The waitress who replaced me at the Sélect at the end of 1966 was called Marguerite and she didn’t last long. After her came a whole string of girls with a little or a lot of experience, all of them pleasant and full of good will, but none exactly right for the job. Not according to the customers, who thought they were too slow or not polite enough, or the employees – in particular Janine, the other night waitress – who thought they were sloppy and clumsy. From day one the poor girls didn’t have a chance and they left seething with anger because it was a job that paid well, especially during the six months of Expo.

Then there was Nick. Every time I dropped in to the restaurant, he took my hand in his big hairy paw and told me how much he missed me. He would blow his nose, wipe his eyes with his dirty apron. He’d sputter a little while he spoke. I didn’t altogether believe him, no one is irreplaceable, I know that, and Nick has the gift of the gab, but still, it was nice to be told that I was. Especially by the person who a few years ago had been so reluctant to try me out as a waitress, to whom I’d had to prove that I could wait on tables despite my peculiar physique. I may have been the first midget waitress in Montréal and he was as proud of that as I was. To make him happy then I told him that I missed his cooking – which was far from true, the mere thought of his spaghetti with smoked meat turned my stomach – but it brought tears to his eyes because it made him happy when people liked his food.

“If you ever want to come back, Céline, just say the word. Give me a call and you’ll be back here in your cute little outfit. I’ve held onto it for you, it’s in your locker …”

I went to check, once, to see if he was bluffing. My waitress outfit was there all right, folded carefully in what Nick called my locker – actually just a shelf in one corner of the kitchen – the little cap sitting on top like a crown, the apron rolled up tight so it wouldn’t crease. With time it had got greasy but there was no permanent damage, the uniform was still wearable. It had warmed my heart and I’d thought to myself that if I ever felt the need, if life tricked me into going back where I had no desire to go, I wouldn’t hesitate to ask Nick to rescue me.

I was on top of things just then, money was pouring in, I would never have imagined that what I thought was just an attack of nostalgia would one day become reality.

Then the Boudoir was shut down and I decided to live on my savings.

My three roommates, because they spent their money as it came in, were forced to go back to the street to sell their “charms.”

After spending six jobless months playing sympathetic den-mother to three adult men who weren’t very rational or mature, I felt it was time to go back to earning my living. Or rather, to go to work. For something to do. Because I still had money. Lots. Enough to last a long time, but I was bored. The enjoyable side of spending long evenings alone, doing nothing or making progress with the Rougon-Macquart, had soon enough worn thin and I was looking out the window more often. My red notebook had been finished for a while, writing interested me less because nothing exciting had happened in my life since the Boudoir was shut down and I wasn’t ready to tackle fiction yet. So I tried films, theatre – which I like a lot but I couldn’t go every night, I’d even gone, though I hate it, I’d actually gone to a hockey game at the Forum!

Nothing worked; what I missed was human contact, direct ties with clients. Of the Sélect as much as the Boudoir. More, even, because for the most part the Boudoir’s clients had been only passing shadows I couldn’t understand a word of because they came from all over the world, while a good number of the Sélect’s customers had become more than acquaintances, almost friends. And I now realized that I’d been missing them all that time. But I couldn’t go back to the Sélect just because I was bored!

Meanwhile, there was no end to the winter, the snow would melt, disappear, come back suddenly, soft and wet, so the apartment seemed bigger and bigger, life emptier and emptier.

And in the end I didn’t have to call Nick to the rescue. It happened without my prodding. Once again, fate made the choice for me, I was manipulated by an irresistible force outside myself.

If the new night waitress at the Sélect hadn’t left, throwing her apron at Janine who’d said one word too many to her, I probably wouldn’t be here today, sitting in front of my blue notebook, dithering before I officially introduce the handsome Gilbert Forget, object of my woes.

Because I know that I’ve been vacillating since the beginning of this chapter, stalling for time, postponing Gilbert’s arrival because I’m afraid. Of him. Of memories that sting too much. Of what they could do to me. When that’s why I write, isn’t it? To untangle, verify, understand and, in the end, choose.

