Five Roses (23 page)

She turned so they lay forehead to forehead, their breath mingling. “That was the only story she ever told.”

Leo kissed her. “She made up a story about roses just for you.”

She liked the thought and that Leo had said it. She liked how surely his hand slid to her hip.

Maddy was sliding a rectangle of mousse and cake into a box. Off to the side she sensed a bustle of movement. Sharp steps and Pettypoo's high-hipped rump, then a savage slap that would have been offensive in private, and in a workplace was probably illegal.

Maddy glanced and saw Pettypoo and Yushi glaring at each other. “What the fuck,” Maddy muttered.

“Pardon me?” The woman waiting for her cake was holding out a platinum card.

Yushi spat words at Pettypoo, who whirled off with flushed cheeks. Yushi stared after her, shoulders stiff, mouth grim. Angry spikes of hair.

Maddy's next customer asked which desserts had no nuts.

“There are several, but all of the cakes come from a kitchen where nuts are used. We cannot assure you that a cake that does not contain nuts has not come into contact with nuts.” The nut spiel was a jingle Maddy recited at least twice a day.

“Oh, it's not for an allergy.” The woman leaned across the counter as if to confide a great secret. “I think I've got fibro-myalgia, and when I looked online, I saw I shouldn't eat nuts.”

Why didn't the woman go to a doctor and get herself tested? In her place, Maddy would eat every nut in sight — before it was forbidden. With no expression, she pointed out the desserts that featured chocolate, fruit, mocha, whipped cream, caramel.

As the woman debated out loud with herself — because Maddy had no intention of being drawn into a dietary consultation — Maddy leaned toward Cécile, who was setting
macarons noisettes
on a tray. “What got into Pettypoo?” she whispered.

“Did you see her? She's crazy. Yushi was fixing a sign that slipped and Pettypoo thought she was reaching for a bread without gloves on.”

Maddy looked across at Yushi. Her face seemed calm, even indifferent, but she shot a baguette into a bag with such force that Maddy expected it to tear through the paper.

Maddy followed Cécile downstairs. They untied their aprons and crumpled them into balls they lobbed into the laundry hamper inside the locker-room door. Yushi was sitting on a bench, knotting her green running shoes.

Cécile said, “We all saw that upstairs. We're witnesses. That was an act of aggression. You should charge her with assault.”

Yushi didn't lift her head.

“Come on, Yushi,” Cécile said. “You have to stand up for yourself.”

“She's right,” Maddy said. “If you don't do anything, she's going to keep bullying you.”

“Sure, she's right.” Yushi scowled. “So what? Pettypoo is nuts. I don't want to get sucked into her crazy vortex.”

“No,” Cécile said. “She's nuts with everyone. With you, she's ballistic.” She'd pulled off the shirt with three-quarter sleeves she was obliged to wear to hide her tattoos and stood before them in a tiger-stripe push-up bra, her stomach lean and tanned.

Maddy had a fleeting instant of envy. Never would she look that young and fit again — if she ever had. She looked at Yushi. “Pettypoo's out of control. Even for her. You have to talk to Zied.”

Yushi snatched her knapsack from her locker. “Or quit this funny farm and find a new job.”

Maddy bit her lip. That was another option, yes.

Cécile had squeezed into a ribbed tank top. “You could do way better than counter help. You could work in a kitchen.”

Yushi shrugged and asked Maddy, “Are you coming?”

Maddy grabbed her helmet and slammed her locker shut. “Bye, Cécile.
À demain
.”

At the last of the fruit stalls, Pierre-Paul stood behind his bins of apples. His wife wasn't there, but he gave them only a distant nod. He'd finally got the hint that Maddy wasn't playing. She still felt his eyes on her back. On her ass.

Fog had crept across the city and along the canal. The buildings of downtown had been swallowed by a duvet of grey.

“What do you think you'll do?” Maddy asked.

“About what?”

“Pettypoo.”

“I don't want to talk about it right now.” Yushi bent to unlock her bike. Her movements were so brisk, her bike already wheeled from the rack, that Maddy thought she was going to cycle off without her. But Yushi waited until Maddy had her bike free. And though Yushi didn't speak again, she cycled with Maddy as far as the turnoff to the Pointe.

