7

DURING THE DRIVE MY EMOTIONS DID ACROBATICS. IT HAD TURNED dark, but the city was fully lit. Apartment windows glowed softly in the east end neighborhood surrounding the SQ building, and here and there a television flickered blue light into the summer night. People sat on balconies and stoops, clustered in chairs dragged outside for summer curtain calls. They talked and sipped cold drinks, having piloted the thick heat of afternoon into the renewing cool of evening.

I coveted their quiet domesticity, just wanted to go home, share a tuna sandwich with Birdie, and sleep. I wanted Gabby to be all right, but I wanted her to take a taxi home. I dreaded dealing with her hysteria. I felt relief at hearing from her. Fear for her safety. Annoyance at having to go into the Main. It was not a good mix.

I took René Lévesque to St. Laurent and hung a right, turning my back on Chinatown. That neighborhood was closing for the night, the last of the shop owners packing up their crates and display bins and dragging them inside.

The Main sprawled ahead of me, stretching north from Chinatown along Boulevard St. Laurent. The Main is a close-packed quarter of small shops, bistros, and cheap cafés, with St. Laurent as its main commercial artery. From there it radiates out into a network of narrow, back streets packed with cramped, low-rent housing. Though French in temperament, the Main has always been a polycultural mosaic, a zone in which the languages and ethnic identities coexist but fail to blend, like the distinct smells that waft from its dozens of shops and bakeries. The Italians, the Portuguese, the Greeks, the Poles, and the Chinese cluster in enclaves along St. Laurent as it climbs its way from the port to the mountain.

The Main was once Montreal’s principal switching station for immigrants, the newcomers attracted by the cheap housing and the comforting proximity of fellow countrymen. They settled there to learn the ways of Canada, each group of rookies banding together to ease its disorientation, and to buoy its confidence in the face of an alien culture. Some learned French and English, prospered, and moved on. Others stayed, either because they preferred the security of the familiar, or because they lacked the ability to get out. Today this nucleus of conservatives and losers is joined by an assortment of dropouts and predators, by a legion of the powerless, discarded by society, and by those who prey on them. Outsiders come to the Main in search of many things: wholesale bargains, cheap dinners, drugs, booze, and sex. They come to buy, to gawk, to laugh, but they don’t stay.

Ste. Catherine forms the southern boundary of the Main. Here I turned right, and pulled to the curb where Gabby and I had sat almost three weeks before. It was earlier now, and the hookers were just beginning to divvy up their patches. The bikers hadn’t arrived.

Gabby must have been watching. When I glanced in the rearview mirror, she was already halfway across the street, running, her briefcase clutched to her chest. Though her terror wasn’t enough to launch her into full flight, her fear was evident. She ran in the manner of adults long estranged from the unfettered gallop of childhood, her long legs slightly bent, her head lowered, her shoulder bag swinging in rhythm to her stilted stride.

She circled the car, got in, and sat with eyes closed, chest heaving. She was obviously struggling for composure, clenching her hands tightly in an attempt to stop the trembling. I’d never seen her like this and it frightened me. Gabby had always had a flare for the dramatic as she threaded her way through perpetual crises, both real and imagined, but nothing had ever undone her to this extent before.

For a few moments I said nothing. Though the night was warm, I felt a chill, and my breathing became thin and shallow. Outside on the street, horns blared and a hooker cajoled a passing car. Her voice rode the summer evening like a toy plane, rising and falling in loops and spirals.

“Let’s go.”

It was so quiet I almost missed it. Déjà vu.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” I asked.

She raised a hand as if to ward off a scolding. It trembled, and she placed it flat against her chest. From across the car I could sense the fear. Her body was warm with the smell of sandalwood and perspiration.

“I will. I will. Just give me a minute.”

“Don’t jerk me around, Gabby,” I said, more harshly than I’d intended.

“I’m sorry. Let’s just get the hell out of here,” she said, dropping her head into her hands.

All right, we’d follow her script. She’d have to calm down and tell me in her own way. But tell me she would.

“Home?” I asked.

