Montreal Noir

Rush Hour by Patrick Senécal

Translated from French by Katie Shireen Assef

Downtown

“Slight congestion on South Shore exits. Traffic is flowing smoothly on Jacques-Cartier. Décarie northbound is experiencing delays; there’s a broken-down car on the 640. North Shore bridges are all clear.”

“Thank you, Hugues. It’s 3:35. And now, we turn to the new bill that has just been—”

Hugues takes off his headset, props it on the center console, and turns onto Notre-Dame East, still a clear drive for now. Between the front seats, the two-way radio that communicates with Transport Québec and the highway patrol is silent: a good omen. While he’s listening to a traffic update on another station, one of the two cell phones mounted on the dashboard rings. He activates the speaker.

“Traffic, bonjour!”

“Hey, Hugues! How about this weather, eh?”

“Well, it’s spring, Diane. Time to get out your golf bag!”

He’d recognized the voice immediately, as he always does with his regulars. This particular resident of Laval has called him every day for the past seven years. Others have been communicating with him since he started this beat sixteen years ago.

“Can hardly wait! Say, Hugues, I’m on Acadie northbound, and it’s starting to back up something awful.”

Hugues grabs his notepad and jots down a few symbols only he can decipher.

“Already? The 15 must be jammed then.”

“Well, screw it. I think I’ll stop off at Rockland Centre and wait for it to pass—”

“Diane, no! You’ll go on another shopping spree!”

She chuckles softly and they chat for a while, about everything but traffic, then she tells him she’ll call again later. Hugues has no idea what Diane looks like, and the same goes for most of his regulars. He likes these odd, distant friendships that develop over the years with people he’ll probably never meet, the familiarity that grows between disembodied voices. It’s his favorite part of the job, and it’s what he’ll miss most when he retires. He’s only fifty-three, so it’ll be awhile, but that doesn’t mean he’ll get to stay on the road. At most stations, the “car office” has been replaced by a conventional one, full of screens and telephones. Hugues may be the top traffic reporter in Montreal, but he knows that his bosses are keen on this change. Doing this job from an office would be beyond depressing.

He shakes off the thought, takes a call from another regular, makes notes, listens to an update on another station. After ten minutes, still on Notre-Dame East, he answers a call on one of the two hands-free phones.

“Traffic!”

“How is the traffic, Hugues? Not too stressful, I hope?” It’s an unfamiliar male voice. Probably a first-timer, or someone who hasn’t called in a long while.

“Oh, no! It’s normal for a Thursday afternoon.”

“No shit. You have no clue what stress is, Hugues.”

Hugues stops at a red light. An arrogant jerk calling in to take jabs at his job? He’s had two or three of those in sixteen years. The main thing is not to egg him on by getting angry.

“And you — you know what it is, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes. I know.”

“And what is it that you do, sir?”

“For the moment, I’m unemployed, and I might be for a long time. But everyone knows my story, Hugues, even you.”

“Really? You’re a star, then? Well, good luck to you, and good—”

“I used to work in traffic, but a much more complex kind than your little road-bound racket. You didn’t want to admit that last year. You belittled my job on the air to make yourself look good.”

Hugues frowns. Notre-Dame is starting to jam, so he turns onto Avenue Haig. “What the — what are you talking about?”

“Come on, Hugues, try harder.”

The reporter glances down at his dash screen: Unknown Number. Of course. “Listen, I’m hanging up now. I have other things to—”

“You’re on Haig, then? Perfect, pull over,” the man says.

Hugues feels his jaw drop. He looks in the rearview mirror; no one seems to be following him. “But how do you know—”

“I advise you to pull over now.”

Hugues wonders if he has finally come across someone a bit more sinister than the average crank caller. He comes to a full stop at the side of the road, ignoring the ringing of his other cell phone. “All right then, who are you?” he asks.

“Try harder, I told you. I gave you plenty of clues.”

Hugues clicks his tongue in irritation. He doesn’t remember bad-mouthing any reporter a year ago. And what other kind of traffic is this guy talking about? And suddenly, he understands. “Létourneau,” Hugues sighs.

“At least you have the decency to remember my name.”

It would be difficult to forget — the story had made headlines around the world. Philippe Létourneau, a forty-something Quebecer who worked as an air-traffic controller in New York, had committed a disastrous error by allowing a plane to land on a runway where another aircraft was already parked. The crash had been horrific, causing nearly a hundred deaths.

On the morning after this tragedy, in the middle of the first traffic report of the day, the program host had said to Hugues, on the air, that it was a good thing his job wasn’t as complicated and stressful as air traffic.

“Well, sure,” Hugues had replied, “but both jobs demand a lot of responsibility, mine as much as his. I have to anticipate everything that happens on these roads, or drivers’ll be furious with me. Sadly, I think this Létourneau lacked professionalism and failed to manage the stress of his job. It’s terrible for him, I know, but there’s no messing around in this line of work.”

What had made him go on like that? Pride? The need to tout the importance of his profession? A little of both, perhaps. Even his bosses had reprimanded him after the program. Behind the steering wheel, Hugues now smooths back his graying hair, nervous. “Monsieur Létourneau, what I said was ridiculous.”

“That’s an understatement, Hugues. You make a mistake, people are unhappy. I make a mistake, people die.”

“Listen—”

“It’s been a year since I came back to Quebec and I still can’t find work. Post-traumatic stress it seems. Funny, I have a feeling the condition doesn’t affect road traffic reporters.”

“Look, I’ll apologize on the air if you want.”

“No, no, Hugues. I think that for you to truly understand what an asshole you were, you’ll have to live through what I lived through.”

Perplexed, Hugues can think of nothing to say.

After a long silence, the ex-controller says in a neutral voice, “I’ve planted a bomb in downtown Montreal.”

Hugues blinks, then raises his voice in anger: “Okay, listen, I understand that you’re upset, but that’s no reason to make such a sick joke! Even if I know you’re lying, I’ll have to alert the police, it’ll be a shitstorm downtown and—”

“Look to the east.”

“What?”

“Look to the east, Hugues. You won’t be sorry.”

Disconcerted, Hugues turns his head toward an empty lot that stretches out for a good kilometer.

“You’re looking? Perfect. Five, four, three...” Létourneau whispers.

“But what are you—”

“...two, one, zero.”

For a few seconds, Hugues sees nothing. Then he makes out the plumes of smoke rising several kilometers to the east; a small cloud, pitch black and ominous. Quickly, his exasperation is overtaken by a fear that crawls right up his throat. He turns his pale face toward the cell phone, as if he can see the man on the other end of the line. “What have you done?! What the—”

“Calm down, Hugues, that wasn’t the bomb I was telling you about. This one was much smaller, planted in an abandoned building. I set it off from a distance, so I couldn’t see if there were any people nearby, but I’d be surprised if there were.”

Hugues moistens his lips, his eyes still fixed on the phone. “I don’t believe you.”

“Listen to your two-way.”

Hugues stares at the black box. After a few seconds of silence, an anxious voice comes on: “Alert, explosion on Rue Jean-Grou, at Pointe-aux-Trembles. Police are sending a team over right now. There appears to be no victims, but we are awaiting confirmation.”

“Do I have your attention now, Hugues?” asks Létourneau.

Hugues squints at the smoke in the distance, breathing faster. His second cell phone rings again. He ignores it.

“Hugues, do I have your attention?”

“Yes.”

“Perfect. Get back on the road. Head downtown. If you take another direction, I’ll know and I’ll set off the bomb.”

His hands trembling, Hugues shifts up a gear and accelerates toward Rue Sherbrooke. Dry-mouthed, he manages to ask: “You... you’ve become a terrorist?”

The ex-controller lets out a laugh, at once bitter and amused. “Come on, Hugues. On the Internet, anyone can learn to make a bomb.”

“So, what do you want?”

“I’ve planted a bomb on a street downtown and it’ll do much more damage than the one you just saw, especially in the middle of rush hour. It’s programmed to go off automatically, but I can set it off whenever I want. So if you call the police, if I see a few too many cops or squad guys hanging around downtown, I set it off. Ditto if I hear you make any hints about a bomb or try to warn people on the air. Is that clear?”

“Why are you warning me?”

“I told you, I want you to live through what I lived through. For you to understand that your so-called stress is nothing compared to what I—”

“You’re insane!”

“Call the psychiatrist I’ve been seeing for the past six months and tell him he botched his diagnosis,” responds Létourneau.

“Your plan makes no sense! You’re the one who’ll set off the bomb. I won’t feel what you felt. I won’t be responsible.”

“If you manage to find it in time.”

“What?”

“You’re the most popular traffic reporter in the city, Hugues, make the most of it. But to be clear, I won’t have you announcing on the air that there’s a bomb on this or that street, no, no. That’d be too simple, too amateurish. And it’d just create panic. You’ve got to behave like a professional... manage the stress, understand? So, if you find where it’s hidden, you’ll say on the air that the street is backed up, or under construction, it doesn’t matter, whatever you want, and you’ll tell people to take a different route, like you normally do. If you can do that, you’ll prove that you can manage the same kind of stress I had to deal with, and I’ll deactivate the bomb.”

Hugues stays silent for a moment, astounded. He keeps driving on Sherbrooke, then crosses Papineau, now heavily jammed, approaching downtown. “You’re insane!” he blurts out again.

“You’re repeating yourself, Hugues. I know, it goes along with your job, but still...”

“How am I supposed to guess where your fucking bomb is?”

“It’s a year ago today since the accident, Hugues. I want the story to play out all over again, same time, same place, but through—”

“The same place? But it was in New York!” Hugues shrieks.

“Oh, please, Hugues, you’ve never heard of symbolism?”

“Wh... what?”

“By the way, don’t worry. I synchronized the timer with your station’s clock, so we all have the same time down to the second. And I know you give four traffic updates per hour: at three minutes past the hour, then eighteen, thirty-three, and forty-eight. It’s 3:44, you’ve got four minutes before your next update.”

“I won’t find shit in four minutes!”

“In that case, pray the bomb won’t go off before the next one, at 4:03.”

Hugues feels his body shaking. “You’re screwing with me! You’re just trying to scare me to death!”

“After what you’ve seen over at Pointe-aux-Trembles, do you really want to take that risk?”

The reporter massages his forehead as he crosses Rue Saint-Denis.

“Stay downtown, don’t drive anywhere else until it’s all over,” Létourneau says. “If you go too far in another direction, I’ll know.”

“You... you installed a tracking device under my vehicle, is that it?” Hugues asks with a quiver in his voice.

“Very good, Hugues. And if you try to remove it: boom! I’ll call you later.”

“Wait—”

But the lunatic hangs up. For a few seconds, Hugues hardly notices the heavy traffic around him. This is a bad joke, he thinks. It has to be. Yet the voice that comes on the radio quickly shatters this illusion.

“Confirmation: a device has exploded on Rue Jean-Grou. One wounded. Police on-site. The area will be closed off for the rest of the day.”

Hugues starts to turn his head when a ringing invades his eardrums; it takes him a moment to realize it’s his console signal, alerting him that he’ll go on the air in less than two minutes. The cars inching forward along Sherbrooke come back into his peripheral vision, just as one of his cell phones rings.

“Tr... traffic, bonjour.”

“Hugues! It’s Paul! Hey, it’s not looking good on Papineau Bridge, lemme tell you.”

Hugues’s hand flutters as he takes his pad and jots down the notes from this regular who’s been calling him for ten years, not really seeing what he’s writing.

“Okay, Paul, thanks...”

“You don’t seem too cheery, Hugues.”

“No, it’s just... I’ve got a cold. Thanks, Paul.” He disconnects, slips his headset on, and the voice of the on-air host fills his left ear. Don’t say anything about a bomb, or danger. Stay professional. A wave of nausea makes him grimace as he waits for his cue.

“Now, the traffic update with Hugues Nadeau.”

For a second that lasts an eternity, the reporter is incapable of making a sound.

“Hugues?” the host calls out.

“Yes, Valérie. Traffic is getting heavier downtown. Papineau Bridge is gridlocked. The broken-down vehicle on the 640 has been removed, but the jam has already formed...” He goes on like this for thirty seconds, managing to keep his voice natural, only a little stiff-sounding, though he wants to scream his lungs out with every word. Afterward, Valérie asks him if he has any updates on the explosion at Pointe-aux-Trembles. Hugues licks his lips several times. “Ah, well... nothing too serious it seems, but the area around Jean-Grou is closed, so drivers should avoid it.”

“Thank you, Hugues. Now, we turn to some new film releases...”

Hugues removes his headset and turns onto Union, a small avenue, almost empty. There, he parks close to the curb, opens the passenger-side door, and vomits on the asphalt. He sinks down into his seat and takes several deep breaths. Panic washes over him, but he has to stay calm and lucid, he simply has no choice. Think. Hard and fast. If the bomb is timed to go off before the next traffic update, it’s all over.

He voice-dials a number on one of the two cell phones and Muriel, a fact checker for the program, answers. “Muriel, I need you to find me some information on the plane crash that happened in New York last year.”

“Why? You want to talk about it on the air?”

“It’s... it’s been a year today and I might want to fit in a reference to it, yes. Perhaps mention the exact time of the accident.”

“What? Why? I might not have time, Hugues, we’re in the middle of a show, you know how it is.”

“Just do what you can, okay?”

He hangs up, shaking his head. He’s an idiot to count on Muriel, she’s clearly much too busy. He takes out his personal cell phone, connects to the Internet, and brings up the Google home page. Shit, he was never good with the keypad, his thumbs are too slow. And his next update is in twelve minutes.

Finally, he finds an article that appeared in La Presse last year, the day after the accident, and starts reading: TWO DELTA AIRPLANES CRASH IN NEW YORK. Yesterday, at 4:25 p.m., Philippe Létourneau, an air-traffic controller at John F. Kennedy Airport, changed the course of this city’s history...

He stops reading: 4:25! The bomb will go off in thirty-one minutes! That leaves him two more traffic updates. He breathes a little easier. But now he has to find the spot. The bomb obviously can’t be in New York, so where? Trudeau Airport? It has to be there. But not in the building itself, no. Létourneau said he’d planted it on a street. What’s the name of that road that leads to the airport? That narrow road that everyone’s complained about for years?

He grabs his personal cell phone again and brings up Google Maps, indifferent to the ringing of another phone. He zooms in as close as possible on the area surrounding the airport and scans the road names in panic.

There are two possible routes. He knows that one is more commonly used than the other, but which? On the map, even in satellite mode, it’s not clear. He brings his face up close to the phone, blinks several times... Yes, that’s the one. Boulevard Roméo-Vachon. Now, what’s the alternative route? He grabs his notepad, his eyes darting from screen to paper, and writes, crosses out, rewrites.

One of the hand-free cell phones rings and Hugues glances at it in exasperation. He reads Unknown Number on the dash screen. Létourneau? He connects. “Yes?”

“Are you sweating yet, Hugues? I’ll bet your idea of stress is already quite a bit different,” Létourneau taunts through the speaker.

“I figured it out! I found the time and place! It’s at—”

“Tell it to your listeners, Hugues, not to me. And I see you’ve been parked for almost ten minutes. Get driving.”

“I had to look up—”

“Act like a pro and drive!” Létourneau yells.