“Bye,” Maddy called as Yushi continued along the canal into the mist.

The fog thickened, but Maddy didn't think it would rain and decided to go for a cycle by the river. She stopped at home first to change into shorts. On a day like today she would be alone on the path. Urban fact #42: people only remembered they had bikes when the sun shone.

She liked this sense of cycling into nothingness, not able to see farther than the asphalt before her, a damp bristle of grass, the trees shrouded in fog, an edge of grey water. It felt as if
she
were making the path unroll before her.

She grinned when she saw the woman in baggy shorts with her hair tucked in a French twist, the decided motor of her hips and legs stomping the stress of the day underfoot. Maddy passed her with a silent mental salute.
Hey-ho
, sister
!

As she cycled, her brain whirred to come up with a solution for Yushi. She didn't want her to leave the patisserie, but the patisserie wasn't a good place for her to be — and if you were someone's friend, then you wanted the best for that person, not what happened to suit you.

Her knees pistoned up and down. Fog breathed thick and cool around her. Even the birds that usually squawked and called were silent.

The mist over the river thinned just enough that she made out a narrow shape gliding along … a canoe with one figure at the bow, another at the stern. She slowed, lightly squeezing her brakes, to see more clearly — but knew she shouldn't stop or the vision, which was what it seemed, would disappear. The upright grace of the two figures. The tent of long hair to their shoulders. The canoe slipping low through the water. Iroquois used to hunt and fish along these shores when the land was called Teiontiakon.

As Maddy thought the words, the mist closed again, obscuring the mystery of the river.

The day at work had been long and dull without Yushi. Maddy was paired with Régis, which always put her on edge. She wasn't surprised Yushi had called in sick after yesterday's scene, but she wished Yushi had let her know. She would have called in sick as well. One down, the counter could manage. Two down and Pettypoo had to tie on an apron and serve customers.

She pulled her bike onto the sidewalk by the
dépanneur
and said
salut
to the man who sat tilted on the kitchen chair. She said hello so he would know she knew he was there and expected him to watch her bike, which she leaned against the storefront.

“Thalut!”
His greeting was slurred by his toothless, frilly lips.

Walking into the store, she nearly tripped over a man on the floor, reading aloud from a book that looked like the Bible — columns of dense print with numbered verses. His performance was earnest, if tortured and difficult to follow. Yet, chin in hand at the cash, the Korean store clerk listened. The stumble of words followed Maddy down the aisle to the beer refrigerator, back to the cash, out the door again. She slipped the man on the kitchen chair a loonie.

At home she opened a beer and walked onto the deck. It was still warm enough to sit outside, but autumn was coming. The maple tree against her back fence was still green, but high up it sported a single tuft of crimson. It did that every year — her own personal harbinger of winter.

From across the fence she heard Fara and Frédéric's door open and saw Fara step out.

“Hi!” Fara called. “How are you?”

“Good, thanks. And you?” Maddy heard how fake her friendliness sounded. She should have told Fara and Frédéric about Ben trying to get through their gate.

“Busy day at work. Nice to come home.”

But what if they'd called the police? That was all Ben needed, added to everything else that he'd already gone through. She'd told him to stay away and hoped he'd listened.

“It's starting to feel like home, too.” Fara was still talking. “We've got the furniture in place and all the big problems fixed. You know what really helped?” Fara lifted her chin at the house behind her. “Frédéric's cousin installed French doors between the hallway and the dining room. You know, where the … It changes the look of the room and the hallway completely.”

“I shouldn't have told you.”

“No, I'm glad you did. It's better to know than not know. If you don't, you keep wondering
where
…” She bugged her eyes dramatically.

“But it bothered you —”

“No, no, no!” Fara said too quickly. And again, “No, no.” Even shaking her head.

Maddy recognized a woman who could be stubborn in denial past her own best interests.

“Once we're completely settled, we'll have you over for supper. We might even have a housewarming party. The people where I work really want to see the place. I'll let you know when.”

“Great,” Maddy said, hearing again how glib she sounded. If she saw Ben again, even just standing at the back fence, she would tell Fara and Frédéric. Alert them, too, that he might still have a key.

