The Bar Next Door Page 3

  My relationships have all been duds, just packs of seeds I hopefully sprinkle onto freshly tilled soil and nurture for weeks on end, only to watch some runty little weed poke its head up and then wither a few days later. My mother says I have a habit of taking on boyfriends as ‘projects’ and that I like to ‘seek fulfillment by helping others reach their potential instead of working toward my own.’

  That’s what you get having a former psychologist for a mother.

  The man in front of me doesn’t look like he needs any help on the road to Potential Town; everything about him announces he’s already there.

  “I think I know that guy.”

  Roxanne’s declaration startles me back into the present. I realize we’ve both moved so close to the door we’ve almost got our noses against the glass. I step back and rip my gaze away from beardie to give her an incredulous look.

  “You know that guy?”

  She might as well have just told me she’s real tight with Zeus and that they hang out all the time on Mount Olympus.

  “Well, of him,” Roxy amends. “I’ve seen him at the Nom Noms. I think he owns some fancy club in the Old Port or something. They won their category this year.”

  ‘The Nom Noms’ is a big Montreal food and beverage award show that started up a few years ago. People in the city get to vote on things like Best Tapas and Most Creative Cocktails. The cafe and microbrewery chain Roxanne is a director for won Best Craft Beer back in January. Taverne Toulouse has been long-listed for a few different categories over the years, but we’ve never actually gotten enough votes to be invited to the event.

  “A fancy club, huh?”

  The building in front of us isn’t big enough for a club. I’m musing over what his prospective plans could be when Roxanne mutters, “Merde. We’ve been spotted.”

  There’s no time to make an awkward dash back up the street. The calm of the sea has been broken, and the riptide is coming straight for us.

  Beardie pulls the door open and greets us with an expression that’s more curious than annoyed.

  Piercing blue eyes, I can’t help noting.

  In his case, it’s not just a cliché; his irises actually feel like they’re fracturing me, chipping away at my edges to see what they can find underneath.

  “Est-ce que je peux vous aider, Mesdames?” His deep voice asks if he can help us with anything.

  “I thought I recognized you,” Roxanne blurts in French after a moment of silence. “You don’t happen to be the owner of Cavellia, do you?”

  His eyebrows rise briefly above his glasses, and then his lips twist in the hint of a grin.

  “I think this is the first time I’ve been recognized in public by someone I don’t know—unless, of course, I do know you? In which case, I’m extremely apologetic.”

  His accent is softer than the broad, guttural syllables of Québécois French. There’s something European in the way he lets his tone twist around his consonants and linger on the vowels.

  “I don’t think we did much more than shake hands,” Roxanne tells him. “I was at the Nom Noms this year. I work for La Bareille.”

  “Then we must have met, but allow me to shake your hand again anyway, Madame...?”

  “Roxanne Nadeau,” she supplies, slipping her hand in his outstretched one.

  “Julien Valois.”

  Then he turns to me.

  “And you? Do I also need to apologize for forgetting our first meeting?”

  I’m not a shy person. There’s no room for hesitation when you’re swatting drunks away at the bar or breaking up dance floor make-out sessions that are about to go from PG13 to straight up R, but those damn ice-blue laser beams have me pinned to the sidewalk.

  “Um, no,” I force out in English, and then stutter to correct myself. “I mean, um, non.”

  He steps forward, one arm still holding the door open, and extends his hand to me.

  “A fresh start, then. I’m Julien.”

  There’s no spark or tingle when his bare skin closes over my thin black glove. The world doesn’t stop. The sidewalk doesn’t fall away from under my feet. I don’t stare into his eyes and feel an irreversible shifting somewhere deep inside me.

  What happens is far less dramatic, but all the more startling for that. As soon as I feel the pressure of his hand on mine, my breathing eases. The rushing sound I didn’t even realize had flooded my ears fades away. My confidence comes back to me like a jolt from a defibrillator. I remember to return his smile and pump my hand up and down instead of letting it hang between us like some kind of dead fish.

