The Bar Next Door Page 2

  That’s all it is, though: a daydream. It’s wishful thinking. It’s vanity. There are people here who depend on me, and that’s more important than some totally implausible scheme. I don’t need to rule over everything in sight to be happy with my life, and ninety percent of the time, I’m perfectly happy with my life just the way it is.

  People who meet me as bartender never believe I have a Masters in English literature or that I minored in classical studies during my undergrad, and people who knew me in school never believe I run Taverne Toulouse, but I don’t see the two as conflicting versions of myself. I’ve always thought of bartending as natural habitat for any enthusiast of the written word. Standing behind a bar is kind of like speed reading a dozen books a day; you watch each customer walk up and try to guess their story. You get hooked by the pull of those first few pages until you just have to know more. You pour their drink, chat a little, try to piece their personal history together bit by fascinating bit.

  The oddballs are my favourite. I’ve consoled a lot of heartbroken sorority sisters and stressed out students juggling exams, but when I see some old guy in a suit jacket with a feather tucked into his pocket saunter in at noon, or when a lady wearing mismatched shoes sits down with a sigh and asks if I can make a decent Bloody Mary, that’s what really makes me love my job. Bars are like a library for all the stories that never found an author to write them.

  I run a hand over the dark wood in front of me before rapping on it twice with my knuckles—an old superstition I picked up from a former boss of mine who told me it brings the bar good luck. I tell our one table of customers to have a good night as I walk past them and out onto the street.

  “Damn, it’s cold,” I mutter, digging through my purse to pull out a pair of gloves. We’re halfway through March, and winter is still going strong.

  Not many souls are venturing out on the street tonight, and I take solace in the fact that we can’t be the only establishment who’s hurting. I pause in front of the empty building beside Taverne Toulouse. The windows are all papered over, and just like Zach said, the sign saying it’s for sale now announces they’ve found a buyer.

  Please don’t be another bar, I think as I start walking the few blocks to my apartment. Please be anything except another bar.

  Two

  Monroe

  WHITE WHALE: A term used within the beer tasting and brewing community to describe a beer that is exceptionally rare or difficult to obtain

  I grab my best friend’s hand for what must be the sixth or seventh time today and bring it closer to me where we’re both sitting on my couch, peering down at her ring finger.

  “You’re going to stretch my wrist ligaments or something,” Roxanne complains, but she still lets me twist her hand around to make the diamond catch the light.

  “It’s just so perfect!” I exclaim. “It’s so...so you, you know? Cole knows you so well.”

  Roxanne Nadeau, my best friend of many years and a former employee of Taverne Toulouse, got engaged yesterday. Her ring really is perfect for her: a rough diamond set in a plain gold band. It’s simple but so unique, with that same raw and unexpected beauty she blends so well with a touch of delicacy.

  I already went through the screaming and crying phase of finding out Cole proposed. I’ve known him even longer than I’ve known Roxanne, and if their relationship was an ice cream flavour, it would be extra rocky road. They’ve been to hell and back for each other, and there’s no couple I know who deserves a happy ending more than they do.

  “Are you planning an extra special surprise way to ask me to be your maid of honour?” I ask Roxanne.

  She snorts. “Voyons, what surprise? Do I even need to bother asking? It’s obvious I’ve already picked you.”

  Roxanne and I got to know each other under somewhat unorthodox conditions. She left her home in northern Quebec as a teenager and came to Montreal all by herself with next to nothing. Cole found her and eventually asked his most generous female friend to give Roxanne a place to stay until she could save up a few months of rent. He also asked said generous friend to help find a job for the little runaway at her bar.

  Spoiler alert: the generous friend was me, and the bar was Taverne Toulouse. Roxy started off as a dishwasher and lived on my couch for the better part of a year. She barely spoke a word of English back then, but we bonded through our impromptu language lessons and ended up inseparable. I would full-on bitch slap her if she asked anyone else to be her maid of honour.

  “You’re making me feel cheap,” I joke. “You could at least buy me a card.”

  “Okay, Monroe.” She pulls her hand out of my grip and uses it to pat me on the shoulder. “I’ll buy you a card.”

  I get up when I hear the kettle finish boiling and select two mugs from my extensive and borderline obsessive collection before pouring us some tea. I bring the drinks back to where Roxanne’s still on the couch, facing the massive framed portrait of Charles Dickens that takes up a large part of the opposite wall.

  Charles Dickens was the man.

  I manage to find two coasters with Latin printed inscriptions on them under the pile of papers and books on my coffee table. I’m just taking my first sip when my phone starts vibrating on the arm of the couch. I grab it with a groan. Managing anything in the food and drink industry means that real ‘days off’ gets reduced to a pleasant idea it’s nice to think about sometimes. I am always on call.

  I let out a second groan when I see the name on the screen.

  “Fuck, it’s Félix Fournier.”

  “Fucking Félix Fournier!” Roxanne choruses.

  For some reason, we only ever refer to the owner of Taverne Toulouse by his full name. It’s usually accompanied by an expletive—because alliteration is fun, and also because my boss is a dickhead.

  I get up off the couch and wander over to the kitchen as I accept the call.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur Fournier,” I greet him.

