Ice Lake (15 page)

“Do that. I’ll ready Lucy’s supplies.” “How do I take that stuff across the border?” Honigwachs waved a hand in the air, not interested. “You’re the one with the heavy connections. You figure it out.”

Andy nodded. He wasn’t thrilled about the plan—he’d rather have avoided criminal exposure—but the prospect of seeing Lucy Gabriel again was incentive enough to go along with it.

The next day, Wednesday, January 19, 1999

Camille Choquette moved down the dim corridor in search of Room 44. Behind the doors, televisions recited the news, conversations were interrupted by bawling kids, walls thumped with music. When a door opened up ahead, she increased her pace, and waiting for her there was the black man she knew as Wendell.

“Thank God,” he said.

“How are you?” she inquired as she came inside.

“I’ll need help to get back to bed, Camille, that’s how I am.”

Sores on his feet made walking difficult. His breath was short, and he was feeling dizzy. “I only answered because I hoped, I prayed it might be you.”

“That’s sweet. Take it easy now, Wendell. Take it slow.”

He groaned as she helped him into bed and immediately launched into a sustained coughing fit. “Am I going to die?” he asked when she was done.

“Why would I let you die?”

Camille took his temperature, checked his pulse and blood pressure, and examined the lesions that had erupted in a symmetrical design across his chest. She placed a stethoscope over his lungs and listened to the rumbling mucous there.

“I don’t think the new cocktails are working,” he surmised, his voice scarcely audible, as she was putting away her instruments.

“That’s hard to say. Obviously, you’re not doing very well.”

“I’d offer you a drink, but frankly, sweetheart, it’s too much effort.”

“Don’t worry about it, Wendell. But do you mind if I sit down awhile? That would be a huge favour. I’ve been run off my feet.”

She sat in the big, soft armchair and watched the man close his eyes. The room was a hodgepodge, with wigs on the furniture, makeup on the bookshelves, photographs scattered about on the floor, as though the man had been rampaging through his past, or his memories. Camille shut her own eyes to enjoy a brief catnap, and when she opened them again, Wendell was snoring lightly. Camille observed him. When eventually he stirred, she offered, “I can help you. For today. Would you like that?”

He nodded gently, coughed, and sat up. Not one to remain quiet for long, he asked, “Camille, how did you get into this business? Are you a nurse or a scientist?”

“I’m in it for the money.”

“Oh good. There are just too many damned saints in the world. I adore Lucy, though, she’s one of the best. Camille. Save me, before you go, will you, please? I’m feeling so rotten.”

Camille pulled up the sleeve on his pyjamas and dabbed the back of his biceps with rubbing alcohol. She returned across the room to her bag and loaded a needle, holding it up to the light of a floor lamp.

“Actually, I came upon my profession honestly,” she told Wendell. “I had a brother. Paul. Loved him dearly. When I was fourteen I asked him to buy me drugs, I didn’t really care what. We were both on the wild side back then.” She moved back to the bed. “This’ll prick a little, Wendell, nothing serious.” She gave his arm a jab, to which he hardly reacted. “I don’t know what happened, but that night my brother was killed. First he was shot through the face, right in the eye, and then his neck was cut half off.”

“My God, Camille, I’m sorry. You poor thing.”

She put away her implements. “I thought it was my fault. Maybe he was trying to steal drugs for me and that cost him his life. Who knows? I remember the funeral as if it was last week. The bones on his face, they’d been smashed in by the bullet, he didn’t look like himself at all. He was painted in heavy, dreary makeup. The smell of the makeup made me sick. My father told me to kiss him, on the lips, that’s what I was supposed to do, so I did.” Camille dismissed her bad memory of the moment with a brief, sad smile. “I loved my brother, but I didn’t like doing that. It was too creepy.”

“No, that’s a very sad thing for a child.”

“Yes. Well. Life.”

“So… sad.”

“Are you feeling drowsy, Wendell?”

“Yes, I … suppose, I …”

The sedative was taking effect. Camille fluffed the pillows and adjusted the blanket around him. Tenderly, she kissed his cheek. His eyelids flickered.