  “Monroe,” I introduce myself, breaking our contact and propping my hand on my hip in the typical tavern wench stance I seem to adopt on instinct after so many years behind the bar.

  “Monroe,” Julien repeats, in the curious tone people usually use when I tell them my name. “First name or last?”

  “I just go by Monroe.”

  I can see his curiosity pique in the way his eyebrows draw together, as if he’s a teacher who just got his hands on a new textbook, but he lets the subject drop.

  “So, Roxanne and Monroe, are you out spying on every store on Avenue Mont-Royal today?”

  “We’re only spying on this one, but we might get a drink at the bar next door,” I improvise. Now that I’m not quite so caught up in his beard magic, I’m refocused on the task at hand: finding out what’s going on at this building and whether or not I need to do something about it.

  Not that I have any idea what I would do about it, but that’s a bridge I can cross later on.

  Julien huffs out a laugh and glances over at Taverne Toulouse. “That little dump? People actually drink there?”

  I bristle so quickly I feel Roxanne lean away from me like I’ve turned into a porcupine, but Julien doesn’t seem to notice.

  “We were just talking about what a waste of the property it is,” he continues, unaware that I’d be shooting quills out of my skin if I had any quills to shoot. “It would be nice to have both units for my project, but that place looks like it might need to be completely gutted. I was going to head over there myself once this meeting is over to see if it’s worth looking into.”

  This is good, I tell myself, as my insides start mixing up a cocktail of insult and disappointment to wash away any traces of my five second crush. This will allow me to focus on the task at hand.

  The task at hand is now more vital than ever. He’s already talking about being interested in buying Taverne Toulouse. I need to pump him for information, and it strikes me to do that the best way I know how: over a pint.

  So I swallow down the indignation of hearing my favourite place in the world described as ‘that little dump,’ and I make my move.

  “Would you like to join us for a drink?”

  Three

  Julien

  PLONK: A British slang term for inexpensive or low quality wine

  Drinks with strange—and attractive—women I found on the sidewalk were not on today’s schedule, but I still find myself saying yes. There are approximately twenty-eight other things I need to be doing right now, and yet I look down at the curvy brunette in front of me, the one with her lips pursed and her hand propped on her hip, and tell her I’d like nothing better.

  I don’t know what startles me more: those words coming out of my mouth, or the fact that they’re completely true. It’s the middle of a work day. I should be making my excuses and heading out.

  “I just have to finish up inside and I’ll be right over.”

  I leave the girls standing where I found them and step back into the bare room, where the workers are packing up the measuring tools they brought with them. Swiping at my phone, I double check there’s nowhere I absolutely have to be and refresh my inbox to convince myself I don’t have any emails that need immediate attention. I tuck my phone away after I’m certain the world won’t fall apart if I go for a drink and happen to catch a glimpse of my lock screen as I do.

  I really have to ch
ange the maudit thing.

  One of these days, someone’s going to notice Madame Bovary’s furry little face stretched across my screen and give me hell for it—not that I’ve allowed myself to be the kind of boss people feel comfortable giving hell to, but the sight of a Yorkshire terrier with a pink bow on its head guarding my cell phone’s secrets would embolden even the most servile of employees.

  To be clear, I didn’t put the bow on her head. Madame Bovary was a gift from my mother during her last visit to Canada. Of course Maman couldn’t just pick up a dog from the pound like a normal person—the Yorkie and her pedigree papers were delivered to my condo in a luxury SUV emblazoned with the breeder’s prestigious logo—but in many ways, I think she was just doing what a lot of parents do when they see their child is lonely: they find them a friend.

  It’s just that the child in this case is thirty-two years old, and the question of whether I’m lonely or not is constantly in debate. Although the fact that I refer to Madame Bovary as the ‘woman of the house’ and once let her vet spend the better part of an hour drafting a ‘dedicated doggie meal plan’ I now follow religiously is a heavy strike against me.

