The Bar Next Door Read online

  If I concentrate enough, I can still hear Fleur shouting at me, her words bouncing off the walls of the condo as she threw things over her shoulder at a suitcase, not caring that most of them just landed on the floor.

  “Tu n’es qu’une machine, Julien! Ta tête est trop grosse et ton coeur trop petit.”

  You’re nothing but a machine. Your head is too big, and your heart is too small.

  I didn’t even reach for her as she hauled the suitcase out the door.

  The streets seems a little more dim as I make my way to the condo, the shadows a little more dark.

  Six

  Monroe

  CHAPTALIZATION: The process of adding additional sugar during fermentation to increase the alcohol content of a wine

  In addition to putting a sign out on the street, I let DeeDee blast a message to her thousand or so Facebook friends saying there’d be three for one shots at Taverne Toulouse for a limited time this evening. My hope was to attract some sort of crowd for when Fucking Félix Fournier shows up tonight.

  I need to get him sweetened up before we go through the numbers together. Why he insists on doing a business meeting at a bar in the evening is beyond me. We could have gone for lunch somewhere like I suggested. It would have been quieter. It would have put him in a better mood than being squished into my broom closet as we shout over the music thumping in the main room, but I’ve long stopped questioning why Fournier does any of the things he does.

  Taverne Toulouse is barely half-full when he shuffles through the door at half past six, balding and beer-bellied and scowling at the world. I’m thankful we’ve at least got enough customers to keep him quiet out on the floor. I can only imagine what he’d have to say if he walked in and found the place empty. I myself am having hard time not pulling my hair out in dismay at the sight of the meagre crowd, even if it’s bigger than what we’ve been getting lately.

  Fournier likes to show up every six months or so and make noise. I doubt he even knows how many employees we’ve got on the payroll, never mind what their names are, but it makes him feel like he’s doing his part if he can pop in and criticize everyone on the way they’re doing jobs he knows nothing about.

  “Monroe, c’est quoi ҫa?” he demands once he’s let himself in behind the bar. “What’s going on here? You barely have any maudit customers, and you’ve got five people on staff.”

  “I have four people on staff.”

  He harrumphs. “You’re here, aren’t you? That makes five.”

  “I’m meeting with you, Monsieur Fournier.” I try not to roll my eyes. “I can’t be out on the floor.”

  He just grumbles to himself in answer as I lead the way to my office.

  “This place needs work,” he comments, lowering himself onto the stool.

  My thoughts exactly, but you won’t let me hire anyone to do it.

  “We’re doing our best with what we have.”

  He taps some of the papers on my desk. “If this is the best this place can do, then selling is looking more and more like a good idea.”

  “Sales are up,” I tell him. I pull up a few documents on my computer and point out the upwards trend—the very slight upward trend that has only occurred within the past few days, but I doubt he’s paying attention. “When our profits are at their normal levels, this place makes you way more as an investment than selling it off would.”

  “But profits aren’t at their normal levels. They haven’t been for a long time. The students aren’t coming all the way out here anymore, and nobody pours money into cheap alcohol like the brats from McGill. We used to be the cornerstone of cheap booze and a good time, but competition is catching up.”

  “What if we try to attract different clients?” I offer, knowing full well it’s futile to present him with the idea. “This has always been the wrong neighbourhood for a student bar. If we changed things up a little—”

  “The only bar that makes real money is a student bar. They don’t give a shit what they’re drinking or where.”

  Félix Fournier: business sage extraordinaire. I don’t know where he picked up that idea about student bars, but he’s been trying to bash it into everyone’s brains like it’s gospel since well before I started working here.

  “If you want to get the students back, I can do it. I just need time.” I’m grasping at straws, but I need to get him off this train of thought fast.

  “Time’s up. I got the contact information for the guy who bought the place next door, some rich connard who already owns a bunch of restaurants. Shouldn’t be a problem for him to buy this place up. I’ve been talking to my lawyer about how I should make the offer.”

  “Give me until June.” I almost shout the words in desperation, my heart hammering in my ears.

  “June? It’s April, Monroe.”

  “Exactly. Just give me two months to prove this place is worth keeping.”

  He’s not convinced. “They’re renovating next door now. This is the time to sell.”

  “No,” I counter. “It’s not. I...I’ve talked to the owner a few times. They’ve decided to stick to their original plans, at least until the place is open. They’ll expand after if the business works out. Even if you offer now, they’re not looking to buy.”

  Technically, Julien told me he’s still caught between moving the building process along and going after the extra space we have here, but if Fournier doesn’t make the first move, there’s a good chance Julien will leave Taverne Toulouse alone—for now.

  “So I keep this place open until he opens?” Fournier demands. “Then what? Get run out of business by whatever uppity place he puts in next door and lose who knows how much money when I could have just got the place off my hands months before? He’ll buy. Places like this don’t come easy.”

  “You said it yourself, Monsieur Fournier. The only place that makes real money is a student bar.” Repeating his words like some kind of disciple almost makes me want to shudder, but I hold back the urge. “You’re not going to get run out of business. If anything, the bar next door is the one that’s going to flop, and you’ll be left with a solid money maker that hasn’t failed you for over ten years.”