Realizing that the slightest annoyance could cause this lunatic to set off the bomb, Hugues hurries to get back on the road. His hands are so damp that he has to wipe them on his pants before gripping the steering wheel.

The voice on the other end of the line softens. “Perfect. Now stay downtown.”

“Can’t you tell me if I—”

But Létourneau has already hung up. Hugues bangs his fist on the dashboard and curses. He rubs his left eye, then glances at the clock: 3:59. On the air in four minutes.

A cell phone rings. Goddamn these drivers and their traffic tips! Yet if he doesn’t keep doing his job as usual, he’ll deliver a half-assed update. And Létourneau had ordered him to stay professional to the end. Manage the stress! He lets out a joyless laugh and activates the phone.

“Hey, Hugues, I didn’t stop at Rockland Centre after all!”

It’s Diane again. Hugues tries to make his voice sound normal. “That so, Diane?”

“Pffft, no, I’ve been spending too much money lately anyway! You know, last week I bought my little...”

He barely listens, his head buzzing, as he answers in monosyllables. Finally, Diane tells him that the 15 is now backed up from the 440; he thanks her and disconnects.

Turning west on René Lévesque to join the long line of bumper-to-bumper cars, he takes another call from a regular who cracks a few jokes with him. And Hugues laughs too, a laugh that tears at his chest and makes his lips twitch as he scribbles in his notepad, his vision blurring.

At 4:02, he puts on his headset. A minute later, Valérie’s voice fills his ears: “Well, Hugues, the traffic’s getting heavier, I imagine?”

Don’t go to the airport! Don’t take Boulevard Roméo-Vachon, there’s a bomb! Obviously, he says none of these things. He clears his throat and in his normal voice... professional... he starts his update: “Yes, Valérie, it’s pretty slow all around. I’ve just been told that Roméo-Vachon is closed — the boulevard that leads to Trudeau Airport. I don’t know why, but it’s closed. I suggest taking Jacques-de-Lesseps — but via Chemin de la Côte-de-Liesse, not Autoroute Côte-de-Liesse.”

“So, if you don’t want to miss your flight, take Autoroute Côte-de-Liesse to Jacques-de-Lesseps—”

“No, no, no! Not the autoroute, the chemin!” Hugues cuts in impatiently. “Take Chemin de la Côte-de-Liesse, or you’ll end up on Roméo-Vachon!” He blurts out these last sentences a bit too passionately, and the host stammers a disconcerted, “Right, thanks.”

Turning north on Atwater, Hugues grinds his teeth. Goddamnit, he has to stay calm. He continues his update in a smooth voice, summing up the situation on the other main roads of Montreal. “And don’t forget,” he concludes, “for those heading to the airport, avoid Roméo-Vachon.”

“Thank you, Hugues. Now for the weather, with...”

Covered in sweat beneath his spring jacket, Hugues takes off his headset and sighs as if a hundred kilos had just been lifted off his shoulders. I did it! I figured it out! He’d solved Létourneau’s little puzzle, hadn’t he? As he drives past the old Forum, one of the cell phones rings: Unknown Number. He answers, feverish.

“You did that like a pro, Hugues,” Létourneau says, a note of amusement in his voice.

“So I guessed right, then? I told people to take a different route. Now you’ll deactivate the bomb?”

“If you’re right, yes.”

“Well, am I right or not?” Hugues asks testily.

“You’ll know when the bomb is supposed to go off. If it doesn’t, you were right. Otherwise...”

“But... but why can’t you just tell me now?”

“So that you can experience stress, Hugues. Real stress. To the very end.”

The lunatic hangs up again and the reporter stares at the cell phone, then grabs it and hurls it to the back of the car. He regrets it immediately. Shit, that’s the Bell Mobility phone! Létourneau probably has a phone on the same plan and won’t be able to contact him if his is broken. Hugues pulls over, reaches back to grab the cell phone, and checks — it still works. Reassured, he sets it on its stand and slowly smooths back his hair, letting out a sigh that quickly turns into a gasp. He straightens up — if he stays parked too long, Létourneau won’t be happy. He gets back on the road and heads east on Sherbrooke. He feels ridiculous driving in circles like this, but does he have a choice?

He starts to wonder: Could I have guessed wrong? Hiding the bomb on a street near the airport seems to fall right in line with Létourneau’s logic, with his desire to be as faithful as possible to last year’s events...

A cell phone rings. Grudgingly, he answers. It’s a woman named Juliette who reports in an almost giddy voice that she’s calling for the first time. She starts telling him about her daily commute and Hugues is about to cut her off when she mentions that there’s a broken-down car in the Lafontaine Tunnel. Hugues thanks her, disconnects. He could call the cops and warn them of a bomb near the airport, couldn’t he? Létourneau told him that if he saw too many cops downtown, he’d set it off, which means that the lunatic must be downtown, not at the airport. So he wouldn’t be able to see the cops arriving there... He stops at a red light at the corner of Guy, frowning. This thought reminds him suddenly of the exact words Létourneau had used: he’d planted a bomb not just on any street in Montreal, but on a street downtown — he’d said that very clearly.

Hugues screams again, pounding his fists on the steering wheel. How could he have been so stupid to forget this detail? Besides, Roméo-Vachon isn’t big enough for an explosion to cause as many deaths as the crash. He has to start over from square one.

A cell phone rings, the indifference of its tone unbearable. The name of a regular comes up on the dash screen. “Fuck you!” Hugues spits in the direction of the phone.

He turns on Mackay, furiously massaging his right temple. He thinks through the details of last year’s tragedy and tries desperately to make connections with the present, with Montreal. At least he got the time right: 4:25. That leaves him seventeen minutes, and ten minutes before his next update. He’ll never make it in time. He stops at a stop sign and squeezes his eyes shut, concentrating with all his strength. The two planes crashed in New York... There’s no Rue New York in Montreal, so it can’t be that... What, then?

Startled by the sound of several car horns blaring behind him, he accelerates and turns east onto Sainte-Catherine. The traffic is dense, he can drive slowly and think. But his goddamn cell phone rings again and to save face from his blunder on the air, he has to answer.

“Hey, Hugues, where’d you get that info about the airport?”

It’s Denis, a traffic reporter from another station, the only other one who still works from his car. Denis tells him he had no problem on Roméo-Vachon and that Hugues’s last update caused total chaos on Jacques-de-Lasseps. Hugues mumbles that he’d obviously gotten a bad tip.

“Huh. Well, it happens!” Denis says. “Hey, pretty nice out, isn’t it? Soon we’ll be seeing all the ladies strolling around down—”

“Sorry, Denis, I’ve got to go.” He hangs up, but his other cell phone rings.

A caller gives him an update on Champlain. When it rings again a minute later, he ignores it; he can’t think if he’s constantly being interrupted. He turns onto Union, sweat running down his face. Less than four minutes before his next update. And it’ll be the last one before 4:25! It’s not possible. It’s just not possible!

He starts to moan involuntarily, racking his memory as he drives on autopilot, not registering when he turns west onto René-Lévesque, barely seeing the road or the cars in front of him. Crash in New York... Two airplanes... What airline was it, again? He’d read it earlier... Delta, yes... Shit, there’s no Rue Delta in Montreal.

But there is Hôtel Delta — downtown.

The buzzing in his brain stops all of a sudden. Could the bomb be planted there? Létourneau said it was on a street. Where is the hotel, exactly? On Avenue du Président-Kennedy... and the airport in New York was John F. Kennedy Airport!

This revelation arrives with such intensity that for a moment he sees nothing but a blinding white light. A shock brings him back to reality, propelling him forward with such force that his nose collides violently with the steering wheel. Dazed, he realizes he’s hit the car in front of him. The driver leaps out of his Lexus, curses, marches up to Hugues’s vehicle, and starts kicking the passenger door.

Hugues jumps out to calm the guy who, seeing the reporter’s bloody nose, stops kicking, but remains furious.

“Jesus Christ, learn to drive!” the guy says as he eyes the logo on Hugues’s car. “And you’re a traffic reporter? Bravo, genius!”

Hugues apologizes, says that the damage seems minor, and manages to remain polite even if he wants to tell the guy to fuck off; but the latter insists they call the police. Other drivers pass by slowly and cast jeering looks at the two of them.

With shaky hands, Hugues holds out the station’s business card to the man. “Call them, they’ll... It’s one of the largest radio stations in Montreal, they’ll take care of it!”

The guy stares at him skeptically and, grumbling, finally agrees to leave.

Hugues hurries back to his car, gets behind the wheel, starts driving again, checks the time: 4:20! He missed his 4:18 update! All because of that fucking imbecile.

A cell phone rings. He answers, sure that it’s Létourneau.

Damnit, it’s Diane. “Well, Hugues, I should have stopped at Rockland after all, my girlfriend just called to tell me there was a sale on—”

He disconnects, cursing. Then he dials a number and the voice of his program director comes on.

“Where’d you go, Hugues?”

“Technical problem, but I’m back! You can put me on the air now.”

“That’s okay. We can put you back on at 4:33,” the director says.

“No! Listen, Simon, it’s a circus downtown, I have to... I have to go on!”

“Come on, it can wait.”

The reporter glances at the clock on his dashboard: 4:21 p.m. Four minutes before the explosion. “No, it can’t! I need to go on right away!”

“Hugues, listen, you—”

“Simon, it’s the first time I’ve ever asked you this and I swear it’ll be the last, come on, just put me on the air!”

Simon sighs, baffled. “Okay, in thirty seconds, after Gaétan’s sports brief.”

Hugues disconnects, puts on his headset, wipes the blood flowing from his nose, stops at a red light. Chest heaving, he stares at the clock as if looking into the eyes of a dangerous beast. 4:23.

Valérie’s voice finally comes on: “And now, back to our friend Hugues with his traffic update—”

“I’ve just been informed that Avenue du Président-Kennedy is closed near Hôtel Delta! Completely closed!” the reporter interrupts in a jumpy voice. “I suggest taking Maisonneuve, via City Councillors or de Bleury. It’ll be much faster! Okay? Is that clear? Président-Kennedy closed near Delta!”

“Very well, thanks, Hugues... And for the rest of the traffic?”

“Eh? Ah, well... let me...” He grabs his notepad, disoriented, and turns north on Peel. “It’s... There’s still heavy traffic on the 15 and the 640; Lafontaine Tunnel is backed up from Anjou; for the other South Shore bridges, expect half-hour delays, except for Victoria, which isn’t too bad for now.”

Valérie thanks him again and he tosses his headset onto the passenger seat. He parks on the side of the road and keeps his eyes on the clock, his heartbeat pulsating in his head like a death knell. 4:24 p.m.... My God, please tell me I didn’t guess wrong, I beg you... 4:25! He holds his breath.

Hugues hears nothing but the reassuring hum of traffic. No explosion, no loud or unusual sounds. He turns his head in the direction of Président-Kennedy, at least a kilometer away: no black cloud on the horizon. He keeps studying the sky for a moment, then looks back at the clock: 4:26 p.m.

He starts to chuckle, a nervous, ambiguous chuckle, punctuated by convulsive sobs.

A cell phone rings: Unknown Number. Hugues switches the speaker on.

“You were late with your update,” says Létourneau.

Hugues wants to tell him he can shove his bomb up his ass, but he knows that the lunatic could reactivate it. “I did it! It’s 4:27 and the bomb hasn’t gone off!” he crows.

“When people realize that Avenue du Président-Kennedy wasn’t closed, they won’t be happy... You’ll lose your luster, my poor Hugues.” Létourneau laughs. “I was sure you’d tell them to take Maisonneuve via City Councellors or de Bleury. I’ve been listening to you for a year, Hugues, I can predict every piece of advice you give.”

“I figured it out, damnit, that’s all that matters!”

A long silence, then Létourneau calmly murmurs, “Drive to Rue Sherbrooke, just east of Saint-Marc. I think it’ll interest you.”

Hugues winces. “Why? You... you aren’t gonna cheat me, are you?”

“I don’t cheat, Hugues. Come on, hurry.” And he hangs up.

Hugues hesitates, then gets back on the road, torn between curiosity and anguish. While he drives toward Sherbrooke, three different calls come in, but reading the regulars’ names on the dash screen, he doesn’t answer. He turns right on Sherbrooke and weaves through the slow traffic; confused, angry, and intrigued, all at the same time. Does Létourneau want to meet him? To convince him not to warn the cops? Is he really that insane? His cell phone rings: Unknown Number. It must be him. “Traffic?” he says.

“You’re on your way?”

“I just crossed Lambert-Closse, I’ll be there in a minute. What do you want, Létourneau?”

“The point was for you to live through every stage of what I experienced.”

“And I did, so?”

“No, you didn’t. You didn’t feel guilt. I did, Hugues. I sent more than a hundred people to their death.”

“Goddamnit, Létourneau! The deal was I had to guess where you hid the bomb!”

“Yes, that was the deal.”

Hugues passes Saint-Marc when out of nowhere a pedestrian steps off the sidewalk and plants himself in the middle of the street, in front of the vehicle. Hugues slams on the brakes, but the stranger, who must be around forty, long-haired and shabbily dressed, doesn’t move. A cell phone against his ear, the stranger stares at the reporter with an unsettling intensity. In a second, Hugues realizes who it is and a shiver runs through him. He calls out in a voice both victorious and enraged, “I did what you asked me to do, Létourneau! Admit it!”

The man smiles, then moves his lips close to his phone. Hugues hears Létourneau’s voice in his ear: “Well, if you say you succeeded, then it’s all over.” As he says this, the ex-controller takes a pistol out from under his belt, points the barrel to his temple, and pulls the trigger. Hugues’s scream is muffled by the sound of the explosion.

Cars stop in the middle of the street and cries of shock erupt. While a crowd gathers around the body, Hugues remains frozen, gripping the steering wheel. He gets out of his vehicle slowly, but stays close to it. The crowd blocks his view of Létourneau’s body. Almost all the cars on the street have stopped, and curious bystanders arrive from all sides: Sherbrooke is in total chaos.

You didn’t feel guilt. I did, Hugues. I sent more than a hundred people to their death.

Is that why he killed himself? To make Hugues feel responsible? Well, his plan failed. All the reporter feels is a great sadness. And yet, he can’t help but sense another meaning behind Létourneau’s words, though he doesn’t know what.

His console alarm tells him he’ll be on the air again soon. Shaken, he gets back in the car and puts his headset on. Then, at 4:33, he starts the update in his normal, professional voice, but a bit more restrained than usual: “Valérie, a terrible event has just taken place on Sherbrooke, at the corner of Saint-Marc — a man has killed himself, in the middle of the street.” The host exclaims in surprise while Hugues continues: “Obviously the street will be closed for a while. Since the Collège de Montréal campus is just north of Sherbrooke, drivers will have to take a detour to the south. Those heading east on Sherbrooke can take Lincoln to Guy, those heading west can take Maisonneuve.”

He gives two or three directions for the other bridges, then disconnects. He rubs his eyes and lets out a long sigh, his body drained of strength, more tired than he’s ever been.

Policemen start to appear from all over, and one of them approaches Hugues’s vehicle. He gets out again, introduces himself, and rambles off the whole story in a minute. Stunned, the officer listens, then says he’ll send a team to Delta immediately to remove the bomb, even if it is deactivated.

“You stay here, all right?” the cop shouts as he walks away. “We’ll have to question you further on this whole affair.”

