A Very Bold Leap (42 page)

Then, in a joking tone that masked frank admiration, he told Charles that he had become a kind of idol to Steve; he had learned that he was working for
Artist’s Life
from his mother, who was an assiduous reader of such publications, and he had become a real fan, as was she. And so Charles’s call had filled him with joy; he was very eager to know what had prompted it.

“Nothing,” Charles said, slightly embarrassed. “I wanted to see you, that’s all. You’ve always been my favourite idiot.”

“And you’re my slomo of choice!”

There was no mention of Céline; it was as though she didn’t exist. Perhaps some day they would broach the painful subject that had caused the disruption in their friendship, if ever their friendship could be re-cemented. They exchanged news about friends they had in common, which is how Charles learned about the death of Ginette Laramée, the teacher who had given him a copy of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
, the book that had turned Charles’s life around. Charles’s grief surprised Steve, whose memories of grade school consisted primarily of slaps to the head, pinched ears, and detentions. He’d lumped all his schoolteachers into a single category: prison guards in high heels.

“What can I say?” Charles explained, his eyes moistening. “She helped me a lot when I was nothing but a snotty-nosed kid. You have no idea … Okay, maybe she played rough at times, but she had a good heart, take it from me… If I’d known she was sick, I would have gone to see her, it would
have pleased her a lot, I think. And I would have gone to her funeral… I owed her at least that! Anyway,” he went on after shaking his head as though to get rid of the sadness that had come over him, “what are you up to these days?”

“You’ll never guess.”

“Not still in school! Surely not!”

“No. You should know me better than that, my friend.”

He waited a few seconds, smiling in anticipation of the surprise his revelation was going to cause.

“I do housework.”

“You do housework?” Charles repeated, not quite getting it.

“I’m a housecleaner. And I make a good living at it, too.”

“So … what? You’re kidding, right? You spend your life pushing a broom around?”

“It’s not as bad as all that, pal. I might even say that it’s pretty cool, most of the time. This is not well-known, but it’s a pretty fantastic boondoggle. If more people knew about it, everyone would want to get into the act! Fortunately, only a few schemers like myself are raking it in.”

And he went on to describe the attractive features of his chosen profession. There were five of them. They worked alone, with no boss. They chose their own hours. They worked in pleasant surroundings: nice, big apartments, plenty of good music, and so on. There were pets to look after, which soon became like their own. But best of all they made between fifteen and twenty bucks an hour!

He had to respond to his friend’s incredulity with a qualifier: the first visit to an apartment required seven or eight hours of hard work, since they had to leave the place as spic and span as Céline Dion’s bathroom. But during their subsequent visits, all they had to do was keep it that way: it rarely took more than two or three hours, and they were paid
by the day
. You’d have to be a complete blockhead not to figure that one out, but there were apparently a lot of blockheads out there willing to throw their money down the drain. So much the better for us, so much the worse for them!

Charles laughed, amused but secretly saddened to see the turn his friend’s life had taken. He still liked Steve, despite their differences.

“And you don’t find it too tiring?” he asked, thinking about the aftereffects of Steve’s terrible accident.

“I work at my own pace — and when my leg starts to ache, I take a pill. But what about you,” he said with a serious smile. “How are you doing?”

“Fine.”

“Oh? You’re sure? I’ve been staring at your mug for an hour, now, and you don’t have the look of someone who’s doing fine.”

“Ah, well, my girlfriend just told me to piss off, but really she did me a favour: I was getting ready to dump her anyway. We were like oil and water together.”

“You shouldn’t take women too seriously,” Steve said gravely. “As soon as you do, your goose is cooked.”

“Yeah, but they work it so you have to take them seriously: sooner or later they’ll drop a baby in your lap!”

“Safe and double-safe, that’s my motto, man, even if it cuts down on the pleasure a bit. It’s no good counting on the pill: they tell you they’ve taken it, and they don’t take it! They want to get your sympathy. Me, I’ve had it up to here with that.”