She nodded, never taking her face from her hands. I started the car and headed for Carré St. Louis. When I arrived at her building she still hadn’t spoken. Though her breathing had steadied, her hands still shook. They had resumed their clasping and unclasping, clutching each other, separating, then linking once again in an odd dance of panic. The choreography of terror.

I put the car in park and killed the engine, dreading the encounter that was to come. I’d counseled Gabby through calamities of health, parental conflict, academics, faith, self-esteem, and love. I’d always found it draining. Invariably, the next time I’d see her, she’d be cheerful and unruffled, the catastrophe forgotten. It wasn’t that I was unsympathetic, but I’d been down this route with Gabby many times before. I remembered the pregnancy that wasn’t. The stolen wallet that turned up beneath the couch cushions. Nevertheless, the intensity of her reaction disturbed me. Much as I longed for solitude, she didn’t look as if she should be alone.

“Would you like to stay with me tonight?”

She didn’t answer. Across the square an old man arranged a bundle under his head and settled onto a bench for the night.

The silence stretched for so long I thought she hadn’t heard. I turned, about to repeat the invitation, and found she was staring intently in my direction. The jittery movements of a moment ago had been replaced by absolute stillness. Her spine was rigid, and her upper body angled forward, barely touching the seat back. One hand lay in her lap, the other was curled into a fist pressed tightly to her lips. Her eyes squinted, the lower lids quivering almost imperceptibly. She seemed to be weighing something in her mind, considering variables and calculating outcomes. The sudden mood swing was unnerving.

“You must think I’m crazy.” She was totally calm, her voice low and modulated.

“I’m confused.” I didn’t say what I really thought.

“Yeah. That’s a kind way to put it.”

She said it with a self-deprecating laugh, slowly shaking her head. The dreadlocks flopped.

“I guess I really freaked back there.”

I waited for her to go on. A car door slammed. The low, melancholy voice of a sax floated from the park. An ambulance whined in the distance. Summer in the city.

In the dark, I felt, more than saw, Gabby’s focus alter. It was as if she’d taken a road up to me, then veered off at the last minute. Like a lens on automatic, her eyes readjusted to something beyond me, and she seemed to seal herself off again. She was having another session with herself, running through her options, deciding what face to wear.

“I’ll be okay,” she said, gathering her briefcase and bag, and reaching for the handle. “I really appreciate your coming for me.”

She’d decided on evasive.

Maybe it was fatigue, maybe it was the stress of the last few days. Whatever. I lost it.

“Wait just a minute!” I exploded. “I want to know what’s going on! An hour ago you were talking about someone wanting to kill you! You come sprinting out of that restaurant and across the street, shaking and gasping like the goddamn Night Stalker’s on your tail! You can’t breathe, your hands are jerking like they’re wired for high voltage, and now you’re just going to sail out of here with a ‘Thank you very much for the ride,’ without any explanation?”

I’d never been so furious with her. My voice had risen, and my breath was coming in short gulps. I could feel a tiny throbbing in my left temple.

The force of my anger froze her in place. Her eyes went round and cavernous, like those of a doe caught in high beams. A car passed and her face flickered white then red, amplifying the image.

She held a moment, a catatonic cutout rigid against the summer sky. Then, as if a valve had been released, the tension seemed to drain from her body. She let go of the handle, lowered her briefcase, and settled back into the seat. Again, she turned inward, reconsidering. Perhaps she was deciding where to begin; perhaps she was scouting alternative escape routes. I waited.

At length, she took a deep breath and her shoulders straightened slightly. She’d settled on a course. As soon as she spoke I knew what she’d determined to do. She would let me in, but only so far. She chose her words carefully, threading a guarded path through the emotional quagmire in her mind. I leaned against the door and braced myself.

“I’ve been working with some—unusual—people lately.”

I thought that an understatement, but didn’t say so.

“No, no. I know that sounds banal. I don’t mean the usual street people. I can handle that.”

Her choice of words was tortuous.

