The Main

5

By the time they cross Sherbrooke, the last greenish light is draining from sallow cloud layers over the city. Streetlights are already on, and the sidewalks are beginning to clog with pedestrians. A raw wind has come up, puffing in vagrant gusts around corners and carrying dust that is gritty between the teeth. The cold makes tears stand in Guttmann’s eyes, and the skin of his face feels tight, but it doesn’t seem to penetrate the Lieutenant’s shaggy overcoat hanging to his mid-calves. Guttmann would like to pace along more quickly to heat up the blood, but LaPointe’s step is measured, and his eyes scan the street from side to side, automatically searching out little evidences of trouble.

As they pass a shop, LaPointe takes his hand from his pocket and lifts it in greeting. A bald little man with a green eyeshade waves back.

Guttmann looks up at the sign overhead:

“Buttonholes?” Guttmann asks. “This guy makes buttonholes? What kind of business is that?”

LaPointe repeats one of the street’s ancient jokes. “It would be a wonderful business, if Mr. Klein didn’t have to provide the material.”

Guttmann doesn’t quite get it. He has no way of knowing that no one on the Main quite gets that joke either, but they always repeat it because it has the sound of something witty.

Each time they pass a bar, the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke greets them for a second before it is blown away by the raw wind. Halfway up St. Laurent, LaPointe turns in at a run-down bar called Chez Pete’s Place. It is fuggy and dark inside, and the proprietor doesn’t bother to look up from the girlie magazine in his lap when the policemen enter.

Three men sit around a table in back, one a tall, boney tramp with a concave chest who has the shakes so badly that he is drinking his wine from a beer mug. The other two are arguing drunkenly across the table, pounding it sometimes, to the confused distress of the third.

“Floyd Patterson wasn’t shit! He never… he couldn’t… he wasn’t shit, compared to Joe Louis.”

“Ah, that’s your story! Floyd Patterson had a great left. He had what you call one of your world’s great lefts! He could hit… anything.”

“Ah, he couldn’t… he couldn’t punch his way out of a wet paper bag! I used to know a guy who told me that he wasn’t shit, compared to Joe Louis. You know… do you know what they used to call Joe Louis?”

“I don’t care what they called him! I don’t give a big rat’s ass!”

“They used to call Joe Louis… Gentleman Joe. Gentleman Joe! What do you think of that?”

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why did they call him Gentleman Joe?”

“Why? Why? Because… because that Floyd Patterson couldn’t punch worth shit, that’s why. Ask anybody!”

LaPointe crosses to the group. “Has anyone seen Dirtyshirt Red today?”

They look at one another, each hoping the question is directed to someone else.

“You,” LaPointe says to a little man with a narrow forehead and a large, stubbly Adam’s apple.

“No, Lieutenant. I ain’t seen him.”

“He was in a couple hours ago,” the other volunteers. “He asked around about the Vet.” The name of this universally detested tramp brings grunts from several bommes at other tables. No one has any stomach for the Vet, with his uppity ways and his bragging.

“And what did he find out?”

“Not much, Lieutenant. We told him the Vet come in here late last night.”

“How late?”

The proprietor lifts his head from the skin magazine and listens.

“Well?” LaPointe asks. “Was it after closing time?”

One of the tramps glances toward the owner. He doesn’t want to get in trouble with the only bar that will let bommes come in. But nothing is as bad as getting in trouble with Lieutenant LaPointe. “Maybe a little after.”

“Did he have money?”

“Yeah. He had a wad! His pension check must of come. He bought two bottles.”

“Two bottles,” another sneers. “And you know what that cheap bastard does? He gives one bottle to all of us to share, and he drinks the other all by hisself!”

“Potlickin’ son of a bitch,” says another without heat.

LaPointe crosses to the bar and speaks to the owner. “Did he seem to have money?”

“I don’t sell on the cuff.”

“Did he flash a roll?”

“He wasn’t that drunk. Why? What did he do?”

LaPointe looks at the owner for a second. There is something disgusting about making your money off bommes. He reaches into his pocket and takes out some change. “Here. Give them a bottle.”

The proprietor counts the change with his index finger. “Hey, this ain’t enough.”

“It’s our treat. Yours and mine. We’re going fifty-fifty.”

The arrangement does not please the owner, but he reaches under the bar and grudgingly gets out a bottle of muscatel. By the time it touches the counter, one of the bommes has come over and picked it up.

“Hey, thanks, Lieutenant. I’ll tell Red you’re lookin’ for him.”

“He knows.”

They have been wandering for an hour and a half, threading through the narrow streets that branch out from the Main, LaPointe stopping occasionally to go into a bar or café, or to exchange a word with someone on the street Guttmann is beginning to think the Lieutenant has forgotten about the Vet and that young man stabbed in the alley last night. In fact, LaPointe is still on the lookout for Dirtyshirt Red and the Vet, but not to the exclusion of the rest of his duties. He never pursues only one thing at a time on his street, because if he did, all the other strings would get tangled, and he wouldn’t know what everyone was up to, or hoping for, or worried about.

