with anyone. Of course these café girls were really too young for him, but refreshing, direct, and nice to think about. By contrast, his job seemed to put him in touch with too many crushed and worn out, or desperately cynical, older women, some of them attractive enough, and quite willing to cry on his shoulder — Elena Holland, for one. She had even threatened to come along with him on this trip.
Sam shuddered. Elena and her crowd — the people he worked for — were mostly feature items in Ottawa’s Point-Blank magazine, the scandal sheet and webzine that regularly displayed and mocked the rich, the powerful, and the foolishly notorious. Sam had opened up his detective agency after his father’s death, but he knew exactly what the old man would have said about his work and his clients.
He frowned, and tasted his first croissant. Buttery, chewy, slightly crisp on the outside. No disappointment. He dipped it into the coffee, which seemed to be espresso, although in a large cup. He decided this was an okay place.
Of course, Ginette and Paul had known it would please him. Before they departed for work they had written him a detailed note, one very characteristic of them, containing minute instructions guaranteed to get him through a morning of painless sightseeing. Advice about taxis and buses, places to shop and visit, walks around the old city, instructions for locking the apartment door, and, of course, a mention of the café, with a little sketch map pointing him straight to its front terrace. His old friends were nothing if not meticulous — or maybe they just thought that he couldn’t find his way across the Grand Allée and manage the few blocks to the restaurant without walking into some trouble.
“Everything’s been going smoothly,” Ginette had told him over drinks, just after his arrival the previous evening. “And you, dear buddy, are Mr. Trouble. Remember when we lived in Ottawa and you came to our cottage in the Gatineau for the first time? Everything quiet up there for decades, and two days after you appear, two retired schoolteachers shot to death by some hideous thug. And poor Paul dragged into the case. Then there was the time —”
But at that point her husband had intervened to change the subject. Sam knew his friend thought Ginette was moving into dangerous territory. The Past. The Bad Times. His Family. Little Teddy.
Sam helped out by asking Ginette about the music she was rehearsing. Paul was a policeman, but she was a violinist with the Quebec Symphony, and the only one of his friends he could talk to about classical music. As in many things, he was a fish out of water in his generation, for while he could take or leave all kinds of pop stuff, and even most jazz, he doted on classical, everything from Bach to Bartok, and sometimes beyond. He also had a taste for traditional folk (the sixties extrapolations mostly left him cold). After he had found Teddy and held his lifeless body in his arms, he had gone numb for weeks — he couldn’t sit still, couldn’t think straight, couldn’t read, and hardly ate anything. But he put on an old Richard Dyer-Bennet disc and listened over and over to one song. Not only listened, but took it in — memorized its meaning for life. It wasn’t a very consoling song, he knew, but it told the truth:
You got to cross that lonesome valley
You got to cross it by yourself.
There ain’t no one can cross it for you,
You got to cross it by yourself.
Teddy had crossed the valley, and Sam had gone with him as far as he could, but as the song said, it could never be all the way.
* * *
The waitress dropped a menu on his table. She was busier now, and zipped off without a word or a glance. It was just as well. He didn’t want to fall into the category of older males who, tripping around, chat up waitresses, shop girls, and barmaids. He took it as a sign of weakness, one demonstrated everyday by lonely men heading somewhere (or nowhere) — older business travellers, reporters, investigators, athletes, all of whom were happy to kill time by lapping up the friendly chatter of any available ministering angel. The female equivalents of these lonely pilgrims, smart ladies busy with books, magazines, earphones, or stock reports, were used to self-sufficiency. Whatever they might look for when they got in motion, it wasn’t the sympathy of youth.
Sam dipped his second croissant in the now rather tepid coffee. The waitress brought another cup and he ordered sausages and fried eggs. While he waited, he looked around, trying to figure out why there was an energy, an excitement in the air here that he hardly ever felt in Ottawa. Was it just that he was on holiday, or was there really something more intense in the atmosphere of this city, or this street? Did it have something to do with the way Cartier itself was laid out? It was a fairly narrow street with many shops, second-floor apartments, and a few gardens. Various activities were thrust together in just the right way, with people enjoying themselves and going about their business with a certain bright intensity. Oddly enough, the Glebe in Ottawa was not so very different, yet it never, or rarely, seemed this wired up.
“Well, this is my lucky day. I didn’t think I’d find you right where Paul said you’d be!”
The voice burst in on his thoughts. A familiar voice. Sam turned. A slender, well-dressed black woman stood there grinning at him. Only it wasn’t “a black woman,” it was Clara.
He jumped up, grabbed her and gave her a bear hug. She was lanky and strong, and she smelled familiar, and, he thought, quite wonderful. It was good to feel her so close again.
He held her at arm’s-length and looked at her, then stepped back, pulled out a chair, and waved at her to sit. “My God. What in hell are you doing here? Not that I’m sorry to see you, but I thought I’d escaped from the Ottawa scene.”
“I know. You’re on vacation. By yourself, too, for a change. Paul told me. Sorry to bust in on you like this.”
“Are you kidding? I’m glad to see you. I’ve started talking to myself again and it’s only the second or third day of my holiday.”
Clara laughed. “Same old Sam. For some reason this reminds me of the first time we sat down together — remember, in graduate school? You had the same surprised look on your face.”
“No wonder, you crashed my table then, too. I was trying to figure out how to ace one of my law exams.”
“I think I upset your academic year a little. I know you upset mine.”
“You upset me a lot more when you left the country.”
Clara shrugged her shoulders and laughed again. “I thought I knew what was best for us — for me.”
“Yeah.”
They exchanged a look. Delighted by her presence, enjoying the sight of her familiar face — the high cheekbones, the broad forehead, the lively eyes — he noticed also that she’d aged, gathered a few wrinkles and gray hairs, and sensed, too, that recently she’d been worrying a lot, that something was on her mind. He knew her so well. And it occurred to him: She wants to tell me something, but she’s hesitating. She’s thinking I’m older, too (how right she is!), and wondering if she can still trust me. Why have we been so out of touch for the last few years?
“I’ve just realized why you’re down here, Clara. I read about Daniel’s exhibition. I was going to look in on it today or tomorrow. Is everything okay? You look a bit worried.”
“You noticed. Of course you’d notice. Where did you read about the exhibition?”
“On the web, before I took off from Ottawa. I’ve been in Montreal for a couple of days, just browsing around St. Denis, buying CDs and