Let’s go then, plunge into my return to the Sélect, the anticipated happiness at being back with my old work-mates and my customers, especially the night owls I’d always liked because they’d chosen not to live their lives like everyone else and did it so casually! It’s funny, my three roommates have become customers again and I feel as if I’m growing closer to them. I wasn’t cut out to be their mother, they understood that as well as I did.

Tomorrow, I swear, I’m going to start!

First, I have to write a few words about my return to the Sélect or something will be missing from my story. Some of the most significant events in my affair with Gilbert happened there, so I have to set the scene before I tackle the most important part of what I want to say.

I was greeted like a queen home from exile. But I had a strange reaction to the expressions of affection and the uncertainties of my return to my old job. At first I saw everything with a kind of sense of déjà vu that left me feeling uncomfortable and slightly dazed. I was living inside a dream that came back all too often and that I’d tried to forget; everything was familiar as if I’d only left the day before – the restaurant that had stayed the same, the employees who seemed to have been there forever, customers on whom I recognized certain clothes and even the scent of the perfumes they wore – though I’d been away for nearly two years and had changed a lot during that interlude. I must have seemed less familiar to the Sélect than it seemed to me, even if my appearance was the same – as was my way of working for that matter – and it bothered me. I realized soon enough that one doesn’t forget the art of waitressing and that the amount of work it took was exhausting; I kept my nose to the grindstone much more at the Sélect than I ever had at the Boudoir. The Boudoir had been a picnic; the Sélect was a job. I switched from champagne to beer with no transition and the shock was a big one. Besides, going back to square one was not my favourite activity.

The Sélect, an unchanging institution if ever there was one, was the same as it had been two years before, in every detail, from the colour of the walls to the shape of the sugar containers, while I had experienced things that had made me totally different, if not someone else. Actually our roads had never been parallel; the Sélect was in decline, like something that is old and nearly finished because its development is complete and everything must die, while I had spent those years in search of adventure, hoping for something new, something exciting, enriching, that had taken me away from the restaurant’s straight and uneventful existence. I had some trouble going back to it. I was seeing things through different eyes, understanding them differently too. I was more critical and I was afraid of lapsing into condescension or even contempt, two feelings that I most condemn.

But my routine was re-established, the purring motor that had marked my actions as well as my schedule for two years had a reassuring aspect that I must have needed, before I got down to thinking about what I’d do for the rest of my life, and eventually I calmed down. Went numb would be more like it; I’d come back to the Sélect to be busy, and busy I certainly was!

As I was no longer fixing the evening meal for my three roommates, they came to the restaurant around seven or eight o'clock before taking up their posts on the Main. This gave us a semblance of family life and added a lot of excitement to rush hour: Jean-le-Décollé, Nicole Odeon and Mae East knew most of the clients and went from table to table, clinking glasses, talking loudly, flirting shamelessly. As for me, I played the tearful mother, I called them to order, pretended I was ashamed of them, and as my role of mother hen was no longer serious, everyone was happy.

Winter passed. Spring, the real spring, announced itself in skies that were not so blue but more luminous, April smelled of wind from the south, and I was beginning to wonder if I’d made the right choice – I couldn’t see myself spending the summer, my favourite season, serving never-ending hamburger platters when I could afford to take a vacation – when along came the event that I’ve been hesitating to bring up since I started this notebook for fear of getting it wrong.

I was wearing brand-new yellow shoes that night. I’d seen them in the window of a boutique on St. Catherine Street that I don’t usually go to because they never have anything in my size, neither clothes nor shoes. I was looking for something flamboyant to celebrate the return of spring, something fun and bright, heels that I would hear tapping along the pavement finally free of its coating of ice, like the Easter Sundays of my childhood, when I spotted them in the middle of all the boring new styles for the season.

You would have thought they were shoes for little girls playing grown-up because it’s very rare to see such high stilettos in such a small size. Though no little girl would dare to wear those shoes where her mother could see them! They had a touch of the hooker, too, which was quite amusing. I thought to myself that they’d be the last shoes I would buy as a creature of the Main, my farewell to the world of Fine Dumas, and I stepped inside the boutique. They fit. And made me a good two inches taller! I left the store wearing them. They tapped along the cement of St. Catherine Street the way I’d hoped, promising long, hot, idle days when I would wear light summer dresses as I strolled across Montréal, which like all northern cities is only beautiful in summer. Wonderful yellow shoes for summer to scare off the last April chill.

