Maxine (19 page)

Yeah. Oh look, there's the Sydney Opera House.

How do you know that's what it is?

Duh. Maxine, I think everybody knows what the Sydney Opera House looks like?

12

june 2003

k
yle has asked her to come and so here she is, late, hustling in through the door of the Salvation Army Temple and paying two dollars for her seat. The first child is already singing
I'll be your candle on the water
, a girl younger than Kyle, with stern glasses and a pink T-shirt dress. Maxine sits quickly without trying to find the Larsens in the crowd.
Here's my hand so take it
. Absurdly, Maxine feels as if the girl is speaking to her. The voice is small but clear and firm. Her hands don't look strong enough to pull you to safety unless you were perhaps a baby bird. A steady, tuneful little voice in the cavernous space.
I know you're lost and drifting
. Alarmingly, Maxine has a sense that someone understands. Her eyes prickle. She gives her arm a hard pinch and studies the program. The next two children play violin, a sound like pain, and Maxine regains her composure. Are all the non-violin parents, she wonders, trying not to stick fingers in their ears? Are they thinking, There but for the grace of God? Then there's another singer, and when a trumpet player's father shifts in front of her she sees Kyle two rows ahead, Barb beside him, and Dave next to Barb. Dave's blond hair is cut short at the back and his neck's burnt a pinkish brown. One beefy arm rests on the back of the pew, his elbow behind Barb, hand at the back of Kyle's head. Every now and then his head turns toward Kyle but Maxine can't see his expression. He ruffles Kyle's hair, strokes the back of his head.

When his name is called, Kyle stands and looks quickly around. Pssst, says Maxine, and Kyle turns, and she winks, and he smiles, and then he's up sitting beside his guitar teacher, the two of them strumming together, singing “Four Strong Winds.” Next to Maxine a girl strokes her teddy's fur with one finger in a gentle flattening and tidying way. Don't worry, the girl seems to be telling her bear, I'll take care of you.

After Kyle plays, Maxine gives him two thumbs up and several more children perform and then they are in another room with sandwiches and potato chips and those chocolate squares that have pink and green mini marshmallows in them and paler bits that look like straw but are probably coconut. Kyle is off at the drinks table—he isn't usually allowed pop—and Maxine stands stiffly with Barb and Dave. She is not Auntie Maxine, not a godparent, nor an old school pal, not a girlfriend. Why is she hanging out with Kyle? Because it happened that way, she thinks. Because he was brought to me.

Kyle approaches them with a cupcake in one hand and a glass of lime Crush in the other, slopping the Crush onto industrial grey carpet tiles without noticing, humming “Four Strong Winds.”

Why am I here? Because he wanted me to come.

Dave bends down and kisses the top of his son's head. More green Crush slides overboard.

You were great, said Dave.

They'd driven out past Sooke and kept going to the National Park and stopped, overlooking the Pacific, on the highest point they could find. Trees and bush sloped down to the waterline. “Your instinct,” Frédérique told him, “when they're after you, is to hide, to make yourself small, like a guinea pig, crawl down inside the shavings, burrow away and cover yourself up and close your eyes. But you need to do the opposite. Get up. Get up high and look. See them—every car, every hiker—before they see you.” She reached under the seat and took out a bag containing a bottle of white wine in an insulating roll and two small sake bowls. She filled one bowl and handed it to him. “You've been amazing. I don't think I'd be alive but for you. Cheers.”

They took a tiny bungalow hidden in the trees on Malahat Mountain. Cash in advance, one night only, Mr. and Mrs. Donaldson, car by the door. Frédérique leaned over the registration desk and smiled at the young clerk. “No calls, no visitors, please,” said Frédérique, “If anyone is looking for us, I know you will not allow them to intrude on our privacy. You would of course come and tell me immediately, though, because it could be terribly important.” She smiled at the clerk and he got up off the bar stool and stood up straight. He drew air into his chest.

“I would,” he said, “Of course I would.” She touched his forearm gently, just for a second, enough to graze the soft hair.

