My October (23 page)

On push-up number three, there was a knock at the door—a double knock, somewhat tentative. Luc leapt to his feet. It was her. It had to be. She had dropped by twice before in the early afternoon on her way back to the office after lunch meetings.

He dashed down the stairs, his whole body singing. He was wearing the black jersey. He would enfold her in it, let her feel the softness for herself. A vision of him carrying her, laughing, over the threshold rose up in his mind. He would do it. He would literally sweep that girl off her feet.

When the door opened, Serge Vien stood before him, gazing at him with his unnerving eyes. Luc's expression must have been weird, because Vien stepped backward in alarm. “Is it not a good time? I can come back, you know. It's no problem.”

Luc shook his head and made reassuring sounds even as his heart folded up like a piece of origami. What was Vien doing here? How did he even know the address? No one besides Marie-Soleil had it.

“I was just at Laporte Street,” Vien said, as if reading his thoughts. “Hannah told me where to find you.”

Hannah. He'd forgotten about her. He looked at Vien sharply. How casually he'd said her name, as if he considered her a friend.

Vien was squatting now, the flesh of his flabby thighs straining the seams of his flannels. “I've got something for you,” he said, rifling through his briefcase. Papers were jammed in haphazardly, some of them creased and torn, with faded pencil scribblings, obviously years old. He found what he was looking for. “It's a contract,” he said, handing over a plain brown envelope. “School protocol. Both you and Hannah have to sign it.”

There it was again—
Hannah
. Luc took the envelope but didn't open it.

Vien's attention shifted. “So this is the new space,” he said, smiling politely. Dead leaves and the pages of an abandoned
newspaper swirled behind him in the street. A sudden gust blew up, sending dust into Luc's face. Vien shivered in his thin suit jacket.

Luc pushed the door open and waved expansively inside. As they walked through the dim and narrow ground-floor rooms, he became aware in a way he hadn't been before that there was no furniture. Not a rug or single ornament. And the colour Monsieur Gagnon had picked for the walls looked atrocious in this light.

Luc had walked through these rooms plenty of times already, but with Vien by his side, he was seeing them with fresh eyes. And smelling them with a fresh nose. He had been habituated to it, but now, coming in from the street, he was assaulted by the close, musty odour. It grew stronger as they passed the kitchen. The strip of counter behind the kitchen sink was black with some kind of growth. The air was probably teeming with noxious spores.

He led Vien up the stairs. There was a chair upstairs—the only one in the house. As soon as they entered Luc's workspace, he regretted bringing Vien in. The yoga mat was still on the floor, but this wasn't the problem. It was hardly a crime to work out in one's office. Luc had forgotten all about the bed, however. It wasn't a real bed, just his futon in the corner, and it was obvious that it had been slept in. The sheets were in a tangle with his soiled laundry heaped on top. It looked like the room of a student.

Luc pulled his chair out from the desk and gestured for Vien to sit down. Another error. The desk was piled high as well. Clearly, not a whole lot of work was going on here. There were two boxes of light bulbs and some plastic hangers Marie-Soleil had brought over when she realized he didn't have any.

There were also tools that Luc had taken from Laporte Street: a hammer, a wrench, a screwdriver with exchangeable tips in the hollow interior of its green plastic handle. At the age of two, Hugo had vomited into this implement. Luc couldn't remember the details of how this had come about, but all these years later the screwdriver still reeked.

Vien picked up a CD from the desk and read the name on the front cover. “David Gray?” he said, breaking into a smile. “Since when do you listen to British pop?”

Luc didn't smile back. “It belongs to a friend.”

Vien lifted his eyebrows twice, Groucho Marx–style, his stray eye magnifying the comic effect. Luc ignored him, turning his focus instead on the photograph of the rugged blond man on the CD cover. The shot was in black-and-white, with
David Gray—Lost Songs
printed in purple across the singer's chest and shoulders. He was unshaven. Not an actual beard, just a couple of days' growth. The hair on his head was the same length as the bristles covering his chin. He looked like a thug.