At this moment, LaPointe is talking with a fat woman with frizzy, bright orange hair. She leans out of a first-story window, her knobby elbows planted on the stone sill over which she has been shaking a dust mop in fine indifference to passers-by. From the tenor of their conversation, Guttmann takes it that she used to work the streets, and that she and LaPointe have a habit of exchanging bantering greetings on the basis of broad sexual baiting and suggestions on both sides that if they weren’t so busy, they would each show the other what real lovemaking is. The woman seems well informed on events on the Main. No, she hasn’t heard anything of the Vet, but she’ll keep her ears open. As for Dirtyshirt Red, yes, that sniping bastard’s been around, also looking for the Vet.

Guttmann can’t believe she ever made a living selling herself. Her face is like an aged boxer’s, a swollen, pulpy look that is more accented than masked by thick rouge, a lipstick mouth larger than her real one, and long false eyelashes, one of which has come unstuck at the corner. As they walk on, he asks LaPointe about her.

“Her pimp did that to her face with a Coke bottle,” LaPointe says.

“What happened to him?”

“He got beat up and warned to stay off the Main.”

“Who beat him up?”

LaPointe shrugs.

“So what did she do after that?”

“Continued to work the street for a couple of years, until she got fat.”

“Looking like that?”

“She was still young. She had a good-looking body. She worked drunks mostly. Hooch and hard-ons blind a man. She’s a good sort. She does cleaning and scrubbing up for people. She takes care of Martin’s house.”

“Martin?”

“Father Martin. Local priest.”

“She is the priest’s housekeeper?”

“She’s a hard worker.”

Guttmann shakes his head. “If you say so.”

Back on St. Laurent, they are slowed by the last of the pedestrian tangle. Snakes of European children with bookbags on their backs chase one another to the discomfort of the crowd. Small knots of sober-faced Chinese kids walk quickly and without chatting. Workingmen in coveralls stand outside their shops, taking last deep drags from cigarettes before flicking them into the gutter and going back to put in their time. Young, loud-voiced girls from the dress factory walk three abreast, singing and enjoying making the crowd break for them. Old women waddle along, string bags of groceries banging against their ankles. Clerks and tailors, their fragile bodies padded by thick overcoats, thread diffidently through the crowd, attempting to avoid contact. Traffic snarls; voices accuse and complain. Neon, noise, loneliness.

“Now that is something,” Guttmann says, looking up at a sign above a shop featuring women’s clothes:

The business is new, and it is located where a pizzeria used to be. The owners are greenhorns newly arrived on the Main. Older, established merchants refer to the shop as “the shmatteria.”

“Shmatteria?” asks Guttmann.

“Yes. It’s sort of a joke. You know… a pizzeria that sells shmattes?”

“I don’t get it.”

LaPointe frowns. That’s the second time this kid hasn’t gotten a street joke. You have to have affection for the street to get its jokes. “I thought you were Jewish,” he says grumpily.

“Not in any real way. My grandfather was Jewish, but my father is a one-hundred-percent New World Canadian, complete with big handshake and a symbolic suntan he gets patched up twice a year in Florida. But what’s this about… how do you say it?”

“Shmatteria. Forget it.”

LaPointe does not remember that twenty-five years ago, when the now-established Jews first came to the Main, he did not know what a shmatte was either.

They climb up a dark flight of stairs with loose metal strips originally meant to provide grips for snow-caked shoes, but now a hazard in themselves. They enter one of the second-floor lounges that overlook St. Laurent. It is still early for trade, and the place is almost empty. An old woman mumbles to herself as she desultorily swings a mop into a dark corner by the jukebox. The only other people in the place are the bartender and one customer, a heavily rouged woman in white silk slacks.

LaPointe orders an Armagnac and sips it, looking down upon the street, where one-way northbound traffic is still heavy and the pedestrian flow is clogged. He has got off the street for a few minutes to give this most congested time of evening a chance to thin out. Friday night is noisy in the Main; there is a lot of drinking and laughter, some fighting, and the whores do good business. But there will be a quieter time between six and eight, when everyone seems to go home to change before coming back to chase after fun. Most people eat at home because it’s cheaper than restaurants, and they want to save their money to drink and dance.

Guttmann sips his beer and glances back at the customer in conversation with the bartender. She seems both young and middle-aged at the same time, in a way Guttmann could not describe. A dark wig falls in long curls to the middle of her back. He particularly notices her hands, strong and expressive, despite the big dinner rings on every finger. There is something oddly attractive about those hands—competent. Periodically, the customer glances away from her talk and looks directly at Guttmann, her eyes frankly inquisitive without being coy.

As they walk back down the long stairs to the street, Guttmann says, “Not really what you’d call a bird.”

“What?” LaPointe asks, his mind elsewhere.

“That barfly back there. Not exactly the chick type.”

“No, I guess not. Women never go to that bar.”

“Oh,” Guttmann says, as soon as he figures it out. He blushes slightly when he remembers the expressive, competent hands covered with dinner rings.