“I knew I could count on you,” she said.

13

t
he result of Maxine's labour. OK, not a stupendous epic or anything. However, the red column on the bristol board has finally and not by accident but sheer muleheadedness butted up against the top line on the chart. The fact that this has occurred just in time for the e-submission is no accident. She has one day for the final edit.

Maxine, who has not pulled an all-nighter since the
Hamlet
paper for Professor O'Dell in first year, plugs away throughout the day and into the night with section-by-section revisions. At eleven pm there's a knock at the door; by the time Maxine answers, Gail's car is pulling away but a bag on her doorstep is full of plastic containers of snacks to keep her going.

At four she pretends it's morning, which it is, and has a shower. At eleven-thirty (four in the afternoon, Paris time) Maxine hits send. She's quietly sure she will win. She is experiencing that moment of euphoria that comes with the completion of a piece of writing, the moment during which the writer believes it possible that this could be not just the best thing s/he has ever written, but, remotely possibly, among the best things anyone has ever written.

Maxine ambles around the apartment, giddy with excitement and sleep deprivation, wondering how it would be to tell Gail she has won an international fiction competition and must fly to Paris to collect her prize. She leaves a message at the Larsens' telling Kyle to call between five and six if he can go to A&W for supper with her, and falls into bed.

Kyle's voice on the phone sounds high and young. He's just a little boy, she remembers with a stab of alarm.

I can come to A&W, please, and we can take the car.

Great, Ky. Give me fifteen minutes and I'll be ready.

What do you think Mademoiselle Duchamp is having for her supper?

Hmm. Not A&W. Snails, maybe. Followed by steak and fries. A glass of red wine.

What kind of fries?

What do you mean? Spiral fries?

No, Max. French fries.

Ahaha.

It is without doubt more difficult to continue practising virtue than to begin. Virtue starts out feeling really good but its appeal wanes rapidly. When Maxine turns on the computer one morning and receives the email about the prize, she decides she will tell Gail, her parents, and perhaps one or two other people. Kyle, of course. This is only partly modesty. It's also the case that Maxine does not actually know very much about the details of the contest, that she has deliberately not inquired too closely into the nature of the organization which sponsors the prize. There were quite a few very specific eligibility criteria, which Kyle adapted to a checklist and printed and attached to a clipboard and went through with her repeatedly. Among them: the novel must be a thriller, must be set at least partly in Western Canada and partly in Paris; it had to be exactly 64,371 words and include a minimum of three references to ouzo; at least one character had to travel on France's national rail system. The writer had to be between the ages of thirty and thirty-five, to reside in a country in which French is an official language, to have written the novel in English, and to submit, in addition, a favourite yoghurt recipe (non-competitive). In fact, the last time she looked for the contest information on the web, the page wasn't there any more. Maxine does not wish to unearth at this point any trivial and wearisome pieces of information: that she was in fact the only contestant, that the contest no longer exists, or what have you. The main thing about contests, the only thing, really, is to win them and Maxine has won this one, to the tune of just about enough euros, if she's got the exchange figured out, to cover her air fare and meals. They put her up for a week in a hotel not far from the magazine's offices. So it's a free trip to Paris plus recognition, the latter being the more important to Maxine, at least she thinks so. The words
tour de force
pop into her head unbidden, as if they had been used in the email, which they weren't. To have someone— not just someone you don't know but someone in another country—validate all your hard work by saying This one, yes this one is the best... That is the part she can't get over. And the sheer joy and relief and validation spill over into Maxine and, as it were, through her, so that by the time she is packing her bag and hunting down her passport and ticket for that evening's flight, the whole town knows about the award, and real live journalists have called her, Maxine, wanting to know about her book, Maxine's own book. In fact she is on the cordless to one of them as the taxi pulls up to take her to the airport.