  “Is it really a ‘good day,’ Monroe?” he continues in French. “I got those sales reports.”

  “I find them just as...troubling as you do, I’m sure.” I have to pause and search for the right word. My French is good, considering I didn’t really start learning the language until I moved to Montreal for my undergrad, but I still falter from time to time.

  “I understand a lull after Christmas, but this...What’s going on, Monroe?”

  “I promise you, Monsieur Fournier, if I knew what was wrong, I would already be working on fixing it. I’ve double-checked everything. The numbers just...dropped. It—”

  “Is it the staff?” he interrupts. “I know you have your favourites, but maybe I need to come in and—”

  “I know my staff,” I retort, as sharply as I dare, “and they are not the problem. Everyone working there right now is excellent at what they do. I’ve let anyone we can spare go already. If we drop any more employees, we won’t be able to stay open full time. They’re already so starved for hours that I’m scared some of our best will quit.”

  “We can barely afford to stay open full time as it is. You’re the manager, Monroe. If you can’t figure out what’s going wrong...”

  I feel my spine stiffen at his implied threat.

  “With all due respect, Monsieur Fournier, you said it yourself: I am the manager. I’m not a market researcher or an advertising specialist or even an interior designer. I’ve worked to know something about all of those things, but all my job really consists of is managing the staff and overseeing most of the finances. I would be happy to do more, of course, but without the proper—”

  “I can’t afford to pay you more,” he snaps, cutting me off again.

  I glance at Roxanne, and from the mixture of concern and alarm on her face, I’m sure my eyes must be bugging out of my head.

  Is that seriously what he thinks I was asking? That I just want to be paid more?

  If all I cared about was pay, I would have left Taverne Toulouse a long, long time ago. I’m half-temped to tell
him just that, but he’s already threatened to fire me once in this conversation.

  “We’ll talk more about this later. The real reason I called is because I just got word that the place next door has been sold.”

  I hold back on replying and wait for him to continue. He’s obviously not in the mood to let me get a full sentence out. He rarely is.

  “Some construction company is in there today doing measurements. They must be remodelling. If they put a restaurant or bar in there and this trend in our sales continues, la taverne will not survive. I need to prepare for that.”

  Oh he needs to prepare for that.

  “I know you’re not in today, but I need you to go over there and check it out.”

  “Check it out?” I repeat, not sure I’ve understood correctly.

  “Yes. Go see what they’re up to. We can find out who the owner is and see if they’re willing to buy us out. If they’re remodelling for a restaurant, they’ll already be dumping a fortune into renovations. Might be cheaper just to knock a wall down and use our kitchen as well. They’d get the extra space too.”

  Félix Fournier sounds more and more excited as he goes on, like the idea is winning him over the longer he thinks about it. We don’t even know what’s going in next door, but he’s already imagining giving up two decades’ worth of ownership and forcing almost a dozen people out of jobs they love. A few of the staff have been there even longer than me. We don’t just work at a sloppy student bar together; we’re family.

  The Fourniers bought the bar back when it was still possible for somewhat normal people to afford property on Avenue Mont-Royal. It was an office space for decades before Félix Fournier inherited the place at the turn of the millennium and had it remodelled into a bar. For as long as I’ve known him, he’s been grumbling about the property value and how much he’s missing out on by refusing to sell, but his comments have always been just that—grumbling. He’s never sounded this serious before.

  I’m about to remind him that he knows most of the landlords on the street and could ask around instead of sending me on a reconnaissance mission, but for some reason, I stop myself. Félix Fournier is the sin of sloth personified, so it doesn’t surprise me that he’s asked me to do something he could accomplish much more efficiently himself. Normally I’d at least try to stand my ground on this, but I’ve realized that I don’t want him to know who the buyer is.

  Not until I do.

  Not until I’ve decided what to do with that information.

  If the business next door is going to affect us, I want to know about it first. My staff has just been threatened, and my Mamma Bear instinct are out in full force.

  “I’ll head over there in a few minutes,” I reply, “see what I can find out.”

  Cut it on the scheming voice, I urge myself. Be subtle. You. Are. Subtle.

  “Bon. À la prochaine.”

  And without even a thank you to go along with his ‘until next time,’ he hangs up.

  “Fucking Félix Fournier!” I exclaim, resisting the urge to slam my phone down on the counter.

  I cannot afford a new phone.

  “I hear you, my sister!” Roxanne agrees with a raised fist. “What did he want?”

  “Fuck what he wants.” I come around the kitchen counter and grab my purse from off the floor. “How do you feel about doing a little espionage today, Roxanne?”

  * * *

  As the two of us descend the snow-covered stairway of my walk-up apartment, the contrast between Roxanne and I strikes me the same way it always does. She’s got several inches of height on me—but then again, most people do—and her fondness for slimming black clothing just makes the difference between our body types all the more apparent.

  I’ve never been thin. I’ve also never actually been overweight, so I feel bad for complaining about the healthy body I’m lucky enough to live in, but it’s hard not to draw comparisons when you’re walking down the street with a girl who always looks like she’s fit to strut up a runway. Roxanne has this subtle style that’s all clean cut lines and drapey black fabric. Her clothes manage to scream, ‘Pay attention to me!’ without even raising their voice above a whisper.

