LaPointe rises. “Yes. But we have more to talk about.”
She has crossed to her desk and is taking up a folder of material pertaining to her working lunch. She glances at her calendar. “I’m tied up all afternoon. Are you free tonight, Lieutenant?”
“Yes.”
“Say nine o’clock? Here?”
She shakes hands with Guttmann, then offers her hand to LaPointe. “You really don’t remember me, do you, Lieutenant?”
“I’m afraid not. Should I?”
Still holding his hand, she smiles a montage of amusement and sadness. “We’ll talk about it tonight. Armagnac, isn’t it?”
She shows them to the door.
By nine o’clock it is dark in the little park of Carré St. Louis. For the first time in weeks, the wind is from the north and steady. If it remains in that quarter, it will bring the cleansing snow. But its immediate effect is to hone the edge of the damp cold. LaPointe has to fold in the flap of his collar against his throat as he cuts across the deserted park, picking his way carefully over the root-veined path because the dappled light from distant streetlights serves more to confuse than to illuminate.
Suddenly he stops. Save for the hiss of wind through gnarled branches, there is no sound. But he has a tingling in the back of his neck, as though someone were watching him. He looks around through the zebra dapple of black trees and shadows interlaced with the silver of streetlights bordering the park. There is nothing to be seen.
He continues across toward Mlle. Montjean’s school, where there are lights behind drawn shades on the first and third floors; probably late students learning French or English in a hurry. His knock is answered by the fussy man he met earlier. Mlle. Montjean is not in, but she is due any minute; she has left instructions that the Lieutenant is to be shown up to her apartment. The nervous man looks LaPointe over, his lips pursed critically. It isn’t his business who Mlle. Montjean’s friends are. He doesn’t care what his employer does on her own time. But there are limits. A policeman, really. Oh, well, he’ll show him up anyway.
Three lamps light the apartment, pooling three distinct areas. There is a porcelain lamp on the escritoire by the windows overlooking the square; a dim hanging lamp picks out the sunken “conversation island”; and beyond that, over the bar, is a glass ball confected of bits of colored glass and lit from within. The room is centrally heated, the dwindling fire in the fireplace largely decorative. LaPointe takes off his overcoat and makes himself at home to the extent of putting two kiln-dried, steam-cleaned logs on the fire and poking at the embers. He enjoys fiddling with open fires, and he often pictures himself in his daydream home in Laval, turning logs or pushing in burnt-off ends. The bark has begun to crackle and flutter with blue flame when Mlle. Montjean enters, her coat already off, her fur hat in her hand.
“Sorry, Lieutenant. But you know how these things are.” She does not mention what things. “Oh, good. I’m glad you’ve tended the fire. I was afraid it would die out; and I set it especially for you.” She ducks under the bar flap and begins to pour out two Armagnacs, light from the ball of glass shining in her carefully done hair. When LaPointe sits on a bar stool across from her, he realizes that she has been drinking fairly heavily, not beyond control, but perhaps a little beyond caring.
“I hope you didn’t have anything big on tonight,” she says.
“Nothing very big. A pinochle game I had to postpone, that’s all.”
“Hey, wow, Lieutenant.” She makes two clicking sounds at the side of her cheek. “Pinochle! You really know how to get it on.” She lifts her glass. “Salut?”
“Salut.”
She finishes half her drink and sets it down on the bar. “That word ‘salut’ reminds me of a proof we recently had that our aural-oral system of language learning is not without its flaws. We had an Arab student here—a nephew of one of those oil pirates—and he was being preened to take over the world, or learn to surrender in six languages, or whatever the fuck they do. Dumb as a stick! But they were giving him all sorts of special tutoring at McGill—I think his uncle bribed them by buying an atomic laboratory for them, or half of South America, or something like that… I mean, he was really stupid. He was so dumb he’d have difficulty making the faculty of a polytechnic in Britain, or getting his Ph.D. in journalism in the States… That line would get a laugh in an academic crowd.”
“Would it?”
“You’re not much of an audience, LaPointe. And now I don’t even remember what that story was supposed to illustrate.”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe you’re just playing for time.”
“Yes, maybe. How about another drink?”
“I still have this one.”
“I think I’ll have another.” She brings it around the bar and sits beside him. “I had the weirdest experience just now. I was crossing the park, and there was someone there, in the shadows.”
“Someone you know?”
“That’s just it. I had the feeling I knew him, but… I can’t explain it I didn’t see him, really. Just sort of a shadow. But I had this eerie feeling that he wanted to talk to me.”
“But he didn’t?”
“No.”
“Then what frightened you?”
She laughs. “Nothing. I was just scared. I warned you it was a weird experience. Am I babbling, or is it my imagination?”
“It’s not your imagination. This afternoon you said you knew me. Tell me about that.”
As she speaks, she deals with her glass, not with him. “Oh, I was just a kid. You never really noticed me. But for years, you’ve been… important in my life.” She puffs out a little laugh of self-derision. “Now that sounds heavy, doesn’t it? I don’t mean you’ve been important in the sense that I think of you often, because I don’t. But I think of you at… serious times. It must be embarrassing to have a stranger tell you that she has a rather special vision of you. Is it?”
He lifts his glass and tips his head. “Yes.”
“You think I’m drunk?”
He balances his thumb against his little finger. “A little.”
“Drunk and disorderly,” she says in a distant tone. “I charge you, young woman, with being drunk, and with having a disorderly life—a disorderly mind.”
“I doubt that. I think you have a very orderly mind. A very clever one.”
“Clever? Yes. Neatly arranged? Yes. But disorderly nevertheless. The front shelves of my mind are all neatly stacked and efficiently arranged. But back in the stacks there is a stew of disorder, chaos, and do you know what else?”
“No. What?”
“Just a pinch of self-pity.”
They both laugh.
“Now how about another drink?” She goes around the bar to refill her glass.
“No, thanks… all right. Yes. And tell me, with that self-pity you talk about, is there some hate?”
“Tons and tons, Lieutenant. But…” She points at him quickly, as though she just caught him slipping a card from his sleeve. “But not enough to kill.” She laughs drily. “You know something, sir? I have a feeling we may spend a lot of this night talking about two different things.”
“Not all of it.”
“A threat?”
He shrugs. “So, tons and tons of hate. Do you hate me for not remembering you?”