The Bar Next Door Read online

  In fact, most of my previous boyfriends barely knew the meaning of a twenty hour work week. They’d complain about me always being busy, but then when I actually was around, they’d sit on the couch playing Call of Duty or take me out on romantic dates to the Dominos pick-up counter.

  Don’t get me wrong; pizza dates can be great, but if you tell me to prepare for a nice evening together and then make me come all the way out to Outremont just so we can grab a medium pepperoni and take it back to your mom’s basement, you are not worth the little free time I have.

  A date with someone who actually understands the effort it takes to clear my evening—and the constant possibility that I might have to cut things short—sounds like just the kind of anomaly I dared not hope to find.

  It would only be one date...

  I mentally bitch slap myself. It was only supposed to be one drink. Now I’m contemplating one date. Next it’s going to be just one orgasm.

  And who in their right mind can stop at one orgasm?

  “Julien, I can’t go on a date with you.”

  “Voyons, be frank with me, would you?” He’s still chucking, but I can tell he’s taken aback. “May I ask why?”

  “We...We’re too different.”

  “Let’s go on a date so I can prove we’re not.”

  I groan. “Julien...”

  “It’s just a date, Monroe. You piqued my curiosity when you said you wanted to pick the bar. You can’t leave me hanging like this.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find somebody else to pique your curiosity,” I shoot back.

  That’s when I realize how well and truly screwed I am. I’ve spent a handful of hours in his company, and already the thought of him flirting with someone else makes me want to embrace my inner vengeful warrior woman and shoot arrows at her from a tree.

  “I had a new idea about that bar you like,” he continues. “I was hoping to run it by you. Seeing as you seem to be their honorary guard dog, I want to know if you approve.”

  I jerk and then freeze on the couch, my copy of The Brothers Karamazov sliding off my lap and onto the floor.

  “What idea?” I rasp.

  “I’d be happy to tell you...over drinks.”

  The smugness in his tone brings me back to my senses.

  “You’re manipulating me,” I accuse. “This isn’t The Notebook. You don’t have to dangle yourself off a Ferris wheel to make me go on a date with you. It’s not going to work.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No, it’s not,” I fume, “so just tell me what the idea is.”

  “Bon. Okay. The idea is...” He pauses, and I can hear my own bated breath echo in the receiver. “Mon dieu, you really want to know, don’t you?”

  “Julien Valois!” I nearly screech. I don’t know how he turns me into such a maniac. He’s charming one second and infuriating the next.

  “Go out with me. Just once. We’ll go wherever you want. I’ll drink whatever you want. I’ll even let you make me get a craft beer.”

  “You don’t deserve a craft beer.”

  “Then I’ll drink a vodka Red Bull, or whatever other disgusting concoction you decide to inflict on me. Just go on a date with me, Monroe.”

  His tone is playful, but there’s a yearning underneath it he can’t quite hide, and I end up blurting the question that’s been bouncing around my mind ever since we got out of the car in the Old Port together.

  “Why do you want to go out with me so much?”

  There’s something about an equation including him and me that doesn’t add up. I’m not ashamed of my life or who I’ve grown up to be, and I don’t feel inferior to people like him, but there’s a clear expectation in the world for who the gorgeous son’s of French heiresses date as they build up their restaurant empires, and the underpaid managers of dive bars—or sex shops—who drape their love handles in Wal-Mart’s finest don’t exactly fit the bill.

  “Do I need a reason?”

  Not exactly the most doubt-assuaging answer ever. He seems to gather that I was hoping for more.

  “I’ll give you three. One: you are exceptionally smart, extremely funny, and extraordinairement belle, and despite what people seem to think, that is a rare combination to find. Two: you still haven’t told me what it’s like to sell vibrators and adult DVDs all day, and even if it makes me a pervert, I am very curious. Three: I...I haven’t felt this...well, this in a long time. I don’t—I don’t give myself very many opportunities for it.”

  He clears his throat, his bravado cracking to display a trace of self-consciousness.

  “Believe me when I say I realize just how many reasons there are to hesitate, but I’m a businessman,” he continues. “I know a good lead when I see one, and this—whatever this thing is, and I know you know what I’m talking about—this is a bloody good lead.”

  His moments of vulnerability are the hardest thing about him to fight. The brief flashes I get into the things that make him human, the things that give him hopes and dreams and fears and sorrows, are what tug on my heartstrings like a fish hook reeling me closer. A bleeding heart—that’s what my dad always calls me, and it’s true. I see a need, and I fill a need, which is why it’s so unfortunate that what he seems to need right now is for me to say yes.

  “You going to make me an offer I can’t refuse, businessman?” I quip, trying to cut the tension that’s crept into our brief silence.

  “I think I already have. I rest my case. Alors, where are we going for dinner?”

  “Dinner?” I repeat. “I thought we were getting a drink.”

  “If you’re the kind of manager I think you are, you work late every night. You’d probably have to skip dinner to make it to our date on time, and I would too, so let’s save ourselves from sitting in miserable hunger and get some food before we drink.”

