Without waiting till I got over my surprise, he said, “Are you finished work?”

I didn’t give him a chance. I told him with a superior little look, walking around him on my way to the kitchen, “I’m not in the habit of changing my clothes till I’ve finished my shift! And I don’t clean up the restaurant in my regular clothes.”

He was shifting from one foot to the other like a shy little boy who’s not yet comfortable in his body. A little boy over six feet tall! I thought he was touching. Instead of telling him off as I’d intended. That gave him the courage to try pursuing a conversation that had started off so badly.

“Are you going straight home?”

I shut the door behind me, thinking that surely he wouldn’t follow me into the kitchen.

He pushed it open and stuck his head in. And saw Nick sweeping the floor while Lucien scoured the last saucepans.

“No customers in here!”

It didn’t seem to bother him too much because he went on talking to me as if nothing had been said.

“I was just wondering if you’d have one last drink with me before you go home …”

Nick pushed the door shut with the flat of his hand.

“Wait till she leaves to ask her … But I don’t think you’ve got much chance, cowboy.”

Cowboy? Gilbert Forget was nothing like a cowboy, aside from the fact that he was wearing jeans. Even so, there’s nothing western about elephant pants! Everything about him said beatnik, flippant, dope, over-strong espresso and over-long nights, and absolutely not the open air and chasing cattle and singing country! A guitar, yes, but no Hawaiian sobs!

Feeling a little sorry for my tall suitor, I shouted through the door, “Wait outside, I’ll be there in two minutes!”

Janine, who was leaning against the huge refrigerator smoking a cigarette, came out with a laugh that startled me.

“Nobody but you, Céline, would tell a hunk like that to wait out in the cold for you in the middle of the night! You’ll get what you deserve if he finds himself a hot babe on St. Catherine Street and leaves you behind cooling your heels …”

I smiled as I put on my coat.

“I don’t think there’s much danger of that.”

Shrugging, she mashed her cigarette.

“You’re pretty sure of yourself all of a sudden!”

“Actually I’m not, but I’ve got a feeling I can be sure of him – for tonight anyway.”

“On top of it all you’re pretentious!”

I blew her an insincere kiss as I was leaving the kitchen.

“I’m not pretentious. But if he came all the way to the ladies’ room to look for me, I don’t think he’s going to leave me for the first female he sees.”

She followed me into the restaurant. Now she was the one who looked like a puppy trotting along behind me.

“He followed you into the ladies room?”

“I didn’t say that, Janine, I said to the ladies’ room! He didn’t come in to help me change!”

“What did he say, what did he say?”

I slowed down at the cash register where Françoise was very carefully counting the night’s take.

“Look, Janine, is it all that surprising for a guy to ask me out for a drink?”

She came to a sudden halt in front of the first booth, unable to come up with an answer.

“Umm … no … that’s not what I meant … Come on, Céline, you know that’s not what I meant …”

“I’m going to start feeling sorry for you and not ask what you did mean because, if you ask me, you can look till tomorrow morning but you won’t come up with an answer that makes any sense … See you tomorrow night, Janine … And if you ask me one question about what’s going to happen, you’ll regret it! Wait till I say something before you give me the third degree, okay? Besides, I might not even feel like talking!”

She and Françoise, looking stunned, stood frozen in the restaurant doorway, the cashier with a wad of bills, the waitress nervously lighting one last cigarette before leaving. The prospect of not knowing a juicy piece of gossip the next night must have incensed Janine and she must have been wondering how she’d be able to restrain herself.

Gilbert was leaning nonchalantly against the streetlamp at the corner of St. Catherine and St. Denis. Immediately I thought about my roommates doing the same thing at the corner of the Main, but for other reasons, and I had a kind thought for them, poor dears, who were freezing their butts for hours for next to nothing now that the Golden Age of the Boudoir was in the past. How would they react to the existence of Gilbert Forget, should I ever decide to talk about him? With sympathetic smiles? Words of warning because they didn’t want me to be hurt?

Gilbert tossed his cigarette butt in the gutter – I knew from the smell that it wasn’t regular tobacco – and smiled as he walked up to me.

“Does this mean it’s yes?”

“To a drink? It’s no. But we can walk together if you want … I live nearby …”

“Where?”

“Place Jacques-Cartier.”

“That’s not next door …”

“With legs like yours you shouldn’t complain.”

He sensed right away that he was on slippery ground – this wasn’t the moment to talk about the difference in the length of our legs – and he didn’t push it. We stood rooted there at the corner of the street, not sure what to do. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and heaved a sigh whose meaning I couldn’t grasp.