  Whereas my clothes cheerfully announce, ‘I bought this for nine dollars off the Wal-Mart sales rack the other day!’ for all to hear. I’m not ashamed of my curves, but I know the world of haute couture wasn’t built for girls like me. Plus, Wal-Mart clothes are comfier, and I don’t exactly live a life that necessitates dressing up.

  “When was the last time you salted these steps?” Roxanne complains, gripping the banister for dear life as she steps her heeled boots off the final stair.

  “Um, well, I’ve had ‘buy salt’ on my to-do list for...a while now,” I admit.

  She shakes her head as she takes my arm in hers, and we start making our way up to Avenue Mont-Royal.

  “You’re always so busy taking care of other people that you never do things for yourself. I’m buying you a bag of salt before we go home today.”

  “That is not true!” I protest.

  She gives me a look.

  “I like helping other people!”

  “I didn’t say you don’t enjoy it, or that it’s bad thing to do. You’re the best friend a person could ask for. I just wish you’d ask for more things for yourself.”

  I pretend to sulk. “I did ask for a special maid of honour surprise, but you wouldn’t let me have one.”

  “You’re right. I’m a monster.”

  I reach up and pat her on the head. “At least you’re cute, Nadeau. I don’t why else I keep you around.”

  We trudge up the slushy sidewalks of my neighbourhood for the next ten minutes until we get to the even slushier sidewalk of the main road.

  “I can’t wait for spring.” Roxanne grimaces as she uses the curb to knock off some of the buildup from the bottom of her shoes.

  “I think you mean summer. Spring is just going to turn all these snow banks into soup. Delicious brown street soup that always manages to leak over the top of your boots.”

  We both shudder before covering the final block up to Taverne Toulouse.

  “It feels like I haven’t visited in forever,” Roxanne says fondly, staring at the garage door-style windows that take up the whole front of the bar. On warm days, we haul them up out of the way and have a patio going outside. “Can we go in and say hi?”

  “Roxanne! We are on a very important reconnaissance mission,” I remind her. “Get your head in the game.”

  “Right. What’s our plan?”

  “Uh...”

  I stare over at the neighbouring storefront. The paper is still in place on the windows, but at the very top, I can see the lights are on. There’s a construction company van parked on the street out front.

  “We, um, knock on the door?” I supply.

  Roxanne shrugs. “D’accord.”

  “Wait, no! Roxy, I was joking!”

  I chase after her and grab hold of her arm just before she raises it to knock on the glass.

  “Woah, check him out.”

  She ignores me latching myself onto her arm like a sloth and nods toward the door. The paper has been torn off the glass there, and inside, we can see a group of men all standing together at the back of the room. I don’t even have to ask who Roxanne’s talking about. Three of the men are wearing matching jackets paired with work boots and jeans. One of them is pointing up at the roof while the rest of the group watches him indicate various spots in the ceiling. The fourth man has his back to us, but even from that angle, he’s a showstopper.

  “I’ve never seen someone pull off double denim like that,” Roxanne comments.

  His collared chambray shirt is a light enough blue that it doesn’t look weird paired with his dark jeans, but honestly, he could probably be in a clown costume and that ass would still be sexy. I don’t think I’ve ever actually felt attracted to a man’s butt before, but damn, I would squeeze that thing so hard.

  That was a weir
d thing to think.

  Then he turns slightly so we can catch a glimpse of his profile, and I start to think a lot of other weird things.

  “What is he?” I ask, almost breathlessly. “A professor of...sex?”

  He has these studious square-framed glasses on that bring out the angles of his cheekbones even from here, and that beard. I’ve always been a beard enthusiast, and this one is magnificent: not too long, well groomed, and a rich brown colour that’s slightly darker than his tousled hair.

  His hair literally looks tousled, like he just ran his fingers through it after hopping out of bed with a sultry co-ed before striding his way across campus to teach a course on erotic undertones the works of Shakespeare. There’s something inescapably scholarly about him, despite the denim and the mountain man facial hair.

  “Mon dieu, Monroe, he is so your type.”

  In truth, he doesn’t look anything like the guys I’ve dated. The handful of exes I’ve collected over the years never followed much of a pattern—aside from being noncommittal man-children who were all weirdly dependent on their mothers—but none of them had that ‘Is he moving in slow motion or is my brain just doing that to make this moment last longer?’ effect that this guy does.

  His good looks aren’t even the most eye-catching thing about him; there’s an intensity to the way he stands with his chin pinched between his finger and thumb, watching the workmen point out various features of the room. There’s a hidden energy masked behind his stillness, a kinetic force you sense rather than see, like the threat of a riptide lurking beneath calmer waves. He reminds me of one of my best professors in school. He’d sit with steepled hands, patiently listening to his students ramble on about whatever they read on the SparkNote’s entry for Anna Karenina, before jumping out of his chair to call them out on their bullshit.

  I had a huge crush on that professor, so maybe Roxanne’s not too far off in saying denim guy is my type, but he’s definitely not a type I have experience with.