  Why he does he have to be so damn perfect sometimes?

  “I’m only agreeing because you’re being immature and manipulative enough to withhold information from me that I am very interested in,” I announce.

  “I would expect nothing less.”

  “I will meet you on Saturday night at seven. Do you know Frango Tango? The one just off Crescent?”

  To my surprise, he lets out a full-blown belly laugh and continues to chuckle seemingly uncontrollably as I wait for him to collect himself.

  “I know it’s not very fancy,” I admit, “but are you really going to laugh in the face of delicious Portuguese chicken? I haven’t been there in forever, and the bar I want to go to isn’t far, but if you don’t want to dine with the peasants—”

  “No, no. It’s not that. I just...Frango Tango would be great,” he manages to gasp out before he starts laughing again.

  “This is not a promising start to our date, Bordeaux boy. Don’t make me change my mind.”

  I notice how fast my pulse is racing in my veins, and I realize that I really don’t want him to make me change my mind.

  “Never. I’ll see you on Saturday, Monroe.”

  “See you then.”

  Mission Cut Ties With Julien Valois: complete failure.

  Seven

  Julien

  DECANT: The transfer of wine from a bottle to another vessel, used to aerate the liquid or separate it from sediment

  “Pour continuer le service en franҫais, choisissez l’option deux.”

  “I don’t care what bloody language you continue the service in. I want to talk to a human!” I grumble into the phone.

  The tile company’s automated answering system has spent the last fifteen minutes shuffling me through a series of options that had to have been modelled on the Penrose steps; you think you’re at the top, but all you’ve done is climb straight back to the bottom. I knew the chances of someone picking up on a Saturday morning were slim, but I thought I’d at least get a shot at leaving a message.

  I cancelled services with the company after the delivery fiasco, but they still billed me for a second shipment and then neglected to respon
d to any of my many emails. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve faced the prospect of taking an issue to the Better Business Bureau, but things take forever to get sorted out through them, and I’m laying enough on the line to get this wine bar up and running. Having a few thousand sit in dispute for months on end isn’t part of the budget.

  I know what my mother would say about that. She’d tell me we’re rich for a reason and that I should take as much as I need out of the family trust. She’s never understood why all I used to set myself up in Montreal and start my first restaurant was the life insurance money. Even Fleur didn’t really understand it, but she knew I wanted to build something on my own, how important it was for me to shape something with my own two hands—the hands Papa gave me, broad and strong like the log drivers and tree fellers who made up his family’s past.

  Fleur’s hands were always so small in mine, white and soft and slender. Whenever I’d come home at midnight complaining about the fact that we wouldn’t turn a profit again that month, she’d roll over in bed and ask why I couldn’t just use some of the trust fund money from back home.

  Then we’d fight. We’d fight so hard we’d both be up on our feet shouting things across the bed. She’d get so mad she’d throw a pillow at me, and then we’d both be laughing at ourselves before we fell back onto the mattress in each other’s arms.

  Until the night we didn’t. Until the night she left with only a suitcase and flew back to France. I found the engagement ring on the kitchen counter. She’d taken it off before we even started to fight.

  “Connard!” I shout at the robotic voice in my ear. “Keep my money, then!”

  I hang up and let myself fall back onto the couch, reaching to scratch Madame Bovary behind her ears when she’s whining on the cushion beside me.

  It’s not even eleven in the morning, and I’ve already put out several fires—both literal and figuratively—across my businesses. I stopped by Frango Tango’s downtown location to let them know I’d be in for a meal tonight and walked into the back just in time to see a new chef send one of the stovetops up in flames. Thankfully, they hadn’t changed the whereabouts of the fire extinguisher since the days I used to help out in the kitchen myself.

  I still haven’t decided just how I’m going to reveal to Monroe that she’s taking me to one of my own restaurants tonight. There’s a lot of potential there.

  There’s a lot of potential in her. Despite having just been through one hell of a morning, I find I’m now sitting here smiling to myself like a complete idiot at just the thought of seeing her expression when she finds out she’s spent our whole meal complimenting chicken I used to help make.

  Monroe is a torch lighting up parts of myself I’ve kept in the dark for far too long. I hardly know her, but somehow she cuts through the boundaries I’ve put in place and takes us both straight to the deep end, to the crumbling caverns I never even finished building before I decided to seal them up.

  I don’t know if those places are safe. They caved in on Fleur. They collapsed like an aging cathedral and left us both crawling out from under piles of bricks and dust.

  Your head is too big, and your heart is too small.

  For a long time, I believed her. I believed there was something hungry inside me, something too hungry to leave room for anything else. It was like my father always said: your work isn’t done when you finish the first floor. You build up. You never stop pushing for more.

  After Fleur, I decided I wasn’t cut out to bring anyone to the top with me, but that wouldn’t stop me from reaching it. Turns out you can only sit alone in a silent condo for so many nights before you start to wonder if the top is even worth reaching on your own.

  My phone starts buzzing on the couch cushion beside me, and I pick my glasses up from where I tossed them down in frustration before looking at the screen.

