The Main

3

The phone rings.

Half of the sound blends into the eddy of a dream; half is jagged and real, still echoing in the dark room.

The phone rings again.

He swings out of bed and gropes into the dark living room. The floor is icy.

The phone ri—

“Yes! LaPointe.”

“Sorry, Lieutenant.” The voice is young. “I hate to wake you up, but—”

“Never mind that. What’s wrong?”

“A man’s been killed on your patch.” The caller’s French is accurate, but it has a continental accent. He is an Anglophone Canadian.

“Murdered?” LaPointe asks. Stupid question. Would they call him for an automobile accident? He still isn’t fully awake.

“Yes, sir. Knifed.”

“Where?”

“Little alley near the corner of Rue Lozeau and St. Dominique. That’s just across from—”

“I know where it is. When?”

“Sir?”

“When did it happen?”

“I don’t know. I just got here with Detective Sergeant Gaspard. We took an incoming from a patrol car. The Sergeant asked me to call you.”

“All right. Ten minutes.” LaPointe hangs up.

He dresses quickly, with fumbling hands. As he leaves he remembers to take the paper bag of garbage with him. He may not get back in time for the collection.

It is three-thirty, the coldest part of the night. Following the pattern of this pig weather, the overcast has lifted with the early hours of morning, taking with it the smell of city soot. The air is still and crystalline, and the exhaust from a patrol car parked halfway up the narrow alley shoots a long funnel of vapor out into the street. A revolving roof light skids shafts of red along the brick walls and over the chests and faces of the half-dozen policemen and detectives working around the corpse. Bursts of blue-white glare periodically fill the alley, freezing men in mid-gesture, as the forensic photographer takes shots from every angle. Two uniformed officers stand guard at the mouth of the alley, tears of cold in their eyes, their gloved fingers under their armpits for warmth.

Despite the cold and the hour, a small knot of rubbernecks has gathered at the mouth of the alley. They move about and stand on tiptoe to catch glimpses, and they talk to one another in hushed, confidential tones, instant friends by virtue of shared experience.

LaPointe crosses the street just as an ambulance pulls up. He stands for a time on the rim of the knot of onlookers, unobtrusively joining them. Some maniac killers, like some arsonists, like to blend with the crowd and experience the effects of their actions.

There is a street bomme in conversation with a small uncertain man whose chin is buried in a thick wrap of scarf. This latter looks out of place here, like a bank clerk, or an accountant. LaPointe lays his hands on the shoulder of the bomme.

“Oh, hi-ya, Lieutenant.”

“What are you doing up at this end of the street, Red?”

“It got too cold in that doorway. The wind shifted. It was better walking around.”

LaPointe looks into the tramp’s eyes. He is not lying. “All the same, stay around. Got any fric?”

“None I can spend.” Like most clochards, Dirtyshirt Red always keeps a dollar or two stashed back for really hard times.

“Here.” LaPointe gives him a quarter. “Get some coffee.” With a jerk of his head he indicates the all-night Roi des Frites joint across the street.

The clerk, or accountant, or pederast, moves away from the bomme. Anyone on talking terms with a policeman can’t be perfectly trustworthy.

LaPointe looks up and down the street. The air is so cold and clear that streetlights seem to glitter, and the corners of buildings a block away have sharp, neat edges, like theatrical sets. Everyone’s breath is vapor, twin jets when they exhale through their noses. From somewhere there comes the homey, yeasty smell of bread. The bakeries would be working at this hour, men stripped to the waist in hot back rooms, sweating with the heat of ovens.

As LaPointe turns back toward the alley, it starts. A light, rather pleasant tingle in his chest, as though his blood were carbonated. God damn it. A rippling fatigue drains his body and loosens his knees. A constriction swells in his chest, and little bands of pain arc across his upper arms. He leans against the brick wall and breathes deeply and slowly, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible. There are dark patches in his vision, and bright dots. The flashing red light atop the police car begins to blur.

“Lieutenant LaPointe?”

The chest constrictions start to ebb, and the stabs of pain in his arms become duller.

“Sir?”

Slowly, his body weight returns as the sense of floating deflates. He dares a deep breath taken in little sucks to test for pain.

“Lieutenant LaPointe?”

“What, for Christ’s sake!”

The young man recoils from the violence of the response. “My name’s Guttmann, sir.”

“That’s your problem.”

“I’m working with Detective Sergeant Gaspard.”

“That’s his problem.”

“I was the one who telephoned you.” The young officer-in-training’s voice is stiff with resentment at LaPointe’s uncalled-for sarcasm. “Sergeant Gaspard is down the alley. He asked me to keep an eye out for you.”