“So. Shall we go?”

I took advantage of a green light to cross St. Catherine heading south.

A heavy silence settled in. I took four steps to each one of his, that was the first thing I noticed. The tall lanky guy and the wobbly little girl. One question was burning my lips but I knew I mustn’t ask it: Why? Why had he asked me to go for a drink, why were we there not talking when his certainly more interesting friends were waiting for him, I was sure, in some hip café in the neighbourhood, to smoke pot, drink, or talk about the show they were working on with such passion? Our worlds were so unlike that a topic of conversation was practically non-existent, that was obvious; after all I couldn’t talk about my waitressing job and he knew that I didn’t know a thing about the music world. So? Simple sexual attraction? I was attracted to him, that was undeniable, but him … He could probably get it on with any girl he wanted, so what was he doing with someone like me?

The same damn problem! When we’re starting our first walk!

It was a chilly night, one last jolt of cold wind was cruelly shaking Montréal to remind us that the real spring hadn’t arrived yet and that knowing nature’s undeniable hypocrisy, a nasty surprise was always possible. Especially in April, the most treacherous month of the year. Cars drove by on our left, sending up sprays of icy water because it had rained earlier that evening.

Gilbert looked at my yellow shoes.

“You know you’re wrecking those pretty shoes of yours …”

It’s true that they were all wet and sticking to my skin, already starting to stretch out of shape. After just one night.

“It’s true, I am, but they’ve already served their purpose. I wanted to feel like spring was here and they made me feel it … Once they’re dry, tomorrow, I’ll know whether I can wear them again … If I can, that’s good, but if not … I’ll put them on a shelf in my closet as a souvenir …”

“Of our meeting?”

“So far, Gilbert, there’s been nothing memorable about it.”

Right away I wished I hadn’t said that. It was uncalled for. And cruel. I nearly expected him to drop me on the spot, I deserved it. But all he did was give me a long look and say nothing. Was he more perceptive than I thought? Did he understand why I was worried, and was he trying to find a way to let me know? To reassure me? To convince me of his integrity, his candour? Was the braggart finally going to appear in all the splendour of his bad faith?

If he was trying to think of something to say he hadn’t found it because we said nothing for a good while. Finally I broke the silence. One of us had to say something before we got to the apartment on Place Jacques-Cartier.

“You must’ve thought I was really brainless last summer …”

He couldn’t help laughing at the memory of our first meeting, no more successful than this one as far as that’s concerned.

“At first I thought you were a … a …”

“A junkie?”

“Maybe not, but someone who knew where to find grass …”

“If you’d said pot, sure … That, at least, I knew what it was … But grass … that’s too specialized for me … How come you didn’t know? That’s hard to believe.”

He hesitated briefly then went on, “Actually I had some on me …”

“Pot?”

“Yes.”

“So why ask me?”

“Can’t you guess?”

My cheeks turned red but I knew he couldn’t see it in the dark. What was I getting into? I could guess what he was going to say and I didn’t want him to because I wouldn’t believe it and maybe that would hurt him.

He asked again, “Can’t you guess?”

I stopped walking, I crossed my arms. He turned around and I saw his handsome face in the streetlamps of Bonsecours Street.

“I know what you’re going to say, Gilbert, and I want to ask you just one thing. If it’s not true don’t say it.”

He crouched down in front of me to talk. He didn’t know that was the last thing he should do. There’s nothing I hate more than when people bend down to talk to me, when they feel that they have to huddle down to be at my height. It’s a lack of respect, especially when it’s unconscious, and I can’t stand it. I’m not a child, my ears are fine and I have no trouble hearing and understanding without people bending in two because I’m small.

I should have got in his face, insulted him, hit him, sent him back where he came from with cruel words and the order never to get in touch with me again … In fact I nearly did. I froze in the middle of the sidewalk when he started to bend down, I straightened up as much as I could, which is what I do whenever I feel offended, I pulled back a little, even opened my mouth to let out the first insult that came to mind, anything as long as it was hurtful, when a hint of something in his big blue eyes, true innocence perhaps, sincerity without a hint of contempt or condescension, stopped me. I realized right away that he was bending down so that our eyes would be at the same level, that was all, there was no judgment in his behaviour, it was most likely a sign of genuine interest, of the beginning of affection. What he was about to say was important for him and he wanted to look in my eyes to see if his message had got through. So I let him talk, even if it meant telling him at the end of his presentation never to start again: a man as a little guy is ridiculous, a man as a little guy courting a midget is grotesque!