Hugues sits back behind the steering wheel, his eyes closed, indifferent to the chaos that reigns on the street. A cell phone rings. He wants to ignore it, but he glances at the dash screen and sees that it’s Muriel, the fact checker. He answers.

“Sorry it took me so long to find what you asked for, Hugues, but like I told you, I’m swamped.”

“That’s okay, Muriel.” Hugues sighs weakly, closing his eyes again. “I don’t need it anymore.”

“You sure? I have all the information right here: the controller was named Létourneau, the crash took place at 4:40...”

Hugues opens his eyes. “You mean 4:25.”

“Eh? No, no. Oh, I understand: 4:25 was when Létourneau told the pilot he could land on the runway.”

Hugues sits up straight. Then he remembers the beginning of the article he’d read earlier: Yesterday, at 4:25 p.m., Philippe Létourneau, an air-traffic controller at John F. Kennedy Airport, changed the course of this city’s history... Shit, if only he’d read the rest of the article, he would’ve realized that it was Létourneau’s call, and not the crash, that had changed the course of history. The accident had happened fifteen minutes later. Hugues checks the time: 4:38. Panic threatens to overwhelm him again, but he forces himself to stay calm: even if he got the time wrong, he still found the right spot. Létourneau must have deactivated the bomb before killing himself. He’d promised him he wouldn’t cheat, after all. But why hadn’t he told him he’d guessed correctly? Hugues starts sweating again.

“What else did you find?” he asks Muriel.

“Well, both planes belonged to Delta Air Lines, the one on the runway had arrived from Miami twenty minutes before, and the other was coming from Lincoln, Nebraska.”

The word Lincoln echoes in the reporter’s mind. He’d said the name of this street on the air a few minutes ago... And what had Létourneau told him earlier? I’ve been listening to you for a year, Hugues, I can predict every piece of advice you give...

In his last update, he’d told drivers to take Lincoln. Suddenly he understands: Létourneau hadn’t wanted him to feel responsible for his suicide, but for something much worse. The reporter swallows the scream that rises in his throat and spits into the cell phone: “Tell Valérie to put me back on the air, right away!”

“Oh come on, not again! You pulled this on us earlier and it wasn’t even urgent!”

“Damnit, Muriel, it’s...” But what’s the point? Létourneau is dead, he can’t deactivate the bomb. He’d killed himself before the reporter could deliver his last update, the one that would’ve warned people of the explosion. He’d killed himself because Hugues was sure he’d succeeded.

If you say you succeeded, then it’s all over.

He lets out a gasp so disturbing that Muriel starts to ask, “Hugues, are you...”

The sound of the explosion is distant, but loud enough to drown out the voice of the fact checker. Hugues’s cell phone slips out of his hand and flies to the back of the vehicle; the earth shakes for a moment as he watches the hysteria rising around him. And he sees, from two hundred meters away, the immense black cloud rising and spreading across the sky, all the way to Rue Sherbrooke, toward him, filling his nostrils, invading his soul, where it will remain for as long as he lives.

Such a Pretty Little Girl by Geneviève Lefebvre

Three Tshakapesh Dreams by Samuel Archibald

Translated from French by Donald Winkler

Centre-Sud

Yeah, I remember the story, even if I don’t get to tell it very often.

It happened after the war. They found the kid in the Frontenac Library bathroom with a needle sticking out of his arm. It was no surprise he’d been shooting up. Ontario Street’s known for its poets, whores, and druggies. Simon was all three. He often peddled his ass to pay for his dope, then when he got straight for a while, he gave poetry readings. Sometimes, like on that day, he went to the library and left his dogs tied to a bicycle rack at the door while he picked up books by Carole David or Patrice Desbiens. No one knew how long he’d been dead. No one knew what to do with his dogs. The medics brought out the body, with help from the Montreal police. They kept the dogs at the pound for a bit, in separate cages. There wasn’t much chance of them being adopted. They were two pit bulls full of fleas and with shitty pedigrees. After a week, the vet came to give them the needle too.

That’s how families bite the dust in the Centre-Sud.

In those days, no one knew the Indian was a cop.

It was Brisebois, his contact at the provincial police, who called him at home to tell him Simon was dead. The Indian asked if they were going to do an autopsy. Brisebois said everyone could see it was an overdose, but the Indian just laughed. Later, the Indian would tell me: “Simon may have had his faults, but he knew how to shoot up.”

When you say the war around here, you don’t mean Iraq or Afghanistan. You mean the Great Quebec Biker War. You had to be in Montreal at the end of the 1990s to understand: Maurice “Mom” Boucher thinking he’s Joseph Stalin, the independents against the Hells Angels, about 160 dead, nearly 200 attempted murders, and bombs exploding all over the place. People stopped going out. It wasn’t Montreal anymore; it was Belfast. When the government and the police got fed up, they threw everyone inside.

The Indian was too young to play a role in the 2001 deployment, he was still in Nicolet. His superiors posted him in Montreal afterward, undercover, so he could keep an eye on things in the city. He did little jobs around the neighborhood, like peddling stolen goods and driving taxis for escorts. He lived just below us, in Dan Quesnel’s triplex on Larivière Street. It was just by Saint-Eusèbe Church and the McDonald’s cigarette factory, where in spring and summer the dried tobacco smells so much like cinnamon buns that it’s been twenty years since I’ve eaten one of those damned buns.

The Indian made Brisebois promise to at least check out the stash they’d found in Simon’s pockets.

Brisebois called him back the next day to tell him they’d found coke and a bag of almost-pure heroin.

The Indian went to an AA meeting on Wednesday. People were used to seeing him there; being an alcoholic was part of his cover. He picked up a donut and listened as people spilled their guts until the cigarette break. Then he went to ask Keven Savoie if he knew where to find Kim. The guy told him that Kim barely came around anymore, but he could find her on Mondays and Thursdays at Walter Stewart Park. She played in a lesbian softball league.

He caught up with Kim the next night, after her game. She played shortstop, really good hands. Kim was Simon’s oldest friend, but since she’d stopped using, she hadn’t seen him much. After getting herself clean, Kim started working for Stella, a sex workers organization. She handed out condoms and guidance to the girls in that part of town.

Kim and the Indian sobbed in each other’s arms for ten minutes. Kim couldn’t tell him a lot, but she had the same thought that he did: there was something fishy about Simon dying from a heroin overdose. Smack, for him, was a rich kid’s drug, and he mainly shot coke. Besides, where would he have gotten pure heroin with half the country’s criminals behind bars?

In those days, the Indian called himself Dave Tshakapesh.

He’d taken the name in memory of his grandfather, who had been a bush pilot for Hydro-Québec and for outfitters in the north. He’d married a Robertson from Pointe-Bleue and spent most of his life with the Innu, the Atikamekw, and the Cree. He knew lots of stories, which he’d told Dave years ago, when he was just a kid. Stories about Carcajou, the Wendigo, and especially Tshakapesh, the boy who succeeds in everything he undertakes.

Tshakapesh was born prematurely, when the black bear devoured his father and his mother. It was his sister who found him, rolled into a ball in the uterus that had been ripped from his mother’s body. Tshakapesh’s sister brought the little creature back to camp, where he wormed his way out of the womb all by himself. Then he stood up and asked his sister to go and get his bow and arrows so that he could avenge his parents. Dave loved that idea: a baby born ready for war.

When Simon died, Dave knew something terrible was going to happen. He’d dreamed that a giant bear was marching through the Centre-Sud, holding onto the big L-shaped tower of the Quebec police, the building all the kids on Ontario Street see when they look to the sky, the building everyone still calls by its old name: the Parthenais Prison.

The following afternoon, Dave went to see Big Derek.

You don’t see Big Derek around here much anymore, but back then, he was kind of a celebrity. He trained for strongman competitions, and he had his picture in the paper along with Hugo Girard. In the crime world, he was known as the doorman at Sex Mania, the strip club at the corner of Ontario and Bercy. He was a pimp. He dealt dope to the strippers and collected debts for the Ontario Street loan sharks. People got really good at digging out money when Derek came to the door. He appeared to weigh three hundred pounds, he had tattoos up and down his arms, and he could pull a fire truck with his jaws. That fucker had muscles in places good Christians don’t even have skin.

Derek lived in an old house that had been spared demolition when its working-class neighborhood was torn down. He’d bought it from a retired schoolteacher and immediately took down her crucifix and sacred hearts, replacing them with laminated Scarface and porn star posters. Mixing a Jack and Coke, he asked: “Did you go to the funeral?”

Dave said no.

Derek hadn’t gone either. At that point, the Indian had no intention of telling Derek he didn’t think Simon had done himself in. All he wanted to do was scout the territory and let Derek get smashed, so he would relax and tell too many stories. With his cocktail recipe, that wouldn’t take long. Derek made his Jack and Cokes Centre-Sud style: four ounces of Jack Daniel’s, slightly less Coca-Cola, and two lines of coke on the side. His cocaine left a strong taste of burnt rubber at the bottom of your throat, and it loosened the tongue.

Derek talked to him for hours about the balance of power in Centre-Sud. On his nights off, he watched porn with the TV muted while sweeping the police frequencies with his scanner. He was the archivist for a kingdom of bums that went from Davidson to Saint-Denis Street, between Sherbrooke Street and the river.

Before the Indian left, Derek said: “I always knew he’d come to a bad end. I hate the fucking bikers, but they’re right about one thing: you should never do the dope you’re selling.”

Derek sniffed a line here and there, but you’d never find him in the bathroom with a needle sticking out of his arm. Still, he had no business preaching to anybody. His vice was pussy and everyone knew it. He screwed the girls at Sex Mania, he screwed the escorts he chauffeured, he even screwed the twenty-dollar whores strung out on crack who no sane guy would touch with rubber gloves. He was always up for a new hustle or some crazy deal, because he spent more on hookers than what the hookers brought in.

Yes, Derek and the kid knew each other.

The summer before, some gangbangers from Saint-Michel robbed several freight trains and turned up at the Indian’s place with a box of samples. Fencing stolen goods was Dave’s number-one cover. These guys had emptied all the crates from a railcar stalled under the Rachel Street overpass. Not knowing what they were getting, they’d stolen twenty-five cases of luxury dildos — silicone brands that looked like old iMacs. Orange, pink, red, and mauve. Anal plugs, high-class battery-powered vibrators, clit ticklers — the works. Dave had a network for selling cigarettes and booze. Clothes too. He sold douchebag suits to the wannabe mobsters in Saint-Léonard, and ghetto getups to the wiggers in Hochelaga. But for dildos, Dave needed a whole other network. Simon and Derek were his best salesmen, each in his own department. Derek sold the toys to strippers, and Simon dealt here, there, and everywhere in the Gay Village. After that, Dave, Derek, and Simon kept on working together; they even went for a beer from time to time to honor the summer they’d rained down dildos on the town.

Dave got home that night thinking about all he’d learned, which wasn’t much. But he did learn one thing: according to Derek, Edmond-Louis Gingras was the interim drug boss in Hochelaga and the Centre-Sud. Gingras was an old hand who worked mainly with whores, for the Italians. He’d married into the Mafia — one of Rizzuto’s nieces. The Italians chose a perfect puppet to hold the fort while waiting for negotiations in prison to cough up the real boss. Derek believed that the power was going to Gingras’s head: “You’d think he wants to keep the job forever. Seems he’s even been doing a housecleaning in the neighborhood, checking out people who’ve been talking to the police. There’s a girl and a guy who’ve disappeared. When I heard about Simon, I even thought he might be a rat. But then I thought, no. Simon would never have snitched to the cops.”

That night Dave went to bed with a heavy heart.

Simon would never have talked to the police — neither would Derek — but they talked to him every day without knowing who he really was. The Indian followed his own strict rule: never ask someone for anything if you can make him do it without knowing it. He got information out of people by making them think he was their friend. He always told himself he was protecting them, but now he wasn’t so sure.

During the night he had another dream.

He dreamed he was Tshakapesh fighting the black bear. He had no knives and could only use his fists against the fearsome animal that was twice as tall as he was. It had a shark’s mouth, and its thick oily fur smelled of piss. He woke up in a sweat, reaching for his Glock. He remembered that his gun was at the station. He came knocking on the window of my room upstairs; he did that sometimes. He asked me if I knew anything about Edmond-Louis Gingras. I said yes, but I added that no one around here called him by that name. Because of his big fat ass and his big teats and the hair sticking out of his shirt collar, everyone called him Teddy Bear.

That was when Dave Tshakapesh realized that he, too, had someone to avenge.

After that, Dave got on Gingras’s case.

The job was almost too easy. Teddy Bear needed people. The provincial police had dismantled the Rock Machine in the fall of 2000, and in the spring of 2001 they’d moved on to the Hells. On March 26 alone they’d arrested twelve people, and not just guys who emptied ashtrays. Dons, deadbeats, crooked lawyers. A hell of a catch.

It’s not often you can say this, but at the beginning of the 2000s there was a shortage of criminals in Montreal. The Indian was a bright guy, everyone knew that, so he got work pretty quickly. He didn’t have much trouble convincing his bosses to keep the pressure on. With the war freshly won, the cops knew perfectly well that crime was like nature: it abhors a vacuum. They didn’t want a new despot rearing his head to reign over the empire’s ruins. It took Dave one week to sell the idea of laying hands on Teddy Bear. Then he spent the summer cadging more and more jobs from Teddy Bear’s men, while supplying Brisebois with information at the same time. The police moved in after him and took photos of Teddy Bear’s dope stash, cash, and bungalows on the North Shore, where his guys had hydroponic grow ops.

One night, Teddy Bear asked to see the Indian alone.

Dave didn’t tip off his boss at the provincial police. He was afraid they’d want him to wear a wire. He went to have a beer with Teddy Bear in an Ontario Street bar. They took a booth at the back, and Dave figured out that the bar was probably owned by Teddy Bear when he saw him get up and draw two drafts without asking for anyone’s okay. He made his little bank-manager speech to Dave: he very much appreciated his work; he wondered if Dave was ready to get more involved.

Dave asked him what he was thinking of, and Teddy Bear told him he was having a problem with someone — his friend, Big Derek.

Big Derek had been playing the pimp behind his back for years. Now he was dealing too. Dave asked Teddy Bear if he was looking for a temporary or a permanent solution. Teddy Bear said permanent. That would set a good example, and they’d be able to place bets on how many shitheads it would take to shoulder that son of a bitch’s coffin.

Dave pushed his luck a bit. He looked Teddy Bear straight in the eye and asked whether the kid’s OD in the spring had been meant as a warning for Derek. Teddy Bear hesitated for five seconds before answering: “Yes, but he’s a slow learner.”

When Dave’s bosses found out he’d been asked to kill someone, they were royally pissed off, since he hadn’t recorded the conversation. Then they got used to the idea, and had a secret meeting on the other side of the city with their whole on-site team, Dave, and the government prosecutors. An undercover agent being asked to commit homicide — that was the breaking point. They looked at what they had, and one of the prosecutors said: “Go. We can nab them with what we’ve got.”

Dave went home and watched baseball on TV, alone in his living room, while drinking a beer in Simon’s honor. He went to bed late; he was keyed up, but his mind was at rest.