LaPointe grunts. “Well?”

“Sir?”

LaPointe settles his heavy melancholy eyes on the OIT. “You say Gaspard is waiting for me?”

“Yes, sir. Oh. Follow me, sir.”

LaPointe shakes his head in general criticism of young policemen as he follows Guttmann into the alley where a bareheaded photographer from the forensic lab is packing up the last of his equipment.

“That you, LaPointe?” Gaspard asks from the dark. Like a handful of the most senior men on the force, Gaspard tutoyers LaPointe, but he never uses his first name. In fact, most of them would have to search their memories to come up with his first name.

LaPointe lifts a hand in greeting, then drops the fist back into the pocket of his rumpled overcoat.

The forensic photographer tells Gaspard that he is going back to the Quartier Général with the film. He will get it into an early batch, and it will be developed by mid-morning. He sniffs back draining sinuses and grumbles, “Colder than a witch’s écu!”

“Titon,” Gaspard corrects absent-mindedly, as he shakes hands with LaPointe.

“We haven’t searched the body yet. We’ve been waiting for Flash Gordon here to take the class pictures.” Gaspard addresses the photographer. “Well? If you’re through, I’ll let my men move the bundle.”

The victim is a young male dressed in a trendy suit with belled trousers, a shirt with a high rolled collar, and shoes of patent leather. He had dropped to his knees when stabbed, then he had fallen forward. LaPointe has never seen a corpse in that posture: on its knees, its buttocks on its heels, its face pressed into the gravel, its arms stretched out with the palms down. It looks like a young priest serving High Mass, and showing off with excessive self-abasement.

LaPointe feels sorry for it A corpse can look ugly, or peaceful, or tortured; but it’s too bad to look silly. Unfair.

Guttmann and another detective turn the body over to examine the pockets for identification. A piece of gravel is embedded in the boy’s smooth cheek. Guttmann flicks it off, but a pink triangular dent remains.

LaPointe mutters to himself, “Heart.”

“What?” Gaspard asks, tapping out a cigarette.

“Must have been stabbed through the heart.” Without touching each of the logical steps, LaPointe’s experience told him that there were only two ways the body could have ended up in that comic posture. Either it had been stabbed in the heart and died instantly, or it had been stabbed in the stomach and had tried to cover up the cold hole. But there was no smell of excrement, and a man stabbed in the stomach almost always soils himself through sphincter convulsion. Therefore, heart.

To turn the body over, the detectives have to straighten it out first. They lift it from under its arms and pull it forward, unfolding it. When they lower it to the pavement, the young face touches the ground.

“Careful!” LaPointe says automatically.

Guttmann glances up, assuming he is being blamed for something. He already dislikes the bullying LaPointe. He doesn’t have much use for the old-time image of the tough cop who uses fists and wisetalk, rather than brains and understanding. He has heard about LaPointe of the Main from admiring young French Canadian cops, and the Lieutenant is true to Guttmann’s predicted stereotype.

Sergeant Gaspard pinches one of his ears to restore feeling to the lobe. “First time I’ve ever seen one kneeling like that. Looked like an altar boy.”

For a moment, LaPointe finds it odd that they had similar images of the body’s posture. But, after all, they share both age and cultural background. Neither of them is a confessing Catholic any longer, but they were brought up with a simple fundamentalist Catholicism that would define them forever, define them negatively, as a mold negatively defines a casting. They are non-Catholics, which is a very different thing from being a non-Protestant or a non-Jew.

The detectives go through the pockets routinely, one putting the findings into a clear plastic bag with a press seal, while Guttmann makes a list, tipping his note pad back awkwardly to catch the light from the street.

“That’s it?” Gaspard asks as Guttmann closes his notebook and blows on his numb fingers.

“Yes, sir. Not much. No wallet. No identification. Some small change, keys, a comb—that sort of thing.”

Gaspard nods and gestures to the ambulance attendants who are waiting with a wheeled stretcher. With professional adroitness and indifference, they turn the body onto the stretcher and roll it toward the back doors of the ambulance. The cart rattles over the uneven brick pavement, and one arm flops down, the dead hand palsied with the vibrations.

They will deliver it to the Forensic Medicine Department, where it will be fingerprinted and examined thoroughly, together with the clothes and articles found in the pockets. The prints will be telephoned to Ottawa, and by morning Dr. Bouvier, the department pathologist, should have a full report, including a make on the victim’s identity.

“Who found the body?” LaPointe asks Gaspard.

“Patrol car. Those two officers on guard.”

“Have you talked to them?”

“No, not yet. Did you recognize the stiff?” It is generally assumed that LaPointe knows by sight everyone who lives around the Main.