It is nearing eight o’clock, and the pedestrian traffic is thickening again. Blocking the mouth of a narrow alley is a knife sharpener who plies his trade with close devotion. The stone wheel is rigged to his bicycle in such a way that the pedals can drive either the bicycle or the grinding stone. Sitting on the seat, with the rear wheel up on a rectangular stand, he pedals away, spinning his stone. The noise of the grinding and the arc of damp sparks attract the attention of passers-by, who glance once at him, then hurry on. The knife sharpener is tall and gaunt, and his oily hair, combed back in a stony pompadour, gives him the look of a Tartar. His nose is thin and hooked, and his eyes under their brooding brows concentrate on the knife he is working, on the spray of sparks he is making.

He pedals so hard that his face is wet with sweat, despite the cold. His thin back rounded over his work, his knees pumping up and down, his attention absorbed by the knife and the sparks, he does not seem to see LaPointe approaching.

“Well?” LaPointe says, knowing he has been noticed.

The Grinder does not lift his head, but his eyes roll to the side and he looks at LaPointe from beneath hooking eyebrows. “Hello, Lieutenant.”

“How’s it going?”

“All right. It’s going all right.” Suddenly the Grinder reaches out and stops the wheel by grabbing it with his long fingers. Guttmann winces as he sees the edge of the stone cut the web of skin between the Grinder’s thumb and forefinger, but the old tramp doesn’t seem to feel the pain or notice the blood. “It’s coming, you know. It’s coming.”

“The snow?” LaPointe asks.

The Grinder nods gravely, his black eyes intense in their deep sockets. “And maybe sleet, Lieutenant. Maybe sleet! Nobody ever worries about it! Nobody thinks about it!” His eyebrows drop into a scowl of mistrust as he stares at Guttmann, his eyes burning. “You’ve never thought about it,” he accuses.

“Ah… well, I…”

“Who knows,” LaPointe says. “Maybe it won’t snow this year. After all, it didn’t snow last year, or the year before.”

The Grinder’s eyes flick back and forth in confusion. “Didn’t it?”

“Not a flake. Don’t you remember?”

The Grinder frowns in a painful bout of concentration. “I… think… I remember. Yes. Yes, that’s right!” A sudden kick with his leg, and the wheel is spinning again. “That’s right. Not a flake!” He presses the knife to the stone and sparks spray out and fall on Guttmann’s shoes.

LaPointe drops a dollar into the Grinder’s basket, and the two policemen turn back down the street.

Guttmann squeezes between two pedestrians and catches up with LaPointe. “Did you notice that knife, Lieutenant? Sharpened down to a sliver.”

LaPointe guesses what the young man is thinking. He thrusts out his lower lip and shakes his head. “No. He’s been on the Main for years. Used to be a roofer. Then one day when the slates were covered with snow, he took a bad fall. That’s why he fears the snow. People on the street give him a little something now and then. He’s too proud to beg like the other bommes, so they give him old knives to sharpen. They never get them back. He forgets who gave them to him, and he sharpens them until there’s nothing left.” LaPointe cuts across the street. “Come on. One more loop and we’ll call it a night.”

“Got a heavy date?” Guttmann asks.

LaPointe stops and turns to him. “Why do you ask that?”

“Ah… I don’t know. I just thought… Friday night and all. I mean, I’ve got a date tonight myself.”

“That’s wonderful.” LaPointe turns and continues his beat crawl, occasionally making little detours into the networks of side streets. He tests the locks on iron railings. He taps on the steamy window of a Portuguese grocery and waves at the old man. He stops to watch two men carrying a trunk down a long wooden stoop, until it becomes clear that they are helping a young couple move out, to the accompaniment of howls and profanity from a burly hag who seems to think the couple owe her money.

They are walking on an almost empty side street when a man half a block ahead turns and starts to cross the street quickly.

“Scheer!” LaPointe shouts. Several people stop and look, startled. Then they walk on hurriedly. The man has frozen in his tracks, but there is a kinesthetic energy in his posture, as though he would run… if he dared. LaPointe raises a hand and beckons with the forefinger. Reluctantly, Scheer crosses back and approaches the Lieutenant. In the forced swagger of his walk, and in his mod clothes, he is very much the dandy.

“What did I tell you when I saw you in that bar last night, Scheer?”

“Oh, come on, Lieutenant…” There is an oily purr to his voice.

“All right,” LaPointe says with bored fatigue. “Get on that wall.”

With a long-suffering sigh, Scheer turns to the tenement wall and spread-eagles against it. He knows how to do it; he’s done it before. He tries to avoid letting his clothes touch the dirty brick.

Guttmann stands by, unsure what to do, as LaPointe kicks out one of Scheer’s feet to broaden the spread, then runs a rapid pat down. “All right. Off the wall. Take off your overcoat.”

“Listen, Lieutenant…”

“Off!”

Three children emerge from nowhere to watch, as Scheer tugs his overcoat off and folds it carefully before holding it out to LaPointe, each movement defiantly slow.

LaPointe chucks the coat onto the stoop. “Now empty your pockets.”