At two in the morning, he awoke in a sweat. He’d had exactly the same dream as when he’d spoken to Derek in June — he was fighting the black bear with his naked hands. Dave didn’t like talking about his dreams much. They were very private for him. But he explained to me later that dreams don’t tell the future or the past. They tell you how to behave, and whether you’ve behaved the right way. For him, it was as clear as spring water: he’d acted in accordance with his second dream, so he shouldn’t have had to dream it all over again.

Unless the ancestors were trying to tell him that he’d made a mistake.

Something about Simon’s story didn’t hold water.

Dave got up and went to eat two eggs with bacon at Bercy’s. He gave Kim a call to ask her if there was anything new. She’d heard nothing, but earlier in the week she’d talked to another social worker at Stella. This friend had an escort client who did heroin on and off. She was a girl from the neighborhood who put out for tourists in the Old Montreal hotels during the Grand Prix. Her pimp had slapped her around because she’d started shooting up between her fingers. She couldn’t work anymore and was shit-scared of getting another beating, because she owed money to the guy who sold her the heroin. Dave asked Kim if she’d been able to get the name of the pusher.

“Don’t tell anyone I said this, but it’s Big Derek,” she told him.

Dave put the story together piece by piece: a hundred times over, he saw the expression on Teddy Bear’s face when he’d ask about Simon. Teddy Bear hadn’t hesitated because he wasn’t sure if he wanted to come clean, he hesitated because he had no idea what Dave was talking about. Teddy Bear didn’t have Simon killed. The asshole was just showing off.

Big Derek had a source for smack, one of the independents. Who knew which one? The Chinese or the Arabs. He’d tried to bring Simon on board, but Simon had done himself in while testing the product. Instead of telling Dave the truth, Derek had sent him chasing after Teddy Bear. Derek had always hated Teddy Bear. It was dicey, but Derek was a gambler. He’d waited for the war to end before making his bundle, and he didn’t want a new boss standing in his way.

It all made sense, but only if Derek knew Dave was with the police. But he was smart enough to have figured that out on his own. The only thing you couldn’t know for sure was whether Derek had killed Simon by accident, passing him stuff that was too strong, or on purpose, to stop him from bringing Dave in on their plan to peddle the heroin.

The Indian was furious.

He spent the whole day brooding in his apartment, drinking O’Keefe’s. Around four o’clock, he called me so I’d go buy some more at the corner store and come drink with him. It must have been a hundred degrees in that apartment. The Indian was downing the beer in his living room and sweating like a pig. When he wasn’t talking to me, he kept repeating the same thing over and over, real low, between his teeth: “That fuck, that fat fuck, that fat fucking fuck.”

I drank a couple with him. He ended up telling me the whole story and admitting, straight out, that he was a cop. He was drunk, so I asked him, “Are you sure it’s a good idea, telling me that?”

He said his time around here was coming to an end anyway. He apologized in advance for the shit I’d be in, and I said: “Don’t worry. I’ve known worse.”

Around seven o’clock he told me: “I don’t see any other solution. I’m gonna have to beat the shit out of Derek.”

I asked him if he did judo or tae kwon do or something. He said no. He said it wasn’t so hard to fight a guy bigger than you. You can’t be intimidated; you have to wait for him to make a mistake. Tall guys and fat guys tend to put too much trust in their strength. Also, try not to hit them in the balls. The tall guys and the fat guys are used to people pulling that on them.

“So your plan is: don’t be intimidated and don’t kick him in the balls?” I asked.

I was skeptical. Derek was all fat and muscle, with skin as thick as walrus hide. I wasn’t even sure he’d fall on his ass if you fired a twelve-gauge into his chest. I told myself that I’d spend the next few days getting all that stuff out of Dave’s head, but when I asked when he intended to go and fight Derek, he eyed how much beer he had left in his bottle and said: “I’ll finish this, and we’ll go.”

You would have thought it was a big neighborhood fair.

The Indian told whomever he met along the way that he was going to fight Big Derek. And they went to tell others, until almost a hundred people were gathered at dusk behind Sex Mania to watch the battle in the tobacco factory parking lot. It was up to me to go in and find Derek. I just told him, “Dave wants to talk to you outside.”

When Derek came out, he saw the crowd and Dave in the middle of the circle, making his neck pop like Bruce Lee. “You kidding me, Dave? Go sober up at home, fucking Indian.”

But Dave said he wouldn’t budge without a fight. Derek laughed and moved into the circle. Things looked really bad. Face to face, Dave and Derek didn’t seem to even belong to the same species. That must have struck Dave too, because the first thing he did was serve up a kick to Derek’s balls. Derek dodged it, fast for a guy his size, then he delivered a right hook with all his strength to the side of Dave’s head. Dave blinked and fell to the ground. I was sure he wouldn’t get up.

“Had enough?” Derek taunted.

“Not enough, no, you piece of shit.”

Dave got up and charged Derek again. He did that about ten times, fighting like crazy. Derek always ended up grabbing him and throwing him to the ground with a punch or a kick. The tenth time, he socked the Indian in the stomach, picked him up in his arms, and heaved him into the Polish butcher’s dumpster. There was a long silence, and then we heard Dave scrambling around and cursing. Derek started back toward the door to the club, saying, “Everybody go home. The fight’s over.”

“No, it’s not over,” Dave declared, climbing out of the dumpster.

Derek didn’t react and kept on walking. Dave took his key ring out of his pocket and threw a fastball to the back of his head. That put a big cut in Derek’s hairy hide. When he turned around, you could see that the Indian had really managed to make him mad. I wasn’t the only one who began to wonder how we could stop the fight or whether Dave was going to be killed.

Derek clobbered him one. Dave’s cheek was swollen, and he was bleeding from his right ear. I was worried about internal bleeding too, because Derek kept on punching him in the gut and the ribs. Dave’s skin had gone white, almost green.

Finally, Derek lifted him up and squeezed. A bear hug, like in wrestling. The Indian bellowed.

“Tell them what you are, Dave. Or I’ll crush you.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

Derek squeezed some more. We heard Dave’s spine crack.

“Tell them you’re a cop.”

Derek kept on squeezing. We thought he was going to break the Indian in two, but with all the blood and sweat, they were as greasy as a banana peel; Dave managed to slide his right arm out of the vise, and then raised his fist high in the air and slammed his elbow like a tomahawk into Derek’s eye. We learned afterward that some bone fragments had gone right into his cornea. Derek let Dave go and fell to his knees, his hand on his eye. He was squealing like a pig. Dave went up to him, pushed Derek’s hand out of the way, and threw a punch to his cheekbone as hard as he could. He said later it was like hitting cement, except the cement was hurting too. Dave struck three more blows and felt his joints give way, one after the other. He gave the fifth punch everything he had left in his fist and felt an electric jolt running up past his elbow to his shoulder. His hand was broken. Derek was swaying on his knees. The Indian stepped back five or six paces, then said in front of everybody: “Yeah, I’m a cop. And that makes him a fucking snitch.”

There were two angles to his strategy that Dave hadn’t told me about. First, he knew that the big guys and tall guys had a tendency to drag things out. Second, he always wore shoes that looked like plain city shoes, but they had steel toes. He took a run, five steps, and hammered Derek right under his jaw, like he was punting. We heard the jaw split along its length like a wooden splint. For about ten seconds, Derek tried to shut his mouth, sucking at the air like a fish. Then he fell back onto his bent knees. His legs were shaking. Dave came up to hit him again, but he held back. Derek was spewing a huge pink-and-red geyser into the air. It took five of us to turn him on his side, and if we hadn’t had the idea, he’d have choked to death on his broken teeth.

By the time we’d done that, the Indian had disappeared.

The next day, people honored an old Centre-Sud tradition.

Early in the morning, they tossed twenty dozen eggs at the wall of Dan Quesnel’s triplex. It was their way of marking the houses of those who’d talked to the police. Dave didn’t even hear it. He was high as a kite from the painkillers he’d been given at the hospital. He’d been released during the night. They’d wrapped up his hand, put his face together a bit, and made him promise to come back right away if he started shitting or pissing blood.

It was the smell of rotten eggs cooking in the sun that woke him at about ten thirty. The smell, and the pain that had returned. He went out into the street. Monsieur Quesnel and I were trying to assess the damage. Dave apologized to the owner of the house and gave me three hundred dollars in twenties and fifties to rent a pressure hose and buy him a forty-ouncer of Johnnie Walker and a bag of ice. He watched me work all afternoon, sitting in a folding chair on the sidewalk, with his Scotch on one side of him and the pail of ice on the other. He soaked his hand — all messed up with staples, scabs, and stitches — in the cold water, and from time to time he dipped his fingers in his glass to collect some ice cubes. All afternoon we heard police sirens in the Centre-Sud. It was the guys from the provincial police and the Montreal police coming to arrest Teddy Bear and his boys. They’d had to move the operation up because of Dave’s acting out, and they weren’t too happy about that.

One day later the Indian left, and we never saw him again. Never saw Derek again either. When he got out of the hospital, he headed for the North Shore. We later heard that he had gotten himself arrested for forcing a thirteen-year-old girl into porn.

On that day before Dave left, I finished cleaning off the wall at six o’clock, and he gave me more money. He told me to go and buy hot dogs for us to eat in the stands of Walter Stewart Park. He wanted to see Kim play softball one last time. The heat had let up a little, and we felt good.

That night, for the first time, I decided to ask Dave if it bothered him that everyone called him the Indian. Did he find it racist or anything like that? Should we have called him something else?

“It’s hard to answer, because where I come from, the word means two different things. If you say someone dead or gone is a real Indian, it means he’s brave. Someone who knows how to live and honors the ancestors. My uncle Robertson once said of my grandfather that he was almost an Indian. That’s the only time in my life I’ve heard that said about a white man, and I can’t imagine a bigger compliment. On the other hand, if you say of someone, behind his back or to his face, that he’s a goddamn Indian or a fucking Indian, it means he’s a drunk, a fool, or a hothead, a guy you can’t trust and who really doesn’t know how to take care of his people.”

So I asked him again: “Well, do you mind that?”

He grinned and said: “Nah. I’m good either way.”

The Haunted Crack House by Michel Basilières

Boulevard Saint-Laurent

Ryan the Rat — Academy Award winner and cousin to Mickey Mouse (or so he said) — was red-faced and waving his arms, spittle flying, defending his turf. He shouted. He swore. He threatened to call the cops. But the bigger, burlier, toothless, bald-headed panhandler grabbed Ryan’s entire face with one fat hand and shoved him to the ground, beating him with a white cane.

In the slush, Ryan twisted and crawled away. The victor leaned on his glinting white cane and faced the door of the restaurant, smiling at the customers shuffling in and out of the cold. Puffs of steam escaped the open door, carrying the smell of smoked meat, french fries, and beer across Boulevard Saint-Laurent and into the bookstore.

I sat on a high stool behind a wooden counter, facing the display window. Every day I watched people line up, rain or shine, to eat at Schwartz’s. Whether it was broiling in the summer or freezing in the winter, the restaurant’s queue stretched for over an hour’s wait. Even after midnight you had to share a table.

Ryan stood ten feet away from the interloper who had just beaten him, yelling still, but now looking for a gap in the traffic. Finding one, he made a break for it. He loped and staggered across the street, pulling himself up into the recessed entrance, and yanked hard on the handle. He stepped up across the threshold and jumped away as the ancient coiled springs slammed the wooden, glass-paneled door back to the frame. The bell rang.

“Hi, Ryan.”

He was twitching, his wire-frame glasses askew, his tattered cotton coat open. “Jesus fucking Christ. That fucker beat me. Did you see that?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuckin’ took my spot. That was my spot. Suppertime, that’s my spot.”

“I thought you guys had a schedule.”

“Yeah, we do. Now’s my time. Fucker took my spot, how am I going to make my money now?” He made his way to the center of the bookstore, took off his coat, and sat on the couch. “Can I dry my coat on the heater?”

“Sure. Don’t let it catch fire.”

It was a dark evening in late November and no customers were in the store. I was pricing a box of paperbacks I’d bought earlier. Across the street, Fucker was nonchalantly panhandling. He seemed to be doing well. Panhandlers come and go, but in this neighborhood they are mostly fixtures. Guys like Ryan actually lived, grew up, and fell apart here. This guy with the cane was new.

“I don’t recognize him,” I said.

Ryan took off his toque, shook out his head, walked over, and stood in front of my counter.

“I don’t know who he is, either. I told him we got a system here, and that he wasn’t welcome in our territory.”

“Gonna get your buddies together and talk some sense into him?” I asked. There were four or five of them, mostly spindly derelicts, but numbers count. And even though Cane Man — or Fucker — was big, Ryan’s closest ally on the street, Billy One-Eye, was a scrapper. I’d seen him hold off more than one cop at a time.

“I ain’t seen anybody all day,” Ryan said. “Can I use the bathroom?”

The toilet in the back room wasn’t for customers, but we often let our friends use it. Ryan was wet with dirty slush. “Go ahead. Don’t mess it up.”

“No, I won’t. I promise. Thanks.”

A few customers wandered in, browsed the rickety shelves, glanced over the tables, asked for titles or authors, wandered out. Ryan’s coat was still on the heater, but he hadn’t come back.

I opened the door to the office, yelled his name. No answer. I went in, turned right between shelves stacked high with overstock, special items, books reserved for regulars, random stuff placed aside to be dealt with later. Around the corner, the bathroom door was open. Ryan was on the throne, pants around his ankles, head back like his neck was broken. Snoring.

I kicked his foot. “Ryan. Wake up, for fuck sake.” I had to kick harder.

Eventually his head came forward, his eyes opened, and he saw me standing there. Confusion. Recognition. He cleared his phlegmy throat. “Sorry.” He stood and pulled up his pants. I walked away.

Back at the counter, Ryan asked, “You got any paper I could use?” He was an artist, had been a famous animator. He really did have an Oscar. Or had.

I reached under the counter, pulled open the printer tray, and peeled out a few sheets.

“Any pencils?”

I shoved a dirty glass jar full of battered pens and pencils across the counter.

“Thanks.” He sunk onto the couch and put pencil to paper. I finished pricing the books, set some of them out on the display table, shelved the rest in the new arrivals case. The phone rang, a regular came in and asked after the boss, a couple of arts students came and went, and Cane Man was still there, leaning hard on his cane, making a show of it, drumming up business. Snow fell, big flakes, slow and quiet, sucking up the noise of traffic.

Ryan looked over. “Ah, shit. What time is it?”

I glanced at the clock. “Ten.”

“Shit. Ah, shit.” He shoved his drawings aside, stood up, and paced back and forth. “Fuck.”

“What is it?”

He hurried around the couch. “I’m late. I’m too late. Fuckin’ hell.”

“Late for what?”

“The mission. Closes at ten. Fuck. You gotta be there early to get a bed. Fuckity fuck.”

Which meant Ryan had no place to sleep.

I took some twenties from the till, added up the day’s receipts, shoved a wad of cash where the boss would find it, washed the floor, donned my coat, and locked the door. Ryan was sitting on the stoop, staring at Cane Man, who was still at his post across the street.

“I’ll buy you a beer,” I said.

He jerked his head up. “Really? Thanks, man. That’s great.” He stood up, stamped his feet, and got out of my way. We walked south a block under the orange streetlights. Snow came down heavy and silent. The street was a mess of shiny rivulets and tracks in the gray slush. It was almost midnight. Taxis drove north past us.