  Apparently I have an inner real-estate agent who’s decided to come out and play today.

  “So you really think it’s worth my time and hard-earned money to keep dumping resources into something that’s not giving me any returns?”

  I nearly snort. His money is hard-earned all right; just not by him.

  “It will,” I reply, as convincingly as I can. “It will give you returns. Just give me two months to get the sales up.”

  What the hell I’m going to manage in two months, I don’t know, but now is not the moment for hesitation. Fournier settles back in his chair and runs a hand over the grizzled five o’clock shadow creeping along his jaw. Somehow his facial hair always gives the impression of being overenthusiastic sideburns rather than an actual beard.

  “Why do you care so much about this maudit place anyway, Monroe? Can’t be because of how much I pay you.” He roars with laughter like he’s just made a fantastic joke.

  Ha ha. My lack of a competitive salary is indeed hilarious.

  “I...”

  I trail off for a moment. The answer to his question is more than a word or a sentence. It’s a feeling so complex it would take a whole damn book to explain, and even if I was willing to put in the time or effort to write it for him, Félix Fournier isn’t someone I would or probably even could share that story with.

  To understand what Taverne Toulouse means to me, you have to appreciate history. You have to appreciate connection. You have to know what it is to look at someone everyone else has written off and still see something worth saving.

  There’s more to life than numbers and thresholds. There are things more important than goals and personal milestones. We live our lives so focused on the big picture, on that bright shiny future we’re all striving to achieve, that any person or place who can’t keep up gets
left in the dirt when all they really needed was a hand to pull them up. At the end of the day, that’s what we give people here: a chance to put everything else on pause, to accept that even for just a few hours spent in good company with a cold beer, they are enough.

  That’s what I want my customers to feel when they walk in the door. That’s what I want my staff to feel when they’re punching in. I want this bar to be a place where you can raise a toast in triumph or find consolation in defeat. I’ve spent most of my adult life working to make it that way. Taverne Toulouse is all I’ve got to show for myself. This place and these people are everything I’ve worked for. If I lose it, what am I?

  “I like my job,” I finish flatly.

  Fournier just stares at me for a moment, shaking his head.

  “Voyons. Two months, then.” He smacks my desk with his palms before pushing himself up off the stool. “And I don’t just want to see a return to last year’s sales. We need to surpass them.”

  “Anything for you, Monsieur Fournier,” I can’t resist replying.

  “Very funny, Monroe. I hope I don’t regret this decision.”

  I follow him out of my office to where he pauses just before entering the front of house. I’m too short to see over his shoulder, but I can spot enough through the gap beside him to know the crowd has already shrunk considerably from when he arrived.

  I hope I don’t regret his decision either.

  “You should tell that kid to shave his beard,” Fournier comments, nodding over to where Zach’s serving a table. “He looks like a farmer.”

  He makes his exit before I run out of the patience necessary to resist telling him he’s not in a position to be criticizing anyone else’s beard. Fournier’s wiry whisker patches make Zach’s dirty blond scruff look like the epitome of follicular charm. Really, Zach’s beard is quite cute. It’s not as striking as, say, a magnificently trimmed, lustrously brown, woodsy-yet-refined style, but it works for him. It matches his rye-and-ginger-on-a-Thursday-night persona, all smiles and open book honesty.

  You have to be more smoky whiskey or dry red wine to pull off the woodsy-yet-refined look.

  Not that I have any particular woodsy-yet-refined beard in mind.

  I shut myself back up in my office, doing my best ignore the mental images of the very last person I should be thinking about. My brain gets the memo after a moment and switches gears to focus on the task at hand—namely, paperwork— but memories of Julien hover on the peripheral of my thoughts. He’s been hovering there a lot there lately, and my fiasco of a meeting today is just more proof it’s the last place I should be allowing him to take up residency.

  I have another hour of work to get through before I can go home, but Fournier was right about one thing: we don’t have enough business tonight for me to keep five of us on the payroll. I clock myself out before I get started. I’ve cut so many people’s hours lately that I can’t bring myself to do it again, not when they’re probably making their first decent amount of tips in weeks.

  I trudge through the rest of the paperwork and then stop in behind the bar to make sure everyone’s up to speed on the closing duties before heading out. There are still a few clumps of snow left on the curbs, but they’re disappearing fast. The cool air that rushes to fill my nose is scented with more than just the jagged chill of winter; I can catch a hint of ripeness, of mud and melting and the thrum of green things poking through the earth, even here in the heart of the city.

  My apartment’s stairway is still a slippery death trap, despite the bag of salt sitting at the top courtesy of Roxanne. Turns out not only am I too preoccupied to buy the things necessary for my survival, but I also seem to be too preoccupied to actually use them.

  I make it to the top without fracturing any vertebrae and pull my key out of my pocket. The place is old, a typical Montreal brick walk-up three stories high. My neighbour’s terra cotta plant pots are wrapped in garbage bags for the winter and take up most of the free space on the balcony at the top of the stairs. There are three doors: mine on the left, Plant Lady’s on the right, and the door that leads to the two uppermost units in the middle. All the frames are slightly crooked and warped with age. I have to boost my door handle up and jiggle it just right to get inside.