Marie-Soleil was wild about David Gray. She'd played the album for Luc the previous evening over dinner, making him listen to the lyrics and singing along in an accent that was worse even than his own. She'd played it after dinner too, which had been a shock. He'd never made love to music before. It had never occurred to him. Or to Hannah, for that matter. He didn't like it. There was something juvenile about it.

Vien was still reading the cover. To distract him, Luc opened the brown envelope. He pulled out the pages and skimmed them: several copies of a document entitled
“Contrat social.”
An echo of Jean-Jacques Rousseau? He groped through the pile on his desk for his reading glasses.

When he got to the end of the document, where he was supposed to sign, he stopped short. “What's this?”

Vien looked up guiltily.

“Hugh Stern?” Luc's voice was hard with anger. Only he tripped over the pronunciation. Did one enunciate the
H
or not?
You Stern
was how it came out.

Vien shrugged. “We had to get him on board.”

Luc frowned. Bonnaire used this metaphor too. As if they were a bunch of sailors.

Vien regarded him meekly. “He wouldn't have signed otherwise,” he pleaded.

Luc stared at the unpronounceable first name. Part of him felt like raging. Another part whispered to let it go. Marie-Soleil's smiling lips floated into his thoughts. His breathing eased. One thing about infidelity was that it left little room to dwell on other things. Things like his infuriating son, for example, or his wife. The rabbit hole of his marriage opened in his mind, but he turned away before he could fall in. All that remained was the wobbly-sick sensation he used to feel as a boy, spinning on the tire in Saint-Henri Park. He turned away from that too, and closed his eyes.

Marie-Soleil's face was still there. He pictured her body, the delicate red rosebud tattooed on the small of her back. Half an inch below her panty line, in fact, just above the crack of her fine, shapely ass. He released his breath and turned, smiling, to Vien.

Vien's head bobbed. “You're not mad at me?” He looked like a character in a Chekhov tale, a former serf who couldn't break the habit of servility.

Luc waved as if the whole thing were a joke, youthful folly, something unimportant and excusable.

“We're good to go, then?” said Vien, looking hopeful. “You'll sign?”

Luc signed the sheets with a flourish. “Keep a copy,” he advised, handing them back to Vien one at a time. “Maybe one day it'll be worth something.”

There was a noise below. Vien didn't hear it, but Luc did. He hurried down the stairs, leaving Vien sitting puzzled on the chair.

Marie-Soleil was standing in full sunshine on the doorstep, smiling her luscious smile. She was in pink again, her favourite colour. Luc had watched her get dressed that morning, pulling on little white boots, ankle-high, with heels that made her pelvis jut. He loved her choice of clothes. Loved her smell too, which he breathed in hungrily whenever they embraced: spicy and sweet all at once. His balls clenched inside his gym shorts.

“Come in,” he said recklessly, pulling her by the hand. She resisted at first, saying she had to get back to the office, but eventually allowed herself to be led into the little house, down his green corridor, and up his stairs. Her laughter was like music, her hand so soft it made him giddy.

It was only once they were upstairs that he realized she'd thought he wanted to make love again. When she saw Vien, she stopped short and turned to Luc, her smooth brow creasing in surprise and displeasure.

He made the introductions, telling Vien she was his agent.

“Fortunate man,” said Vien, staring like a boy.

“I'm the fortunate one,” she said, and illuminated Luc with her perfect white smile. “He's our brightest star.”

Luc's face went hot. A pleasurable heat.

Vien couldn't stop staring. He blinked his unmoored eyes
and grinned a loopy grin. The three of them stood there, flushed and happy, buoyed by the waves of sex filling the room like a rising tide.

They conversed politely about books and the fate of the publishing industry in an increasingly digital age. Vien said that kids today were illiterate. But Marie-Soleil disagreed: they were literate, just in a way that was different from the past. Usually, this kind of talk bored Luc silly, but he was so busy attending to the happy sensations of his body that he didn't feel irritated. There was a lull in the conversation and Marie-Soleil turned to him.

“I brought you something.” She reached into her handbag and rooted among its contents. The bag was large, the same shade of pink as her dress. “Ah,” she said after a moment, and pulled out a promotional flyer. “I knew it was down there somewhere.” She laughed and handed it to Luc. “My bag's such a
bordel
.” She stood quietly beside him, almost like a child, while he took a look at it.

