last perfect moment to savour, almost as though they suspected what was to come. Max would remember every single detail for the rest of his life: the colour of the sky, the shapes of the clouds, the heat of the sun, but also Pascale’s smouldering look as they pulled themselves out of the tangled sheets, and the feel of her soft, trembling skin beneath his fingers. She smiled enigmatically when he asked what she was laughing at, and she said, “I’m not laughing. I’m just happy.”
This was normally a word that scared Max, but coming from Pascale, it was the best in the world, the “truest.”
“I’m simply happy because you’re here and I love you.”
He took her face in his hands, and they gazed at each other. Her eyes were brighter than ever, and her face shone with a glow he’d remember always. “I love you, too.”
It seemed funny to be saying these words and believing them, knowing that she also believed them. For once, words weren’t being used to manipulate someone. He kissed her in a way he never had before. And then they dived back into it.
The next morning, Pascale got up early to go to the gym at the far end of the complex. From her stationary bike, she saw the police storming into the building. Without taking time to change, she ran across Queen’s Quay and got on a bus. She looked like an ecology-minded jogger, but also a lazy one who was taking transit to Cabbagetown. That was the location of Max’s hideaway and “base camp,” a place to ride out the storm. This one was a tornado. The entire gang was arrested, and they all had the fifteen minutes of fame they never wanted on page one of the papers.
When she realized things were going south, Pascale contacted Antoine, who came in from Montreal with Bruce Clayton, a lawyer who was refreshingly down to earth. He advised her to turn herself in. After all, what had she done beside take off when she saw the police coming? She had no record, and for once she wasn’t actually part of the plan, so no one could turn on her, and he was right. It was the only smart decision in this whole business that had collapsed with everyone inside, including the pigeon, whose wife left him when he was fingered. The bank put him on ice.
Clayton explained that Max could be tried in Montreal for crimes committed elsewhere and eventually sent away. The Quebec Ministry of Justice only had to make the request to Ontario. Roberge, however, did not come to put his hooks into Max — on the contrary, he wanted him as far away from Montreal as possible, so the trial took place in Toronto, and he was locked up in Temagami. Max was off to the Arctic Circle.
A whole pile of crap, that’s what the greenhorn had got Max into — and worse than that, three years at the other end of the world — gee, thanks, Roberge. Max kicked himself for hiring this disaster-prone nitwit. Still, no point in beating yourself up every day.
No sense crying over spilled milk, he told Pascale when she visited him. At first she came by plane, which set her down in North Bay, where she rented a car to drive the rest of the way. After a few months, she settled for the bus: nine hours from Montreal, where she was living near Mimi and Antoine. One day, Max asked her if she had money problems, but she said no — she said she used the long ride to calm herself and do some thinking. He didn’t know why, but he felt she was slipping away.
Looking at the forest with her in his arms, he knew he couldn’t reach her anymore. She was going through the motions of a ritual she no longer believed in. She had taken up her spiritual quest once more. What was it again? Being reincarnated a hundred times, seated in the lotus position with eyes closed, living in the present, the only time that really exists, and awaiting the bodhi, awakening, illumination like Siddhartha. So this cut-rate Buddhism she’d practised before had come back to haunt her, was that it? Antoine swore it hadn’t. He put her coolness down to the time and distance that separated them.
Free at last after months that seemed like centuries, Max expected to find her waiting at the exit for him, as agreed. Instead, there was Antoine, with a sad smile and his habitual silence. He’d taken time off from his new job at Dorval Airport — having left Air France — to go get his friend in Temagami. They ate in a restaurant at the edge of the forest, surrounded by heavy machinery. The hamburger was awful. Antoine explained that Pascale had been in France for two months and was out of touch. Antoine hadn’t wanted to worry Max. He really thought she’d be home for his release, as she’d promised. “I’m so sorry.”
They got back on the road, the taste of rotten meat still in their mouths.
“Please tell me what really happened,” pleaded Max.
Antoine recoiled: was it that obvious he was hiding things?
One evening a few weeks before she left, he’d dropped in at her place. There was a man. “No, it isn’t what you think. There was nothing between them. I’m sure of it.”
Max wasn’t.
“But they were both embarrassed. I could tell the guy wanted to be anywhere but there.”
Pascale hadn’t introduced them, and Antoine never saw him around there again.
“Did you ask her about it? What did she say?”
“To mind my own business.”
Antoine was Max’s friend, and he persisted. He wanted to know if she was ditching Max, but Pascale paid no attention and just kept telling him to stay out of it. She was old enough to “look after herself.”
“Did she go to Europe with the guy?”
Antoine didn’t know, but apparently not. She’d left the country alone. “But that doesn’t mean anything. She could’ve met him over there.”
As the car emerged from the woods, Max ignored the landscape, brooding, trying to understand. So the son of a bitch had waited till he was locked away to move in and take her thousands of kilometres away. Max had no doubt the guy had handled this elopement, this kidnapping. Even though she had agreed to it, it was still kidnapping. Max blamed himself for not being able to do anything about it. How could he, though? Still, any reaction at all would have been better than not realizing.
Eleven years later, Antoine was on a wild-goose chase through the ghats of Varanasi. The silhouette of this stranger, this elusive phantom, had once again undermined his existence. Max felt a shadowy world creeping all around him. He was a pawn in a game with rules unknown, especially to the players. All his life, people had deserted him with no warning: first his mother, then his father. Philippe’s death was an abandonment too; Pascale, of course, and now David. All of them had disappeared into a shadow world he couldn’t shed light on.
The sound of his cellphone snapped Max out of his reverie.
“The Pakistanis have successfully tested a missile,” yelled Jayesh, overexcited. “Of course the Indians couldn’t care less!” They should care, he thought. “You know what Musharraf said? ‘We don’t want war, but we’re ready for it.”’
The crisis was worsening every day, and government ministries were scrambling. Prime Minister Vajpayee had his top three strong men in an emergency meeting: Lal Krishna Advani, Jaswant Singh, and Arun Jaitley.
“They’re even thinking of covering the Taj Mahal with a gigantic camouflage net!”
“The Taj Mahal? Seriously? It’s a Muslim monument. Why would Pakistan fool with that?”
“The continent’s gone topsy-turvy,” Jayesh said with a sigh.
President
