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  We looked at each other, Lé and me. The guy was right.

  He went on:

  “You’re no big operator, Big Lé, but it’s not worth losing your rep for a lousy three grand.”

  We agreed on a plan B. Lévis decided to call Luis to ask him for the rest of the three thousand bucks right away. It was Lévis’s girlfriend in Jonquière who was checking to see if the money had been deposited in our account. We didn’t have the Internet on our cell phones back then. Luis was supposed to fork over the rest of the three thousand for us to get América across the border, and two thousand more once we were on the other side so we wouldn’t haul her back with us. None of that money involved taking the girl all the way to California. We’d said, “Let them deal with it, Christ.”

  Lévis said:

  “You take care of the girl. I’m calling Luis.”

  I said OK, but before hiding himself away around beside the reception desk, he added:

  “Fuck it, I’m going to tell him that for two thousand more we can bring him América ourselves. We’ll go down to San Francisco, just the two of us, with the girl. A total road trip. I’ll drive without a licence, we’ll be careful, and that’s that.”

  “What do we do with halfwit?”

  “Fucking halfwit, we throw him onto a bus, that’s what.”

  *

  The fourth mistake was to not get everything straight before leaving. When it came to the girl.

  When América arrived at the airport, I said to myself, “Me, I’d go to bed with that girl.” I was twenty-three years old, and she wasn’t far off forty. Her face was a bit tired, especially the eyes, and she had a big explosion of black curly hair on her head. She was about so high, almost no breasts but a solid ass, and the most beautiful legs I ever saw on a woman. Above all she had a way of rolling her hips, a way of not being able to stop herself from rolling her hips, that made you choke on your saliva, let’s say.

  At first everything went fine with her in the car. Big Lé made her laugh, we pretended to understand her, and Lé’s music rocked. But after a while, his mood changed. I didn’t know why.

  I knew that Bezeau, in the back, was getting on his nerves. That retard had brought along a whole kit just to turn coke into crack while we were on the road. He had a funny old spoon shaped like a ladle, a little medicine bottle full of baking soda, and a big bottle of distilled water. He put four parts of coke, one part of Cow Brand into the spoon, two or three drops of water, then he heated it from underneath with his lighter, while stinking up the whole car.

  América said over and over, “Están locos, están locos.” Where she came from, that was enough to get thrown in the hole for the rest of your days.

  I wouldn’t have wanted to be sitting beside him either, especially in her place. Smoking, it’s not like snorting, it puts you to sleep sometimes. If you can call that sleep. Bezeau was having bad dreams right beside her. Rock dreams. He grabbed at his cock through his jeans, raging, murmurous, through his teeth:

  “Here, my cunny. Here, my muffin. Here, my coochie.”

  We didn’t quite know what he was talking about. Lévis would have put him up front with me, but the only time he’d tried to do so, after the dinner when he’d stayed in the car to smoke, he’d insisted he wanted to drive, and América had almost had a nervous breakdown.

  I know that was more than enough to spoil a trip, but his mood had altered even before Bezeau had started freaking out.

  I wanted to talk about it to Lévis that night, while he was having a smoke out on the terrace in front of the motel, but before I could open my mouth, he said:

  “She’s not his wife.”

  “Of course, if they were married, we wouldn’t have to be doing this.”

  “No, what I mean is, she’s not his woman at all. Maybe she was a vacation fuck in San José, maybe he owes her a favour, I don’t know what, but she’s not his woman and she’ll never be his woman.”

  I agreed with him. Bezeau had told us all at least a dozen times that América had offered to suck him off the day before at Cindy’s. It wasn’t true, obviously, but you didn’t need a sign as clear as that to see that América was nobody’s woman. You could just tell, I don’t know why.

  I agreed with Lé, but I still asked him:

  “Why are you saying that?”

  “Because if I loved a woman and I wanted her to join me in the States, I wouldn’t give the job to a couple of clowns like us.”

  He cleared his throat and spat a large gob onto the ground. He added:

  “And if I loved a woman and some clown offered to set her down on my doorstep for two thousand dollars, I wouldn’t say, ‘Once you’re over the border, do whatever you want with her.’”

  Lévis got a text from his girlfriend at three in the morning. The money had arrived.

  He told me to wake up América and to load up the car and wait for him outside. He woke Bezeau, who was sleeping like a log, and told him, “You’re not coming with us to the border.”

  He gave him three hundred bucks to take a taxi to the bus station and a bus to the Saguenay in case we didn’t come back. Bezeau kept shouting, “I can’t even speak English, for Christ’s sake!”

  The voices got quieter, and Lévis came out by himself. We got in the car. He turned to América to say, “Todo saldrá bien, guapa.” Then he looked at me and said, “Let’s go.”

  The following Friday, Bezeau went to see Lévis at the bar where he was the doorman, to ask him when they were going to split the money.

  “There’s no more money. I gave it all to the girl. You, you got three hundred bucks worth of coke out of me, you didn’t drive for two minutes, and you cost me a bus ticket. In my books I don’t owe you a fucking cent.”

  Bezeau went off, cursing.

  “Anyway, the next time you come up with a plan like that, don’t call me.”

