sporting crowd to The King’s Arms.
The legendary Flopper, so-called because of the inimitable manner in which he had once minded the nets for the Boston Bruins, was a child of prairie penury. Pug-nosed, his gray eyes hard as pebbles, his impudent moon-face scored with more than a hundred stitches, he still wore his steely gray hair brush-cut, a memento of the day when he had been sent down to Springfield to play for the great Eddie Shore. The Flopper, born in a sod hut, the fifth of seven children, had worn a flour sack, holes scissored out for his arms, until he was nine years old. He was pulling carrots for ten cents an hour before he learned how to read, and even now his English was enriched by felicities all his own. Once, flipping through a book about the Holocaust that Joshua had just bought, The Flopper was startled to come across photographs of Dachau’s survivors. “They sure as shit didn’t get much to eat,” he said. “I mean, lookit how emancipated they look.”
A hard-nosed conservative, The Flopper was vehemently opposed to abortion-on-demand, spearing on ice, or an independent Quebec. “I condone it,” he had said again and again. “I absolutely condone that kinda shit.”
The bartender, an otherwise amiable Griffintown boy, was also a firm advocate of Canadian unity. He had taken to keeping a baseball bat, a Louisville Slugger, in full view of the clientele. It lay on his rear counter, intimidating, underneath a framed photograph of QueenElizabeth. George, who called his bat “my Pepsi-tamer,” had also developed a line of jokes about French Canadians. “Hey, did you hear that the Berkowitz boy, you know, Son of Sam, has got himself a Pepsi lawyer?”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, he’s going to plead guilty to the six murders, but fight the parking ticket.”
But when Joshua was standing at the bar, George restrained himself for his sake. Pauline, on her mother’s side, was a de Gaspé Benoit. The blood of seigneurs coursed through her exquisite veins. George, like all the regulars in The King’s Arms, was fond of Pauline, and inquired after her daily, now that she was resting in the psychiatric ward of the Royal Victoria Hospital.
Wasting.
Bolstered on Scotch – usually two quick ones, sometimes more – Joshua visited Pauline every afternoon. He read to her. Treading carefully, he talked to her about the children. Their love, their happiness. The seemingly impregnable fortress they had made for themselves, before her brother’s intrusion. But Pauline, once so fastidious, better than beautiful, an excitement, no longer even combed her soft honey-colored hair. It was tangled, dirty. He combed it out for her. Then he noticed that her once faultless fingernails were broken here, bitten there. There were foodstains on her negligée. Joshua protested to the nurses, but he knew there was nothing they could do. She didn’t care. His wife languished in bed, selfishly adrift on Valium, her blue eyes listless, her face a sickly white. Staring at him. Once, he had angrily tried to shock her out of her comatose state. “She insists on coming to see you. She won’t let go.”
Pauline didn’t even stir.
“I’ll bring her tomorrow.”
Nothing.
“She wants to explain everything to you.”
Still, she didn’t ask who.
“Jane Trimble.”
Pauline began to weep without sound, her lips quivering, and he leaped up to take her surprisingly cold hand and say, “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, my darling.”
Only a week after Pauline had been admitted to the Royal Victoria, Joshua was summoned to the psychiatrist’s office.
The esteemed Dr. Jonathan Cole, author of
My Kind, Your Kind, Mankind
, a rotund man, brown eyes mournful, turned out to be Yossel Kugelman, of all people. When they had been kids together on St. Urbain Street, Yossel had already catalogued his library of Big Little Books. If you borrowed one, you signed for it. To be fair, they had all collected salvage door-to-door for
The legendary Flopper, so-called because of the inimitable manner in which he had once minded the nets for the Boston Bruins, was a child of prairie penury. Pug-nosed, his gray eyes hard as pebbles, his impudent moon-face scored with more than a hundred stitches, he still wore his steely gray hair brush-cut, a memento of the day when he had been sent down to Springfield to play for the great Eddie Shore. The Flopper, born in a sod hut, the fifth of seven children, had worn a flour sack, holes scissored out for his arms, until he was nine years old. He was pulling carrots for ten cents an hour before he learned how to read, and even now his English was enriched by felicities all his own. Once, flipping through a book about the Holocaust that Joshua had just bought, The Flopper was startled to come across photographs of Dachau’s survivors. “They sure as shit didn’t get much to eat,” he said. “I mean, lookit how emancipated they look.”
A hard-nosed conservative, The Flopper was vehemently opposed to abortion-on-demand, spearing on ice, or an independent Quebec. “I condone it,” he had said again and again. “I absolutely condone that kinda shit.”
The bartender, an otherwise amiable Griffintown boy, was also a firm advocate of Canadian unity. He had taken to keeping a baseball bat, a Louisville Slugger, in full view of the clientele. It lay on his rear counter, intimidating, underneath a framed photograph of QueenElizabeth. George, who called his bat “my Pepsi-tamer,” had also developed a line of jokes about French Canadians. “Hey, did you hear that the Berkowitz boy, you know, Son of Sam, has got himself a Pepsi lawyer?”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, he’s going to plead guilty to the six murders, but fight the parking ticket.”
But when Joshua was standing at the bar, George restrained himself for his sake. Pauline, on her mother’s side, was a de Gaspé Benoit. The blood of seigneurs coursed through her exquisite veins. George, like all the regulars in The King’s Arms, was fond of Pauline, and inquired after her daily, now that she was resting in the psychiatric ward of the Royal Victoria Hospital.
Wasting.
Bolstered on Scotch – usually two quick ones, sometimes more – Joshua visited Pauline every afternoon. He read to her. Treading carefully, he talked to her about the children. Their love, their happiness. The seemingly impregnable fortress they had made for themselves, before her brother’s intrusion. But Pauline, once so fastidious, better than beautiful, an excitement, no longer even combed her soft honey-colored hair. It was tangled, dirty. He combed it out for her. Then he noticed that her once faultless fingernails were broken here, bitten there. There were foodstains on her negligée. Joshua protested to the nurses, but he knew there was nothing they could do. She didn’t care. His wife languished in bed, selfishly adrift on Valium, her blue eyes listless, her face a sickly white. Staring at him. Once, he had angrily tried to shock her out of her comatose state. “She insists on coming to see you. She won’t let go.”
Pauline didn’t even stir.
“I’ll bring her tomorrow.”
Nothing.
“She wants to explain everything to you.”
Still, she didn’t ask who.
“Jane Trimble.”
Pauline began to weep without sound, her lips quivering, and he leaped up to take her surprisingly cold hand and say, “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, my darling.”
Only a week after Pauline had been admitted to the Royal Victoria, Joshua was summoned to the psychiatrist’s office.
The esteemed Dr. Jonathan Cole, author of
My Kind, Your Kind, Mankind
, a rotund man, brown eyes mournful, turned out to be Yossel Kugelman, of all people. When they had been kids together on St. Urbain Street, Yossel had already catalogued his library of Big Little Books. If you borrowed one, you signed for it. To be fair, they had all collected salvage door-to-door for
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