We went into Bar Saint-Laurent, really an empty retail space, no decor, shabby tables and wooden chairs. The kind of place you don’t want to see in the light. I ordered a cheap pitcher of Boréale Rousse and poured glasses for the both of us.

Ryan grabbed his and drained it. His eyes shone, a deep satisfied breath gushed from him. He leaned forward and filled his glass again. There weren’t many customers. Les Cowboys Fringants were thrashing from the speakers, a song about UQUAM girls on Rue Saint-Denis.

“Can I crash with you?” he asked.

“No.” I was only willing to go so far. Ryan knew a lot of people, but he’d burned them all. His parents still lived out on the West Island, but they hadn’t spoken to him for years, ever since the infamous mural incident.

In his youth Ryan wasn’t so bad; as long as his alcohol and drug intake didn’t get out of hand, and as long as someone made him take his meds, he was fine. But when he got a little money, when his short films began to be taught in film schools, he moved out on his own and unraveled. He got a huge commission on the strength of his Oscar and an offer to paint a giant mural of whatever he wanted on the lobby wall of the new the National Film Board building in Montreal. He had carte blanche and worked on the mural in secret until the unveiling. The mural’s debut ceremony was posh, of course, with socialites, bankers, government ministers, and state-approved artists in attendance. They drew the curtain, and that was it. His career was over.

The scene depicted Ryan himself, masturbating to pictures of his mother.

His parents wouldn’t take his calls after that. No one would. Over the years people tried to give him some help, work, a place to stay, money, but it always ended badly. For years he’d been in and out of hospitals, jails, flophouses, missions. Now he begged for spare change. For a few months in the summer, a carpenter on Duluth had been letting him sleep in his enclosed yard with the lumber. It wasn’t indoors, but it gave him some safety and shelter from the wind and rain. But now it was too cold to sleep outside.

“I had a place to stay last week,” he said.

“Yeah? What happened?”

He drank half the glass. “A guy offered me a place to crash if I knew where to score a rock.”

“I thought you were off crack?”

“Yeah, yeah, I was,” he said earnestly. “But shit, I needed a place to sleep. So I took him to my friend and he bought a few boulders and I went with him.” He finished the glass. I poured.

“When we were high, he tried to give me a blow job.” He shook his head, as if in disbelief, but it wobbled like he’d lost power over it.

“You take it?”

“Fuck no. I’m not a homo. But when I tried to leave, he beat me. I’m a little guy, I can’t fight. He punched me every time I got off the couch. Then he tied me up.”

“You serious?”

“Yeah. He got out ropes and fuckin’ leather straps. Bondage, you know? He kept me there for days, he beat me and sexually abused me.” Ryan went quiet, his head still trembling, his eyes on the table. He carefully brought the glass to his lips and sipped slowly. “Then he threw me out.”

I was going to leave him with the pitcher when I finished my glass, but then Billy One-Eye came in. He saw us and came right over.

“Ryan, there you are. What’re you doing here? Why didn’t you come to the mission?”

“I got fucked up. It wasn’t my fault.”

Billy looked at the nearly empty pitcher on the table, and swallowed. His good eye made contact with mine. It was a question. I kicked out a free chair for him, raised my arm for the waitress. He sat and said, “I waited for you, saved you a cot beside me for as long as I could. When you didn’t show up, I got worried. Came up here to see if you were still at Schwartz’s or something. Thought you must be making a lot of money.”

“Some fucker pushed me out.”

“Big guy with a cane?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s still there. I asked if he’d seen you. He said no.”

“Fuckin’ liar,” said Ryan. “He beat me up and took my spot.”

I ordered another glass and another pitcher.

“Want to go talk to him?” Billy wasn’t much taller than Ryan, but he was built solid. Big trunk, big arms and legs, round face. He still had both eyes, but one didn’t work — it was enlarged, the iris milked over, bloodshot, leaky, like it was sore; the lid wouldn’t close over it anymore. Billy was from up north, not soft-spoken exactly, but a kindhearted guy. Something in his voice was like a fairy godmother, no matter what he was saying. His thing was heroin.

The waitress came back with Billy’s glass and the beer.

“Not now,” said Ryan.

I had one more glass but it wasn’t long before the second pitcher was near empty. Billy and Ryan were talking, but having two different conversations, both laughing, slurring words, asking me for cigarettes every minute or so. I didn’t smoke.

I stayed too long; Max Ygoe came in, looked around, and saw us. He stomped his work boots over to the bar, took an upside-down glass from the sink, and slapped it on the table. He shook out of his raccoon coat and emptied the pitcher into his glass. Before setting it down, he craned around to the bar and waved it at the waitress. “Cheers, fellows,” he said, and drained his glass.

“That’s one you owe me,” I said. I didn’t like Max. He was a sculptor, chisels and stone, always covered in dust. A big guy, older, maybe sixty-five, strong, still a lot of muscle under slackening skin. He talked too much about whores in Rome after the war, and working with Irving Stone on that book about Michelangelo. Always a story about the cat houses, the black hair, and big tits. You could be introducing your grandmother to him, and she’d remind him of a hooker.

“You see that waitress?” She was coming over with the beer, and as she bent to put it on the table between us, Max pointed, almost grabbing her. “Look at those cans. Nice.”

I handed her a twenty. “For the first two,” I said, indicating the empty pitcher. She grabbed the empties and left. I filled my glass. I didn’t want more beer, I just wanted back what Max took. I filled Ryan’s and Billy’s too.

“You shouldn’t be buying beer for rummies,” said Max, laughing.

Billy sipped. “Hey, fuck you.”

Ryan lifted his glass and tried to smile. “Fellow artist.”

“Working late?” I said.

He put his glass down, smacked his lips. “I sent off a commission today. For Portuguese Park on Rue Rachel. Got a new block of stone coming in tomorrow. A big one, need to make some room, get set up for the new project. I got thirsty.” As if he’d reminded himself, he filled his glass again.

We walked back up the slope the way we’d came. I lived up near Mount Royal; Max’s studio was right beside the bookstore. Billy and Ryan had nowhere to go, so they followed behind us, staggering, bumming smokes from people on the street.

With the beer in him, Max was convinced I was interested in listening to him talk about himself. He was going on about his new project and the big stone that was coming tomorrow.

Truthfully, no one cared about Max’s work. He didn’t have a dealer, no pieces in public galleries, and no one writing about him in the papers or art magazines. He made his living through public commissions, like the fountain for the park he’d just finished.

Max had been trying to change that all his life; he was about to start out on his latest attempt, “a big fucking piece,” he was saying, trying to pierce me with his gaze. “A major piece. The only theme that matters — man. Ecce homo. Adam. He’s going to be seven feet tall, emerging from the rock itself, dragging his cock into the world. Commanding. Frightening. Overpowering. Women and fags will cower before him. He will make my name.”

“Nice,” I said, but that’s not what I was thinking.

“I’ll get a fucking medal,” Max went on. He noticed I wasn’t looking at him. “Listen to me. There’ll be a reception, dinner, and tuxedos. When the visual arts officer’s standing at the podium introducing me, his wife will be under the table sucking me off.”

Max and I stopped in front of the chain-link fence that enclosed the yard in front of his studio. It was above Berson’s Monuments, a headstone maker that had been there since the twenties. One side the yard was stacked with marble and granite slabs waiting to be cut and engraved but most of the space was arranged with earth and grass and various models of headstone set up so customers could get an idea of the effect. Under the yard’s spotlight and the orange glow from the streetlights, the shadows were cast at odd angles and the headstones were all too close together. It was the perfect place for a sculptor — stone was always being delivered and Berson let him use the crane to load and unload his materials.

Across the top of the building, the original Hebrew sign was still visible. The language police tried once to get Berson to take it down, but they backed off quick when Mordecai Richler made fun of them in the New York Times for it.

Ryan and Billy had caught up to us, and now they noticed Cane Man was still across the street, trying his luck with the last few customers leaving Schwartz’s.

Billy said, “C’mon, let’s get him, there’s four of us now.” He pulled Ryan into the street with him. Ryan needed some convincing, but when the traffic that stopped for them became impatient and honked them out of the way, he went. Billy was already yelling at the guy with the cane.

“Shitheads,” said Max.

“C’mon, let’s go,” I said.

“I’m not beating up a bum, for Christ’s sake.”

“We’re not going to join the fight, Max. We’re going to stop it.” Eventually he followed me. When I made it across, Billy’d already got the guy’s cane away from him and was whacking him. The guy had his hands up and his head bent away, but he was advancing on Billy. Ryan was doing nothing but yelling.

The guy saw me approach and stopped short, wondering. Max came up behind me. Cane Man, still fending off blows from Billy, looked him up and down, back to me, and said, “Eat shit, all of you.”

Then he turned, ran up to the corner, and was gone.

“You forgot your cane!” Billy yelled. “Never seen a cripple run so good.” He lifted the cane and cracked it in two across his knee.

Ryan was leaning back against a parked car. A waiter came out of Schwartz’s and looked around. “No fighting here or we call the cops. Understand?”

“Yes sir,” said Ryan. “No problem, sir.” He started crying. The waiter went back inside.

“Ryan, what’s wrong, buddy?” asked Billy.

“Nothing. Nothing more than usual. Fuckin’ freezing, no money, no place to sleep. What are we gonna do, Billy?”

Billy had no answer.

Max said, “You guys come help me finish up. There’s not much to do. You sweep my floor, you can sleep on it tonight.”

“Really?” said Ryan. I was surprised too.

“But you leave tomorrow. It only locks from the outside. I’m coming back at ten thirty, I’ll let you out then.” He turned and crossed the street.

Billy yanked Ryan to his feet and they followed. I watched Max open the padlocked gate and secure it again after they entered. He led them between stacks of headstones, and then, for a moment, they disappeared. They came back into view climbing the outside wooden staircase to the balcony along the second floor, just under the Hebrew lettering. Max opened another padlock, an iron latch, pushed open the heavy wooden door, and went in. The door closed after them, and a dim light came on behind the murky windows.

I walked north up the hill. It was just after two in the morning and the snow had stopped, but it was white along the edges of the sidewalk.

The next day I watched a tractor trailer snake its way into Berson’s narrow entrance, blocking the entire street. The winch pulled an enormous granite slab off the truck bed and it slowly slid across to the delivery door on the second floor. Max guided it by hand onto a pump truck. When the winch set it down, the balcony groaned and gave an inch. Max, Ryan, and Billy pushed the pump truck together. Max and Billy had their backs into it, but Ryan flitted around like a moth.

Thereafter, Ryan slept nights in the studio. He’d come and go through the lane in the back, hopping a fence, up the fire escape, and in through a window hidden in a crook between the buildings that Max left unlocked for him.

I wondered how long that would last.

It happened again, of course. I was locking up early a few weeks later. It was a Friday, in December now, and the first winter blizzard, although just beginning, had already dumped about two feet of snow in the past couple of hours. Many shops had closed before dinner, the plows were out, and traffic was a mess; no one had been in the bookstore since sundown.

Across the street, the only place of business that still had customers was Schwartz’s, as usual, and there was Ryan, his shoulders piled in snow, arguing with Cane Man. I had to hop over drifts of snow up to my knees to cross the street. When I got there, a guy from Schwartz’s had come out to join the shouting.

“There’s always a fight with you,” he complained to Cane Man. “Get lost and don’t come back. You’re not welcome here.”

“It’s a free country,” he replied. “It’s a public sidewalk. You can’t stop me standing here.”

“You can’t stop me from calling the cops, either!” the waiter shouted.

“What for?”

The waiter took his notebook from his back pocket. “Not paying for the smoked meat you ate.”

“That’s a lie. I didn’t eat any smoked meat.”

The waiter was writing in the notebook. “I got a tab right here says you ate smoked meat, fries, and a pickle. I got a restaurant full of witnesses. What have you got?”

Cane Man swore a little, then went silent. The waiter stared him down. Cane Man finally looked to Ryan, who turned his head away. Then he turned to me. “The fuck you want?”

I didn’t say anything.

Cane Man turned and shuffled away in the snow. The waiter went back in.

“You eat today?” I asked Ryan.

He thought about it. “Had a Mars bar at lunch.”

“C’mon,” I said, “you might as well pack it in and get some food while you can.” We went into Schwartz’s. My glasses fogged. For once there were plenty of seats. We sat way in the back. We ordered the usual, exactly what Cane Man hadn’t paid for.

The lights were bright, there was still a fair bit of noise even though it wasn’t crowded. Conversations were yelled from the patrons to the cooks, from the cooks to the waiters, from the waiters to the cashier high up on his stool in the front window beside the door. French, English, Portuguese, even a little Yiddish. Plates and cutlery, sizzling grill, the door opening and closing. Our sandwiches came.

I gobbled mine, but Ryan ate slowly and left half on his plate. “Something the matter?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I’m saving this for Billy. He’s across the street.” He meant in Max’s studio.

“I thought that was supposed to be just you.”

“Yeah, but I can’t turn Billy out. Besides, Max don’t mind.”

“Does he know?”

Ryan shrugged. “I guess so. Hey, why don’t you come on over, I got something I want to show you. Something I’ve been working on.”

We had the waiter bag the leftovers. Outside, the snow was still falling. Light from the streetlamps bounced around painfully. It was still night, but the street shone without shadows. Big plows were grumbling up the center of the street, smaller ones on the sidewalks. Trucks were being loaded with snow — they’d be at it for days, according to the weatherman.

We had to go down to Pine Avenue and up the lane, which hadn’t been plowed. At least the snow covered the garbage and mud, which was all I ever saw there in the summer. But it was a hard slog on the uneven ground for a quarter-mile back to the rear of Max’s. We cleared a path with our knees. Halfway there I was soaked from the upper thighs on down to my boots.

Ryan reached over the wooden fence, clicked something, and the framed door jerked open. He pushed it back, crushing away the snow behind it. I bent my head and followed him through, trying to step in the footprints he had left behind. I pushed the door shut behind us.

He started up the iron fire escape, waving his foot back and forth to clear each step. On the landing he reached around the corner of the building and into a light well affixed to the adjoining building. He hauled himself around the corner.

“What the fuck?” I said.

Ryan popped his head back. “It’s easy, there’s a one-foot drop to the bottom.”

I reached over and found the window frame easily. I swung myself around the corner and placed my foot exactly where I expected to find the sill. Ryan had the bottom half open already and was hopping in as I crouched and followed him. We were inside.

I waited in the dark while Ryan shuffled around bumping into things. The light came on with a loud click. He was standing beside a wall switch. I stamped the snow from my boots. Over on the couch, beyond the partially sculpted stone, was Billy, one foot on the floor, asleep or passed out.

Ryan called, “Hey, Billy, it’s us,” but he didn’t move. We went over to take a look. He was perfectly still, I couldn’t tell if he was breathing or see his eyes fluttering. His good eye was closed. The bad one was popping out of his face like a dick through foreskin, but it had still managed to turn up. At least I couldn’t see a pupil. On the coffee table beside him, his things were set out: an open bottle of Griffin, some change, a bus ticket.

The matches, the bent spoon, the plastic bag, the syringe — they were all there too.

“Jesus Christ, Billy.” Ryan jumped on him in a panic.

Billy woke fighting. “Cocksucker! What the fuck?”

Ryan leaped off him, gasping. “I thought you were fuckin’ dead.”