Frédérique was speaking in a slow, careful manner as they walked briskly through the downtown streets, hand in hand, smiling. It was dusk. The streetlights were starting to come on. “I must not tell you anything more than you need to know,” she said thoughtfully. Their route had a strange lack of obvious direction, and at times they abruptly turned and started back the other way. Their pace was slow, fast, then slow again. At one point they hopped on a bus and got off two stops later, near the Empress. They strolled along the waterfront, watching the boats, watching everything, watching out. “Before I started on the Local Group,” Frédérique explained, “I was very interested in physics. Of course, the stars have always been, for me—” she waved a hand and shrugged. “But much of my work was in physics then. Some of it was...sensitive.”

“Wow,” said Jerome.

“The results of my research...were not widely disseminated, shall we say. I had contacts, colleagues. A small number. International. We discussed matters amongst ourselves. Important matters.” Frédérique shivered. White and yellow light slid out over the still waters of the harbour, between and past the boats. Jerome put an arm around her shoulders.

“The package,” he said, “contains information that was not...disseminated.”

“Exactly.” Frédérique looked relieved. “Some of my contacts proved not to be as scrupulous as others. I did not see fit to share everything, in spite of the pressure to do so. And I was right.

But the fact that I possess certain data has become known, it seems.”

“Victoria isn't safe for you any more.”

“Nor for you. We need to leave soon. Do what you need to, but nothing obvious. No large withdrawals of money—”

“Frédérique, I work in a pet store. I don't have any money.”

“Sssshhh. You came when I needed you. I shall not abandon you now. No good-byes to relatives, no traceable calls.”

“Where can we go?”

“I'll tell you tomorrow. At the airport.”

14

september 2003

h
ow is it that the nation whose citizens created the Eiffel Tower, the Gare d'Orsay, the Louvre—how could it allow an entire level of the airport to function without a single toilet? Hundreds of rumpled, sweaty passengers trailing luggage and grubby children behind them like exhaust, hoping they're going in the right direction (the signage could use some work too), and if one of them should want to pee, tough, it's under construction. You can take the elevator to another level and pee there. But not just any elevator: it has to be the right one. Maxine inadvertently took the Bad Elevator—she went to some other level entirely and found herself in a parking lot with a bladder screaming now—Now—
NOW
!!! The upside is that Paris appears, even after only fifteen minutes or so, to be populated by vast numbers of stunningly attractive young men, one of whom is even now approaching Maxine as she pivots like a lacklustre basketball player from the high-school junior team (which she once was), looking for some indication of where to go.

Les Parisiens
, Maxine has been told, are mean. They do not like tourists and will try hard to be unhelpful and nasty. Ask only if you're desperate and, if you don't want to be humiliated and possibly shouted at, not then either. Don't expect any basic human decency: these people despise you. Maxine has prepared herself for such a reaction, made sure she has good maps. She plans to ask as few questions as possible over the course of the next week. She is about to get out of the man's way when she realizes he is coming to speak to her, and as he draws near, Maxine is stunned by the extent of his beauty—he is what a Greek god would look like if they looked at all Nordic, which Maxine supposes they probably didn't but that's the general idea—massively tall and blond and blue-eyed-smiley-knock-your-socks-off, in his dark green suit jacket and blindingly white shirt. As he is saying Excuse me, you look a little lost, may I help? she is wishing she could have showered and changed in preparation for this encounter, but, alas, she explains instead about the toilets and he is so utterly gentlemanly and nice and of course he knows the way and explains it clearly and when he smiles and moves on, Maxine tries not to feel run over by a truck because that would be such a cliché, but once when Maxine was jogging she missed a sign, she simply didn't see it, a metal sign that spanned two poles marginally above shoulder height. She ran between the two poles and there was a loud bang and Maxine, lying stunned on the grass, slowly realized that the noise had been her face slamming into metal. It's like that, what she feels now, only better.

Maxine's marching toward destiny. Off to an appointment with her future, the one she's in the process of creating. She has a good suitcase with wheels and a retractable handle, borrowed from Ted, and a printout of the email that began,
Félicitations
!