Scheer does so and holds out the comb, change, wallet, and bits of paper to LaPointe.

“Drop all that trash down into the basement well there,” LaPointe orders.

His mouth tight with hate, Scheer lets his belongings fall into the well fenced off by a wrought-iron railing. The wallet makes a splat because the bottom of the well is covered with an inch of sooty water.

“Now take out your shoelaces and give them to me.”

By now the onlookers have grown to a dozen, two of them girls in their twenties who giggle as Scheer hops to maintain balance while tugging the laces out of the last pair of grommets. Petulantly, he hands them to LaPointe.

The Lieutenant puts them into his pocket. “All right, Scheer. After I leave, you can climb down and get your rubbish. I’ll keep the shoelaces. It’s for your own good. I wouldn’t want you to get despondent over being embarrassed in public and try to hang yourself with them.”

“Tell me! Tell me, Lieutenant! What have I ever done to you?”

“You’re on the street. I told you to stay off it. I wasn’t giving you a vacation, asshole. It was a punishment.”

“I know my rights! Who are you, God or something? You don’t own the fucking street!” He would never have gone that far if there hadn’t been the pressure of the crowd and the need to save face.

LaPointe’s eyes crinkle in a melancholy smile, and he nods slowly. Then his hand flashes out and his slap sends Scheer spinning along the railing. One of the loose shoes comes off.

LaPointe turns and strolls up the street, followed after a moment by the stunned and confused Guttmann.

“What was all that about, Lieutenant?” Guttmann asks. “Who is that guy?”

“No one. A pimp. I ordered him off the street.”

“But… if he’s done something, why don’t you pick him up?”

“I have. Several times. But his lawyers always get him off.”

“Yes, but…” Guttmann looks over his shoulder at the small knot of people around the pimp, who is just climbing out of the dirty basement well. The girls laugh as he tries to walk with his loose shoes flopping. He takes them off and carries them, walking tenderly in his stocking feet.

“But, sir… isn’t that harassment?”

LaPointe stops and looks at the young officer appraisingly, his glance shifting from eye to eye. “Yes. It’s harassment.”

They walk on.

Guttmann sits alone in a small Greek café on Rue Cerat, cramped in a space that would be adequate for a man of average size. The place has only two oilcloth-covered tables crowded against the window, across from a glass-fronted display case containing cheese, oil, and olives for sale. A fly-specked sign on the wall says:

While LaPointe is telephoning from a booth attached to the outside of the café, Guttmann is trying to work out a problem in his mind. He knows what he has to do, but he doesn’t know how to do it. He has been withdrawn since the incident with Scheer half an hour before. Everything he believes in, everything he has learned, combine to make LaPointe’s treatment of that pimp intolerable. Guttmann cannot accept the concept of the policeman as judge—much less as executioner—and he knows what he would have to do should Scheer bring a complaint against the Lieutenant. Further, his sense of fair play demands that he warn LaPointe of his decision, and that will not be easy.

When the Lieutenant returns from the telephone booth a girl of eighteen or nineteen comes from the back room to serve them little cups of strong coffee, her eyes always averted with a shyness that advertises her awareness of men and of her own sexual attractiveness. She has long black lashes and the comfortable beauty of a Madonna.

“How’s your mother?” LaPointe asks.

“Fine. She’s in back. Want me to call her?”

“No. I’ll see her next time I drop by.”

The girl lets her damp brown eyes settle briefly on Guttmann, who smiles and nods. She glances away sidewards, lowers her eyes, and returns to the back room.

“Pretty girl,” Guttmann says. “Pity she’s so shy.”

LaPointe grunts noncommittally. Years ago, the mother was a streetwalker on the Main. She was a lusty, laughing woman always in good spirits, always with a coarse joke to tell, pushing her elbow into your ribs with the punch line. When, every month or two, LaPointe felt the need for a woman, she was usually the one he went with.

Then suddenly she was off the street. She had got pregnant; by a lover, of course, not a customer. With the birth of the child, she changed completely. She began to dress less flashily; she looked for work; she started attending church. She didn’t often laugh, but she smiled a lot. And she devoted herself to her baby girl, like a child playing dolls. She borrowed a little money from LaPointe, who also countersigned her note, and she put a down payment on this back-street café. At five dollars a week, she paid LaPointe back, never missing a payment except around Christmas, when she was buying presents for her girl.

They never made love again, but he made it a habit to drop in occasionally during quiet times. They used to sit together by the window and talk while they drank cups of thick Greek coffee. He would listen as she went on about her daughter. It was amazing what that child could do. Talk. Run. And draw? An artist! The mother had plans. The girl would go to university and become a fashion designer. Have you ever seen her drawings? How can I tell you? Taste? You wouldn’t believe it. Never pink and red together.

While in high school, this girl became pregnant. At first the mother couldn’t understand… couldn’t believe it. Then she was crazy with fury. She would kill that boy! She had an acrimonious shout-down with the boy and his parents. No, the boy would not marry her. And here’s why…

The next time LaPointe dropped in, the woman had changed. She was lifeless, dull, vacant. They took coffee together in the empty café, the woman looking out the window as she talked, her voice flat and tired. The girl had a reputation in high school for being a hot box. She made love with anybody, any time, anywhere—down in the boiler room, once in the boys’ lavatory. Everybody knew about it. She was a slut. She wasn’t even a whore! She gave it away!