“Oh, this,” he said. “Lanctôt.”

“You hadn't forgotten?”

He
had
forgotten, as a matter of fact. Completely. Since the move, he couldn't keep the days straight. Earlier in the week, he had missed an interview with an arts reporter from
La Presse
. Wiped the rendezvous clean out of his mind. His publicist had had to phone the guy and sort it out. Now Marie-Soleil was double-checking his bookings and phoning to remind Luc before every event.

“Jacques Lanctôt?” asked Vien.

Marie-Soleil nodded and plunged a hand back into the bag. She extracted another copy of the flyer and handed it to him. “You might find this interesting too.”

“Marie-Soleil used to work for him,” Luc explained.

“Several years ago,” said Marie-Soleil, lifting her lovely thin eyebrows as if she herself could not quite fathom it.

The skin around Vien's eyes crinkled as he laughed. “Several? Did he hire you when you were in primary school?”

Marie-Soleil beamed at the compliment and shook her dark curls.

Vien opened the flyer, then looked at Luc. “Hey. You're the main attraction.”

“Hardly,” said Luc modestly. “It's a fundraiser,” he explained. “Lanctôt's publishing company is on the verge of bankruptcy.”

“So his friends have gotten together,” Marie-Soleil said. “Everyone's chipping in.”

“Marie-Soleil organized the whole thing,” Luc said, smiling at her.

She shrugged. “He was good to me. A generous man. Several distinguished writers are attending. Including our friend here.” She took Luc's hand and raised it as if he were a boxer, as if she were showing him off. “He's reading from the new novel.”

“Thank God you reminded me,” said Luc. He really was grateful. His agenda was back at Laporte Street, a place he wasn't about to visit.

“That's what you pay me for.” She winked at him, and the wink was so laden with sexual innuendo that Luc had to avert his eyes.

Marie-Soleil did the same, shifting her focus to Vien. “Would you like to come?”

She sounded so young. Like a Girl Guide selling raffle tickets. She began to read the list of “celebrity authors” she had persuaded to take part.

“When is it?” Vien asked, searching the flyer for a date.

“Tonight.” Marie-Soleil gave Luc a meaningful glance. “I'll swing by after work and pick you up. We can get a bite to eat en route.”

“I like Lanctôt,” Vien said suddenly.

“Oh,” said Marie-Soleil. “You know him?”

Vien laughed. “No, no, although I did have the pleasure of interviewing him once.” He was wearing his serf's smile again, bobbing his big hairy head. “And of course I've seen him often enough on TV. He hasn't given up. It's inspiring.”

Marie-Soleil nodded, smiling. “So come,” she said. “The event starts at eight, but you should come earlier if you want a seat. We can save you one, if you want.”

The two men followed her down the stairs to the door. Her telephone hummed. It was Frédéric, she said, checking the caller ID. She would be in serious trouble if she didn't get her ass back to the office.

At the door, Vien shook Marie-Soleil's hand a moment longer than absolutely necessary, telling her what a pleasure it had been and wishing her good luck with the soirée. Luc stood by and watched. Men must shake that hand a lot, he realized. Anything to touch her.

Luc's gaze slipped unconsciously to her chest and he pictured the breasts nestled beneath her blouse inside an expensive lacy bra. She liked good lingerie, a fact that he found surprisingly exciting. Aesthetics mattered to her. The rituals of arousal. She had a whole drawer full of fine underthings. Unlike Hannah, Marie-Soleil would never dream of wearing torn panties. She kissed him goodbye, two chaste pecks, her lips barely grazing his whiskers. It lasted only a second, but the effect on Luc was
incendiary. He stepped backward, and she walked away. He and Vien watched in silence as she picked her way down the cracked front walk.

“Whooo,” said Vien when she was well down the street.

Luc laughed, but a bit of dust from the street caught in his throat.

“That's some girl.” Vien turned back to face him. “So, you two are …?” He didn't finish. He'd seen his answer in Luc's eyes.

For a moment, neither man spoke. Luc could see his friend was envious, but his expression was also sad.

“I'd be careful if I were you,” Vien said.