“Sleep awhile, Wendell. You need your rest. It’ll help. It’s okay, I can find my own way out.”

So much devastation. So many sick men. She envied
Wendell his afternoon nap, drug-induced or not. She herself hadn’t had many hours of sleep since her arrival in New York.

Nor did she enjoy many that night. Awakened by a telephone call, she was told the news of Wendell’s passing.

“Oh no. No. Oh no, that lovely man.”

Her caller was from their network, a patient himself. “There’s more bad news.”

“What? Tell me.”

“It wasn’t natural causes.”

“What do you mean? It was
AID S.”

“He was smothered. Suffocated. With his own pillow, the police say.”

“Oh my God, no. No.”

“Whoever did it sutured his lips closed.”

“What? What are you saying? What?”

“His lips were sewn shut with thread. He was wearing make up, rouge spread messily on his cheeks. Lipstick. Silver eye shadow. With his lips sewn together. Who would do a thing like that?”

Camille remained awake in her hotel room, her stomach in a knot. At dawn, having given up trying to sleep, she ordered coffee. She had another day ahead of her, another round of visits. Everyone would be talking about Wendell. Probably they’d all be equally terrified and upset. She was not looking forward to her day.

The next day, Thursday, January 20, 1999

Luc changed, after Philadelphia. In Newark he’d had a fever, which had caused him to be drowsy and severely cranky, although the symptoms were appropriate for a body being introduced to a major chemical bombardment. He refused his breakfast on the cold, sunny morning of their departure from Philadelphia, and Lucy had to keep close tabs on him, making sure that
he didn’t fall asleep at the wheel.

When he declined lunch she got mad. He showed her the lesions on his right leg then, and the two fresh marks that had appeared on his back. “I don’t feel right,” he told her. He complained about the drugs she was giving him. They just weren’t suited for him.

“Stick with the program, Luc. Without the cocktail, you’d be worse off.”

“That’s hard for my body to believe. My brain understands it. But my brain’s never been a smart cookie.”

After lunch, such as it was, at a roadside truck stop, Lucy drove. For a while, her companion felt ashamed about that, but he soon fell asleep. When she pulled over for diesel fuel, Lucy suggested that he move to the back of the truck, where he’d have air and light as well as a bed.

“I don’t know,” Luc told her.

“What don’t you know?”

“I can’t make it that far.”

“I’ll help you.”

He hung his weight on her shoulder and slowly they made their way around to the rear. Lucy used the hydraulic lift to hoist them up, and she supported him again across to the bunk that ran fore and aft. After making sure that the vents were open, Lucy loosely strapped him onto the bunk with electrical cord. He was already nodding off. She threaded the cord through the belt loops on his trousers and tied him down more snugly. Then she locked him in, climbed back into the cab, and drove on.

Outside Baltimore, in the parking lot of their motel, she pulled the detritus of Luc Séguin back up to his feet. Their rooms were on the second floor, which was unfortunate, but Luc seemed to be getting a measure of his strength back and he struggled up the stairs with her. She settled him into bed and propped him up. He was
keen on watching television, and it didn’t matter what was on. With coaxing, he agreed to hot soup, which she made by pouring boiling water into a cup of instant mix, and Luc sipped it slowly. He seemed to be improving.

After she’d grabbed a bite for herself, she brought Luc his nightly dosage. He visibly recoiled, his body edging back into the pillows. His feet made slight, involuntary kicking motions under the blankets. “Now, Luc,” she said.

“For other people it’s good. For me, maybe not so much.”

“You’ve caught a fever. That’s all. The drugs came along after the fact. So let’s be a big boy.”

He was obedient, he did consume his medication, but in the middle of the night he pounded on the wall to wake her in the adjoining room. Lucy had kept his key, so she barged right in. Luc wasn’t weak this time, he was energized and animated, but Luc was in agony, his muscles convulsing. He raved, spouting nonsense in French. Lucy soothed the tantrum of his body with cool compresses and comforting words. He’d had trouble breathing, which had brought him to the brink of panic. With a soft light on, and her easing touch and the tender lilt of her words, he relaxed, and the ordeal became manageable. Luc apologized for being a pest.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I don’t know what is wrong with me. I don’t feel right.”