  I really do need to change the damn lock screen.

  I can feel Monroe watching me as I close up the property. Her suspicious gaze doesn’t waver as I follow her and her friend into the dingy place next door. It bores into me as we take our seats around a tacky cable spool table, and I can’t help thinking I’ve done something wrong.

  My father always liked to quote a particular line from Victor Hugo: “Quand une femme vous parle, écoutez ce qu’elle dit avec ses yeux.”

  When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes.

  The woman across the table from me is saying something with her eyes, but I have no idea what the message is, or if I’m even supposed to be reading it. She smiles when I speak, and her voice isn’t barbed with the same threat as her eyes, but if she’s trying to hide that she’s upset about something, she’s doing a terrible job of it.

  What did I do?

  It matters more than it should. I don’t just feel the passing guilt of common courtesy. She’s a stranger—a pretty stranger, yes, with lips that don’t quit and a very distracting necklace I can see dipping down under the neck of her shirt now that she’s taken her coat off—but I feel like I’ve failed at something by offending her, like I’ve lost a chance at winning something I didn’t know I wanted until I couldn’t have it anymore. Maybe it’s the confidence she carries like a sword at her side, tucked away with just the hint of the pommel declaring, “I’d much rather be nice, but I’ll pull this out in a second if you give me a reason.”

  It’s a test, and I didn’t pass it.

  Our server, a guy in his twenties whose flannel shirt makes him look like some sort of farmhand, strides over with a few plastic water glasses balanced on a tray.

  “Monroe, a pleasure as always.” He places her glass down with a flourish, ice clinking against its sides. He smiles like his greeting is a joke, and I realize they must be familiar enough that he’s being facetiously formal.

  “Roxanne. Haven’t seen you in a while. I hear you’re tying the knot. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, Zach.”

  He sets the second glass down as Roxanne waves her fingers at him, a diamond glinting below the knuckle of the third one.

  The two of them are regulars here. I guess that would explain the passive aggressive eye contact and thinly veiled hostility being directed my way.

  What did I call this place? A dump?

  There’s no doubt that it is a dump. Taverne Toulouse is less of a bar and more of a cave, dark and drafty even with afternoon sun shining outside the windows. Those windows might be the problem. They’re not nearly big enough, and the garage door look makes the space feel like a teenager’s hangout instead of a proper bar. The tacky chandeliers and drawings of genitalia scribbled on the walls don’t help with the impression. Even the air is tinged with an adolescent mixture of sweat and stale beer.

  If this is the kind of place that puts Monroe on the defensive, she can’t be as mature as she seems. At thirty-two, it’s obvious she’s younger than me, but I didn’t place her as young enough to still have a fondness for dingy student bars.

  Someone ought to show her a proper night out, give her velvet and leather and wine that stains her lips garnet red as it slips past her tongue and down her throat.

  She looks at me and glances away again. I feel my own throat flex as I swallow.

  “And for the random dude I don’t know.”

  My water glass gets deposited in front of me, and the server tucks the tray under his arm.

  “Do you guys need menus, or...?”

  “Grab one for the guy you don’t know,” Monroe instructs, one corner of her mouth lifting up.

  He crosses over to the bar and comes back with a battered laminated menu. I thank him as I accept it and scan through both sides of the page.

  “So,” I hazard, still staring down at the red letters in front of me, “I take it you two come here often?”

  We’ve switched to English now. Despite clearly not being a native speaker, Monroe didn’t seem to have any trouble keeping up, but I’ve learned that’s how language in Montreal often is: a dotted line on the road conversations can weave across in a seamless manoeuvre that somehow rarely results in a crash. I remember listening in shock to two teenagers ahead of me in line at the Montreal airport when I first arrived all those years ago. They switched from English to French and back again three times in a sentence without any hesitation at all, like they didn’t even know they were doing it. I’ve still never quite mastered the trick.