At the Sélect they were a real hit. Jealous Janine wanted to know where I’d found them; Madeleine, after she’d sniffed them like a hunting dog, decreed that they were genuine patent leather and that they were a great bargain, lucky me; Nick and his assistant whistled their approval because they’re no good at compliments, specializing instead in non-verbal communication whenever a pretty woman comes into their field of vision. All the customers talked about them, too, both the regulars and those who’d dropped in by chance.

Around ten o'clock, the first rush long since over and the late-night one still far away, I was peacefully sipping a weak cup of tea with Janine, who was complaining again about her knees which were causing her more and more pain, when the door opened to laughter and the voice of a girl belting at the top of her lungs some song about airplane propellers and airline names.

Janine rolled her eyes.

“Not them again! You look after them, I’m not up to it tonight!”

It was the merry gang who were working on a show at the Quat’Sous, a theatre on Pine Avenue, who came several times a week after rehearsal – famished, noisy, uproarious and absolutely wild. They would sweep into the Sélect, eat a lot and drink more, and usually end up bellowing in chorus some of the songs from their show, quite good from what I could hear.

Janine couldn’t stand them. She claimed that they smelled of sour beer and rebellion, that they’d never accomplish a thing in their lives, just make noise along with all the other hairy lunatics like them, and that they were rude. Actually, she was the one who was disrespectful of them, who rushed them and wasn’t liked. She thought they were stingy while I thought they were generous; Janine found them tiresome, while they entertained me with their nerve and their freedom, like spoiled children who were unacquainted with censorship. Actually, they treated Janine the way she treated them; she didn’t accept it and suffered the consequences. She would have liked them to go elsewhere, preen themselves across the street at Chez Géracimo, but their hearts were set on the Sélect and it was obvious they had no intention of changing. Even just to tease her.

So I was the one who’d inherited them a few days earlier, regardless of whether they were in my section or Janine’s. I was efficient, I served them quickly and well, they appreciated it. They had adopted me just as I’d adopted them, they asked for me as soon as they arrived, ostentatiously turning up their noses at Janine. They even called me the Pearl of the Sélect and generally presented me with tips that would have turned Janine green with envy if I’d told her. But I didn’t want to make things worse kept it to myself.

Anyway, hairy they were. The guys at least, the girls looked a little more conventional. The musicians made me think of the race of new men who were being called beatniks, who decked themselves out as we’d never seen humans do before.

We were around the same age, but the resemblance ended there. I had just spent a year and a half in a drag queen brothel in Montréal’s red light district, while they, some at any rate, had taken a three-year course at the National Theatre School, working on Molière and Shakespeare. The oldest of them, Yvon, had been working as an actor for several years and seemed to play the role of paterfamilias. Though our life experiences couldn’t have been more different, something had clicked between us, some inexplicable affinity had settled in around the little ceremony of the evening meal, maybe because I laughed at their jokes, didn’t yell at them like a prudish auntie if their stories were off-colour, and I understood their excitement at the prospect of going onstage to proclaim what they had to say rather than performing other people’s ideas. They seemed to be putting together something that was vital for them, and I liked their unshakeable enthusiasm.

They spent the time talking about creativity, about the importance of expressing oneself, about culture which had to be repatriated, they reinvented the world and I was a little envious, wondering where I would be today if I’d agreed to act in The Trojan Women in 1966, an event that now seemed so far in the past. There would have been a different Céline Poulin I imagine, she would have developed in a direction that I can’t imagine, become a Céline Poulin profoundly different from the one who for two years has been writing in notebooks of various colours about her demons and worries, a person I would have been curious to know, even for just an hour, to gauge the differences, good or bad.

What connected me to them was similar to the relationships I’d developed two years earlier with the students at the Institut des arts appliqués, when I’d replaced Madeleine, one of the waitresses on the day shift, who was sick.

I put down my cup of tea while they were shedding their coats. Janine hid in the kitchen. I’d have liked to tell her she was going too far, that surely she didn’t hate them so much that she couldn’t stand being around them, but I kept my mouth shut.