“No, no, you’re right. But what do you do when some day you yourself want to have a little brat?”

“Ha!” said Steve, raising his hands to show that any man foolish enough to have such a desire deserved everything he got.

Then he signalled to the waiter for more beer, and they continued talking. The simple pleasure of the old days seemed to have returned, as though time, in an act of sheer mercy, had agreed to obliterate itself in order to bring the two friends together again. Charles gave a swift yawn and looked at his watch; it was almost eleven o’clock.

“Shit, I’ve got to go. I’m back on the treadmill first thing in the morning.”

“Yeah, I should go, too,” said Steve, but with less conviction.

They left the café and crossed de Maisonneuve to the metro station at the Université de Québec à Montréal, where they stopped. It was only the beginning of December, but for several weeks strings of electric lights had been spilling their rainbow colours from most of the storefronts, giving the almost deserted street a kind of childish, almost family-like, appeal. But the damp wind cutting up from the river wouldn’t let them linger outside very long. And Steve knew that with even a slightly prolonged sojourn in the cold, his left leg would keep him awake for the rest of the night.

“So … see you soon?” he said, holding out his hand, a metro ticket sticking out of the side of his mouth.

“Soon, my old friend,” Charles responded, shivering but also smiling.

Steve made to turn and dip into the warmth of the metro station, but something kept him standing in front of Charles. He hesitated, looking embarrassed.

“Are we… are we going to be able to be friends like before, even if I’m just a housecleaner?” he finally asked, with a worried look on his face.

Charles laughed. “Dummy! Of course we are! Why ever not? How does that change anything?”

And he felt proud of his own open-mindedness.

B
ecause his job forced him to wade through divorces, flash affairs, bankruptcies, and betrayals among local and even international celebrities, Charles began to take on a certain air of cynicism. Despite the relatively stable life led by some of his colleagues, and the exemplary faithfulness shown by Isabel and Blonblon or Fernand and Lucie — whose marriage had lasted twenty-eight years and gave no sign of letting up — it seemed to him that humanity had fallen prey to the frenetic confusion of a colony of tadpoles in a pond.

Mercifully, the editor had taken him off the “Letters to Maryse” column. He was now banging out articles with more and more facility, trying to avoid clichés, truisms, repetitions, and banalities, and quite often gracing his work with spirited insights; but he had learned to exercise caution by avoiding taking obvious shots at the people he interviewed. Making enemies in high places was like killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Always pressed for time as he was, he had had to give up any literary projects he might have contemplated, and he felt guilty about that, as though he were being unfaithful to himself. As well as comedians and actors, he had to “do” stars and aspiring stars of the musical stage, and he took less pleasure from these. Perhaps he’d been spoiled by listening to Parfait Michaud’s classical music, but he felt a certain condescension towards popular music, sometimes even a distinct distaste for it. Despite the enormous amounts of money that pop music made for people like Ginette Reno, Céline Dion, or Lola Malo, he did not envy their kind, and even privately made fun of their petty — mindedness. It showed in his work; the editor noticed it and, trying to account for it, decided that Charles was too intellectual. At
Artist’s Life
, intellectualism was practically a mortal sin; you needed to atone for it by hard work or
by being spectacularly good. No matter how much effort they expended or talent they displayed, those who suffered from the sin of intellectualism always found themselves closer to the door than the happy workers who kept their heads down and did their jobs properly. “The reading public does not want
ideas
,” the editor would often pronounce in a threatening tone of voice. “What they want is
diversion
. They want to be made to cry, or to laugh, or to bleed (just a little, of course), or to make love. Anything beyond that is
none of our business
. Especially, may the saints preserve us,
no politics!
Politics for us is like shooting off a cannon in a drawing room!”

One morning Charles was given an unusual assignment; at ten o’clock, at the Place Versailles shopping mall, three doyens of the pop music culture were being interviewed in public: a member of the old rock group the Glowsels; one of the Alarms; and the lead singer for Caesar and His Buddies.