“No. Never saw him before.”

“Looked Portuguese.”

LaPointe thrusts out his lower lip and shrugs. “Or Italian. The clothes were more Italian.”

As they walk back to the mouth of the alley, the ambulance departs, squealing its tires unnecessarily. LaPointe stops before the uniformed men on guard. “Which of you found the body?”

“I did, Lieutenant LaPointe,” says the nearest one quickly. He has the rectangular face of a peasant, and his accent is Chiac. It is a misfortune to speak Chiac, because there is a tradition of dour stupidity associated with the half-swallowed sound; it is a hillbilly accent used by comics to enhance tired jokes.

“Come with us,” LaPointe says to the Chiac officer, and to his disappointed partner, “You can wait in the car. And turn that damned thing off.” He indicates the revolving red light.

LaPointe, Gaspard, Guttmann, and the Chiac officer cross the street to the Roi des Frites. The policeman left behind is glad to get out of the cold, but he envies his partner’s luck. He would give anything to take coffee with LaPointe. He could just see the faces of the guys in the locker room when he dropped casually, “Lieutenant LaPointe and I were having a coffee together, and he turns to me and says…” Someone would throw a towel at him and tell him he was full of shit up to his eyebrows.

Dirtyshirt Red rises when the policemen enter the bright interior of the all-night coffee place, but LaPointe motions him to sit down again. Quite automatically, he has already taken over the investigation, although Gaspard from homicide is technically in charge of it. It is an unspoken law in the department that what happens on the Main belongs to LaPointe. And who else would want it?

The four men sit at a back table, warming their palms on the thick earthenware cups. The Chiac officer is a little nervous—he wants to look good in front of Lieutenant LaPointe; even more, he doesn’t want to seem a boob in relation to this Anglo tagging along with Sergeant Gaspard.

“By the way, have you met my Joan?” Gaspard asks LaPointe.

“I met him.” LaPointe glances at the big-boned young man. Must be a bright lad. You only get into the OIT apprentice program if you are in the top 10 percent of your academy class, and then only after you have done a year of service and have the recommendation of your direct superior.

When LaPointe began on the force, there were almost no Anglo cops. The pay was too low; the job had too little prestige; and the French Canadians who made up the bulk of the department were not particularly kind to interlopers.

“He’s not a bad type, for a Roundhead,” Gaspard says, indicating his apprentice, and speaking as though he were not present. “And God knows it’s not hard to teach him. There’s nothing he already knows.”

The Chiac officer grins, and Guttmann tries to laugh it off.

Gaspard drinks off the last of his coffee and taps on the window to get the attention of the counterman for a refill. “Robbery, eh?” he says to LaPointe.

“I suppose so. No wallet. Only change in the pockets. But…”

Gaspard is an old-timer too. “I know what you mean. No signs of a fight.”

LaPointe nods. The victim was a big, strong-looking boy in his mid-twenties. Well built. Probably the kind who lifts weights while he looks darkly at himself in a mirror. If he had resisted the theft, there would have been signs of it. On the other hand, if he had simply handed over his wallet, why would the mugger knife him?

“Could be a nut case,” Gaspard suggests.

LaPointe shrugs.

“Christ, we need that sort of thing like the Pope needs a Wassermann,” Gaspard says. “Thank God there was a robbery.”

The Chiac patrolman has been listening, maintaining a serious expression and making every effort to participate intelligently. That is, he has been keeping his mouth shut and nodding with each statement made by the older men. But now his cold-mottled forehead wrinkles into a frown. Why is it fortunate that there was a robbery? He lacks the experience to sense that there was something not quite right about the killing… something about the position of the body that makes both LaPointe and Gaspard intuitively uncomfortable. If there had been no robbery, this might have been the start of something nasty. Like rape mutilations, motiveless stabbings are likely to erupt in patterns. You get a string of four or five before the maniac gets scared or, less often, caught. It’s the kind of thing the newspapers love.

“I’ll walk it around for a few days,” LaPointe says. “See what Bouvier’s report gives us. You don’t mind if I take it on, do you?” The question is only pro forma. LaPointe feels that all crime on his patch belongs to him by right, but he is careful of the feelings of the other senior men.

“Be my guest,” Gaspard says with a wave of his arm that indicates he is happy to be rid of the mess. “And if I ever get the clap, you can have that, too.”

“I’ll route the paper work through you, so we don’t upset the Masters.”