  “We won’t call you, that’s for sure.”

  *

  Our fifth mistake was to go through Detroit.

  If we were to do it again, I’d choose a little border crossing in Quebec with one sleepy guy and say, “We’re going shopping in Plattsburgh.” Back then we thought that passing through Detroit would give us a head start if Luis ever gave us the OK to push on all the way to California. In particular, we figured that the Ambassador Bridge had the largest volume of commercial traffic in the world, and that gave us a better chance to get through.

  They had the traffic, yes, but they also had the means to manage it. Especially in the summer of 2002.

  When we drove onto the bridge early in the morning, the cars were flowing freely. But the line-up was still two or three kilometres long. It was already hot, and I had no air-conditioning in my car. We were in a sweat when we arrived at customs right in the middle of the bridge. The guy looked at our passports.

  “So you gentlemen are from Quebec and the lady here is from Costa Rica.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why are you coming to the United States?”

  “To visit. She’s never been here.”

  “All right. And why here?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Why travel this far to cross the state line?”

  Lévis thought we were already fucked when the customs man saw the Costa Rica passport, but I think we were fucked right there. We had no answer for that. Lévis made one up on the spot. He gestured to the back with his head:

  “Oh, she loves Detroit.”

  If we’d been less dumb, we’d have known that that was not an answer to give. Nobody likes Detroit, because Detroit is a shithouse.

  He had us pull over and park, and escorted us inside. They took América aside and kept her for a long time. The two of us waited a good hour before a guy in a tie came to talk to us. My ears were ringing and my hands wouldn’t stop sweating.

  It’s strange, be
cause today I still remember what the guy said as if he was speaking French, even if that’s impossible. Lévis tells me that it’s the same for him.

  The man said right off that we were welcome in the United States, but not the young woman who was with us. He said there was no formal accusation against us, but he thought he knew what we were up to. He said, “If you try it again, at any border crossing from the Rockies to the Adirondacks, today, tomorrow, or in six months, you really won’t like what’s going to happen to you afterwards.”

  We waited for an hour to get América back. She’d been crying. Lévis said to her, “Lo siento, guapa.” We went back on the 401, and I saw he was taking a detour to pass by the motel. I asked:

  “Do we really have to pick up that fucking retard?”

  “I’m not going back for Bezeau, I’m going back for the coke.”

  Bezeau had already left. Lévis went to see the Pakistani at the reception. He convinced him that he needed the keys to the room because he’d left something behind. That son of a bitch had hidden two grams between his mattress and the box spring.

  “And the maid?”

  “Does it look to you like the rooms here are cleaned very often?”

  We headed straight back to Montreal, taking turns at the wheel, and sniffing coke off a key from time to time. América didn’t say a word. Lévis never tried to find out what was behind it all. He didn’t talk about what Luis had said either, but I think she knew. She didn’t once ask to call him on the way back. Not once.

  We arrived at Cindy’s dead on our feet. I think we slept twelve hours straight. The next day we looked into how to get América to Costa Rica. She’d bought a calling card, and she spent her time talking to people in her country. She talked with Cindy, too. I don’t know how they understood each other.

  Lévis gave the girl almost all the cash. A thousand bucks. Back where she was going, that would be a lot of money.

  The first night, we tied one on with some buddies at the Sainte-Élisabeth. The second night we left América with Cindy again and we both went to flame out the rest of the cash at the Solid Gold. We had three hundred dollars, but Lé wanted to save some money for gas, to get back to the Saguenay.

  We drank rum and coke and beer and Jameson shooters. Lé paid me a session in the cubicle with the most beautiful dancer I’d seen so far. I don’t know how much he gave her, but she stayed with me for at least six songs. I would have liked her to rub her pussy against me or shove her big tits in my face, but she didn’t stop showing me her cunt. She had little lips bigger than the big ones, and she kept on playing with them and pulling on them as if they were her pride and joy or I don’t know what.

  In the end that kind of put me off, and I was embarrassed to look.

  The last day, we got up late. América had gone for a walk. Cindy told me she had an air ticket for that same day.

  “I’ll take her tonight. You can leave.”

  We waited around a while for her to come back so we could say goodbye. But she didn’t turn up. So we left.

  *

  It’s Dave Archibald’s brother who asked us to tell him the story the other day, because he wanted to turn it into a film script or a book, I don’t remember which. We started to tell it, we were both talking over each other, and at a certain point he asked:

  “The girl, what was her name?”

  I looked at Big Lé. He didn’t know any more than I did.

  I remembered the road, and the weather, and the guy’s face at the border, and the guy who talked to us in the office. I remembered the bridge, I remembered Bezeau and his bad breath, and if I tried, I could have even remembered the name of the motel.

  But I’d forgotten the name of the girl.

  Lévis said:

  “Just call her América. That’s all she had to say, anyway.”

  In the Fields of the Lord

  BLOOD SISTERS I

  From time to time, she remembers when her grandmother and Jim were still alive.