LaPointe tried to comfort her. She’ll get married one of these days. Everything will be all right.

No. It was a punishment from God. He’s punishing me for being a whore.

“Good-looking girl,” Guttmann says. “Pity she’s so shy.”

“Yes,” LaPointe says. “A pity.” He swirls his cup to suspend the thick coffee dust and finishes it off, sucking it through a cube of sugar pressed against the roof of his mouth. “Look, I just called in to the QG to have them pick up the Vet.”

“Lieutenant…?”

“We can’t wait forever for Dirtyshirt Red. When they find him, they’ll call you. When they do, get down there immediately. If he’s not too drunk to talk, call me and I’ll come down.”

“You told them to call me?”

“Sure. You’re here to get experience, aren’t you?”

“Well, yes, but…”

“But what?”

“I have a date tonight. I told you.”

“That’s too bad.”

Guttmann takes a deep breath. “Lieutenant?”

“Yes?”

“About that pimp back there?”

“Scheer? What about him?”

“Well, if I’m going to be working with you…”

“I wouldn’t say you’re working with me. It’s more like you’re following me around.”

“Okay. Whatever. But I’m here, and I feel I have to be straight with you.” Guttmann feels awkward looking into LaPointe’s hooded, paternal eyes. He’s sure he’s going to end up making an ass of himself.

“If you have something to say, say it,” LaPointe orders.

“All right. About the pimp. It’s not right to harass a civilian like that. It’s not legal. He has rights, whoever he is, whatever he’s done. Harassment is the kind of stuff that gives the force a bad name.”

“I’m sure the Commissioner would agree with you.”

“That doesn’t make me wrong.”

“It goes a ways.”

Guttmann nods and looks down. “You’re not going to give me a chance to say what I want to say, are you? You’re making it as hard as possible.”

“I’ll say it for you if you want. You’re going to tell me that if this asshole brings charges against me, you feel that you would have to corroborate. Right?”

Guttmann forces himself not to look away from LaPointe’s eyes with their expression of tired amusement. He knows what the Lieutenant is thinking: he’s young. When he gets some experience under his belt, he’ll come around. But Guttmann is sure he will never come around. He would quit the force before that happened. “That’s right,” he says, no quaver at all in his voice. “I’d have to corroborate.”

LaPointe nods. “I told you he was a pimp, didn’t I?”

“Yes, sir. But that’s not the point.”

That was what Resnais kept saying: that’s not the point.

“Besides,” Guttmann continues, “there are lots of women working the streets. You don’t seem to hassle them.”

“That’s different. They’re pros. And they’re adults.”

Guttmann’s eyes flicker at this last. “You mean Scheer uses…”

“That’s right. Kids. Junk-hungry kids. And if I deny him the use of the street, he can’t run his kids.”

“Why don’t you take him in?”

“I have taken him in. I told you. It doesn’t do any good. He walks back out again the same day. Pimping is hard to prove, unless the girls give evidence. And they’re afraid to. He’s promised that if they talk, they’ll get their faces messed up.”

Guttmann tips up his cup and looks into the dark sludge at the bottom. Still… even with a pimp who runs kids… a cop can’t be a judge and executioner. Principles don’t change, even when the case in hand makes it tough to maintain them.

LaPointe examines the young man’s earnest, troubled face. “What do you think of the Main?” he asks, lifting the pressure by changing the subject.

Guttmann looks up. “Sir?”

“My patch. What do you think of it? You must realize that I’ve been dragging you around, giving you the grand tour.”

“I don’t know what I think of it. It’s… interesting.”

“Interesting?” LaPointe looks out the window, watching the passers-by. “Yes, I suppose so. Of course, you get a warped idea of the street when you walk it as a cop. You see mostly the hustlers, the fous, the toughs, the whores, the bommes. You get what Gaspard calls a turd’s-eye view. Ninety percent of the people up here are no worse than anywhere else. Poorer, maybe. Dumber. Weaker. But not worse.” LaPointe rubs his hair with his palm and sits back in his chair. “You know… a funny thing happened eight or ten years ago. I was doing the street, and I happened to be walking behind a man—must have been seventy years old—a man who moved in a funny way. It’s hard to explain; I felt I knew him, but I didn’t, of course. It wasn’t how he looked at things; it was what he looked at. You know what I mean?”

“Yes, sir,” lies Guttmann.