  I glance up to find Monroe and Roxanne exchanging a look.

  “You could say that,” Monroe drawls, and Roxanne snorts out a laugh.

  I push the menu away. “Am I missing something here?”

  “Not at all,” Monroe assures me, in a very un-reassuring tone. I’m about to ask if there’s something I should apologize for, or even offer to leave, when the expression on her face softens just slightly enough for me to notice. “Sorry. We’re just joking around. We do come here often. Very often.”

  “Then I’m sorry if I offended you earlier.”

  “Don’t say sorry to me.” She pats the table in front of her. “Say sorry to Taverne Toulouse. No promises she’ll accept it, though.”

  Zach interrupts what I think might be the first real smile she’s given me when he arrives back at the table to take Monroe and Roxanne’s order for identical pints of Shock Top. I ask for the house red and watch them all bite their lips to hold back what I’m sure is the desire to laugh at me.

  “Right. House red. Coming up.”

  “There’s red wine here?” Roxanne asks after Zach has disappeared. “And it’s on the menu?” She turns to me. “And you ordered it?”

  “I like wine.”

  Truth be told, saying I like wine is the same as saying a Mazeratti is a good car or that Shakespeare’s plays are okay. Some people look at a glass of merlot and see a classy way to get drunk. I see the sun beating down on the vineyards. I feel the hot earth of the hills in Bordeaux under my dirt-covered feet. I hear my father’s voice in my ear as he lifted me up to reach the twisting vines, whispering tales about the journey the grapes in my hand would go on, how far they would travel, all that they would do and become.

  Wine is a story just waiting to tell itself to those who know how to listen. Every bottle started with a seed and someone willing to get their hands dirty, someone who saw potential where others saw nothing and then inspired them to see it too. Every step of that journey manifests in the flavours you taste, like ink strokes bleeding onto a blank page.

  “Too good for beer?”

  Monroe’s watching me, the pommel of the sword glinting at her side again.

  “Wine has more...”

  I want to say something like ‘depth’ or ‘complexity,’ something the captures wa
y wine can steal all your senses for a moment and make you forget everything but pleasure. I don’t intend to fail another one of her tests, though, and insulting her drink of choice after I’ve already insulted her bar of choice doesn’t seem like the way to do that.

  “It has more flavour,” I finish.

  She tilts her water glass towards me. “Then you can’t have had any good beers.”

  “Good beers like Shock Top? Their mascot is a talking orange.”

  So much for not insulting her again, but the shot was so easy to take it slipped out of my mouth. To my surprise, Monroe laughs. It’s not just a chuckle or a quick snort; it’s a full-bodied sound, rich and unrelenting, like church bells on Sunday morning. It’s a sound you pay attention to.

  “Okay, I admit it. That one was...low hanging fruit.”

  Roxanne makes a face as Monroe gives her a sly grin that hints at an inside joke.

  “You know I hate that phrase,” Roxanne complains. “It just makes me thing of...of...”

  Now that I’ve made Monroe laugh, I suddenly want to prove I can do it again. It’s not the most distinguished thing to say, but I go ahead and finish the thought Roxanne is clearly trying to voice.

  “Saggy balls?”

  She snaps her fingers. “Exactly!”

  Monroe claps a hand over her mouth, but not before I hear her snort. It’s an adorable snort. We all give in and chuckle when the server comes back and sets the foaming orange pints down, announcing, “Some fruity beer for you, ladies.” He blinks around the table for a moment and then asks, “Did I miss something?”

  “Only if you like saggy balls,” Roxanne supplies.

  His eyebrows only jump up for a second before he shakes his head. “I like to keep things sag-free. This wine might be a little...saggy, though. Drink at your own peril. I had to dig it out from under the bar.”

  He places a cheap-looking wine glass down in front of me and heads off to check on a couple who just walked in the door.