“If you know the players, learn the rules and the lingo, you’re fine down there. It’s like anywhere else. You’ve got to observe the local etiquette and not piss people off. It’s pretty simple: Don’t trespass on someone’s else’s patch, don’t screw up a trick, don’t talk to the cops. Except for the hours, it’s not hard to work down there. Besides, the girls know me now. They know I’m no threat.”

She went mute. I couldn’t tell if she was closing me out again, or if she’d gone back to the shelves to continue her sorting. I decided to nudge.

“Is one of them threatening you?”

Ethics had always been important to Gabby, and I suspected she was trying to shield an informant.

“The girls? No. No. They’re fine. They’re never a problem. I think they kind of like my company. I can be as raunchy as any of them.”

Great. We know what the problem isn’t. I prodded some more.

“How do you avoid being mistaken for one of them?”

“Oh, I don’t try. I just sort of blend in. Otherwise I’d be defeating my own purpose. The girls know I don’t turn tricks, so they just, I don’t know, go along with it.”

I didn’t ask the obvious.

“If a guy hassles me, I just say I’m not working right then. Most of them move on.”

There was another pause as she continued her mental triage, considering what to tell me, what to keep to herself, and what to scoop into a heap, not tendered, but accessible if probed. She fumbled with a tassle on her briefcase. A dog barked in the square. I was sure she was protecting someone, or something, but this time I didn’t goad her.

“Most of them,” she continued, “except this one guy lately.”

Pause.

“Who is he?”

Pause.

“I don’t know, but he has me really creeped out. He’s not a john, exactly, but he likes to hang out with prostitutes. I don’t think the girls pay much attention to him. But he knows a lot about the street, and he’s been willing to talk to me, so I’ve been interviewing him.”

Pause.

“Lately, he’s begun following me. I didn’t realize it at first, but I’ve started noticing him in odd places. He’ll be at the Métro when I come home at night, or here, in the square. Once I saw him at Concordia, outside the library building where I have my office. Or I’ll see him behind me, on a sidewalk, walking in the same direction I am. Last week I was on St. Laurent when I spotted him. I wanted to convince myself it was my imagination, so I tested him. If I slowed down, so did he. If I speeded up, he did the same thing. I tried to shake him by going into a patisserie. When I came out, he was across the street, pretending to window shop.”

“You’re sure it’s always the same guy?”

“Absolutely.”

There was a long, laden silence. I waited it out.

“That’s not all.”

She stared at her hands, which, once again, had found each other. They were tightly clenched.

“Recently he’s started talking some really weird shit. I’ve tried to avoid him, but tonight he showed up at the restaurant. Lately it’s like he’s equipped with radar. Anyway, he got off on the same stuff, asking me all kinds of sick questions.”

She went back inside her head. After a moment she turned to me, as if she’d found an answer there she hadn’t seen before. Her voice was tinged with mild surprise.

“It’s his eyes, Tempe. His eyes are so weird! They’re black and hard, like a viper, and the whites are all pink and flecked with blood. I don’t know if he’s sick, or if he’s hung over all the time, or what. I’ve never seen eyes like that. They make you want to crawl under something and hide. Tempe, I just freaked! I guess I’ve been thinking about our last conversation, and this shitfreak you’re cleaning up after, and my mind took the first bus outa there.”

I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t read her face in the darkness, but her body spoke the language of fear. Her torso was rigid and her arms were drawn in, pressing the briefcase to her chest, as if for protection.

“What else do you know about this guy?”

“Not much.”

“What do the girls think about him?”

“They ignore him.”

“Has he ever been threatening?”

“No. Not directly.”

“Has he ever been violent or out of control?”

“No.”

“Is he into drugs?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know who he is or where he lives?”

“No. There are some things we don’t ask. It’s an unspoken rule, sort of a tacit agreement down here.”

Again there was a long silence while we both weighed what she’d said. I watched a cyclist pass along the sidewalk, pedaling with unhurried strokes. His helmet seemed to pulsate, blinking on as he passed beneath a streetlamp, then off as he moved back into darkness. He crossed my field of vision then disappeared slowly into the night, a firefly signaling his passage. On. Off. On. Off.