Charles was supposed to grab them after the interview and get material from them for a “slice of life” piece, while a photographer took shots that hadn’t been set up with their agents. It turned out to be a piece of cake. As soon as they heard he was from
Artist’s Life
, they hovered around him, starved for the publicity that had bypassed them long ago. They spilled their guts. They seemed old and pathetic to him in their flashy, outmoded get-ups. They talked on and on, trying to sound hip and with-it, but the misery showed through their lies in the coquettish poses they assumed before the camera, and in the way they interrupted one another. He found their enthusiasm pitiful.

Hunched over his notebook, Charles wrote down their words, grateful but also a bit disgusted, telling himself that when life takes away what it has once given, it hits us hard. Why hadn’t these people done something else when they realized that the carpet was no longer under their feet? Truck drivers, dog walkers, encyclopedia salesmen, anything would be better than this humiliating hanging on to a long-gone golden age, filling half the hall two nights out of a three-night stand and having to preen for such minuscule fame.

Charles went back to the office to write his article, torn between compassion and a desire to pillory them as the quavering wrecks they were, and he had just found an angle from which he could amuse the readers of the piece without destroying the egos of the principal characters when, in quick succession, fate sent him two strong signals that he had better give the matter more thought.

The first was brought to him by the magazine’s receptionist.

“There’s a rather strange woman on line one,” she announced, “but she won’t give her name. She says you won’t need it, because you’ll recognize her the minute she opens her mouth.”

“Tell her to call back. I don’t have time right now,” he said abruptly. “I’ve just started an article.”

But the feeling that he was making a mistake suddenly made him change his mind.

“Never mind. Put her through. It may be important.”

“Charles,” said a thin voice that he did not at first recognize. “It’s me.”

“Me? Who’s me?”

“Amélie, of course.”

“Amélie Michaud?”

“There is no one called Amélie Michaud anymore, as you know full well, and have known for some time. It’s Amélie Bourque, now that Parfait has thrown me out.”

“Amélie! How are you?” asked Charles, happy and embarrassed at the same time.

“I’m doing well.”

“Your health … you are well?” he pursued, knowing her passion for that particular subject.

“I’m not sick. I’m old. Like my parrot. You knew I now have Monsieur Victoire’s parrot, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I heard.”

“Never mind, I didn’t call you to talk about parrots or anything else. I called to tell you I want to see you. You’re very busy, I know, but maybe you could find a few minutes to come and have a coffee at my place one of these days?”

“Of course I can,” Charles replied, sensing the reproach lying behind her words. “I could even come over today, if you like. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen one another.”

“Today? Er… that could work. About what time?”

“Towards the end of the afternoon. Would that be all right with you?”

“Er … I usually have my nap at five o’clock. But I can put it off.”

“Let’s say three o’clock, then. Would that be better?”

“No, no. Late in the afternoon is fine. I’ll expect you late in the afternoon.”

She gave him her address, then added, “I have something very important
to tell you, something that concerns you. I don’t want to tell you over the telephone. It’s better that we meet face to face.”

“I can’t wait to see you.”

“I hope so.”

And she hung up.

After the strange conversation with Amélie, Charles was trying to regroup his ideas and get back to working on his article when the receptionist rang with another call. This time it was the editor who wanted to speak to him.

Stifling his sighs and putting on his friendly face, Charles went off to find him.

Over the past two or three months, a part of the editor’s stomach had taken to resting on his desk when he sat down, and his neck was becoming less and less distinguishable from his chin, but other than that his eye was as sharp as ever, and he still made unpredictable decisions.

“Faubert is in bed with the flu,” he announced to Charles. “I have a favour to ask of you.”

Like everyone else, Charles was well aware that that last sentence was code for “I’m giving you a direct order.” But he pretended not to know it, and composed his face into an expression of intense willingness to volunteer.

