Fish Change Direction in Cold Weather (6 page)

As we walked down the street, Alex kept giving me looks. For him, that miraculous call the educational director had received was nothing more than pure luck. When the school
emptied out, he just scratched his head. But I could see he was really blown away when the ambulance arrived at the school with its siren going. We were still there, so we saw everything. I have to
admit I felt kind of bad to see the educational director flat out on her stomach on the stretcher. She was moaning and the paramedic was trying to comfort her.

‘I just hope it’s only a fracture, but by the sound of the pain you’re in, I’m afraid you might have broken your coccyx.’

That was no comfort at all. She moaned even louder. She suddenly seemed so fragile, not at all the way she’d been in her office. Fortunately she didn’t hear the students spreading
the news. Everyone had forgotten that it was because she’d wanted to help sprinkle sand on the ice so that none of the children would slip and hurt themselves that she herself had
slipped.

‘The educational director broke her bum!’

‘The educational director broke her bum!’

‘The educational director broke her bum!’

Children are cruel, I know. Alex didn’t say anything; he was too busy looking at me every five seconds. He was really puzzled, I could tell. We went home, not saying anything. The sky
wasn’t exactly helping me the way I wanted, but it had heard me, that much was obvious, which gave me hope. When we got to our street, I saw that my front door was open. A suitcase appeared,
then another. My dad came next. Hope hadn’t lasted long.

‘What are you two doing here?’

‘School’s closed ’cause of the ice. Didn’t you hear?’

‘No, I haven’t really had time to listen to the news this morning.’

I looked at my dad. I could see in his eyes that he really didn’t want me there to witness his departure. In moments like these you just say what you can. He went first.

‘I suppose you’ll use the time to do your homework?’

‘We didn’t even have time to get any, Dad.’

‘That’s lucky . . .’

When he heard the word, Alex seemed to return to his senses. My dad grabbed his two suitcases.

‘I have to get going, apparently it’s pretty rough on the roads . . . Give Mum a kiss for me.’

Give Mum a kiss for him! He bent over me. I clung to him. I could see his hands squeezing the handles of the cases, so tightly they trembled. It can’t be easy to leave. He hurried off to
load the car, not looking at me – or rather, he didn’t want me to see him. He started the engine right away. As he pulled out, the tyres skidded on the ice. He disappeared around the
corner. Alex looked away.

‘They’re splitting up, huh?’

I didn’t know what to say. Alex could tell I was holding back my tears. He was sorry he’d asked. He took a few steps back; even tough guys sometimes know how to be soft.

‘I’m going home . . . That was awesome, your trick with the educational director. You’re brilliant! The best!’

He said that to make me happy. He didn’t believe a word of it. I think that in his shoes I wouldn’t have believed it either.

When I got home, my mother wasn’t there. So I spent the afternoon alone in my room, watching the ice come down.

I couldn’t think of anything better to do.

IN LIFE, IT’S EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF

Meow!

Brutus rubbed up against his lovely mistress’s smoothly shaven calf. Julie was at her mirror putting on make-up. She didn’t look either happy or unhappy, it was all just habit. It
was a ritual to make herself beautiful, because it was her job to be beautiful. The Christmas tree had disappeared from the coffee table. Christmas was well and truly over. An hour earlier Julie
had got a call from the owner of Sex Paradisio – he was expecting her at six p.m. sharp, ice or no ice. If she didn’t show up, she shouldn’t bother coming back.

‘There’s no such thing as winter in a strip club. There’s only one season, and that’s summer. Here it’s hot indoors and hot on stage.’

Julie didn’t even know why she went on doing this job. As a teenager she’d had a fierce desire for independence, and she’d been left pretty much to her own resources. She could
simply have not run away, but love had found her for the first time when she met Max, a real smooth operator. She had just turned eighteen. He was thirty, and a sort of father figure. When he found
out that Julie’s savings account, which her grandparents had hitherto made impenetrable, had just been unlocked, he suggested they live together. The apartment was their little nest;
they’d chosen it together. The lease was in Julie’s name – Max didn’t like to deal with paperwork. But he’d wanted them to have a joint account. She hadn’t even
finished decorating the apartment when Max disappeared, with every dollar in the savings account.