I thought about what she’d said, wondering if I was to blame. Had I set her fears in motion by talking about my own, or had she actually encountered a psychopath? Was she amplifying a set of harmless coincidences, or was she truly in jeopardy? Should I let things ride for a while? Should I do something? Was this a police matter? I was running through my old, practiced loop.

We sat for some time, listening to the sounds of the park and smelling the soft summer night, each of us drifting alone in separate reflections. The quiet interlude had a calming effect. Eventually Gabby shook her head, dropped the briefcase to her lap, and leaned back in the seat. Though her features were obscured, the change in her was visible. When she spoke, her voice was stronger, less shaky.

“I know I’m overreacting. He’s just some harmless weirdo who wants to rattle my cage. And I’m playing into his game. I’m letting this fuckhead grab my mind and shake me.”

“Don’t you run across a lot of ‘weirdos,’ as you call him?”

“Yeah. Most of my informants aren’t exactly the Brooks Brothers crowd.” She gave a short, mirthless laugh.

“What makes you think this guy may be different?

She thought about it, worrying a thumbnail with her teeth.

“Ah, it’s hard to put into words. There’s just a—a line that divides the crackpots from the real predators. It’s hard to define, but ya know when it’s been crossed. Maybe it’s an instinct I’ve picked up down there. In the business, if a woman feels threatened by someone, she won’t go with him. Each one has her own little triggering devices, but they all draw that line on something. Could be eyes, could be some odd request. Hélène won’t go with anyone who wears cowboy boots.”

She took another time-out to debate with herself.

“I think I just got carried away by all the talk about serial killers and sexual devos.”

More introspection. I tried to steal a look at my watch.

“All this guy is trying to do is shock me.”

Another pause. She was talking herself down.

“What an asshole.”

Or up. Her voice was growing angrier by the minute.

“Goddammit, Tempe, I’m not going to let this turd get his rocks off sniveling trash and showing me his sick pictures. I’m going to tell him to blow it out his ass.”

She turned and put her hand on mine.

“I’m so sorry I dragged you down here tonight. I am such a jerk! Will ya forgive me?”

I stared mutely at her. Again, her emotional U-turn had taken me by surprise. How could she be terrified, analytical, angry, then apologetic all within the space of thirty minutes? I was too tired, and it was too late at night to sort it out.

“Gabby, it’s late. Let’s talk about this tomorrow. Of course I’m not mad. I’m just glad you’re all right. I meant it about staying at my place. You’re always welcome.”

She leaned over and hugged me. “Thanks, but I’ll be fine. I’ll call ya. I promise.”

I watched her climb the stairs, her skirt floating like mist around her. In an instant she disappeared through the purple doorway, leaving the space between us empty and undisturbed. I sat alone, surrounded by the dark and the faint scent of sandalwood. Though nothing stirred, a momentary chill gripped my heart. Like a shadow, it flickered and was gone.

All the way home my mind was at warp speed. Was Gabby constructing another melodrama? Was she genuinely in danger? Were there things she wasn’t telling me? Could this man be truly dangerous? Was she nurturing the seeds of paranoia planted by my talk of murder? Should I tell the police?

I refused to allow my concern for Gabby’s safety to overpower me. When I got home, I resorted to a childhood ritual that works when I’m tense or overwrought: I ran a hot bath and filled it with herbal salts. I put a Chris Rea CD on full volume, and, as I soaked, he sang to me of the road to hell. The neighbors would have to survive. After my bath, I tried Katy’s number, but, once again, got her machine. Then I shared milk and cookies with Birdie, who preferred the milk, left the dishes on the counter, and crawled into bed.

My anxiety was not completely dissipated. Sleep didn’t come easily, and I lay in bed for some time, watching the shadows on the ceiling, and fighting the impulse to call Pete. I hated myself for needing him at such times, for craving his strength whenever I felt upset. It was one ritual I’d vowed to break.

Eventually sleep took me down like a whirlpool, swirling all thoughts of Pete, and Katy, and Gabby, and the murders from my consciousness. It was a good thing. It’s what got me through the following day.