Billy was wide-eyed, crouched with his fists up, red-faced with tension and anger. “The fuck? You fucking idiot.” He relaxed, but he was still angry.

There was one shabby chair. I sat in it; Ryan took a pillow and sat at the short end of the coffee table. “What did you want to show me?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Ryan, who got up, shuffled through a pile of stuff tucked against the wall, and brought out some papers.

Despite Ryan’s habitual tremors, the lines of his drawings were elegant and fluid. The pictures were simple, almost outlines really, big loose suggestions of figures, objects, buildings. The people were all naked; their feet were never on the ground, and their limbs seemed to float away. They were like cartoons, the colors indicated by the thick strokes in different pens. I couldn’t see anything different about these, they were just like any others of his I’d seen — beautiful.

“What am I looking at?”

“You’re looking at the wrong side.”

I turned them over and saw charcoal sketches of the studio with Max’s stone in it, newly delivered through the process of sculpting, like a record of watching Max work. I glanced from the statue to the sketches, and back. Ryan’s drawings looked less finished but more natural, yet the face emerging from the stone was not a clean, young, hard face, it was a square grim face, with broad flat cheeks and dead eyes. On some of the sketches Ryan had scrawled odd birds or swirls in the air.

“Kind of grim,” I said.

“I got the idea from the letters outside on the sign and staring at that stupid statue. You ever see this old German movie about the golem? Old Jewish legend from the ghetto?”

“I know it — I read Meyrink and saw the movie at Concordia.” I peered at his drawings again and could now imagine the little swirls as Hebrew letters. I looked at Max’s stone, the figure was still only roughed out but you could already see the upturned face of an idealized man looking to the heavens, like a worker in a Soviet poster, and even more prominent, the rough mass of his up-thrusting phallus, like a prod, and I said, “You know, Ryan, Max is an asshole. But you made art.”

Billy opened his stamp and tapped the remaining few grains out onto a clean spot on the coffee table. He picked up the foil of Ryan’s crack, found a few tiny rocks, put them down with the dark powder, and crushed it all together with the back of his spoon. It was a tiny pile. I took my dime bag out, dropped the last few crumbs of bud into it. Billy mashed it all up. I gave him my papers and he deftly slid the powder into the crease of the Zig-Zag. He rolled, licked, lit. We smoked. I went to the fridge. Max had a few bottles of beer in there. I grabbed three and twisted off the caps.

By the time I brought them back to the coffee table, I wanted to leave. Billy One-Eye was snoring; Ryan’s head was down and he wasn’t saying anything. I suddenly felt extraordinarily tired, like if I didn’t move soon, it would be too late.

I woke with the feeling, but not the memory, that I’d heard a sound. I was high, and upon opening my eyes in the semidarkness of the candlelight, I sensed the speed with which the universe revolved around me. Had I dreamed it? What have I been dreaming?

It was an effort to keep my own head still and focus. Ryan was still in the wooden chair, slumped over, and Billy was stiff as a corpse, like he had been when we entered.

But there — shuffling steps in the kitchen, where the light was still on, and a draft came from the open window.

Open. I had closed it. Ryan had asked.

Then I heard the window slowly closing.

I struggled to clear my head, unsure what to do. But it didn’t matter. I was drugged, I felt as if I were in a cocoon or a womb. I could wriggle and kick and perhaps turn over, but I couldn’t manage to lift myself up and I struggled simply to maintain consciousness.

A figure filled the kitchen door, a big man blocking the light. He entered the studio and loomed behind Max’s statue. He was almost as big, but soon disappeared in the shadows behind. I heard him stomping around, and then approaching us. He was standing behind the couch I was on, but I couldn’t turn my head to look at him. I was lying on my side, looking across at a passed-out Billy. Ryan was only visible in my peripheral vision.

As I lay there, trying to get up and keep my eyes open, I saw him lumber out from behind the half-formed statue, almost staggering, leaning on something; it looked like a staff. Or — wait. A cane. Cane Man. He must have followed us.

I couldn’t sit up to ask Ryan or Billy. Both were snoring, as I had been. I could only watch behind my heavy lids, which opened and closed slowly, as Cane Man approached. He must have stubbed his trailing foot on the sculpture — he swore when it shifted weight and thumped the floor; the couch beneath me swayed like a canoe, and I twitched instinctively, my hand flopping and knocking an empty beer bottle off the coffee table.

I felt like the ground was gone and I was falling backward, then I got the darkness with the electric sparkles, and suddenly the world was black again.

Billy got up like a dead man. Ryan was dancing around, freaking out, like some animal caught in a trap, swearing spittle across the room in a ragged arc.

Billy was staggering over, not really conscious, just doing what Ryan was screaming at him, going over to fight with Cane Man.

He was just standing there, sizing things up. He glanced at me on the couch, then looked away quickly. He brought his attention toward Billy, who was slowly making his way toward him, hunched over and leaning on things as he walked — the arm of the couch, the coffee table, a chair beside it. Cane Man then turned to Ryan and brought his cane high above his head, swinging down on Ryan’s skull with both hands.

Ryan collapsed and screamed like a girl. Billy roared and straightened up, like a bow unstrung. He rounded his fist and delivered an underhand punch into Cane Man’s left kidney. The guy went down on top of a whimpering Ryan, who yelped upon impact. Billy lost his footing and also fell face-first onto the pile.

Beyond the statue, the light from the kitchen shone across the end of the room. Everything seemed to glow faintly, and light spilled like fog into the darkness. It seemed almost to pile up at the base of the statue, spilling around it in swirling eddies and shining from within rather than being illuminated from without.

Then my attention was caught by the Cane Man’s movements, and when I blinked, my eyes were focused on him, down the long trail of the couch with my feet so tiny in the distance, and beside me the stained and crowded wooden coffee table, the empty bottles and cans, towering over the ashtrays, matchbooks, lighters, forks, packs of cigarettes, and other debris like skyscrapers over crowded streets, and I could faintly make out his outline in the darkness behind Ryan, passed out in his chair, head bowed and leaning back into the corner with his palms together under his cheek and his knees drawn up.

Cane Man seemed to stumble on something in the darkness, maybe even bump into the chair, because I heard a tiny rumbling like thunder down a long tunnel. Ryan squeaked and leaped up off the floor, grabbing hold of the couch to anchor himself.

Cane Man came into the light, his face a red scowl. Ryan was yelling. Billy roused too, but with lids lying low and bags under his eyes. He grabbed Cane Man’s arm but fell forward at the same time.

Ryan dodged out of the way; Billy ran forward a few unsteady steps, though he recovered with his arms spread like he was about to rise from the earth. Cane Man fell forward onto the floor where Ryan had just been.

I saw Billy run out of my vision like an actor dashing into the darkness in the wings of a theater. I saw Cane Man’s big frame scrape the wide wooden planks of the floor, and then from the right side of my peripheral vision, I saw Billy jump back on top of Cane Man, stomping his head and his face, hopping around on one foot.

A sound like a carbonated waterfall roared in my ears, and the statue, still radiant and diffuse against the darkness, sailed across my vision from the left and dropped upon Cane Man like a lover upon his betrothed, and there was an echoing boom as the great phallus found its mark, the torso smothering the now prone Cane Man, the shoulder popping his skull like a blueberry between your fingers just as Billy, without turning about or flinching a muscle, suddenly bounded backward away from the spread of brains, blood, and eyes trailing connective tissue and nerves like spermatozoa or comets.

Suddenly there was silence, which either lasted less than a second or an interminably long time, or both. Ryan approached from the left and Billy approached from the right and all I could see beyond my distant and tiny feet was a granite boulder rising to a point like a triangle and then the two of them slowly, and as if on purpose in synchronization, turned their faces toward mine.

They staggered and climbed over whatever was in their way and it took the two of them to lift me from the couch and drag me, one on either side, to the window. Billy took a handful of snow from the sill and smashed it all over my face, and then Ryan slapped me until I roused enough to help them get me over the sill, out the window, and onto the fire escape.

We slowly climbed our way down, acutely aware of how high we were, of what had just taken place, and of the need to get away as quickly as possible. We fell and tripped and scraped our way down the iron staircase, making too much noise. But this was Saint-Laurent, where strange noises were normal every night. We didn’t arouse any suspicion.

Like drunken revelers we climbed up Saint-Urbain’s hill toward Mount Royal, where Ryan and Billy pulled and pushed me up the stairs to my second-floor flat. When we got inside, my girlfriend woke and gave us a stony welcome. She took me from them, angry I’d brought them home — though in truth it was the other way around — and led me to bed. After I stripped out of my clothes and climbed under the sheets, I began to cry uncontrollably, like a child, great sobs blinding me. My girlfriend turned away from me, and left me to cry myself out.

When Max opened the studio door the next day, there was his glorious statue, his ecce homo, pinning the broken rummy to the floor, his phallus up the bum, so to speak. He called the cops, but they never made any arrests. The Gazette reported that a homeless man was tragically killed seeking shelter in the massive blizzard, and the city spent the next week clearing snow and ice from the streets.

My girlfriend never forgave me for letting Ryan and Billy crash with us that night. Things only got worse between us from there. She went off to Toronto and I stayed home. Ryan and Billy moved into a rooming house, which they could barely afford between their welfare checks, so they supplemented their income by panhandling. Ryan was back across the street outside Schwartz’s, but he could never again stay the night at Max Ygoe’s studio. He tried to sell his drawings; I even gave him ten bucks for one, though I can’t tell what it’s supposed to be. It hangs over the couch he slept on that night he saved me from being found unconscious and surrounded by drug paraphernalia at a murder scene.

Billy died later that year. He was found among some garbage bins behind the Belgian fries place in the heat of summer, near Duluth, a needle sticking out of his arm. Overdose was the verdict, yet Ryan swore to me that it couldn’t have been an accident — Billy was too experienced and careful for that. According to him it must have been on purpose.

Later that year a guy started making a film about Ryan, a documentary about his fall from grace and his life on the street. And when it won an Academy Award two years later, Ryan and his buddies were watching the Oscars on the big screen at the Bar Saint-Laurent, so he saw his eventual triumph, and not long after he succumbed to the cancer he’d been ignoring for a couple of years.

Wild Horses by Arjun Basu

Mile End

Albertson wakes to the sound of horses galloping. He looks out his window, and yes, there are horses racing down his street. He watches them cross another street and run into the darkness, toward the condo construction site two blocks away. He pinches himself to make sure he’s not dreaming. He can already see himself at work, saying, You know what I saw this morning? He will tell his story unless the media picks it up first, and they are sure to — someone’s probably blogging about it right now. Either way, he’ll still have a story. His story. And women love horses.

Albertson is the manager of a shoe store downtown, and all of his employees and customers are women. And these women are not the types to drag around their indifferent husbands, the kind of men who show distaste with aggressive boredom. No, Albertson’s shoe store is for women, for girlfriends, the kind of women who will be impressed by horses running down the middle of a city street.

After a quick scan online and a survey of the local TV networks, Albertson finds no media reports about horses running wild though the city. There are no blogs, no status updates, no photos. The radio is silent on the matter of horses invading Mile End. In both languages.

Albertson’s blood feels like it’s changed color. Why is no one acknowledging what I have just seen?

He walks up his street, past the butcher with the grass-fed veal, the boulangerie owned by the tattooed guy, and the ceramics shop with the collection of fine art chopsticks. When he turns the corner, he sees orange-helmeted construction workers standing under the green loft project and condo developments that are surely going to change everything about this place. And then there, just beyond the construction site, is a hole in the ground, where fresh horse shit has been flattened by traffic. The unmistakable smell of horse shit steams from the hole, filling the air. It is obvious.

Albertson walks up to a hip young man wearing a tartan bowler hat and a skinny blazer, and asks, “Do you smell that?” The man stops and sniffs the air.

“What?”

“Do you smell something odd?”

The man in the bowler hat takes a good deep whiff. Deliberate. He’s polite. “Like out of the ordinary?”

“You don’t smell it?” Albertson is incredulous.

The man sniffs the air again and looks at Albertson before walking away, breaking into a trot after several paces.

Albertson wants to reach down and touch the horse droppings, but he has to get to work. He wants that horse shit to be horse shit, so he walks over to it, looks around, and puts his right shoe in the biggest pile. The give. It goes right through his brown Oxfords, right up to his brain. It registers as horse shit; he smiles triumphantly.

He returns to his apartment and changes into another pair of brown Oxfords, putting his single shit-encrusted shoe into a plastic bag and into the freezer. He goes to work.

At work he waits. He waits for one of his employees or a customer, anyone, to bring up the horses. Every time his phone rings, he expects a call about them. He checks the Internet constantly, his social media channels, the news. The city must know there are wild horses about. They are running up our streets at night, shitting near half-finished condos, and running some more. He has proof of these things. He smelled it. He saw the horses. He heard them and then he saw them and then he smelled them. That’s three senses.

Albertson swims through the day and no one brings up the horses. The radio is silent on horses. He googles it, because at the end of day, if it isn’t on Google, it isn’t real. Nothing turns up.

He begins to entertain the possibility that perhaps there were no horses. He asks about horses on his Facebook page and receives no response. After he closes the store, he races home to inspect his Oxford shoes, and there it is. Horse shit. He has horse shit on his shoe. It wasn’t a dream, it was real. He has a shit-covered shoe in the freezer. It’s his link to an event he knows happened. To a specific reality.

Albertson goes to the park to investigate. He walks up to a dog owner who is waiting for the inevitable to drop out of her animal’s backside. Albertson approaches the woman and her dog cautiously.

“Were you out last night?” he asks, which is the wrong way to approach a stranger, he knows, but he can’t take it back.

“Excuse me?” she replies, looking at her dog as it squats, getting in position. She knows she’s trapped. She can’t get away. Not yet.

“Sorry,” Albertson says. He stammers a bit and pushes his hair back. “Last night. Here. Did you see them?”

The woman is distracted by her dog. It’s not doing what it needs to do. The thing is a small mongrel, definitely some type of terrier.

“The horses,” Albertson clarifies in a soft whisper. He feels like a dissident in Communist Germany. “They galloped down this very street. A herd of them.”

She smiles sympathetically. “Are you crazy or is this an elaborate pickup line?”

Her dog has shifted position, walked to another spot a foot away, and is trying again. Albertson can sense its exertion. “I wish,” he says, still whispering.

“You wish what?” she asks. “You can do it, Bella. Go on.”

“Early this morning. I saw them. I heard them. I even stepped in their poop.”

She puts a finger to her lips to shush him. “Don’t say that,” she says, lowering her head. “We’re not supposed to talk about it.”

Meanwhile, Bella squeezes out a small turd, something small, even for a little dog. She seems satisfied, however, and comes over to sniff Albertson’s pant leg.

“Good girl!” the woman chirps. Bella looks up and wags her tail.

“We’re not supposed to talk about what?”

“There were no horses,” she says, giving Bella’s leash a yank and walking away without bagging her dog’s poop.

At the other end of the park, Albertson spots another dog walker, an elderly man with a robust German shepherd. The dog takes note of him as he approaches, and sits, alert. Albertson slows his walk.

“She’s friendly,” the man says, but Albertson decides to stay where he is, twenty feet away.

“I was wondering if I could ask you a question,” he says to the old man.