“Well, he stopped off for coffee, and I sat down next to him. We started talking, and it turned out that he was a retired cop from New York. That was what I had recognized without knowing it—his beatwalker’s way of looking at things only an old cop would look at: door locks, shoes, telephone booths with broken panes, that sort of thing. He had come up here because his granddaughter was marrying a Canadian and the wedding was in Montreal. He got tired of sitting around making small talk with people he didn’t know, so he wandered off, and he ended up on the Main. He told me that he felt a real pang, walking these streets. It reminded him of New York in the twenties—the different languages, the small shops, workers and hoods and chippies and housewives and kids all mixed up on the same street but not afraid of one another. He said it used to be like that in New York when the immigrants were still coming in. But it isn’t like that anymore. It’s a closed-up frightened city at night. Not even the cops walk around alone. We’re about thirty years behind New York in that way. And as long as I’m on the Main, we are never going to catch up.”

Guttmann imagines that all this has something to do with the harassment of that pimp, but he doesn’t see just how.

“Okay,” LaPointe says, stretching his back. “So if Scheer makes a complaint, you’ll back him up.”

“Yes, sir. I would have to.”

LaPointe nods. “I suppose you would. Well, I have some grocery shopping to do. You’d better get home and get something to eat. Chances are they’ll pick up the Vet tonight, and we may be up late.”

LaPointe rises and tugs on his overcoat, while Guttmann sits there feeling—not defeated exactly in this business of Scheer, but undercut, bypassed.

“What’s wrong?” LaPointe asks, looking down at him.

“Oh… I was just thinking about this date I’ve got for tonight. I hate to break it, because it’s the first time we’ve been out together.”

“Oh, she’ll understand. Make up some lie. Tell her you’re a cop.”

LaPointe braces one of the grocery bags against the wall of the hall and gropes in his pocket for his key. Then it occurs to him that he ought to knock. There is no answer. He taps again. No response.

His first sensation is a sinking in his stomach, like a fast down elevator stopping. Almost immediately, the feeling retreats and something safer replaces it: ironic self-amusement. He smiles at himself—dumb old man—and shakes his head as he inserts his key in the slack lock and pushes the door open.

The lights are on. And she is there.

She is wearing Lucille’s pink quilted dressing gown, which she must have gotten from the closet where Lucille’s things still hang.

Lucille’s dressing gown.

She is sitting on the sofa, one foot tucked up under her butt, sewing something, the threaded needle poised in the air. Her mouth is slightly open, her eyes alert.

“Oh, it’s you,” she says. “I didn’t answer because I thought it might be the landlord. I mean… he might not like the idea of your having a girl in your apartment.”

“I see.” He carries the groceries into the narrow kitchen. She sets her sewing down and follows him.

“Here,” he says. “Unwrap the cheese and let the air get to it.”

“Okay. I’ve been walking around quietly so no one would hear me.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. Just set the cheese on a plate.”

“Which plate?”

“Any one. It doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t the landlord care if you have girls up here?”

LaPointe laughs. “I am the landlord.” This is true, although he never thinks of himself as a landlord. Seven years after Lucille’s death, he heard that the building was going to be sold. He was used to living there, and he could not quite grasp what it would mean to move away from their home, Lucille’s and his—what that would imply. Because there was nothing to spend it on, he had saved a little money, so he arranged a long-term mortgage and bought the building. Just two years ago, he made the last payment. He had become so used to making out the mortgage check each month that he was surprised when it was returned to him with the notification that the mortgage was paid off. The other tenants—there are three—do not know he owns the building, because he arranged to have the bank receive their rents and credit them to his debt. He did this out of a kind of shame. His concept of “the landlord” was fashioned in the slums of Trois Rivières, and he doesn’t care for the thought of being one himself.

Marie-Louise sits at the kitchen table, her elbow on the oilcloth, her chin in her hand, watching him tear up the lettuce for their salad. He has planned a simple meal: steak, salad, bread, wine. And cheese for dessert.

“It’s funny seeing a man cook,” she says. “Do you always cook for yourself?”

“I eat in restaurants, mostly. On Sundays I cook. I enjoy it for a change.”

“Hm-m.” She doesn’t know what to make of it. She never met anybody who enjoyed cooking. God knows her mother didn’t. It occurs to her that this old guy might be a queer. Maybe that’s why he didn’t make love to her last night. “What kind of work do you do?”

“I’m with the police.” He says this with a shrug meant to shunt away any fear she might have of the police.

“Oh.” She’s not very interested in what he does.

He puts the salad bowl on the table before her. “Here. Make yourself useful. Mix this.” The skillet is smoking, and the steaks hiss and sizzle as he drops them in. “What did you do today?” he asks, his voice strained because he is standing tiptoe, looking in the cupboard for an extra plate and glass.

“Nothing. I just sat around. Mended some things. And I took another bath. Is that all right?”

“Of course. No, you don’t stir a salad. You toss it. Like this. See?”

“What difference does it make?” There is annoyance in her voice. She could never do anything right in her mother’s kitchen either.

“It’s the way it’s done, that’s all. Here, let’s see.” He lifts her chin with his palm. “Ah. That eye is looking better. Swelling’s gone.” She is not a pretty girl, but her face is alert and expressive. “Well.” He takes his hand away and turns to cut the bread. “So you sat around and mended all day?”

“I went out shopping. Made breakfast. I borrowed that coat from your closet when I went out. It was cold. But I put it back again.”

