the movies …” Francine always talked about her boyfriend, Vincent, and the dances they went to, the movies they’d seen.

But he never asked Micheline and she never volunteered.

About three weeks after Micheline was hired, on a sweltering Sunday night in August at Hammerman’s soda shop, so hot behind the counter that Artie had to keep putting Johnson’s baby powder on his forehead and forearms so sweat wouldn’t run into the drinks he was mixing, the bell rang over the door and three girls came giggling in, speaking French. You didn’t hear much French on Park Avenue in those days. That’s where the Jewish kids hung out, walking along holding hands, driving their father’s cars—those few whose fathers had cars—up and down, back and forth, calling out to friends or groups of girls on the sidewalk.

When Artie looked up and saw Micheline with two friends, his heart fluttered, then quickly sank. Seeing her outside the factory was something he had thought about constantly, but not like this; not with powder on his arms and face like a clown, serving cones and squirting coloured syrup into glasses. He’d wanted her to see him dressed in his best poplin jacket, striding up the avenue, ordering in a restaurant.

Damn it. Damn it damn it damn it.

So pretty, so light on her feet. He made himself smile and say
“Bonsoir”
to her and her friends, and she gave him a beautiful smile in return, a real hummer, and said, “Ar-
tie
,” the way her sister did, with the accent on the second syllable. “How many jobs you have?”

He took their orders, scooped ice cream into their cones—she ordered strawberry, of course she did, and he bet her lips tasted like strawberries the rest of the night. Maybe always. He was glad they went to sit at one of the rickety white tables outside because the sweat was running freely and he had to powder up again.

The next morning he wasn’t sure what he should say to her
about it. Maybe nothing. Maybe avoid her completely. But she spoke first, saying he was lucky to work at an ice cream shop where he could probably have all he wanted. “Me, I love ice cream,” she said. “I would have one every night if I could.”

“Always strawberry?” he said.

She smiled and said, “
Ben, non
. I would have a different one each time. Strawberry one night, chocolate the next. Then vanilla, pistachio—what else you have at that place?”

He stammered out the complete list of flavours, watching her eyes sparkle with each new one. And couldn’t help himself, didn’t want to stop himself, and said, “Come next Sunday night and I’ll make you something special. A triple scoop with strawberry, chocolate and vanilla.”

“Non!”

“Yes.”

“
Oh, mon Dieu
, that sounds great. I’m gonna do that. I’m gonna see you there next Sunday.”

The week dragged by. There were orders to fill, the fall lineup going out to the stores, wool dresses and skirt-jacket combos much heavier than what the girls were wearing now in the summer heat. Micheline almost always wore something light and sleeveless. Micheline. What do you look like naked, he wondered. What do you smell like when a man holds you in his arms and breathes in the tang of your sweat, the musk of your—oh, God, he had to stop himself and march off to the washroom, splash cold water on his face. And quickly touch himself.