Gaspard nods. That is the way LaPointe usually works. It avoids direct run-ins with the administration. There is nothing official about LaPointe’s assignment to the Main. In fact, there is no organizational rubric that covers him. The administration slices crime horizontally into categories: theft, bunco, vice, homicide. LaPointe’s responsibility is a vertical one: all the crime on the Main. This assignment was never planned, never officially recognized, it just developed as a matter of chance and tradition; and there are those in authority who chafe at this rupture of the organizational chain. They consider it ridiculous that a full lieutenant spends his time crawling around the streets like a short timer. But they console themselves with the realization that LaPointe is an anachronism, a vestige of older, less efficient methods. He will be retiring before long; then they can repair the administrative breach.

LaPointe turns to the uniformed policeman. “You found the body?”

Caught off guard, and wanting to respond alertly, the Chiac cop gulps, “Yes, sir.”

There is a brief silence. Then LaPointe lifts his palms and opens his eyes wide as if to say, “Well?”

The young officer glances across at Guttmann as he tugs out his notebook. The leather folder has a little loop to hold a pen. It’s the kind of thing a parent or girlfriend might have given him when he graduated from the academy. He clears his throat. “We were cruising. My partner was driving slowly because I was checking license plates against the watch list of stolen cars—”

“What did you have for breakfast?” Gaspard asks.

“Pardon me, sir?” The Chiac officer’s ears redden.

“Get on with it, for Christ’s sake.”

“Yes, sir. We passed the alley at… ah… well, let’s see. I wrote the note about ten minutes later, so that would put us at the alley at two-forty or two-forty-five. I saw a movement down the alley, but we had passed it by the time I told my partner to stop. He backed up and I got a glance of a man hopping down the alley. I jumped out and started to chase him, then I came across the body.”

“You gave pursuit?” LaPointe asks.

“Well… yes, sir. That is, after I discovered that the guy on the ground was dead, I ran to the end of the alley after the other one. But he had disappeared. The street was empty.”

“Description?”

“Not much, sir. Just caught a glimpse as he hopped away. Tallish. Thin. Well, not fat. Hard to tell. He had on a big shabby overcoat, sort of like…” The officer quickly looks away from LaPointe’s shapeless overcoat. “…you know. Just an old overcoat.”

LaPointe seems to be concentrating on a rivulet of condensed water running down the steamy window beside him. “Il a clopiné?” he asks without looking at the officer. “That’s twice you said the man ‘hopped’ off. Why do you choose that word?”

The young man shrugs. “I don’t know, sir. That’s what he seemed to do… sort of hobble off. But quick, you know?”

“And he was dressed shabbily?”

“I had that impression, sir. But it was dark, you know.”

LaPointe looks down at the tabletop as he taps his lips with his knuckle. Then he sniffs and sighs. “Tell me about his hat.”

“His hat?” The young officer’s eyebrows rise. “I don’t remember any…” His expression seems to spread. “Yes! His hat! A big floppy hat. Dark color. I don’t know how that could have slipped my mind. It was kind of like a cowboy hat, but the brim was floppy, you know?”

For the first time since they entered the Roi des Frites, Guttmann speaks up in his precise European French, the kind Canadians call “Parisian,” but which is really modeled on the French of Tours. “You know who the man is, don’t you, Lieutenant? The one who ran off?”

“Yes.”

Gaspard yawns and rubs his legs. “Well, there it is! You see, kid? You’re learning from me how to solve cases. Just talk people into committing their crimes on the Main, and turn them over to LaPointe. Nothing to it. It’s all in the wrist.” He speaks to LaPointe. “So it’s routine after all. The guy was stabbed for his money, and you know who…”

But LaPointe is shaking his head. It’s not that simple. “No. The man this officer saw running away is a street bomme. I know him. I don’t think he would kill.”

“How do you know that, sir?” Guttmann’s young face is intense and intelligent. “What I mean is… anyone can kill, given the right circumstances. People who would never steal might kill.”

With weary slowness, LaPointe turns his patient fatigued eyes on the Anglo.

“Ah…” Gaspard says, “did I mention that my Joan here had been to college?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Oh, yeah! He’s been through it all. Books, grades, long words, theories, raise your hand to go to the bathroom—one finger for pee-pee, two for ca-ca.” Gaspard turns to Guttmann, who takes a long-suffering breath. “One thing I’ve always wondered, kid,” Gaspard pursues. “Maybe you can tell me from all your education. How come a man grins when he’s shitting a particularly hard turd? I mean, it isn’t all that much fun, really.”

Guttmann ignores Gaspard; he looks directly at LaPointe. “But what I said is true, isn’t it? People who would never steal might kill, under the right circumstances?”

The kid’s eyes are frank and vulnerable and they shine with suppressed embarrassment and anger. After a second, LaPointe answers, “Yes. That’s true.”

