“Come on!”
“No, Gail. I don’t think.…”
“Please, please! I know you’ve been dreaming it for a long time. Tomorrow it’ll be too late.”
“I … I don’t know.…”
She stumbled towards me, and I submitted to her with fearful docility. She undid my belt, took my clothes off. I felt blood rushing to the bottom of my stomach. A fog in my brain, I didn’t even know where I was anymore. She said, panting, “Help me.” I tripped trying to take off my pants and my underwear, my cock hard, aimed at her, her eyes avoiding it entirely. Timidly, I lay down next to her; the tension slowly cleared as our lips touched, her warm body next to mine, her salty, fresh skin, then her suddenly agitated hands finding their way towards my crotch, an electric shock that ran down to my toes, she guided me clumsily into her, moist heat, sublime, my head emptied, my conscience completely gone, and a groan shuddered through me, without warning.
Her disappointed eyes, and the shame that filled me.
She moved away brusquely, no doubt she was thinking of Don, with whom she’d done it, I was sure now. I wanted to die, to flee. I couldn’t hold a candle to him. What humiliation. How could I have believed that such a girl was actually interested in me? And what time was it? Late now? How much time had we spent in that room? I was seventeen, for God’s sake, and I had just done it for the first time, and that’s all there was? That disappointing?
“Romain, please! You’re going to ruin everything!”
I jumped out of bed in a panic. I wanted to stammer embarrassed apologies, something like, It would have been better if we hadn’t done it, it was better before. But you couldn’t say something like that. I tried to collect my clothes strewn across the floor, looking for my belt, my shoes, my shirt. I wished I could be far away from this place. I needed to think about what had happened, alone. Gail insisted in a plaintive voice that I come back to bed. I didn’t answer. She got up, furious, her hair half-covering her face. “What are you afraid of? It’s like that’s all there is in you, fear!” The remark should have upset me, but I barely heard it. I still needed to find my socks and one of my damn shoes, which Gail picked out from under the bed, and threw at me maliciously, like a bone to a dog. I must have looked ridiculous, down on all fours like an idiot, half dressed and half shod, blind to the miracle before me, Gail naked, her small round breasts, a shining spot between her legs, but it didn’t interest me anymore, my genitals had withered, a hermit crab back in its shell. We heard a noise on the ground floor.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing! Just the wind!”
“No, there’s someone there!”
Then a terrible cry in the night, a terrifying howl.
Panicking, Gail wrapped herself in a sheet and ran out of the room, a cold shower wouldn’t have had sobered her quicker. My heart beating, we ran down the stairs, into the living room, and reached the veranda in which a heavy, strange silence lay. “Locki?” Gail said in a nervous voice. “Locki, is that you?” She saw the blood on the veranda, viscous, steaming. She screamed, desperate shouts that were heard all the way to the Tees mansion. In a panic, I ran until I thought my heart would explode, first to the back garden, then down the cedar staircase that led to the beach, and due east, my ankles turning on the stones. That poor dog, stretched out, its throat slit, not completely dead yet. Light burst from the Riddington place, and then the Hayes’. In front of me, far away, under the nearly full moon, someone was running towards the village, a broad-shouldered silhouette, familiar.
I made my decision. I would denounce him to the police. Louis kept killing animals, the bastard. The next morning, there was a knock on the door. But it wasn’t Louis they were looking for. It was me.
12
The wind blew stronger, clearing up the sky over the sea. That cold November wind! My breath forming clouds of steam, shaking in my buckskin jacket, I forced myself to walk as slowly as possible, letting the names of the houses I passed come to me: Joe Rousseau of the caisse populaire; Roger Quimper of the general store; Jeff Loiseau the mechanic; Lionel Coutu — Françoise, Jean, and Paul’s father … Rue Principale. Its modest wooden homes, all jumbled together on small plots, some still had their asbestos shingles, some of their yards entirely asphalted over. Small houses of one or two stories, scrupulously maintained and freshly painted, just like it had been back in the days. Nothing had changed really, except for doors and windows replaced by newer materials, and the cars in the driveways, more luxurious now.
Loiseau’s garage, the bakery, and Leblond’s shoe shop had disappeared; Quimper’s general store, swallowed by the grocery chain Metro. And Louis’ house, which had always been a shambles, was a video rental place.
Only Mode pour toute la famille, my mother’s store, remained almost unchanged, except that the front had been painted bright yellow, in stark contrast with the dull white of the houses surrounding it and the melancholy grey of the sky and sea. The same sign with its outdated lettering, the same mannequins in the shop window. On the second floor, our apartment seemed inhabited: lace drapes dressed the windows, and a child’s drawing had been taped in one window. My old room.
Troubling, this nostalgia that brings tears to your eyes, even if the memories aren’t that great. Places, smells, sounds — the happy jingling of the bell over the store’s front door — something you thought had been deactivated from your memory, erased, like toys with their batteries removed, and here you are, throat tight with emotion.
“Can I help you?”
It was her. Françoise. She looked older than fifty-two, her face saggy, her heavy body even more massive, and her short hair almost the colour of eggplant.
She squinted, then her brow furrowed as if she suddenly couldn’t see. “Romain?”
I can’t say how much time we stood there, watching each other, intimidated and disbelieving. Clearly she wasn’t very happy to see me — her tight smile was almost a grimace. I too was shocked to realize I still held a grudge. After a long hesitation, I said, “You look well,” a comment I realized she couldn’t return when I saw my reflection in one of her large lateral mirrors. She didn’t answer, watching me, her mouth dumbly slack, as if she was afraid of me, a man in a wrinkled suit, my face drawn, a three-day beard on my face; it all implied there was something wrong with me.
I turned my head and looked quickly around the shop: impeccably sorted displays, on the left side men’s clothing, on the right, women’s and children’s. Like when my mother ran the shop. I said matter-of-factly, “So you got the store?” An embarrassed look on her face. “You own the place, right?”
“Yes. I.…”
“The old man gave you a good price?”
The phone rang, and I saw relief in her eyes.
“Just give me a moment, okay?” She went into the back to grab the phone instead of picking up the receiver right next to us, on the counter.
I began wandering the aisles, forcing myself to look relaxed. Memories were coming back to me, not as unpleasant as I had feared. As if my mother were still alive, and I imagined her working between two displays — a good, nervous woman, with constant aches in her legs that made her suffer. She ran her store with a firm hand, without sentimentality; she was alone at the helm and happy about it, always ready to give us orders, boxes to move or shelves to stock. My father