Marie-Louise sits at the kitchen table, her elbow on the oilcloth, her chin in her hand, watching him tear up the lettuce for their salad. He has planned a simple meaclass="underline" steak, salad, bread, wine. And cheese for dessert.
“It’s funny seeing a man cook,” she says. “Do you always cook for yourself?”
“I eat in restaurants, mostly. On Sundays I cook. I enjoy it for a change.”
“Hm-m.” She doesn’t know what to make of it. She never met anybody who enjoyed cooking. God knows her mother didn’t. It occurs to her that this old guy might be a queer. Maybe that’s why he didn’t make love to her last night. “What kind of work do you do?”
“I’m with the police.” He says this with a shrug meant to shunt away any fear she might have of the police.
“Oh.” She’s not very interested in what he does.
He puts the salad bowl on the table before her. “Here. Make yourself useful. Mix this.” The skillet is smoking, and the steaks hiss and sizzle as he drops them in. “What did you do today?” he asks, his voice strained because he is standing tiptoe, looking in the cupboard for an extra plate and glass.
“Nothing. I just sat around. Mended some things. And I took another bath. Is that all right?”
“Of course. No, you don’t stir a salad. You toss it. Like this. See?”
“What difference does it make?” There is annoyance in her voice. She could never do anything right in her mother’s kitchen either.
“It’s the way it’s done, that’s all. Here, let’s see.” He lifts her chin with his palm. “Ah. That eye is looking better. Swelling’s gone.” She is not a pretty girl, but her face is alert and expressive. “Well.” He takes his hand away and turns to cut the bread. “So you sat around and mended all day?”
“I went out shopping. Made breakfast. I borrowed that coat from your closet when I went out. It was cold. But I put it back again.”
“Did it fit?”
“Not bad. You should have seen the man at the grocery look at me!” She laughs, remembering what she looked like in that coat. Her laughter is enthusiastic and vulgar. As before, it stops suddenly in mid-rise and is gone.
“Why did he look at you?” LaPointe asks, smiling along with her infectious laughter.
“I guess I looked funny in an old woman’s coat.”
He pauses and frowns, not understanding. She must mean an old-fashioned coat. It is not an old woman’s coat; it was a young woman’s coat. He attends to the steaks.
“There isn’t much to do around here,” she says frankly. “You don’t have any magazines. You don’t have TV.”
“I have a radio.”
“I tried it. It doesn’t work.”
“You have to jiggle the knob.”
“Why don’t you get it fixed?”
“Why bother? I know how to jiggle the knob. Okay, let’s eat. I think everything’s ready.”
She eats rapidly, like a hungry child, but twice she remembers her manners and tells him it’s good. And she drinks her wine too fast.
“I’ll do the dishes,” she offers afterwards. “That’s something I know how to do.”
“You don’t have to.” But the thought of her puttering around in the kitchen is pleasant. “All right, if you want to. I’ll make the coffee while you’re washing up.”
There isn’t really enough room for two in the narrow kitchen, and three times they touch shoulders. Each time, he says, “Excuse me.”
“…so I thought I might as well try Montreal. I mean, I had to go somewhere, so why not here? I was hoping I could get a job… maybe as a cocktail waitress. They make lots of money, you know. I had a girlfriend who wrote me about the tips.”
“But you didn’t find anything?”
She is curled up on the sofa, Lucille’s pink quilted robe around her; he sits in his comfortable old chair. She shakes her head and looks away from him, toward the hissing gas fire. “No, I didn’t. I tried everywhere for a couple of weeks, until I ran out of money. But the cocktail bars didn’t want a cripple. And my boobs are small.” She says this last matter-of-factly. She knows how it is in the world. Yet there is some wistfulness in it, or fatigue.
“So you started working the street.”
She shrugs. “It was sort of an accident, really. I mean, I never thought of screwing for money. Of course, I had screwed men before. Back home. But just friends and guys who took me out on dates. Just for fun.”
“Don’t use that word.” LaPointe knows that no daughter of his would ever use that word.
Marie-Louise cocks her head thoughtfully, trying to think back to the offending word. With her head cocked and her frizzy mop of hair, she has the look of a Raggedy Ann doll. “Screw?” she asks, uncertain. “What should I say?”
“I don’t know. Making love. Something like that.”
She grins, her elastic face impish. “That sounds funny. Making love. It sounds like the movies.”
“But still…”
“Okay. Well, I never thought of… doing it… for money. I guess I didn’t think anyone would pay for it.”
LaPointe shakes his head. Doing it sounds worse yet.
“Well, I stayed with some people for a while. All people of my age, sort of living together in this big old house. But then I had a fight with the guy who sort of ran everything, and I moved to a room. Then I ran out of money and they kicked me out. They kept most of my clothes and my suitcase. That’s why I don’t have a coat. Anyway, I was kicked out, and I was just walking around. Scared, sort of, and trying to think of what to do… where I could go. See, it was cold. Well, I ended up at the bus station and I sat around most of the night, trying to look like I was waiting for a bus, so they wouldn’t kick me out. But this guard kept eyeing me. I only had that shopping bag for my clothes, so I guess he knew I wasn’t really waiting for a bus. And then this guy comes up to me and just straight out asks me. Just like that. He said he would give me ten dollars. He was sort of…” She decides not to say that.
“Sort of what?”
“Well… he wasn’t young. Anyway, he brought me to his apartment. He came in his pants while he was feeling me up. But he paid anyway.”
“That was good of him.”
“Yeah,” she agrees with a frankness that undercuts his irony. “It was sort of good of him, wasn’t it? I didn’t know that at the time, because I hadn’t been around, and I thought everyone was like him. Nice, you know. He let me stay the night; and the next morning he bought me breakfast. Most of the others weren’t like that. They try to cheat you out of your money. Or they say you can spend the night, but when they’ve had all they want, they kick you out. And if you make a fuss, sometimes they try to beat you up. Some of them really get a kick out of beating you up.” She touches her eye with her fingertips. The swelling is gone, but a faint green stain remains. “You know what you have to do?” she confides seriously. “You have to get your money before he starts. A girl I went around with for a while told me that. And she was right.”
“That was how long ago? When this old man picked you up?”
She thinks back. “Six weeks. Two months, maybe.”
“And since then you’ve been getting along by selling yourself?”
She grins. That sounds even funnier than making love. “It’s not so bad, you know? Guys take me to bars and I eat in restaurants. And I go dancing.” She tucks her short leg up under her. “You might not think it, but I can dance real well. It’s funny, but I can dance better than I can walk, you know what I mean? I like dancing more than anything. Do you dance?”