Gaspard grunts as he stands and stretches his settled spine. “Okay, it’s your package, LaPointe. Me, I’m going home. I’ll collect the reports in the morning and send them over to you.” Then Gaspard gets an idea. “Hey! Want to do me a favor? How about taking my Joan here for a few days? Give him a chance to see how you do your dirty work. What do you say?”

The Chiac officer’s mouth opens. These goddamned Roundheads get all the luck.

LaPointe frowns. They never assign Joans to him, just as they never give him committee work. They know better.

“Come on,” Gaspard persists. “He can sort of be liaison between my shop and yours. Take him off my back for a few days. He cramps my style. How can I pick up a quick piece of ass with him hanging around all the time, taking notes?”

LaPointe shrugs. “All right. For a couple of days.”

“Great,” Gaspard says. As he buttons his overcoat up to the neck, he looks out the window. “Look at this goddamned weather, will you! It’s already socking in again. By dawn the clouds will be back. Have you ever seen the snow hold off so long? And every night it gets cold as a witch’s tit.”

LaPointe’s mind is elsewhere. He corrects Gaspard thoughtlessly. “écu. Cold as a witch’s écu.”

“You’re sure it’s not tit?”

“écu.”

Gaspard looks down at Guttmann. “You see, kid? You’re going to learn a lot with LaPointe. Okay, men, I’m off. Keep crime off the streets and in the home, where it belongs.”

The Chiac officer follows Gaspard out into the windy night. They get into the patrol car and drive off, leaving the street totally empty.

“Thanks, Lieutenant,” Guttmann says. “I hope you don’t feel railroaded into taking me on.”

But LaPointe has already crooked his finger at Dirtyshirt Red, who shuffles over to the table. “Sit down, Red.” LaPointe shifts to English because it’s Red’s only language, the language of success. “Have you seen the Vet tonight?”

Dirtyshirt Red makes a face. Over the years he has fostered a fine hatred for his fellow bomme, with all his blowing off about being a war hero, and always bragging about his great kip—a snug sleeping place he has hidden away somewhere. A comforting idea strikes Dirtyshirt Red.

“Is he in trouble, Lieutenant? He’s a badass, believe you me. I wouldn’t put nothin’ past him! What’s he done, Lieutenant?”

LaPointe settles his melancholy eyes on the bomme.

“Okay,” Red says quickly. “Sorry. Yeah, I seen him. Down Chez Pete’s Place, maybe ‘bout six, seven o’clock.”

“And you haven’t seen him since?”

“No. I left to go down to the Greek bakery and get some toppins promised me. I didn’t want that potlickin’ son of a bitch hanging around trying to horn in. He’s harder to shake than snot off a fingernail.”

“Listen, Red. I want to talk to the Vet. You ask around. He could be holed up somewhere because he probably got a lot of drinking money tonight.”

The thought of his fellow tramp coming into a bit of luck infuriates Dirtyshirt Red. “That wino son of a bitch, the potlickin’ splat of birdshit! Morviat! Fartbubble! Him and his snug pad off somewheres! I wouldn’t put nothin’ past him…”

Dirtyshirt Red continues his flow of bile, but it is lost on LaPointe, who is staring out the window where beads of condensation make double rubies of the taillights of predawn traffic. Trucks, mostly. Vegetables coming into market. He feels disconnected from events; a kind of generalized déjà vu. It’s all happened before. Some different kid, killed in some different way, found in some different place; and LaPointe sorting it out in some other café, looking out some other window at some other predawn street. It really doesn’t matter very much anymore. He’s tired.

Without seeming to, Guttmann has been examining LaPointe’s reflection in the window. He has, of course, heard tales about the Lieutenant, his control over the Main, his dry indifference to authorities within the department and to political influences without, improbable myths concerning his courage. Guttmann is intelligent enough to have discounted two-thirds of these epic fables as the confections of French officers seeking an ethnic hero against the Anglophonic authorities.

Physically, LaPointe satisfies Guttmann’s preconceptions: the wide face with its deep-set eyes that is practically a map of French Canada; the mat of graying hair that appears to have been combed with the fingers; and of course the famous rumpled overcoat. But there are aspects that Guttmann had not anticipated, things that contradict his caricature of the tough cop. There is a quality that might be called “distance”; a tendency to stay on the outer rim of things, withdrawn and almost daydreaming. Then too, there is something disturbing in LaPointe’s patient composure, in the softness of his husky voice, in the crinkling around his eyes that makes him seem… the only word that Guttmann can come up with is “paternal.” He recalls that the young French policemen sometimes refer to him as “Papa LaPointe,” not that anyone dares to call him that within his hearing.