  As if I hadn’t just lapsed into enough family reminiscences for one day.

  “Salut, Maman,” I greet her as I bring the phone up to my ear.

  “Julien, mon cher, please try to sound a little more excited to speak to me.”

  “Désolé,” I apologise, “it’s been a busy morning. How are you?”

  “All of your mornings are busy. I’m surprised you picked up the phone.”

  She sounds like she’s eating some kind of fruit—cherries or strawberries or something like that. A bowl of them always seems to appear in her lap whenever she sits down. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had the staff keep ready-to-serve fruit arrangements perpetually chilling in the fridge.

  “How’s the season going?” I ask, ignoring the jab at my work ethic. “Were there many repairs to do after the winter? Did they get enough staff hired on for the work?”

  My mother has people to handle the task of running the wineries, but everything is still in her name. She does more work than anyone in her family ever expected or approved of. Before we lost Papa, she’d wander around the fields with him, hanging on his every word and risking the perils of sun damage and insect bites just to hear him talk about all the things that went into making wine. When I was young, I’d trail along behind them, attacking blades of grass with a stick. Even at that age, I was almost as entranced as her by the things he said. He talked about wine like it was poetry, like it was the most intricate of dramas—a war song and a love story all wrapped up in one.

  I know that being in the fields now makes her feel closer to him. Listening to the winery managers review their plans for the season keeps the memory of my father and his words from slipping away. When we talk about the trees and the trellises, we’re really letting each other know that we haven’t forgotten. Not yet.

  “Winter was so mild this year. We’re ahead of schedule now,” she tells me, “but there aren’t as many people as they hoped looking for work.”

  “They’ll come. It’s only April.”

  It might as well still be February here in this frigid wasteland, but back in Bordeaux, spring is always in full bloom by now.

  “I hope so,” Maman agrees. “So much of this business relies on chance. I’ll never get used to that.”

  “At least your castle will always be waiting for you whenever things don’t work out,” I tease.

  “Julien, it is not a castle. How many times do I have to tell you that? It’s a country estate.”

  It’s a castle. She grew up in a modest—relatively speaking, at least—chateau, and her parents can’t wait for her to take it off their hands, but she’s spent the six years since my father died at the wineries.

  “How is the woman of the house?” she asks.

  It’s sad when I call my dog that. It’s even sadder when my mother uses the title.

  “She’s doing well. She’s sitting beside me right now. Actually, she’s getting a bit of an attitude. She sort of starts growling whenever I stop petting her.”

  I let my hand still, and Madame Bovary voices her discontent. Maman laughs into the phone.

  “Alors,” I ask after a pause, “did you need something?”

  She makes a very French-sounding noise of indignation. “Do I have to need something to call my son?”

  “Not at all, Maman.”

  A moment of silence passes between us, one that she fills with the sound of her biting into a strawberry.

  “I do have a...suggestion for you,” she finally admits.

  There it is. I knew it was coming. She brings this up every spring.

  “What if you came home this summer, Julien? Aah, aah, aah, don’t start saying no until you hear me out,” she warns before I even have a chance to protest. “It would only be for a few weeks. They need someone to get the restaurant up and running again. No one is as good at it as you. You could come do the hiring, get the season started...”

  “Maman.” I do my best to hold back my sigh. “You know I can’t just leave. It’s our busiest time of the year, and I’m hoping to open the new bar this summer. I’m needed here.”

  She doesn’t say the words out loud, but h
er reply hangs between us all the same.

  I need you too.

  “I would if I could, Maman. I would love to see Bordeaux again, but I’m—”

  “Busy,” she finishes for me. “My busy boy. That’s what you used to tell me when I’d call you in for dinner or ask if you’d done your homework. You’d look at me with this glare on your little face and say, ‘Mother, I am busy right now.’ You were always working on something, even when you were just arranging rocks or building sandcastles. Do you remember those sandcastles you used to build?”

  I’m not sure if the guilt-trip is intentional, but it’s certainly working. I hunch forward and rest my elbows on my knees, dragging a hand down my face.

  “I do remember them. Maman, I’m sorry I can’t come home.”

  Her question is so quiet I almost miss it.

  “You can’t, or you won’t?”

  It’s like a punch to the gut, hearing that from her. Fleur used to ask me the exact same thing.

  You can’t make it to dinner, or you won’t? You can’t come to my best friend’s wedding with me, or you won’t? You can’t give me more than a half-assed relationship, or you won’t?

  I never liked thinking about the answer. Deep down, I knew it was a choice. It was a choice to stay out late working when I knew she was waiting at home. It was a choice to put my phone back in my pocket when I saw her name on the screen, convinced I would call her later.

  It’s a choice to turn my mother down every time she makes a casual request that barely masks just how desperate she is to have what remains of her family back home. I make these choices again and again, but they never feel like an act of free will. The pull inside me, the ceaseless tug to keep moving, keep going, keep building—it’s stronger than everything else. It’s stronger than me. It wakes me up in the middle of the night, a sharp current shooting up my spine that leaves me covered in icy sweat. It can’t be ignored. It can’t be denied.