Robert, the curly-headed one who if I understand correctly had composed the songs for the show, seemed to be in brilliant form, roaring with laughter when I got to their table. Their tables, rather, because there were more of them than usual and they’d taken over the three large booths at the back, tossing their coats wherever and sprawling as if they were at home. The whole cast, I supposed. Louise, the singer in the group and Mouffe, Robert’s girlfriend, were talking about costumes when I arrived with my order pad.

When he saw me Robert shouted, “My favourite waitress! The Pearl of the Sélect!”

And then, noticing my shoes, “The sun of St. Catherine Street!”

Everyone looked down at my shoes and I blushed at the appreciative applause.

And then I heard the remark that would turn my life upside down.

“Good evening, ma'am! What a glorious night!“

I recognized his voice at once, of course. And replied straightforwardly, “Glorious, I don’t know, but it’s a nice night!“

It was him all right. More handsome than ever because he’d shaved his beard and now his hairless face was even more gorgeous, his dimples more pronounced, his smile more devastating, his eyes if possible more blue, brighter anyway. I didn’t know how to interpret that brightness and, later on, I regretted it … I would have spared myself a lot of trouble … Anyway.

He stepped over the person sitting next to him and came over to say hello. When he was standing in front of me all unfolded, I remembered how tall he was. He had to bend down to talk to me and I had to break my neck to listen.

“Together at last.”

I opened my order pad, pretending to be busy.

“At last?”

He rested one buttock on the Arborite table.

“I didn’t know that my grass supplier worked at the Sélect! If I had, I’d have come here before.”

“I wasn’t working here last summer … And about that grass, I got it a few minutes later and I was very embarrassed … I can be naïve but that was ridiculous … And by the way, how are your dogs?”

“They weren’t mine, they’re my neighbour’s. I look after them now and then …”

There were frowns around the table, quizzical looks passed from one booth to another, knowing smiles exchanged.

Mouffe fiddled with her straight black hair, which gave her a very interesting Indian look.

“You know each other? You never told us that, Gilbert Forget!”

Gilbert. I liked his name right away. I’d never met a Gilbert before and I thought it sounded romantic. If his name had been Wilfrid, my immediate future might have been less complicated.

Louise straightened her little round glasses as she made a show of opening her menu.

“Gilbert is an unfathomable mystery. Watch out, Céline. You never know if he’s coming or going … He’s always full of surprises.”

At these rather sibylline remarks – should I suspect a love affair gone sour? – Gilbert’s smile got wider. A charmer who knows his strength and how to use it.

“I’m sure what I eat will taste better if you serve it, lovely Céline.”

I gave him a shove to send him back to his place at the end of the bench.

“Meanwhile, you’re in my way.”

Everybody laughed. Including him.

We must have already formed a very odd pair because people were giving us very curious looks.

Robert, sitting at the next table, coughed into his fist, then said, “Meanwhile, I’m hungry!”

The fine thread of the first sign of complicity between Gilbert and me was immediately broken. He became a client again and me, the waitress. He went back to his seat and plunged into his menu.

“What’s good here, man?”

The answer came from nearly ten mouths at once, “Hamburger platter!”

He closed his menu, put it on the table.

“Hamburger platter it is. With a beer … and a smile from Céline!”

I know it’s easy to say after all this time, to claim that I suspected everything or at least caught a glimpse of it before it began, but I think it’s true: I see myself again standing next to the long bench, holding my order pad, I’m looking at Gilbert after taking his order. And I think to myself, Don’t touch, he’s not for you, you’ll pay dearly …

But he had the last word.

When I’d finished taking all the orders he held up one finger as if he wanted to add something to his.

“I just wanted to say, Céline, those yellow shoes are far out!”

That face made me melt. My back and around my waist were hot, sweat was running down between my shoulder blades. I felt as if I were liquefying and that when they’d finished eating all that would be left of me would be a puddle around two yellow shoes.

But they finished their meal without incident because that was what I wanted. During that hour I didn’t look in Gilbert’s direction, I served him exactly the same way as the others, concentrating on what I had to do, which was considerable given the number of plates, glasses and cups that I had to transport for the hungry crowd. I didn’t want to leave myself open to any comments and I knew that they all had an eye on me, especially the two girls, so I was imperturbable, efficient, I even had the impression that for once, I’d become chilly, like Janine. I mustn’t delude myself though, because I sensed that the remarks were proceeding at a good pace anyway: they were all waiting for me to go away so they could talk about what had just happened. When I came back to their tables, a heavy silence fell and I even thought I’d caught some quiet laughter a couple of times when I was bringing their desserts. I acted as if I didn’t notice anything, of course, ever the busy waitress, but I was beginning to look forward to their departure so I could catch my breath and try to understand what had just gone on.