He’d taken my gloved hands in his and in his nervousness, was squeezing them a little too hard. Up close, he smelled of patchouli, cigarettes, pot and something indefinable – later I learned that it was the smell of his body – that excited me. After just a few words I could have jumped on him, so strong was the attraction. The summer before when he’d talked to me under false pretences, I’d thought he was handsome, but now, standing on the sidewalk, his face half-hidden in the dim lighting on Bonsecours Street, I thought he was absolutely stunning! If I can remember everything he said to me, it’s not so much because I listened carefully but because of the simplicity of his words, their obvious sincerity that went straight to my heart.

His compliments were new for me; no one so far had ever said that he’d thought I was beautiful as soon as he saw me, that he’d grabbed the first pretext to talk to me, that he’d been glad to see me again after letting me get away … I realized he could have been the biggest liar of all time. I knew enough about that kind of troublemaker though – I was brought up by an alcoholic mother who always lied – to boast that I could recognize a braggart when I saw one, so I was sure that I wouldn’t let myself be dazzled by what Gilbert had to say. I looked him straight in the eyes, thinking to myself that he was an actor and an incredibly good one because he seemed totally sincere.

When he’d finished his little homily he straightened up and stuffed his hands in his pockets again, never taking his eyes off me.

“So, anyway … Will you give me a chance or are you going to reject me again?”

Twice before I’d found myself at a crossroads with a decision to make that would change the course of my existence – the first when I’d agreed to try out for The Trojan Women two years before, the other a few months later when I’d decided to go along with Fine Dumas in the adventure of the Boudoir. When I looked at Gilbert Forget on this sneaky early spring night, I had the impression that I’d now come to a third: what I would say in the next few seconds to this stunning specimen of a man of whom I felt so unworthy would without a doubt determine my immediate future. Or at least the state of mind in which I would live through the days, the weeks and maybe even the months to come. This man seemed too extraordinary for me to let him get away but if I did give in to him I still didn’t know what I was getting into.

Though I told myself that I had to stop analyzing everything like that, that I had to tell him quickly yes or no, that it was unfair of me to leave him hanging out to dry there on the sidewalk, I was aware of the seconds passing and I was doing nothing to encourage him or let him down. Reject him a second time and he might walk away with no hope of return, leaving me with my loneliness. But now I was sentencing myself to loneliness once again, wasn’t I?

I gave a hint of a benevolent smile, the one that I use only rarely and reserve for people I love.

“We’ll start by going to my door, it’s not far, after that we’ll see …”

The rest of the walk was a kind of hesitation waltz of meaningless words exchanged to mask the uncertainty of both of us. I couldn’t help thinking that despite his sincerity and simply because he was a man, Gilbert was hoping for a guarantee of good luck and already saw himself spending a rapturous night with a passionate midget who’d be grateful to him till the end of her days. Though I wanted to be more positive, taking the events as they occurred without searching for a meaning they probably didn’t have, I couldn’t help believing that he was hiding something. I’d burned my fingers too often in physical relationships with men not to feel a nearly pathological wariness that had me paralyzed at the prospect of what was liable to happen in the next few hours. I wanted above all to avoid another letdown. Especially in the arms of this gorgeous hunk.

After all, if I was so concerned, if I was so afraid of being let down and suffering as a result, I just had to kiss his cheek at the door of the apartment on Place Jacques-Cartier, tell him goodnight and leave him on the sidewalk high and dry, then go upstairs and wait for my three roommates to tell them about my misadventure … The comfort of friendship out of fear of love – as usual … I thought I was being ridiculous, a voice was shouting at me, “Make up your mind, say something, out with it!” I wished a thousand deaths for these overly gloomy – and useless – thoughts of mine. Why complicate something that’s simple?

I was exasperated by my inability to make a decision and I wanted to slap myself when we got to my door.

He put his hand on my shoulder.

“If you haven’t decided, there’s nothing we can do about it, right … You seem like sometimes you want to say yes, sometimes you don't … But we’re at your house now, Céline, you have to decide, I can’t do it for you!”

Without giving it another thought I jumped into my destiny with both feet, reciting to myself all the clichés I knew: come what may, qué sera sera, it’s in God’s hands, the future belongs to the bold, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, fucking shit … All that to hide the one and only truth, the simple fact that I wanted this guy, I’d been celibate too long. Miguel the Mexican I’d met at Expo some eight months before seemed far away.

I tugged at the sleeve of his windbreaker, which was too short and too thin for the season.

“How about one last coffee? Or one last beer?”

Again, that smile like a knife in my heart.

“I ought to say no, you deserve it …”

Turning the key in the lock I was positive that what I was doing was definitive.