The man pets the dog as it walks in circles, sniffing, completing its picture of the world. “Shoot.”

“Were you walking your dog this morning?”

The man’s face freezes. It’s subtle, but Albertson notices. “Do I know you?”

“I’m wondering if you saw anything odd this morning.”

“What kind of odd?”

“Out of the ordinary,” Albertson says. He is sinking into code speak.

The man’s face hardens. “What are you going on about?”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Albertson says, turning to leave. He has to look at his shoes again, in the freezer. He needs to confirm the events. Because now he’s not sure. Again.

“Sorry I couldn’t help you,” the man calls out.

Albertson turns back around. “Something odd is happening,” he says.

The man takes a step toward Albertson and then stops. “Perhaps you need some sleep,” he offers gently.

“Horses,” Albertson whispers.

“Horses?”

“Wild horses. A herd of them. Galloping down the street. Early this morning.” Albertson feels out of breath now.

“Something like that would have showed up on the news, no?” the old man says, and this triggers in Albertson a kind of low-level panic. He feels his ears get warm, tingling.

“Y-yes,” he stammers. “You’d think.” Albertson turns and walks away, slowly, back to his apartment. He knows what he saw, but he needs to look at his shoe again.

Back at home, Albertson opens the freezer. There is his brown Oxford encrusted with horse shit. He opens a beer, sits down on the couch, and turns on the TV. He searches for news of what he saw, for some form of evidence, but finds none. He opens his laptop, scours the Internet, but nothing shows up — his search takes him everywhere but to the place he wants to go. Nothing. Less than that. Disappointment. A feeling that he is not himself, that what he knows is wrong, that everything he thinks about himself, everything he dreams, is all wrong.

A dream would not have covered his shoe in horse shit. That stuff is real. Everything else isn’t.

Across the street from the shoe store is a lingerie boutique owned by a middle-aged Indian woman. She comes in for shoes every few weeks, and Albertson attends to her personally. Mrs. Sen has large feet and stands a head above Albertson. She often makes a point of noting how rare it is for an Indian woman to be her height. Albertson always feigns surprise, and Mrs. Sen buys her giant shoes — she’s been partial to Mary Janes lately — and returns to her boutique, but sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes they go out for lunch and talk, and she tells Albertson about her childhood in a village north of Calcutta, and the unfortunate skateboarding accident that killed her first husband, and how her new husband is a judge who has bad breath and always interrupts her, and how she doesn’t know what to do with him, but won’t leave him because they’re invited to all the good parties, and she quite enjoys her new social life.

Today, Mrs. Sen enters the store and takes a seat on the divan. Albertson puts down his coffee and walks over to her.

“Mrs. Sen,” he says, smiling.

“We’re having a dinner party, you know.”

“And what will you be wearing?”

“No, no, I’m not here for shoes,” she says, laughing. “I’m here to invite you.”

This is an odd thing, Albertson thinks. Beyond their lunches, Mrs. Sen has never invited him into her social orbit. “When?” he asks.

A pair of shoes has caught Mrs. Sen’s attention, a pair of muted-blue open-toed pumps. “Oh my,” she says.

“I’ll have to check if we have your size.”

Mrs. Sen turns sharply to him as if he has just said something amazingly rude. “I don’t want them.”

“I can check.”

“Friday night.” She stands and takes a look at the shoes again. “Can you order them?” she asks.

“For Friday?”

“I don’t need them for Friday. It’s nothing fancy. Some dentists. A doctor. The usual lawyers and judges. A city councillor. The lady who owns the nice café in the food court. She has a young boyfriend who’s a musician.”

“I can order the shoes,” Albertson says.

“Thank you. Bring wine if you want.”

As Mrs. Sen steps into the damp light of the mall, she calls Albertson over, and he rushes to her. She leans in, motioning him to come closer.

“Did you see the horses?” she asks in a whisper. Albertson’s eyes radiate fear and awe, but also community. A communal warmth. Bathed in cold.

Albertson picks up a Beaujolais. He doesn’t know a thing about wine, can’t tell the difference between names or regions or grapes. The girl at the SAQ looks like she’s just turned eighteen, but acts like she’s been drinking wine forever. He decides not to ask her about the horses. He’s convinced that everyone around him knows something about the horses, something he isn’t allowed to know. That his understanding of this isn’t permitted. By someone. By someone important.

Mrs. Sen and her husband live downtown on Sherbrooke Street, in an ancient high-rise, built when the city was prosperous. Back then, if you said you lived on Sherbrooke Street, it meant a lot more than a street name. It meant more than money, class, or anything like that. If you said you lived on Sherbrooke Street, it meant that, because of your address, you had inexhaustible power. That if you’d told someone the world revolved around you, they would have had to consider the possibility. All because of your address.

Albertson announces himself to the elderly doorman, who gets on the phone, nods, and welcomes him in. The doorman escorts him into a tiny elevator that smells like lemon-scented wood polish.

Albertson knocks on Mrs. Sen’s door, and she answers with a look of momentary confusion — Albertson is not on her regular guest list, after all. He holds out the wine bottle awkwardly in his hands.

“The girl said it was a good year for Beaujolais.”

“What girl?”

“At the SAQ. I know nothing about wine, unfortunately.”

She accepts it and studies the label. She puts the bottle down on the side table where Albertson imagines it will sit, forgotten. “Come in.”

He takes in the apartment’s decayed grandeur, the vaguely yellowish lights and dimly lit corners populated by exotic statues, bookcases, and half-dead plants. The apartment smells like the elevator, mixed with some unidentifiable odor coming from the kitchen, a collection of spices he can’t quite make out.

“Let me introduce you to my husband.”

She takes his arm and leads him to a room with three dignified-looking men, all in gray suits, standing and talking, each holding a tumbler of Scotch.

“Am I early?” asks Albertson.

Mrs. Sen stops walking and looks at him oddly. “No. My guests are late. Annoyingly so. My husband just arrived himself. He’s in his study.”

She opens the door to the study and her husband, the judge, is standing in the middle of the room, also holding a tumbler of Scotch, watching television.

“Louis, this is the young man who sells me my shoes.”

The judge turns to face him. He studies Albertson and Albertson studies him and neither man learns much. Louis is wearing a gray suit; it seems to be a uniform.

“My wife owns a lot of shoes. You are a very lucky man.”

Mrs. Sen nudges Albertson toward her husband. Albertson allows himself to be nudged.

“Mrs. Sen has an eye for footwear,” says Albertson, uncomfortably.

The judge takes a sip of his Scotch and turns off the TV. “Nothing about the horses,” he sighs, smiling.

Albertson is confused, yet intrigued. “I have questions about the horses.”

The judge walks to a corner and sits on a chair. “What kind of questions?”

Albertson turns to look for Mrs. Sen, but she is gone. The door is closed. Albertson is alone in the room with the judge. “I have a shoe in my freezer at home with horse shit on it.”

Louis’s eyebrows reach north.

“I heard them, but there’s nothing on the news, the Internet, the radio. Nothing. Not even the people on my street saw anything.” Albertson lowers his voice: “They act as if I shouldn’t bring it up. And I’ve only brought it up with a few of them.”

The judge stands and walks to an alcove in the wall and opens a door. “Would you like a Scotch?”

Albertson nods.

The judge pours the Scotch and hands it to him. “Have a seat,” he says, pulling a chair from the corner and placing it in the center of the room.

Albertson sits.

“Wait here,” says the judge, leaving the room.

Albertson sips his drink and closes his eyes. He sees the horses again, feels them rumble through his chest. When he opens his eyes, the judge is before him. This time, he’s with one of the men in the gray suits. “This is my colleague, Bertrand.”

Bertrand is older than Louis, with thinning white hair and brown marks splotching his temple. He holds out his hand to Albertson and shakes firmly. Bertrand leans into Albertson so close that he can smell the old man’s stale breath. Albertson tries to pull his hand away, but he can’t; the old man’s grip is surprisingly fierce.

“Tell me about this shoe,” Bertrand says.

Albertson feels as if he’s about to be sick. Bertrand has Albertson’s hand, but it feels like he has all of him. Albertson feels engulfed.

“Tell me about your shit-covered shoe.”

Albertson remains silent, diverting his eyes from the old man’s glare.

“Fine, tell me: do you ever eat sausage and then lie down, feeling like you’re about to choke or at least suffer from incredible heartburn?”

Albertson has no idea what this means, and doesn’t know why he’s here, in this room, in this house. Who are these people?

“Do you sometimes dream in one language, but when you try to recall the dream, you realize that you’ve forgotten said language?”

Albertson senses a kind of poison running through his veins. He feels the world tilting on its axis. Maybe even changing direction.

“Does the television always come on before you enter the room?” Bertrand twists his face as he asks this. He doesn’t seem like the type to watch TV.

Albertson searches out Louis, but only now does he realize that the judge has left again. “Are you going to kill me?” he whimpers.

Bertrand loosens his grip on Albertson’s hand. His face softens. His eyes become grandfatherly. “I just want to hear more about your shoe.”

Albertson sits up. He can feel the sweat covering his back in tiny dew-like droplets. “My shoe is covered in horse shit.”

Bertrand shakes his head emphatically. “No, it is not.”

“Just one shoe.”

Bertrand raises his hand. “Stop.”

“I put it in the freezer,” Albertson says. “Why would I be lying?”

And then Bertrand’s hand coils into a fist, and that fist connects with Albertson’s mouth with the intensity of a meteor hitting earth.

Albertson awakes in a dark room. The floor is damp with humidity. He touches his mouth and confirms he’s lost a tooth. He faintly hears someone, somewhere in the darkness. He stands quickly, and hits his head on the low ceiling.

“It’s a low ceiling,” a voice says.

Albertson doesn’t know if he should speak or not. He wonders if any of this is happening at all.

“You saw the horses too, I’m guessing.”

Albertson trusts no one. He’s just decided this.

“I saw the horses,” the voice says, “running through Mile End. Down Maguire. Then up de Gaspé. Crazy shit, huh?”

Albertson wants to speak and admit everything. He wants to trust someone.

“Though I guess the real Mile Enders don’t consider that part Mile End anymore. More like Mile End Adjacent.”

Albertson wants to say something.

“And then the old men, those crazy old men. Especially that Bert dude. He punched you too?”

Albertson wishes he had a match right now, so he could see this invisible person he doesn’t trust, the only other person who might believe his story. “Why are you here?” he finally asks.

The voice laughs. “I don’t trust anyone either,” he says. In the silence, one can hear two men trying to figure out the world. “I went down to the cop station on Laurier. I asked them about the horses. They took it down. I filled out a fucking form. And that night, I met Bert.”

“How did you meet him?”

“He knocked on my door,” the voice says. “Of course he had my address: I’d given it to the cops.”

“How long have you been here?” Albertson’s going to ask his way to a place of trust.

“I don’t know,” the voice replies. “It’s always dark. They bring food every two hours. Little bits: chocolate bars, bag of chips, croissants. Pretty good croissants, I have to admit. Not like grocery store stuff. They went to a real boulangerie and bought real croissants. But it’s always dark. That way you lose track of time.”

“How many snacks have you eaten?”

“That’s a good question.” Albertson hears the man rustle and imagines he’s sitting up or stretching out his legs. There’s no way to know, and Albertson now realizes he has no idea how large — or small — this low-ceilinged cell is.

“So you don’t know?”

“I’m counting.”

Albertson figures he’s been in here less than two hours, unless he was passed out a long time, which is possible.

“More than twenty-four.”

“Snacks?”

“More than twenty-four snacks,” the voice says. “So that means two days, at least.”

“And how long have I been here?”

“Maybe an hour. They threw you in with the last snack.”

“You’ve been here two days?”

“At least.”

“The horses were...”

“Two days ago.”

“Three.”

They both contemplate this. Could they be speaking of the same horses? If Louis is a judge, who is Bertrand? Who were the other men in gray? What does Mrs. Sen have to do with all of this?

“Do you know Mrs. Sen?” Albertson asks. He feels unsafe asking this.

“Never heard of her.”

“She owns a lingerie store downtown.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Albertson says, feeling his defenses fall and his trust growing, like some creeping vine.

“My name’s Phil,” the voice says.

Albertson doesn’t give his name.

“I don’t blame you,” Phil says. “This is all fucked up. It doesn’t feel real.”

Albertson wants to stretch out. He wants to believe that none of this is happening. “I have a shit-covered shoe in my freezer,” he says.

Suddenly the lights go on. Phil is standing in a gray suit, grinning. Through a trapdoor come Bertrand and Louis.

“What the fuck?” Albertson shouts, because he has no other words. He has no frame of reference. He has nothing, he realizes. Because he saw some wild horses running down the street, he is at the mercy of these seemingly powerful men. Because in a city like Montreal, even the implausible is not surprising.

And then Bertrand punches Albertson hard in the mouth.

Albertson wakes up in a motel room. He knows it’s a motel room, the aesthetic tells him so. He’s seen this kind of room in movies. He reaches for the phone on the bedside table, picks up the receiver, and doesn’t hear a dial tone. He stands and walks to the windows, pulling back the blinds, but the windows are covered with black tape. He goes to the washroom, and pisses a long fluorescent yellow. The window in the bathroom is covered in black tape too. He flushes the toilet. He notices that there is no shower curtain. He walks back to the bed and sits down. There is no TV. There is no radio.

He lies back on the bed and runs his tongue over his swollen lip. Bertrand has punched him in the mouth twice now, and he doesn’t even know who Bertrand is. He’s never disliked anyone as much as he dislikes Bertrand. Not even the ladies with smelly feet who insist on trying on shoes two sizes too small, who insist that Albertson pry such shoes on and off their grotesque feet. But even they are nothing compared to Bertrand. The man has physically assaulted him. Twice. He is responsible for the loss of a tooth. And much of his dignity. Albertson hates him.

He could use some food. He’s craving a cheeseburger. And then he understands the craving because he can smell meat. He can smell the fried promise of a casse-croûte close by. He could be on Saint-Jacques. He could be in Brossard or Laval. He could be anywhere. But the smell of the casse-croûte tells him he’s still in Quebec. There’s some comfort in that. Some.

The front door opens and Bertrand walks in. Albertson reflexively sits up.

“I won’t punch you again,” Bertrand says. He grabs a chair and brings it over to the bed and sits before Albertson. “No more punching.”

“Why are you doing this?” Albertson doesn’t expect an answer, or at least one that makes sense.

“The problem is your shoe.”

“What about it?”

Bertrand sighs. “Louis is a very important man. This is what you don’t understand.”

“What does this have to do with the horses?”

“You should shut up about the horses.”

“So there were horses.”

“Of course there were horses. You saw them.”

“But no one else did.”

“That’s not true.”

Albertson relaxes again, despite the man’s proximity. “Do you work for him?”

Bertrand looks around the room. “Do you understand what is happening?”

Albertson considers the question. He considers it ridiculous.

“Mrs. Sen is worried about you, or for you. She knows what Louis can do. His capabilities. How high up this goes. How wide.”

Albertson watches the dust float about the room. It’s a dusty room, as if it’s been empty, devoid of any sort of life, for a very long time. “What’s going to happen to me?” he asks.