“But you’re feeling better now?”

Not wanting to be a greater nuisance, he agreed. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

“Okay. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Lucy? Can I ask you something? I keep thinking about it.”

She suspected that this might be a ploy, that he was scrounging for questions to delay her departure. “Go ahead.”

“Why is it that you were in the garage?”

“Excuse me?”

“When your father’s house got burned down, you were in the garage. Why? You wouldn’t tell Andy, but I keep wondering that to myself.”

She could tell him, the story wasn’t as complicated as he might imagine, but she was curious about his interest. “Why do you want to know?”

“It seems so sad to me.” He shrugged with the weight of his gloominess. “I’m glad you didn’t burn, that’s not sad, but why did a little girl not go to sleep in her own house?”

Lucy sat down again on the edge of his bed. She smiled. “My father built the apartment above the garage for his father, but my granddad lived in it for only a few months before he died. A natural death, peaceful. Old age. I missed him, he was a great old guy, and he always had time for me, so I played in his apartment a lot. It was a bit like being with him. Then shots were fired at my house. Warning shots. They weren’t intended to hurt anyone. Just to make a point. My dad was on the Grand Council and a few hotheads didn’t like what he was doing. After that, he put me in my granddad’s place to sleep. He was scared about stray bullets. As it turned out, being in the garage did save my life, only it wasn’t a bullet that missed me.”

She didn’t tell him that she had watched the house burn. That she had seen her father through a window, arms raised, walking, on fire. She had never told anyone that and she never would.

“You were meant to live,” Luc put in.

“I think that’s true, Luc. But I don’t think my parents were meant to die.”

Luc watched her with a steady gaze. “You’ve been mixed up in things all your life.”

“That’s true too. You also. My intuition tells me that.”

Luc responded with a slight shrug of his bony shoulders. “Nothing in my life was easy.”

“
Is
easy,” she corrected him.

“You are changing my English now?”

“Not your English, Luc, your attitude. You’re a long way from dead. You’re in the hands of Saint Lucy, didn’t you know? Your luck has changed!”

“Tell that to my insides. After all this luck I’m having, my insides want back their old misery.”

Lucy laughed with him and planted a kiss on his forehead. She sat on his bed with her legs curled under her and rested her chin in her palm. “Now, Luc,” she directed, “you tell me something. How come you know your way around New York?”

Luc was shy about telling the story. In his late teens he had worked with an older friend who would journey to the Big Apple to buy electric guitars and other instruments. The quality instruments were rarely available second-hand in Canada, and when they were the prices were exorbitant. The two would respond to ads in the papers and run around from Queens to Harlem, Manhattan to Brooklyn, the Bronx to Staten Island. Returning to Canada, they’d pay the duty at the border, then sell the guitars and organs at a terrific mark-up in Montreal.

Lucy was puzzled by the story. Why was Luc embarrassed by his past?

Unaccustomed as he was to intimacy, he was reluctant to confess the true burden of his tale. He had been involved in the wheeling and dealing because it had helped make ends meet while he pursued his real interest. He had wanted to be a musician. “Me,” he said, “in a band. Pretty dumb, huh?” An ambition that had died hard, and Luc was ashamed to admit that he had once had a dream, one that, today, seemed hopelessly farfetched.“One time, we stopped at this roadside
restaurant, and when we came out the truck was gone, stolen. All the instruments, gone. I was so mad. My friend, he was bent out of shape, because all the money he had left in this world was in those guitars. We never had no insurance. Know what I did? I stole ourselves another truck, a small van, to get us home. My dad was a car thief and a truck-jacker himself, and his dad was that, too, before him, so it seemed like the right thing to do. Trouble was, we never made it across the border. I did time for that heist, and after that I was just another criminal, you know? When I got out I hadn’t touched a guitar in five months, so I just started up stealing trucks with my dad.”