Had he been flirting with me or was he just a guy who was nice to everyone so they’d like him, ready to do anything to make people appreciate him? Besides, what could a man his size want to do with a midget like me? Aside from an affair that he could brag about to his buddies. Above all, I didn’t want to become the subject of his showing off, the victim of some boorish behaviour among males whose testosterone was out of control!

Too handsome, he was too handsome, that was the problem, and I would have to be very cautious with Gilbert Forget.

As I was writing up the bills for the table with Louise, Mouffe, Robert and a few others, I heard someone, Yvon, I think, saying to Gilbert two booths away, “Go on, ask! The worst that can happen is she says no!”

Had he told his friends that he intended to ask me out? Was he at that point already?

My ears turned red all at once and I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Robert gave a kind of nervous laugh as he reached out for his bill and Mouffe’s.

“My God, Céline, what’s going on? Your ears are as red as a beet! Are they ringing too? Is somebody, somewhere, talking about you? I wonder who that could be …”

Everyone laughed. I had to smile. While I tried to think of something intelligent to reply. Which, to my great shame, I didn't. I’m not used to letting people step on my toes and there was no way I was going to leave those three booths without making someone shut up, I didn’t know exactly who – Robert? Gilbert? – or why, and I decided that I’d stay there until I’d given them a piece of my mind. Which made no sense, I knew that, because nothing serious had happened. On the contrary. I should have been flattered, should have bragged about it to Janine or Nick, shown off my trophy, handsome Gilbert, with a superior look … It’s what Janine did, after all, when someone came on to her!

But I’ve suffered for too long from other people’s nastiness to let a big slacker, no matter how handsome, think he could use me without my reacting. But was that all he wanted, to use me? There’s nothing I hate more than my own waffling over something silly. With time I’ve become too suspicious. Part of me told myself to let it go, I could always put a stop to it before it was too late, but … How can I put it … Did I really have a sense, in between the booths at the Sélect, of what Gilbert could make me suffer, as I wrote earlier? No. If I think about it, I don’t believe I did. It was too soon. No, it was pride that was making me try to find a retort, some lapidary phrase that would settle scores with them. Those artists wouldn’t leave the restaurant before I gave them a reason to … to what? To admire me? Surely not. To not look down on me? They’d never done that, and that night, they’d just used a trivial anecdote to have a good laugh. But as the time approached to go to the cashier and pay their bill, the more I felt a need to prove to them that I wasn’t just some little idiot they could laugh at without suffering the consequences.

But they hadn’t made fun of me! Where did I get that idea? I’d become nothing more than wounded pride and I hated when that happened!

They all walked past me, one by one, on their way to the cash with their bills, smiling strangely. I was in their way. I saw my tips in the midst of the remains of a far from gourmet meal. Several dollar bills. Some twos.

They were about to get away from me when, maybe from lack of imagination or simply out of irritation because I couldn’t think of something personal to say, I dipped into the Duchess’s repertoire of snappy cracks, which was huge and had nourished the past two years of my life.

I tried to copy in every respect what she, queen of the dauntless and master of the well-placed insult, would have done. I rested my arm on the booth closest to me, no easy matter in view of my height, I raised my head the way great Hollywood stars – Joan Crawford or Rosalind Russell – used to do. And I said, with a French accent that wasn’t nearly as successful as the Duchess's, “Kindly take note: my dance card is full for the next twelve years!”

From their stupefied looks I realized how pathetic I’d just been. I had brought on ridicule instead of nipping it in the bud as I should have done, with a certain dignity, by pretending to ignore what had just happened. I’d given credence to an event that didn’t have the slightest importance.

I was off, nearly at a run. I must have looked like a little dog that skitters away at top speed because he’s been caught doing something he’s not supposed to. A punished pet that goes and hides behind a piece of furniture.