“My friend...” Bertrand’s voice fades away, perhaps to a place where he doesn’t have to punch people, strangers, for having seen a herd of horses running down a residential street. Perhaps he doesn’t know the answer. Perhaps he’s not even a cog in this, merely the hired help. Perhaps his not-knowing is all that keeps him innocent. Because knowing would get him in trouble as well, on the receiving end of punches and waking in a dusty motel room on the edge of the city. “You are here for now,” he says. “Safe. You are safe here.”

Albertson wants to laugh. The humor of the thing finally hits him. “This is a weird version of hell,” he says.

Bertrand shrugs. “It’s nothing. It’s Montreal. Are you hungry?”

“I want answers.”

Bertrand stands and heads for the door. “I’m tired of punching people,” he says, and then he is gone.

Albertson wakes up in the back of a car. He has a headache, and as he gropes his head in pain, he realizes he has been struck — he has a giant welt on the back of his head. He is alone in the car. The car is old and smells like the inside of a musty garage. And then he looks around, and sees he’s in a musty garage. It’s dark, and he can’t tell if it’s dark because it’s night or because the lights are out.

He opens the door and stumbles out of the car, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He makes out a wall and heads toward it, slowly, like a toddler learning to walk. He kicks something metallic-sounding, and hears it ricochet off a surface. He finds himself by a wall covered with cobwebs. Albertson thinks that every single awful thing that is ever going to happen to him has happened. He hates spiders.

He reaches along the wall, feeling his way through the cobwebs, over chipped paint and cracked Gyprock. He feels a light switch, and flips it on. A lightbulb casts a jaundiced yellow glow over the place, and yes, he’s in a garage, except it looks like it hasn’t been occupied in a long time. Along the opposite wall is an old worktable and some tools, but other than that, the only thing inside the room is the car. It’s a cab, a rusted Ford Fiesta that looks like it was never a very good cab — surely a Ford Fiesta is too small to be a licensed cab, even in a city like Montreal with such awful taxis.

He sees a spider crawl along the floor. The garage door is weighed down with a concrete weight that’s bolted to a chain. Whoever put him in here — and he’s guessing it was Bertrand — doesn’t want him to leave.

The light goes out. Albertson reaches for the switch, but it doesn’t work now. Where was that spider? he thinks. He hears a sound, like someone turning on a loud stereo system. Suddenly the garage is bathed in a spectacular array of lights, a disco of color; they seem to light the universe. Albertson shields his eyes, but the room is too bright. And then he hears music. Dance music. Electronic, synthetic, pulsating. The lights dance in synchronicity to the beat, and now he is surrounded by both light and music. His body is inside this thing, this aura — he cannot escape what is around him because he has been made a part of it. He runs to the car and gets back in, but there is no relief from the wash of light and ocean of music. He closes his eyes and holds his head, knowing he must escape — it is the only way.

Albertson abandons the car and heads for the garage door, but it is weighted down, far too heavy for him to lift. He’s only one man, alone and under assault, and he’s entered some crazy alternate reality. And for what? Because he saw some horses on the street? More than some, sure, a lot, that was a lot of horses, but what does it matter? Who cares about these horses and what he saw? Where is this garage? Why are these people doing this?

Why haven’t they killed me? he wonders.

Albertson stumbles over to the worktable and peers underneath it. He sees a key. He takes the key and studies the garage door, the chain, the concrete weight. The chain and weight are held together with a lock. Not even a large one at that. He puts the key into the lock and the tension of the chain is released. It whips out, and the garage door flies open.

It is day. Albertson looks around and is running as soon as he is on the street, in a part of town he doesn’t quite know. It’s suburban; the street signs are different. He figures he’s far from home. He runs. He runs past closed office buildings, warehouses, and derelict garages, much like the one he was just in. He turns onto a busy street with buildings inhabited by commerce. There’s traffic on the street, and Albertson hails a cab. When he gets inside, he asks to go home.

He steps into the apartment and of course Mrs. Sen is sitting there, in the dark, on his love seat, waiting for him. At her feet is the bag with the shit-covered shoe.

“I should probably laugh,” Albertson says. He goes to his fridge and grabs a beer, joining Mrs. Sen in the living room. “I should, shouldn’t I?”

Mrs. Sen nudges the bag toward him with her foot. “Tell me about this,” she says.

Albertson takes a pull of his beer. It feels like liquid gold going down his throat. He thinks he should probably eat, except he’s not hungry. “Tell me what’s going on,” he says.

Mrs. Sen sighs. She lets out a lot of air and sits back on the love seat. “Mr. Albertson...” she says, like she’s apologizing.

“You invite me to your place, and before that, you say something about the horses. So you got my attention. And then your husband, the judge — he’s a judge! — has his goon attack me. So I wake up in a dark room. And then I wake up in a motel. His goon is there, and attacks me again. So I wake up in the back of a cab in a disco garage...” Albertson pauses to see if Mrs. Sen has anything to say, but she just stares at him with a kind of maternal blankness, as if she were expecting disappointment. “What the fuck, Mrs. Sen?”

“Louis is my second husband.”

Albertson knows this. He finds it odd that she would make this point now, after all he’s confronted her with. This is not a response. This is nothing. A non sequitur. Why is Mrs. Sen in my apartment? he asks himself, knowing an answer is impossible.

“My first husband was a cardiologist. Dr. Sen. A very accomplished man. But he died, as you know.” She lets the information sink in. Again. She knows he knows all of this. “I’ve been married to a cardiologist, and now a judge.”

Albertson thinks back to when he’s sold Mrs. Sen shoes. He thinks of the ungodly amount of shoes she has bought from him. The Imelda Marcos amount of shoes. Her lingerie shop is always empty; she’s married to a judge.

He thinks that a normal person would go to the cops, but he doesn’t trust the cops. Not in this city. Not if a judge has old guys ready to punch him and stuff him in cabs and take him to disco garages. For the first time, Albertson is thinking of a conspiracy. Something vast. An ocean. The kind of conspiracy that doesn’t seem like anything until the anvil of it falls in front of you. Those horses were real but he’s not supposed to know about them. Bertrand told him that this went far and wide.

“Why is your husband’s friend punching me in the mouth?” he asks Mrs. Sen.

“My husband wanted to stick to law. He was an excellent lawyer. He’s told me that so many times.”

“Mrs. Sen!”

“Once, I lost my nail clippers. I found them two weeks later in a bottle of Tums.”

She’s lost her mind. Albertson can see that now. What she’s doing here is another matter. He’s not even sure how she knows where he lives. The judge has placed her here. To scare him? What has he done to his wife? She’s a shell, empty, discarded. A void.

He reaches over and takes the bag with the shit-covered shoe. It’s been out awhile now, apparently, and it’s starting to smell. The horse shit never dried; he put it in the freezer still fresh, and now it’s thawing out. He stands and takes it to the fridge. Except his bag is still in there. He opens the bag in his hand and it’s one of Mrs. Sen’s shoes — a shoe he once sold to her — and it is also covered in horse shit.

“My husband hates those shoes,” she says.

He turns and she is standing at the door to the kitchen.

“He says the color doesn’t suit the shape, or something. He’s a very intellectual man. But he doesn’t really have good taste in shoes.”

Is she crazy or speaking in code? Albertson’s head feels like it’s being struck by boulders.

“Are you even old enough to remember cassette tapes?” she asks him.

The light in the apartment changes. Night is coming. Albertson realizes he doesn’t know what time it is. He doesn’t even know if he should be tired or not.

“I cannot patronize your store any longer,” she says. “I am forbidden.”

Albertson imagines the moment before a jumper gives in to the physics of their reality. The feeling of utter loss, and freedom.

“Keep my shoe,” she says. “You might need it. I’m almost sure you will.”

She turns to leave. Albertson can’t even bring himself to call out, to ask her to wait, to ask even a single question.

Albertson wants to call someone, but he doesn’t trust his landline or his cell phone. He is likely being monitored, likely at this very moment. He paces. And then he thinks of his neighbors. What if they report him? All this pacing. It must be driving them mad. He lies on his bed. He tries to sleep. But he can only think of Bertrand and his gray suit. He keeps imagining Bertrand punching him, in slow motion, over and over. With this image, he finally falls asleep.

The phone rings. Albertson is startled and sleepily reaches for the phone.

“Don’t speak,” he hears. He thinks it’s Mrs. Sen but he can’t be sure. “Just listen. Hold on.” Albertson pinches his arm to make sure he’s awake. “The granola is in the pantry behind the cornflakes! Sorry,” she says. “Louis can’t find anything in this house. He’s useless.”

“Mrs. Sen?”

“Yes.”

Albertson doesn’t trust the phone.

“There’s a horse festival happening, up in Little Italy. Have you heard of this?”

“What?”

“I said behind the cornflakes! On the third shelf! Sorry, what did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Le Festival des Chevaliers, or something. My god, there’s a festival for everything in this city.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You know why,” Mrs. Sen says.

“No, I don’t know.”

“It’s new. It’s a horse festival. It’s in Little Italy. It has some government money from the city, and a lot of business money. Mostly construction companies.”

Albertson wishes he’d never seen the horses. He wishes he’d never stepped in horse shit. “When?” he asks.

“It starts tonight.”

“I haven’t heard about it.”

“Me neither,” Mrs. Sen whispers. “Louis told me.”

She hangs up. Albertson puts his phone down and closes his eyes. The sleep never comes. He knows what he must do.

Albertson heads up Saint-Laurent toward Little Italy. Mile End’s not far, but Little Italy is on the other side of the tracks and the crumbling underpass. The city is always claiming to fix the underpass, but then pleads poverty, makes the next neighborhood over seem farther than it is — Little Italy, and Mile Ex, a made-up neighborhood next to Little Italy where you can find beer gardens and restaurants serving foraged food, where bands consist of Casio keyboards, laptops, and two people smoking e-cigs. A neighborhood not really made by hipsters, but one created for them — both of these places are psychologically far from Mile End, even though they are nothing more than a twenty-minute walk, at most.

Before Albertson can notice the new faux diners, kitchen design stores, and dépanneurs serving artisanal toast, he’s in Little Italy, past the marble gates and into the neighborhood. There’s a sign for the horse festival, and in the park he finds people milling about, looking handsome, sipping wine. In the grandstand, Albertson sees Louis, surrounded by important- looking people; some of them are wearing top hats and fedoras. They are the only ones in the grandstand, above everyone else, and they have access to a microphone. Everyone in the park is listening to Louis. He’s the one speaking. The important- looking people are standing behind him, looking important. Albertson doesn’t see any horses.

The crowd claps. Louis has finished speaking.

Banners snap in the breeze. There are hundreds of people in the park — families, well-dressed couples, small children wearing designer clothing. Italian music plays over loudspeakers. Albertson makes his way toward the grandstand. He shouldn’t be here, he realizes. Louis might kill him. But he wants to see the horses, wants to confront Louis when the horses come out. Nothing can happen to him here. He’s safe. There are cameras and microphones. The park is well lit. Albertson smells grilled meat, and at one end of the park he sees smoke. A balloon flies above his head, toward space, free from the pull of gravity.

Albertson walks in Louis’s direction. Why are judges such big shots? he wonders.

Louis sees him and smiles. Albertson stops. He has to confront the man. The breeze shifts, the smoke from the grills swirling around him, and he finally realizes that this festival is serving horse meat.

The people are here to eat horses.

Albertson thinks: So what? You can find horse meat all over this city. You can find the stuff in the grocery store. On menus in not-particularly-ambitious restaurants. People eat horses here. People eat everything here because people like to eat. There are no foie gras protests in Montreal.

“It’s quite something,” Louis says, surveying the park with a father’s pride.

“Those horses I saw...” Albertson says.

“You did not see horses.”

“Let’s not play that game anymore.”

“You saw a run for freedom, perhaps.” Louis is still smiling. He’s won.

Albertson doesn’t know what Louis thinks he’s won, but the smile is the smile of a winner. Albertson feels hands on each of his arms, and he is slowly being led away. Two very large men in black T-shirts and dark sunglasses lead him behind the grandstand. “What is going on?” he asks.

Louis, who has followed them, stops smiling and sighs. “My wife visited you?”

Albertson sees Bertrand. He is walking toward them, a glass of red wine in hand. He puts the wine down and extends his hand. Albertson shakes it. “Your wife visited me, yes. But you knew that.”

Frank Sinatra plays over the loudspeakers, “My Way.” Albertson wants to laugh. At this touch. “No media,” he says. “Nothing. How are all these people here with no publicity?”

“Look at all the television cameras,” Louis says.

“Why didn’t the television networks cover the horses, then?”

“The horses you didn’t see?”

“I have proof I saw them.”

“And how is it that no one else saw these horses? How is it that no one in your entire neighborhood saw these galloping horses that you claim to have seen, Mr. Albertson?”

Albertson doesn’t know. He can’t even pretend to know. “My question is why you’ve gone through all this trouble.”

“Did you read the papers this morning?” Louis asks. He knows Albertson hasn’t. He’s asking rhetorical questions to prove he’s in charge.

Bertrand takes a page from that morning’s La Presse from his back pocket and unfolds it. Right there on the front, the headline reads: “The Police Cavalry Has Gone Missing.”

“We had a problem with a supplier,” Louis says. Bertrand refolds the page and puts it back in his pocket. “Not a major problem, but enough of one. And one of our sponsors said he could fix it. He had storage space too. One of his projects.”

Albertson wants to go back to sleep. “Your wife has a shit-covered shoe as well.”

“I never liked those shoes,” Louis says.

Bertrand cracks his knuckles. Albertson does his best not to flinch.

“I have discussed your situation with many people, obviously.” Louis’s tone has changed. Now it’s business. Now Albertson thinks that perhaps he will die. Right here. Surrounded by well-dressed families eating horse burgers, steaks, and sausages. “We have made some decisions.”

Albertson knows he can’t run.

“We have wondered how best to purchase your silence.”

“Who would believe me?”

“This is true. But still. We are fair people. I am, after all, a judge of the Superior Court.”

Albertson waits for laughter.

“You have been the manager of that store for... how long?”

“Almost ten years,” Albertson says.

“You know shoes. Ladies’ shoes. My wife is very fond of you, of your expertise.”

Albertson wonders what has happened to Mrs. Sen, or if she has always been off. He can’t recall now.

“We don’t want trouble.”

Albertson expects to die any second now.

“You will get your own store,” Louis says. “A boutique. Whatever you want to call it.”

“Montreal doesn’t need another store selling ladies’ shoes,” Albertson says.

“We have picked out a spot. It’s very well located. Near all the new construction in Griffintown. Or, if you would prefer, there is a spot on Laurier, on the Outremont side. But that’s a tricky street, and it’s not so good for your customers.”

“I don’t even have a store.”

“No, but you already have clientele.”

Albertson understands. It has all been fixed. Not only is he going to live, he’s going to own a business. It’s going to be patronized by some wealthy women. Louis has secured everyone’s freedom. Except Albertson does not feel free.

“All the paperwork is done and awaiting the relevant signatures. All the legalities and financials. All the construction permits.”

Albertson feels like he’s about to shit his pants.

“You will combine your contacts, your skills, with certain contacts that my people bring to the table. It will be a massive success. The media will be tremendous. We will make sure of it.”

Albertson just wants to faint. He wants to be tough and he wants to yell for help. To scream. “All that for horse sausages?” he asks.

Louis smiles again. Bertrand steps forward and punches Albertson in the face for the final time. Or maybe not. One never knows in the shoe business.