Fara turned on her heel. “My phone's ringing. See you!”

Maddy opened her palm in a flat wave at the now empty backyard.

Maddy hunkered before a small hibachi, brushing balsamic marinade across rounds of eggplant and halved red peppers. Drips hissed on the hot grill. Yushi sat behind her in the rattan chair. No cooking lesson today. Maddy had planned a simple supper of grilled vegetables and couscous salad.

Jim posed in haughty disbelief on the corner of the deck, not convinced yet that the delicious odours of grilled meat seared into the metal were truly no more than ghosts of past suppers. He stared without blinking at Maddy, as if that might make her change the menu.

“Sorry, Jim. That's life.” Maddy reached for her glass of wine on the table.

“You don't have to watch the barbecue all the time,” Yushi said. “It cooks by itself.”

Maddy pushed herself up from her knees and groaned. “My old knees can't take it.”

“You could have put the grill on the table.”

Maddy shrugged. She could have and should have. She hadn't thought of it.

The cowl turtleneck of Yushi's bulky sweater made her face look smaller — but no less resolute. She'd told Maddy she would be quitting the patisserie as soon as she found another job. Work at the moment was only bearable because Pettypoo was keeping a frigid distance and never addressing her directly. Zied had given Pettypoo a spittle-flecked, operatic dressing-down that everyone in the kitchen had heard from his office. Not that Zied cared if an employee was spanked with a red-hot spatula —
but not in view of the customers
.

Maddy realized Yushi had no choice but to leave. Even if Pettypoo could be made to behave, who wanted to work for a boss who loathed you? “Have you applied for any jobs yet?”

“I hate interviews, with their stupid questions — like if I know how to crimp a pie crust. A pie crust!” She huffed. “I'd like to see them make a sour cherry buttercream without it curdling.”

Maddy piled the grilled eggplant and peppers on a plate. They were going to eat inside at the table by the kitchen window. “Can you bring my glass?” she asked. “Sour cherry butter-cream sounds delicious. Tart and rich — great combo. What would you put that on?”

“Anything. A genoise, a chocolate torte.”

“You should be working as a baker.” Maddy poured more wine as Yushi helped herself to couscous.

“This is Montreal. You've got French cooks
de la France
applying for kitchen jobs. I'm a Canadian Trini who masquerades as Irish. Who would believe I can make a
croquembouche
?”

“Anyone who's tasted your cooking.”

“That makes a sum total of you and Rose.”

“How's she doing?” Maddy asked. She still wondered why Yushi, who'd cut so many ties with her family and her past, felt responsible for her sullen roommate.

“She's devoted to weaving. Some days she doesn't even come home. She sleeps at her studio.”

Maddy, about to bite into charred eggplant, stopped her fork in mid-air. “Maybe she wants to move out.”

“We've got a lease. She can't just take off.”

“You could sublet. On the Plateau, it would be easy.”

Yushi wasn't listening. “You should see the fabric she weaves. She made a bolster for my bed in this really intricate design.” She zigzagged a finger in the air. “I think she should quit her job and weave all day long. She could sell her pieces.” It was rare for Yushi to sound so enthusiastic. “She could,” she repeated. “She used to sell when she lived with her mom. That's how they made a living. And you can tell she loves doing it.”

Maddy's lips parted as an idea began to form.

“She's a real pro, too. Before we stuffed the bolster, she showed me how she finished all the edges on the inside — where no one even sees them, but they're all smooth and tucked away.”

Maddy grabbed her wineglass and raised it to the fairy dust of fantastic ideas — wherever they came from. “That's it! That's what you'll do! You don't have to work for anyone. You'll make your own desserts and sell them to restaurants. Your tortes and your genoise and your marzipan roses. Once people taste them, they'll be gung-ho. They won't even ask where you trained.”

Yushi gave a curt shake of the head. “You don't know what's involved. You need a big kitchen. You need equipment — bowls and cake forms, an industrial mixer, a processor to grind nuts.… And then how do you get the cakes to the restaurants? It's not like selling Girl Guide cookies door to door. If you've got cakes layered with mousse and whipped cream, you need a van — a refrigerated van.”