“Have you seen the latest play at the Theatre du Nouveau Monde?”

Charles shook his head, feeling a slight contraction in his chest without knowing why.

“They’re doing
The Dance of Death
or something like that, supposed to be terribly funny By someone named Steinberg.”

“Strindberg,” Charles corrected, holding back a smile but feeling more nervous than ever.

“Yeah, him. Anyway, Faubert was supposed to interview Brigitte Loiseau early this afternoon. She’s one of the principal actors in the play. But, like I said, Faubert is in bed with the flu. Will you do it instead?”

“I’d like to have seen the play first.”

“No one will know if you’ve seen it or not, as you know. Madame Ouellette on rue Montcalm and her neighbour, Madame Duquette on rue Wolfe, do not as a rule frequent the Theatre du Nouveau Monde. They wouldn’t even know how to get there. It’s Brigitte Loiseau who’s important, because of all those television shows. Get me?”

“Got you,” Charles had no choice but to reply.

“Good, it’s all set, then. See you.”

Charles went back to his desk this time with the certainty that he would not be able to regroup his ideas for at least an hour, if not longer. If there was one eventuality that Charles had feared since being taken on at
Artist’s Life
, it was running into Brigitte Loiseau. There were too many unpleasant memories attached to her; not the least of which was the ridiculous love he’d confessed to her when he was nineteen. He couldn’t, however, turn down this assignment without incurring his editor’s wrath. He decided, therefore, to prepare for the interview by consulting the quite fat file the magazine had on the actress, and even went to the public library to read the play she was in. He wanted to make a good impression.

At two o’clock, he showed up at her apartment on rue Sherbrooke for the interview. As was increasingly becoming the fashion, Brigitte Loiseau lived in one of those furnished condos in a former convent that the Sisters had had to sell off to developers because it had been too expensive to maintain. The developers had attempted to preserve the property’s former cachet. Instead of taking the elevator, Charles went up a huge oak staircase that led to the upper floors, and found himself in a wide, wood-panelled corridor whose atmosphere of calm actually disturbed him. A moment later he was knocking on the actress’s door.

She had hardly changed at all in the six years since he had last seen her. Her face was a bit puffier and her waist had lost some of its slenderness, but she glowed with the same regal beauty that had set her apart from the common run of humanity.

She let him in politely, but with a worried look, showed him into a small room, and asked him if he would wait until she finished her telephone conversation.

She appeared not to have recognized him. He was relieved and disappointed at the same time, even slightly miffed, thinking it could only have been a matter of diplomatic amnesia. “They’re all the same,” he grumbled to himself. “A bit of success on television, page one in the papers a couple of times, and it goes to their heads — or rather, to their hearts.” He was sorry
he’d spent so much time preparing for the interview, and decided to write an article that she would not find amusing.

The room was tastefully decorated in the minimalist, Zen style that was all the rage: blank, white walls; low-slung, plain chairs covered in sober-coloured material; a tiny rug in the middle of a wooden floor that had been varnished until it glowed like polished glass; a vase of dried flowers on the sill of the naked window. It had obviously been professionally decorated by someone with austere taste.

Charles could hear her talking on the phone. Muted sounds reached him in a confused murmur. She was talking quickly, nervously, her words punctuated by sharp exclamations: something wasn’t going according to her wishes, and Charles took a certain satisfaction from the fact. Whether you’re a big star or someone who sells vegetables at the market, Life, which in its own way is always just, can throw you a few curves at times — and at the end of the road there waits Death, staring off into space, not caring one bit who winds up in his net.

He was jerked out of these philosophical ruminations by a burst of laughter that shattered them. An instant later, Brigitte Loiseau was in the room, apologizing again for keeping him waiting and sitting on a chair facing his own. As he put a tape in his recorder, she began talking to fill the silence, then suddenly stopped in mid-sentence.

“But don’t I know you?” she said. “Aren’t you … Aren’t you …”

He nodded very slightly, turning red with pleasure.