‘I’m just going to the corner shop for a packet of cigarettes. I’ve run out.’

Julie hadn’t wanted to move. Not because of the memory of Max, but for the sake of her own independence. She didn’t want a flatmate. At first she’d had to get a second job. She
worked days in a restaurant, evenings at a bar. That’s a lot, especially when you’re working seven days a week. She’d had no time left to live. Chatting to one of her customers
one night, he’d told her that she was far too beautiful to go on hiding behind a bar. He was the owner of Sex Paradisio. It hadn’t taken him long to convince her she’d earn three
times as much while working ten times less. He’d been telling the truth: when you’re pretty, with big breasts, you’ve got a bright future in this field.

‘You see that little bald guy over there? He sometimes blows three hundred bucks a night!’

Julie couldn’t stop thinking about the future. She’d realised that being a stripper meant accepting that you didn’t exist. The woman on stage unveiling herself to men’s
gazes, that wasn’t her. And yet, even if it was some other woman who managed to earn up to five hundred dollars a night, it was Julie who deposited half of it every week into a savings
account, in memory of her grandparents.

The owner of Sex Paradisio made a point of being tough with his girls, but he liked Julie. She behaved properly around him, but above all she behaved properly around the clients. Always smiling
and friendly, a true professional. An example to her co-workers, who tended to be frivolous, their noses buried in powder, or hung up on second-class pimps – an even harder drug. With Julie,
everything was simple. That was why he’d called her, why he was sure she’d show up.

‘If you don’t show, you’re fired!’

That was his managerial style, to threaten the girls. But he wasn’t so crazy that he’d let Julie go, because she’d waste no time making one of his competitors happy.
She’d promised herself she’d only do it for a while, but sometimes that
while
drags on too long. These days, she was just letting time go by, waiting for the right day to quit.
Only love, the real kind, could make you quit a job that brings in five hundred dollars a night.

As she stood at her mirror, Julie suddenly grew four inches. She had just pulled on a pair of high-heeled boots. Brutus couldn’t rub against her warm calf any more, and
the leather was cold. He went to join his mates on the sofa. The larger of the two sleepy beasts made him understand with one swipe of the paw that he wasn’t welcome, so he wandered around
the house. There is a hierarchy among cats, too, and Brutus was still a long way from the top.

Julie came out of the bathroom wearing a superb, tight-fitting dress, all red, her favourite colour. She took her coat off the peg and put it on, and inspected herself one last time in the
mirror, the one in the hallway this time. She opened the door.

‘Bye, cats!’

Meow!

Brutus was the only one who replied. When you’re at the top of the hierarchy, you often forget about those who helped you get there. Such is the ingratitude of cats on sofas. It’s
often said they’re independent. But they’re merely using you, like men do, or at least like every man Julie had ever met.

‘That’s not a very good idea, Mademoiselle!’

Julie was startled. Even at five thirty in the afternoon, a woman alone is a woman alone. From her door she cast a suspicious look at the person who had just spoken, a man with a dog on a
lead.

‘I’m not sure those boots are the best thing to be wearing with what’s coming down at the moment. Especially as they say it’s going to last all night . . .’

‘And who are you?’

‘I’m your next door neighbour . . . and I work for Météo Canada.’

‘I’ve never seen you around.’

‘That could be because we’re not on the same schedule . . .’

Julie didn’t like the insinuation. Still wary, she walked down the steps to the entrance, forgetting to lock her door. One good look was enough to suss her neighbour out. She knew a
ladies’ man when she saw one, and he wasn’t one. Her face immediately softened.

‘So what’s wrong with my shoes?’

‘Your shoes look very nice, but I’m worried you’d fall even harder with them on . . . The emergency rooms are full of people who’ve slipped in the street. To see such a
lovely woman lying in bed with her leg in a cast . . . That would be a waste!’

Julie smiled. It felt good to be in the presence of a man she need neither mistrust nor fear.

‘Thing is I don’t have any shoes without heels . . . I don’t know how to walk without them . . .’