  Her grandmother was an old village sorceress who believed in St. Elmo’s fire, in the devil, in the Holy Trinity, and all sorts of fantastic creatures. She buried saints’ medals in the gardens of couples expecting a child, and spat on the lawns of men who beat their wives or forgot to shave before Sunday Mass. She invoked the spirits of the dead, and read the future in playing cards. She died of a heart attack in the village restaurant, in the company of her two oldest friends, while enjoying her favourite pastime, gossip.

  Jim was her cousin. He was tall and strong, all his movements were slow and sad, and she was, from her birth, in love with him.

  For a long time the three of them had been very happy in the fields of the Lord, then less happy, and then not at all.

  From time to time she remembers the little girl she was. She recalls a little girl she once was, but is no more. When she thinks of her grandmother and Jim alive, she can think only about how they died.

  From time to time, she remembers.

  Once, there was a big family reunion on her parents’ land. There must have been a million people under the tents, breathing in the fatty vapours of three spitted lambs revolving over the coals. The little girl wanted to get away from the crowd of children. She saw in the distance the comforting face of her grandmother, and ran towards her with little hopping steps. She embraced her. The old woman was seated sedately on a deck chair, along with other women. She greeted this burst of affection with surprise, but soon began to stroke the little girl’s hair, while talking with the other women. Bit by bit, the little girl began to feel uncomfortable. The lady had a strange voice and strange gestures. The lady had a strange smell, and wore a dress she had never seen. The lady was not her grandmother.

  She became frightened and started to cry.

  The lady disappeared into the crowd and came back with another lady whose face was a duplicate of her own. The little girl stared at the two identical women, and wasn’t sure if even one of them was her grandmother. She cried, lashed out, bit all the hands trying to grab hold of her, and fled towards the trees, howling like a little savage. They searched for her until nightfall. Her father found her under a cedar tree, and delicately extricated her with his large farmer’s hands. He kissed her on the cheeks, the brow, and at her neck, and explained to her that her grandmother had a twin sister.

  When the ambulance had crossed through the village, all its sirens wailing, the little girl had turned to her sister and said:

  “It’s grandma.”

  They’d been playing with a box, on the side of the road. In the box, a litter of kittens. There were two grey ones, a black, a pale, two caramels, and a tiger. Her sister had said:

  “Don’t say that.”

  But she knew the ambulance was carrying her grandmother, and that her grandmother was going to die.

  Her grandmother had had thirteen children, five girls and eight boys. One of them was her father, three were dead, and two were very sick. The little girl got on her bicycle and pedalled up to the old stone house. She knew that her grandmother would not be there that night, and that someone had to bathe her ailing uncles, and tell them a story.

  During the funeral, her grandmother’s sister planned all the visits to the funeral home in deference to the presence there of the little girl, then almost an adolescent. This was difficult, because the little girl refused to leave her grandmother. She lingered there, half woman and half child. She took a few steps away, sat at the foot of the coffin, or stood covering the dead woman’s chill hands, wrapped in a large wooden rosary, with her own warm hands. No one dared to offer her condolences, no one dared to disturb her.

  Today she sees in this tale all the wisdom of those people. All the world’s wisdom in this tribe putting its own grief on hold out of respect for a child’s overweening sorrow. All the world’s wisdom in this woman stepping back from her own mourning because the sight of it w
ould be unseemly for a little girl.

  The woman had to wait every night for the girl to be coaxed away from her vigil.

  From time to time she imagines this woman, alone, watching over her sister in the darkness, while the undertaker cleans up the rooms for the next day. She imagines her also, at home, with her thoughts.

  On New Year’s Eve, the old woman had gone to the parish church to see the year’s dead file out in procession. She had seen her own face pass by, and had returned home in a panic. She calmed down in the days that followed, and put her affairs in order. During the first months of the year she made a point of being pleasant with everybody, and did not often refuse chocolates with cherry filling. She was sad to have to die, but glad to have been forewarned. When the telephone rang and her nephew told her that her sister was dead, she understood right away, and was greatly relieved. Now she felt guilty.

  She, Rose-Anna, had not been very close to her sister, Laura-Anna, for thirty years. They lived in neighbouring villages, and never visited each other. That night, however, Rose-Anna found herself dreaming of a time when they were one and the same person, with a single face just like that of the little girl. She dreamed of substituting for the face of her dead sister her own identical face, of adopting the little girl in her turn, and of staying with her until she reached an age when the death of an old woman would no longer affect her to such a degree. Of course, she had her own family and her own children, and nowhere near the energy to embark on such a masquerade. It was only an idea, one of those wild ideas of which insomnias are made, and which in the morning linger on only as a desiccated husk, oak bark and the skin of a snake.

  From time to time, she imagines and remembers.

  The third night, after the mass and the interment, the little girl was taken to her grandparents’. They had thought that it would do her good to sleep among the scents and belongings of her grandmother. They stretched her out in the wide guest bed, where she went to sleep for the first time in days.

  In the middle of the night, she woke. Someone was sitting at the end of the bed. She felt a weight making a hollow in the mattress, and tugging at the bedclothes, right beside her feet. Her grandmother was there in her nightdress, smiling in the lunar half-light, holding out her hand to her, both rough and soft. She was wearing the lavender perfume she reserved for special occasions.