“Did it fit?”

“Not bad. You should have seen the man at the grocery look at me!” She laughs, remembering what she looked like in that coat. Her laughter is enthusiastic and vulgar. As before, it stops suddenly in mid-rise and is gone.

“Why did he look at you?” LaPointe asks, smiling along with her infectious laughter.

“I guess I looked funny in an old woman’s coat.”

He pauses and frowns, not understanding. She must mean an old-fashioned coat. It is not an old woman’s coat; it was a young woman’s coat. He attends to the steaks.

“There isn’t much to do around here,” she says frankly. “You don’t have any magazines. You don’t have TV.”

“I have a radio.”

“I tried it. It doesn’t work.”

“You have to jiggle the knob.”

“Why don’t you get it fixed?”

“Why bother? I know how to jiggle the knob. Okay, let’s eat. I think everything’s ready.”

She eats rapidly, like a hungry child, but twice she remembers her manners and tells him it’s good. And she drinks her wine too fast.

“I’ll do the dishes,” she offers afterwards. “That’s something I know how to do.”

“You don’t have to.” But the thought of her puttering around in the kitchen is pleasant. “All right, if you want to. I’ll make the coffee while you’re washing up.”

There isn’t really enough room for two in the narrow kitchen, and three times they touch shoulders. Each time, he says, “Excuse me.”

“…so I thought I might as well try Montreal. I mean, I had to go somewhere, so why not here? I was hoping I could get a job… maybe as a cocktail waitress. They make lots of money, you know. I had a girlfriend who wrote me about the tips.”

“But you didn’t find anything?”

She is curled up on the sofa, Lucille’s pink quilted robe around her; he sits in his comfortable old chair. She shakes her head and looks away from him, toward the hissing gas fire. “No, I didn’t. I tried everywhere for a couple of weeks, until I ran out of money. But the cocktail bars didn’t want a cripple. And my boobs are small.” She says this last matter-of-factly. She knows how it is in the world. Yet there is some wistfulness in it, or fatigue.

“So you started working the street.”

She shrugs. “It was sort of an accident, really. I mean, I never thought of screwing for money. Of course, I had screwed men before. Back home. But just friends and guys who took me out on dates. Just for fun.”

“Don’t use that word.” LaPointe knows that no daughter of his would ever use that word.

Marie-Louise cocks her head thoughtfully, trying to think back to the offending word. With her head cocked and her frizzy mop of hair, she has the look of a Raggedy Ann doll. “Screw?” she asks, uncertain. “What should I say?”

“I don’t know. Making love. Something like that.”

She grins, her elastic face impish. “That sounds funny. Making love. It sounds like the movies.”

“But still…”

“Okay. Well, I never thought of… doing it… for money. I guess I didn’t think anyone would pay for it.”

LaPointe shakes his head. Doing it sounds worse yet.

“Well, I stayed with some people for a while. All people of my age, sort of living together in this big old house. But then I had a fight with the guy who sort of ran everything, and I moved to a room. Then I ran out of money and they kicked me out. They kept most of my clothes and my suitcase. That’s why I don’t have a coat. Anyway, I was kicked out, and I was just walking around. Scared, sort of, and trying to think of what to do… where I could go. See, it was cold. Well, I ended up at the bus station and I sat around most of the night, trying to look like I was waiting for a bus, so they wouldn’t kick me out. But this guard kept eyeing me. I only had that shopping bag for my clothes, so I guess he knew I wasn’t really waiting for a bus. And then this guy comes up to me and just straight out asks me. Just like that. He said he would give me ten dollars. He was sort of…” She decides not to say that.

“Sort of what?”

“Well… he wasn’t young. Anyway, he brought me to his apartment. He came in his pants while he was feeling me up. But he paid anyway.”

“That was good of him.”

“Yeah,” she agrees with a frankness that undercuts his irony. “It was sort of good of him, wasn’t it? I didn’t know that at the time, because I hadn’t been around, and I thought everyone was like him. Nice, you know. He let me stay the night; and the next morning he bought me breakfast. Most of the others weren’t like that. They try to cheat you out of your money. Or they say you can spend the night, but when they’ve had all they want, they kick you out. And if you make a fuss, sometimes they try to beat you up. Some of them really get a kick out of beating you up.” She touches her eye with her fingertips. The swelling is gone, but a faint green stain remains. “You know what you have to do?” she confides seriously. “You have to get your money before he starts. A girl I went around with for a while told me that. And she was right.”

“That was how long ago? When this old man picked you up?”

She thinks back. “Six weeks. Two months, maybe.”

“And since then you’ve been getting along by selling yourself?”

She grins. That sounds even funnier than making love. “It’s not so bad, you know? Guys take me to bars and I eat in restaurants. And I go dancing.” She tucks her short leg up under her. “You might not think it, but I can dance real well. It’s funny, but I can dance better than I can walk, you know what I mean? I like dancing more than anything. Do you dance?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know how.”

She laughs. “Everyone knows how! There’s nothing to know. You just sort of… you know… move.”

“It sounds like you had nothing but fun on the streets.”