‘I see. Well, if you’re used to wearing them, just don’t take any unnecessary risks.’

The little Maltese bichon wagged his tail and came closer.

‘And this is Pipo!’

Julie didn’t even have time to smile. A taxi came tearing down the road. He was showing off, so he braked abruptly, only to skid foolishly on the ice. Taxis think the streets belong to
them just because they know them better than anyone else does. But you’re often in for a surprise when you think that way.
Bang!
Fortunately the rubbish bin he collided with was
empty and, more to the point, plastic.

‘I hope there won’t be too much ice on your journey, otherwise you might be in for a pretty long ride . . .’

The driver, looking sheepish, got out and put the rubbish bin back in place, and Julie smiled. She bent down to stroke Pipo, who probably didn’t get to enjoy a woman’s touch very
often.

‘Nice meeting you. I’m Julie, by the way!’

‘Michel . . .’

‘It’s really odd I’ve never seen you before . . . The dog looks familiar, but I don’t remember seeing him with you.’

Michel clenched his jaw. He couldn’t mention Simon, for fear of revealing their situation, and yet it was so obvious.

Beep! Beep!

The driver was in a rush to get back to his game of rubbish-bin skittles. Julie went back up the steps to lock the door to her little nest, then hurried back down and climbed into the taxi.

‘I’ll tread carefully, I promise!’

Michel watched the taxi take off in a zigzag across the ice. Once again, all he could think of was hiding. When Pipo lifted his leg for a final wee, Michel stared up at the windows of his
apartment. The situation was becoming unbearable. He had to bring it up again with Simon.

Boris Bogdanov could have opened his window to tell his neighbour from across the way what he had just witnessed.

‘Hey, your little cat has just got out!’

But he was not at all the sort you could count on. It might have meant going out and lending a hand trying to find the cat. Boris didn’t want to leave his place, not even for a few
minutes, in case the electricity suddenly got cut off. He turned to his aquarium. The four fish were still going around the exact same way. There on the floor, ready for an emergency, were a
thermometer, a camping stove and only three little gas canisters . . .

At Canada Dépôt a customer had seen Boris emptying the shelves of gas canisters and had protested vehemently to the checkout clerk. Boris had maintained that he
had the right to buy as many bottles of gas as he wanted.

‘I’m a free Canadian!’

‘Like hell you are! You can be a free Canadian all you want, but first you’ve got to show some solidarity with your fellow Quebeckers!’

A few customers applauded. People began to cluster around the source of this outpouring of wild, Russian despair, Boris alone against the world. The manager came over to settle things in his
best bombastic manner. Legally he had no right to stop Boris from buying as many gas canisters as he wanted, but under the circumstances, it was a matter of prestige, of corporate image. The very
mission of Canada Dépôt was at stake. This was not the time to go telling his customers that business had never been better, that he had sold all his salt, all his ice picks, all his
torches and every generator he had in stock, that he had tripled the order to be delivered tomorrow, and that he reckoned he would sell all of it in one day and beat his sales target, with a fine
bonus to come.

‘Young man, as the manager here, and given the forecast from the weather folks, I cannot allow this mass purchase. Come back tomorrow – I’m supposed to get more in. It’ll
be a pleasure to sell them to you.’

The manager of Canada Dépôt turned to his customers, and they all nodded approvingly. Normally they only came to him to complain, so he savoured this magical moment. Boris poured
his heart out, but his Russian accent wasn’t welcome on this day of great Quebecker solidarity. He told them about his fish and his knot theory, how vital it was to him. He took out his
sheets of paper filled with complicated calculations to explain that with one gas canister, if the temperature fell to zero degrees in his apartment, he wouldn’t be able to keep the water in
the aquarium at thirty-two degrees for longer than one hour and thirty-three minutes. The manager waited for a moment before replying, to make sure all the customers were paying attention. Then he
spoke very loudly.

‘Sir, we’re trying to help people here who’ve lost their heat and who have children or old folks to look after who are going to suffer from the cold, and you want to take all
the gas in the store for your fish? Why, that’s a scandal!’