  It makes for a cheap anti-theft protection device.

  I slide my hand along the wall of the entryway to reach the light switch before pulling off my boots and coat. My book collection is constantly expanding like some sort of literary fungus and reaches almost all the way to the front door. Sometimes I think I’m going to come home one day and find a floor to ceiling wall of paperbacks sitting on top of my welcome mat.

  “Hello, Charles!” I call out to my Charles Dickens portrait as I make my way into the kitchen. “Did you miss me?”

  He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to; it’s obvious he did. I pull the remains of a casserole I made a few days ago out of the fridge and place it in the microwave. By the time the ding sounds, I’ve divested myself of my bra and pants in my bedroom and replaced them with an oversized sweater and some leggings. It’s going to be one hell of a wild night.

  I’m nestled into my worn-out couch, missing my mouth with every second forkful of casserole because I can’t be bothered to tear my eyes off the book I have open in front of me, when my phone starts vibrating on the table.

  “Goddamit, Taverne Toulouse,” I complain, “when will you learn to appreciate the sanctity of Dostoyevsky?”

  I grab the phone, expecting an emergency work call, but when I pull the screen closer, it’s not showing Taverne Toulouse’s number or any of my employee’s names.

  I was wondering whether or not he would sit back and let me avoid him. Julien Valois didn’t seem like the type to give up easy.

  It’s one of the things I found myself admiring about him, and that very admiration is the reason I haven’t answered his texts. He throws me off balance. He tips the scales. I don’t know what it is about him, but whenever he’s around, my world goes skewed, and the only thing I seem to be able to reach out for is him.

  I can’t let myself do that. I’m too mature to deny that I’m attracted to him. I know myself, and I know that whatever I feel for Julien is a dangerous thing. It makes me forget about my priorities. It makes me forget that there are people depending on me. It makes me forget about everything except me—everything except for what I want, and when he’s in the room, what I want is clearly him.

  He drives me crazy with his red wine drinking and his bulldozer approach to carving out a path of submission through anything that slows him down, but he gets under my skin in a way that just makes me itch to feel more of him.

  That attraction is not going to lead us anywhere good. We’re competitors. Even if by some miracle I manage to get Taverne Toulouse back on track and keep the property out of Julien’s hands, we’ll be locked in a battle for customers for as long as we both decide to keep our jobs. There’s no future for anything between us. Even a one night stand would get messy. It’s better if we shut this down now.

  I’ve always seen ghosting as taking the low road, though, so I take a deep breath and answer his call.

  “Julien.”

  “Monroe. What’s your first name?”

  “Huh?”

  He chuckles into the receiver. “I thought I could surprise it out of you.”

  “Why can’t you just call me Monroe?”

  “I just feel like I don’t properly know you. It’s a strange feeling.”

  “Everyone calls me Monroe,” I assure him.

  I did a full-blown Facebook security settings hack to make sure of it. It’s the only name I display there. From the fourth grade onward, every teacher I had got a special note on their attendance sheet next to my name. I shit you not, I special order actual lockable wallets so stubborn assholes can’t go through my ID. After some time, most people just accept that my name is Monroe and give up on their curiosity. I really hope Julien isn’t one of the irritating few who can’t ge
t it in their heads that I’m not changing my answer.

  “Even your parents?” he questions.

  I try not to let out a growl. My dear parents finally stopped calling me the ridiculous name they misguidedly had printed on my birth certificate, but that doesn’t keep them from asking what’s wrong with it all the damn time.

  ‘Many things,’ would be the answer. Many, many things are wrong with that name.

  “I go by Monroe,” I reply, in a conversation-ending tone. “Can we leave it at that, please?”

  “Of course. I didn’t mean to disrespect you.”

  In the span of a few sentences, he’s gone from getting my hackles up to making my cheeks heat at his old fashioned manners. I can’t even remember what we’re supposed to be talking about. I know I had a goal in mind here, but he’s done it again. He’s made everything tilt.

  “So, I texted you.”

  Right. The date. The retracting the offer to go on the date. That’s the goal.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t reply,” I tell him. “Things have been crazy at work. I know that’s a lame excuse, but—”

  “But the world needs its cock rings?”

  “What?”

  He sounds puzzled. “You do sell cock rings at the sex shop, don’t you?”

  God, the maudit sex shop. I forgot he still doesn’t know where I work; I was about to go off on a tangent about Taverne Toulouse. I don’t even know how to correct him. How do you tell someone you mislead them about your vocation and then reveal that you can’t go on a date because you’ve realized you’re not emotionally equipped to continue secretly soliciting information for a business in direct competition to theirs that you’ve been working for all along?

  Nothing confusing or weird about that at all. It doesn’t help that I’m also now thinking about cock rings.

  “Look, Julien, I know I agreed to the date, but I think it’s clear that we’re both very busy people, and—”

  “And that’s why we should give this a go,” he cuts me off. “When was the last time you met someone who understands what it’s like to be a manager? Who always has to have their phone on? Who doesn’t know the meaning of a forty hour work week?”