“…and that potlickin’ cockroach—that gnat—tells everybody what a hero he was in the war! That pimple on a whore’s ass—that wart—tells everybody what a nice private kip he’s got! That son of a bitch gnat-wart tells—”

With the lift of a hand, LaPointe cuts short Dirtyshirt Red’s flow of hate, just as he is getting up steam. “That’s enough. You ask around for the Vet. If you locate him, call down to the QG. You know the number.” With a tip of his head, LaPointe dismisses the bomme, who shuffles to the door and out into the night.

Guttmann leans forward. “This Vet is the man with the floppy hat?”

LaPointe frowns at the young policeman, as though he has just become aware of his presence. “Why don’t you go home?”

“Sir?”

“There’s nothing more we can do tonight. Go home and get some sleep. I’ll see you at my office tomorrow.”

Guttmann reacts to the Lieutenant’s cool tone. “Listen, Lieutenant. I know that Gaspard sort of dumped me on you. If you’d rather not…” He shrugs.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Guttmann looks down at the Formica tabletop. He sucks a slow breath between his teeth. Being with LaPointe isn’t going to be much fun. “All right, sir. I’ll be there at eight.”

LaPointe yawns and scrubs his matted hair with his palm. “You’re going to have a hell of a wait. I’m tired. I won’t be in until ten or eleven.”

After Guttmann leaves, LaPointe sits looking through the window with unfocused eyes. He feels too tired and heavy to push himself up and trudge back to the cold apartment. But… he can’t sit here all night. He rises with a grunt.

Because the streets are otherwise empty, LaPointe notices a couple standing on a corner. They are embracing, and the man has enclosed her in his overcoat. They press together and sway. It’s four-thirty in the morning and cold, and their only shelter is his overcoat. LaPointe glances away, unwilling to intrude on their privacy.

When he turns the corner of Avenue Esplanade, the wind flexes his collar. Litter and dust swirl in miniature whirlwinds beside iron-railed basement wells. LaPointe’s body needs oxygen; each breath has the quality of a sigh.

A slight movement in the park catches his eye. A shadow on one of the benches at the twilight rim of a lamplight pool. Someone sitting there. At the foot of his long wooden stoop, he turns and looks again. The person has not moved. It is a woman, or a child. The shadow is so thin it doesn’t seem that she is wearing a coat. LaPointe climbs a step or two, then he turns back, crosses the street, and enters the park through a creaking iron gate.

Though she should be able to hear the gravel crunching under his approaching feet, the young girl does not move. She sits with her knees up, her heels against her buttocks, arms wrapped around her legs, face pressed into her long paisley granny gown. Beside her, placed so as to block some of the wind, is a shopping bag with loop handles. It is not until LaPointe’s shadow almost touches her that she looks up, startled. Her face is thin and pale, and her left eye is pinched into a squint by a bruise, the bluish stain of which spreads to her cheekbone.

“Are you all right?” he asks in English. The granny gown makes him assume she is Anglo; he associates the new, the modern, the trendy with the Anglo culture.

She does not answer. Her expression is a mixture of defiance and helplessness.

“Where do you live?” he asks.

Her chin still on her knees, she looks at him with steady, untrusting eyes. Her jaw takes on a hard line because she is clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering. Then she squints at him appraisingly. “You want to take me home with you?” she asks in Joual French, her voice flat; perhaps with fatigue, perhaps with indifference.

“No. I want to know where you live.” He doesn’t mean to sound hard and professional, but he is tired, and her direct, dispassionate proposition took him unawares.

“It’s none of your business.”

Her sass is a little irritating, but she’s right; it’s no business of his. Kids like this drift onto the Main every day. Flotsam. Losers. They’re no business of his, until they get into trouble. After all, he can’t take care of them all. He shrugs and turns away.

“Hey?”

He turns back.

“Well? Are you going to take me home with you, or not?” There is nothing coquettish in her tone. She is broke and has no place to sleep; but she does have an écu. It’s a matter of barter.

LaPointe sighs and scratches his hairline. She appears to be in her early twenties, younger than LaPointe’s daydream children. It’s late and he’s tired, and this girl is nothing to him. A skinny kid with a gamine face spoiled by that silly-looking black eye, and anything but attractive in the oversized man’s cardigan that is her only protection against the wind. The backs of her hands are mottled with cold and purple in the fluorescent streetlight.

Not attractive, probably dumb; a loser. But what if she turned up as a rape statistic in the Morning Report?

“All right,” he says. “Come on.” Even as he says it, he regrets it. The last thing he needs is a scruffy kid cluttering up his apartment.