“You say that like you don’t believe it. But it’s true. Most of the time I had fun. Except when they got rough. Or when they wanted me to do… funny things. I don’t know why, but I’m just not ready for that. The thought makes me gag, you know? Hey, what’s wrong?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing.”

“Does it bother you when I talk about it?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“Some guys like it. I mean, they like you to talk about it. It gets them going.”

“Forget it!”

She ducks involuntarily and lifts her arms as though to fend off a slap. Her father used to slap her. When the adrenalin of sudden fright drains off, it is followed by offense and anger. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” she demands.

He takes a deep breath. “Nothing. I’m sorry. It’s just…”

Her voice is stiff with petulance. “Well, Jesus Christ, you’d think a cop would be used to that sort of thing.”

“Yes, of course, but…” He rolls his hand. ‘Tell me. How old are you?”

She readjusts herself on the sofa, but she doesn’t relax. “Twenty-two. And you?”

“Fifty-two. No, three.” He wants to return to the calm of their earlier conversation, so he explains unnecessarily, “I just had a birthday last month, but I always forget about it.”

She cannot imagine anyone forgetting a birthday, but she supposes it’s different when you’re old. He is acting nice again. Her instinct tells her that he is genuinely sorry for frightening her. This would be the time to take advantage of his regret and make some arrangements.

“Can I stay here again tonight?”

“Of course. You can stay longer, if you want.”

Push it now. “How much longer?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. How long do you want to stay?”

“Would we… make love?” She cannot help saying these last words with a comic, melodramatic tone.

He doesn’t answer.

“Don’t you like women?”

He smiles. “No, it isn’t that.”

“Well, why do you want me to stay, if you don’t want to sleep with me?”

LaPointe looks down at the park, where a tracery of black branches intersects the yellow globes of the streetlamps. This Marie-Louise is the same age as Lucille—the Lucille of his memory—and she speaks with the same downriver accent. And she wears the same robe. But she is younger than the daughters he daydreams about, the daughters who are sometimes still little girls, but more often grown women with children of their own. Come to think of it, the daughters of his daydreams are sometimes older than Lucille. Lucille never ages, always looks the same. It never before occurred to him that the daughters are older than their mother. That’s crazy.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll look around and see if I can find you a job.”

“In a cocktail bar?”

“I can’t promise that. Maybe as a waitress in a restaurant.”

She wrinkles her nose. That doesn’t appeal to her at all. She has seen lots of waitresses, running around and being shouted at during rush times, or standing, tired and bored, and staring out of windows when the place is empty. And the uniforms always look frumpy. If it weren’t for this damned pig weather, and if the men never tried to beat you up, she’d rather go on like she is than be a waitress.

“I’ll try to find you a job,” he says. “Meanwhile you can stay here, if you want.”

“And we’ll sleep together?” She wants to get the conditions straight at the beginning. It is something like making sure you get your money in advance.

He turns from the window and settles his eyes on her. “Do you really want to?”

She shrugs a “why not?” Then she discovers a loose thread on the sleeve of the dressing gown. She tries to break it off.

He clears his throat and rubs his cheek with his knuckles. “I need a shave.” He rises. “Would you like another coffee before we go to bed?”

She looks up at him through her mop of hair, the errant thread between her teeth. “Okay,” she says, nipping off the thread and spitting out the bit.

He is shaving when the phone rings.

He has to wipe the lather from his cheek before putting the receiver to his ear. “LaPointe.”

Guttmann’s voice sounds tired. “I just got down here.”

“Down where?”

“The Quartier Général. They called me at my apartment. They’ve picked up your Sinclair, and he’s giving them one hell of a time.”

“Sinclair?”

“Joseph Michael Sinclair. That’s the real name of your bum, the Vet. He’s in a bad way. Raving. Screaming. They’re talking about giving him a sedative, but I told them to hold off in case you wanted to question him tonight.”

“No, not tonight. Tomorrow will do.”

“I don’t know, sir…”

“Of course you don’t know. That’s part of being a Joan.”

“What I was going to say was, this guy’s a real case. It’s taking two men to hold him down. He keeps screaming that he can’t go into a cell. Something about being a claustrophobic.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!”

“Just thought you ought to know.”

LaPointe’s shoulders slump, and he lets out a long nasal sigh. “All right. You talk to the Vet. Tell him nobody’s going to lock him up. Tell him I’ll be down in a little while. He knows me.”

“Yes, sir. Oh, and sir? Terribly sorry to disturb you at home.”

What? Sarcasm from a Joan? LaPointe grunts and hangs up.

Marie-Louise is mending the paisley granny dress she was wearing when he found her in the park. She looks up questioningly when he enters the living room.

“I have to go downtown. What are you smiling at?”

“You’ve got soap on one side of your face.”

“Oh.” He wipes it off.

As he tugs on his overcoat, he remembers the coffee water steaming away on the stove. “Shall I make you a cup before I go?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t really like coffee all that much.”

“Why do you always drink it then?”

She shrugs. She doesn’t know. She takes what’s offered.