The Main

Without seeming to, Guttma

Physically, LaPointe satisfies Guttma

“…and that potlickin’ cockroach—that gnat—tells everybody what a hero he was in the war! That pimple on a whore’s ass—that wart—tells everybody what a nice private kip he’s got! That son of a bitch gnat-wart tells—”

With the lift of a hand, LaPointe cuts short Dirtyshirt Red’s flow of hate, just as he is getting up steam. “That’s enough. You ask around for the Vet. If you locate him, call down to the QG. You know the number.” With a tip of his head, LaPointe dismisses the bomme, who shuffles to the door and out into the night.

Guttma

LaPointe frowns at the young policeman, as though he has just become aware of his presence. “Why don’t you go home?”

“Sir?”

“There’s nothing more we can do tonight. Go home and get some sleep. I’ll see you at my office tomorrow.”

Guttma

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Guttma

LaPointe yawns and scrubs his matted hair with his palm. “You’re going to have a hell of a wait. I’m tired. I won’t be in until ten or eleven.”

After Guttma

Because the streets are otherwise empty, LaPointe notices a couple standing on a corner. They are embracing, and the man has enclosed her in his overcoat. They press together and sway. It’s four-thirty in the morning and cold, and their only shelter is his overcoat. LaPointe glances away, unwilling to intrude on their privacy.

When he turns the corner of Avenue Esplanade, the wind flexes his collar. Litter and dust swirl in miniature whirlwinds beside iron-railed basement wells. LaPointe’s body needs oxygen; each breath has the quality of a sigh.

A slight movement in the park catches his eye. A shadow on one of the benches at the twilight rim of a lamplight pool. Someone sitting there. At the foot of his long wooden stoop, he turns and looks again. The person has not moved. It is a woman, or a child. The shadow is so thin it doesn’t seem that she is wearing a coat. LaPointe climbs a step or two, then he turns back, crosses the street, and enters the park through a creaking iron gate.

Though she should be able to hear the gravel crunching under his approaching feet, the young girl does not move. She sits with her knees up, her heels against her buttocks, arms wrapped around her legs, face pressed into her long paisley gra

“Are you all right?” he asks in English. The gra

She does not answer. Her expression is a mixture of defiance and helplessness.

“Where do you live?” he asks.

Her chin still on her knees, she looks at him with steady, untrusting eyes. Her jaw takes on a hard line because she is clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering. Then she squints at him appraisingly. “You want to take me home with you?” she asks in Joual French, her voice flat; perhaps with fatigue, perhaps with indifference.

“No. I want to know where you live.” He doesn’t mean to sound hard and professional, but he is tired, and her direct, dispassionate proposition took him unawares.

“It’s none of your business.”

Her sass is a little irritating, but she’s right; it’s no business of his. Kids like this drift onto the Main every day. Flotsam. Losers. They’re no business of his, until they get into trouble. After all, he can’t take care of them all. He shrugs and turns away.

“Hey?”

He turns back.

“Well? Are you going to take me home with you, or not?” There is nothing coquettish in her tone. She is broke and has no place to sleep; but she does have an écu. It’s a matter of barter.

LaPointe sighs and scratches his hairline. She appears to be in her early twenties, younger than LaPointe’s daydream children. It’s late and he’s tired, and this girl is nothing to him. A ski

Not attractive, probably dumb; a loser. But what if she turned up as a rape statistic in the Morning Report?

“All right,” he says. “Come on.” Even as he says it, he regrets it. The last thing he needs is a scruffy kid cluttering up his apartment.

She makes a movement as though to rise, then she looks at him sideways. He is an old man to her, and she knows all about old men. “I don’t do anything… special,” she warns him matter-of-factly.

He feels a sudden flash of anger. She’s younger than his daughters, for Christ’s sake! “Are you coming?” he asks impatiently.

There is only a brief pause before she shrugs with protective indifference, rises, and takes up her shopping bag. They walk side by side toward the gate. At first he thinks she is stiff with the cold and with sitting all huddled up. Then he realizes that she has a limp; one leg is shorter than the other, and the shopping bag scrapes against her knee as she walks.

He opens his apartment door and reaches around to turn on the red-and-green overhead lamp, then he steps aside and she precedes him into the small living room. Because the putty has rotted out of the big bow windows, they rattle in the wind, and the apartment is colder than the hallway.

As soon as he closes the door, he feels awkward. The room seems cramped, too small for two people. Without taking off his overcoat, he bends down and lights the gas in the fireplace. He squats there, holding down the lever until the limp blue flames begin to make the porcelain nipples glow orange.

Oddly, she is more at ease than he. She crosses to the window and looks down at the park bench where she was sitting a few minutes ago. She rubs her upper arms, but she prefers not to join him near the fire. She doesn’t want to seem to need anything that’s his.