She makes a movement as though to rise, then she looks at him sideways. He is an old man to her, and she knows all about old men. “I don’t do anything… special,” she warns him matter-of-factly.

He feels a sudden flash of anger. She’s younger than his daughters, for Christ’s sake! “Are you coming?” he asks impatiently.

There is only a brief pause before she shrugs with protective indifference, rises, and takes up her shopping bag. They walk side by side toward the gate. At first he thinks she is stiff with the cold and with sitting all huddled up. Then he realizes that she has a limp; one leg is shorter than the other, and the shopping bag scrapes against her knee as she walks.

He opens his apartment door and reaches around to turn on the red-and-green overhead lamp, then he steps aside and she precedes him into the small living room. Because the putty has rotted out of the big bow windows, they rattle in the wind, and the apartment is colder than the hallway.

As soon as he closes the door, he feels awkward. The room seems cramped, too small for two people. Without taking off his overcoat, he bends down and lights the gas in the fireplace. He squats there, holding down the lever until the limp blue flames begin to make the porcelain nipples glow orange.

Oddly, she is more at ease than he. She crosses to the window and looks down at the park bench where she was sitting a few minutes ago. She rubs her upper arms, but she prefers not to join him near the fire. She doesn’t want to seem to need anything that’s his.

With a grunt, LaPointe stands up from the gas fire. “There. It’ll be warm soon. You want some coffee?”

She turns down the corners of her mouth and shrugs.

“Does that mean you want coffee, or not?”

“It means I don’t give a shit one way or the other. If you want to give me coffee, I’ll drink it. If not…” Again she shrugs and squeeks a little air through tight lips.

He can’t help smiling to himself. She thinks she’s so goddamned tough. And that shrug of hers is so downriver.

The French Canadian’s vocabulary of shrugs is infinite in nuance and paraverbal articulation. He can shrug by lifting his shoulders, or by depressing them. He shrugs by glancing aside, or by squinting. By turning over his hands, or simply lifting his thumbs. By sliding his lower lip forward, or by tucking down the corners of his mouth. By closing his eyes, or by spreading his face. By splaying his fingers; by pushing his tongue against his teeth; by tightening his neck muscles; by raising one eyebrow, or both; by widening his eyes; by cocking his head. And by all combinations and permutations of these. Each shrug means a different thing; each combination means more than two different things at the same time. But in all the shrugs, his fundamental attitude toward the role of fate and the feebleness of Man is revealed.

LaPointe smiles at her tough little shrug, a smile of recognition. While he is in the kitchen putting the kettle on, she moves over to the mantel, pretending to be interested in the photographs arranged in standing frames. In this way she can soak up warmth from the gas fire without appearing to need or want it. As soon as he returns, she steps away as nonchalantly as possible.

“Who’s that?” she asks, indicating the photographs.

“My wife.”

Her swollen eye almost closes as she squints at him in disbelief. The woman in the photos must be twenty-five or thirty years younger than this guy. And you only have to look around this dump to know no woman lives here. But if he wants to pretend he has a wife, it’s no skin off her ass.

He realizes the room is still cold, and he feels awkward to be wearing a big warm overcoat while she has nothing but that oversized cardigan. He tugs off the coat and drops it over a chair. It occurs to him to give her his bathrobe, so he goes into the bedroom to find it, then he steps into the bathroom and starts running hot water in the deep tub with its claw feet. He notices how messy the bathroom is. He is swishing dried whiskers out of the basin when he realizes that the coffee water must have dripped through by now, so he starts back, forgetting the robe and having to go back for it.

Christ, it’s complicated having a guest in your house! Who needs it?

“Here,” he says grumpily. “Put this on.” She regards the old wool robe with caution, then she shrugs and slips it on. Enveloped in it, she looks even smaller and thinner than before, and clownlike, with that frizzy dustmop of a hairstyle that the kids wear these days. A clown with a black eye. A child-whore with a street vocabulary in which foutre and fourrer do most of the work of faire, and with everything she owns in a shopping bag.

LaPointe is in the kitchen, pouring out the coffee and adding a little water from the kettle because it is strong and she is only a kid, when he hears her laugh. It’s a vigorous laugh, lasting only six or eight notes, then stopping abruptly, still on the ascent, like the cry of a gamebird hit on the rise.

When he steps into the living room, carrying her cup, she is standing before the mirror that hangs on the back of the door; her face is neutral and bland; there is no trace of the laugh in her eyes. He asks, “What is it? What’s wrong? Is it the robe?”

“No.” She accepts the coffee. “It’s my eye. It’s the first time I’ve seen it.”

“You find it funny, your eye?”

