“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 meaclass="underline" 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.