The Dishwasher by Stéphane Larue

Author:Stéphane Larue
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2019-06-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Every time Marie-Lou brought up Jess I ended up feeling guilty. So she was on my mind when I got up the day after my visit to Chez Maurice. Usually my thoughts about Jess were a muddle, but the one certainty was my sense of relief that we weren’t together anymore. This time I felt something else as well, a strange nostalgia. It might be that my relationship with Marie-Lou had been stagnating for weeks, and though she appeared happy to see me she was clearly still struggling to trust me. She seemed to harbour a serious fear of gambling, or more precisely of what gambling was doing to me. Today I see she understood my addiction better than I did. Hanging out with me demanded a constant effort not to dwell on it, not to be constantly suspicious, not to challenge me or try to teach me a lesson. When she brought up Jess that afternoon, out of nowhere, it made me think about the first time I met Marie-Lou, three years earlier. Yeah, I met Marie-Lou through Jess. It was winter. Jess and I were in a rough patch, fighting all the time. Her mum was going through a relapse. It was a Friday. Jess and I had arranged to meet up at Longueuil Metro station, to do something with her friends. Basically she was doing whatever it took to avoid spending time at home.

I was at the station, leaning on the railing, slightly hidden by a bank of payphones. The crowd was coming off the platform, rushing toward the concrete stairs. People were on their way home from school or work, everyone rushing to catch their buses. Groups of rap kids were waiting for their friends, gathered around the dépanneur right in the centre of the Metro station. Metallica’s “One” played in my headphones. The station smelled like cement, cigarette butts, and fried chicken. With my Walkman turned up to nine, I was discreetly watching the group of sketchy kids in front of the glass doors of the McDonald’s. I knew who they were. Jess knew them all. Maureen wasn’t there yet. Maybe she was still sleeping. I hoped so: that chick scared the shit out of me. Even the baddest of the bad kids got nervous when she showed up. Maureen rolled with the real shit disturbers, the ones who lived on King-George, the ones you didn’t want to look in the eye. When Jess introduced me to her—the one and only time she spoke to me—I’d barely managed to spit out a few meaningless sentences. I’d never experienced a more suspicious, truculent glare.

I’d been waiting around fifteen minutes. I checked out the gang one last time, to see if Jess was finally there. She’d figured out that she could keep me waiting. Luc was there, the dealer from Gérard-Filion high school, with a few of his jaded little sidekicks. Luc pretty much lived at the Metro station. His apartment was next door, in the Port-de-Mer tower.

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