“Why not?” She brings her cup over to the sofa and sits, her short leg tucked up under her buttock. She has a habit of sitting that way. She finds it comfortable. It has nothing to do with her limp. Not really.

He sits in his overstuffed chair opposite as she sips the hot coffee, looking into the cup as a child does. That laugh of hers, so total and so brief, has made him feel more comfortable with her. Most girls would have expressed horror or self-pity to see their faces marred. “Who hit you?” he asks.

She shrugs and blows a puff of air in a typically Canadian gesture of indifference. “A man.”

“Why?”

“He promised me I could spend the night, but afterward he changed his mind.”

“And you raised hell?”

“Sure. Wouldn’t you?”

He leans his head back and smiles. “It’s a little hard to imagine being in the situation.”

She stops in mid-sip and sets the cup down, looking at him levelly. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Why’d you say it then?”

“Forget it. You’re from out of town, aren’t you?”

She is suddenly wary. “How’d you know that?”

“You have a downriver accent. I was born in Trois Rivières myself.”

“So?” She picks up her cup again and sips, watching him closely, wondering if he’s trying to get something for nothing with all this friendly talk.

He makes a sudden movement forward, remembering the bath he is running.

Her cup rattles as she jerks back and lifts an arm to protect herself.

Then he realizes the tub won’t be half full yet. Water runs slowly through the old pipes. He sits back in his chair. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You didn’t startle me! I’m not afraid of you!” She is angry to have cowered so automatically after her swaggering talk.

Is this the same kid who just now was laughing at herself in the mirror? Pauvre gamine. Tough; sassy; vulnerable; scared. “I thought the tub might be overflowing. That’s why I jumped up. I’m drawing a bath for you.”

“I don’t want any goddamned bath!”

“It will warm you up.”

“I’m not even sure I want to stay here.”

“Then finish your coffee and go.”

“I don’t even want your fucking coffee!” She stares at him, her narrow chin jutting out in defiance. Nobody bosses her around.

He closes his eyes and sighs deeply. “Go on. Take your bath,” he says quietly.

In fact, the thought of a deep hot bath… All right. She would take a bath. To spite him.

Steam billows out when she opens the bathroom door. The water is so hot that she has to get in bit by bit, dipping her butt tentatively before daring to lower herself down. Her arms seem to float in the water above her small breasts. The heat makes her sleepy.

When she comes back into the living room, dressed only in his robe, he is sitting in the armchair, his chin down and his eyes closed. Heat from the gas burner has built up in the room, and she feels heavy and very drowsy. Might as well get it over with and get some sleep.

“Are you ready?” she asks. “If you’re not, I can help you.” She lets the front of the robe hang open. That ought to get him started.

He blinks away the deep daydream about his daughters and the Laval house, and turns his head to look at her. She’s so thin that there are hollows in her pelvis. The black tangle of hair at the écu has a wiry look. One knee is slightly bent to keep the weight on both feet. The breasts are so small that there is a flat of chestbone between them.

“Cover yourself up,” he says. “You’ll catch cold.”

“Now just a minute,” she says warily. “I told you in the park that I don’t do anything special—”

“I know!”

She takes his anger as proof that he had hoped for some kind of old man’s perversion.

He stands up. “Look, I’m tired. I’m going to bed. You sleep here.” While she was in the bath, he had made up the sofa, taking one of the pillows from his bed and pulling down two Hudson Bay blankets from the shelf in the closet. They smelled a little of dust, but there is nothing as warm as a Hudson Bay. There is no sheet. He owns only four, and he hasn’t picked up his laundry yet this week. He thought of giving her his, but they are not clean. Nothing in the apartment is prepared for visitors. Since Lucille’s death, there have never been any.

She slowly closes the robe. So he really hadn’t meant for them to sleep together at all. Maybe it’s the leg. Maybe he doesn’t like the thought of screwing a cripple. She’s met others like that. Well, to hell with him. She doesn’t care.

While he is rinsing out the cup and emptying the coffee-maker in the kitchen, she makes herself comfortable on the sofa and pulls the heavy blankets over her. Only when the delicious weight is pressing on her does she realize how tired she is. It almost hurts her bones to relax.

On his way to the bedroom, he turns off the gas. “You don’t need it while you’re sleeping. It’s bad for the lungs.”

Who the hell does he think he is? Her father?

When he turns off the overhead light, the windows that seemed black become gray with the first damp light of dawn. He pauses at the bedroom door. “What’s your name, by the way?”

Sleepiness already rising in the dry wick of her fatigue, she mutters, “Marie-Louise.”

“Well… good night then, Marie-Louise.”

She hums, half annoyed by the fact that he keeps talking. It doesn’t occur to her to ask his name.