Montreal Noir Read online

  “I thought you were off crack?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I was,” he said earnestly. “But shit, I needed a place to sleep. So I took him to my friend and he bought a few boulders and I went with him.” He finished the glass. I poured.

  “When we were high, he tried to give me a blow job.” He shook his head, as if in disbelief, but it wobbled like he’d lost power over it.

  “You take it?”

  “Fuck no. I’m not a homo. But when I tried to leave, he beat me. I’m a little guy, I can’t fight. He punched me every time I got off the couch. Then he tied me up.”

  “You serious?”

  “Yeah. He got out ropes and fuckin’ leather straps. Bondage, you know? He kept me there for days, he beat me and sexually abused me.” Ryan went quiet, his head still trembling, his eyes on the table. He carefully brought the glass to his lips and sipped slowly. “Then he threw me out.”

  I was going to leave him with the pitcher when I finished my glass, but then Billy One-Eye came in. He saw us and came right over.

  “Ryan, there you are. What’re you doing here? Why didn’t you come to the mission?”

  “I got fucked up. It wasn’t my fault.”

  Billy looked at the nearly empty pitcher on the table, and swallowed. His good eye made contact with mine. It was a question. I kicked out a free chair for him, raised my arm for the waitress. He sat and said, “I waited for you, saved you a cot beside me for as long as I could. When you didn’t show up, I got worried. Came up here to see if you were still at Schwartz’s or something. Thought you must be making a lot of money.”

  “Some fucker pushed me out.”

  “Big guy with a cane?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s still there. I asked if he’d seen you. He said no.”

  “Fuckin’ liar,” said Ryan. “He beat me up and took my spot.”

  I ordered another glass and another pitcher.

  “Want to go talk to him?” Billy wasn’t much taller than Ryan, but he was built solid. Big trunk, big arms and legs, round face. He still had both eyes, but one didn’t work—it was enlarged, the iris milked over, bloodshot, leaky, like it was sore; the lid wouldn’t close over it anymore. Billy was from up north, not soft-spoken exactly, but a kindhearted guy. Something in his voice was like a fairy godmother, no matter what he was saying. His thing was heroin.

  The waitress came back with Billy’s glass and the beer.

  “Not now,” said Ryan.

  * * *

  I had one more glass but it wasn’t long before the second pitcher was near empty. Billy and Ryan were talking, but having two different conversations, both laughing, slurring words, asking me for cigarettes every minute or so. I didn’t smoke.

  I stayed too long; Max Ygoe came in, looked around, and saw us. He stomped his work boots over to the bar, took an upside-down glass from the sink, and slapped it on the table. He shook out of his raccoon coat and emptied the pitcher into his glass. Before setting it down, he craned around to the bar and waved it at the waitress. “Cheers, fellows,” he said, and drained his glass.

  “That’s one you owe me,” I said. I didn’t like Max. He was a sculptor, chisels and stone, always covered in dust. A big guy, older, maybe sixty-five, strong, still a lot of muscle under slackening skin. He talked too much about whores in Rome after the war, and working with Irving Stone on that book about Michelangelo. Always a story about the cat houses, the black hair, and big tits. You could be introducing your grandmother to him, and she’d remind him of a hooker.

  “You see that waitress?” She was coming over with the beer, and as she bent to put it on the table between us, Max pointed, almost grabbing her. “Look at those cans. Nice.”

  I handed her a twenty. “For the first two,” I said, indicating the empty pitcher. She grabbed the empties and left. I filled my glass. I didn’t want more beer, I just wanted back what Max took. I filled Ryan’s and Billy’s too.

  “You shouldn’t be buying beer for rummies,” said Max, laughing.

  Billy sipped. “Hey, fuck you.”

  Ryan lifted his glass and tried to smile. “Fellow artist.”

  “Working late?” I said.

  He put his glass down, smacked his lips. “I sent off a commission today. For Portuguese Park on Rue Rachel. Got a new block of stone coming in tomorrow. A big one, need to make some room, get set up for the new project. I got thirsty.” As if he’d reminded himself, he filled his glass again.

  * * *

  We walked back up the slope the way we’d came. I lived up near Mount Royal; Max’s studio was right beside the bookstore. Billy and Ryan had nowhere to go, so they followed behind us, staggering, bumming smokes from people on the street.

  With the beer in him, Max was convinced I was interested in listening to him talk about himself. He was going on about his new project and the big stone that was coming tomorrow.

  Truthfully, no one cared about Max’s work. He didn’t have a dealer, no pieces in public galleries, and no one writing about him in the papers or art magazines. He made his living through public commissions, like the fountain for the park he’d just finished.

  Max had been trying to change that all his life; he was about to start out on his latest attempt, “a big fucking piece,” he was saying, trying to pierce me with his gaze. “A major piece. The only theme that matters—man. Ecce homo. Adam. He’s going to be seven feet tall, emerging from the rock itself, dragging his cock into the world. Commanding. Frightening. Overpowering. Women and fags will cower before him. He will make my name.”

  “Nice,” I said, but that’s not what I was thinking.

  “I’ll get a fucking medal,” Max went on. He noticed I wasn’t looking at him. “Listen to me. There’ll be a reception, dinner, and tuxedos. When the visual arts officer’s standing at the podium introducing me, his wife will be under the table sucking me off.”

  Max and I stopped in front of the chain-link fence that enclosed the yard in front of his studio. It was above Berson’s Monuments, a headstone maker that had been there since the twenties. One side the yard was stacked with marble and granite slabs waiting to be cut and engraved but most of the space was arranged with earth and grass and various models of headstone set up so customers could get an idea of the effect. Under the yard’s spotlight and the orange glow from the streetlights, the shadows were cast at odd angles and the headstones were all too close together. It was the perfect place for a sculptor—stone was always being delivered and Berson let him use the crane to load and unload his materials.

  Across the top of the building, the original Hebrew sign was still visible. The language police tried once to get Berson to take it down, but they backed off quick when Mordecai Richler made fun of them in the New York Times for it.

  Ryan and Billy had caught up to us, and now they noticed Cane Man was still across the street, trying his luck with the last few customers leaving Schwartz’s.

  Billy said, “C’mon, let’s get him, there’s four of us now.” He pulled Ryan into the street with him. Ryan needed some convincing, but when the traffic that stopped for them became impatient and honked them out of the way, he went. Billy was already yelling at the guy with the cane.

  “Shitheads,” said Max.

  “C’mon, let’s go,” I said.

  “I’m not beating up a bum, for Christ’s sake.”

  “We’re not going to join the fight, Max. We’re going to stop it.” Eventually he followed me. When I made it across, Billy’d already got the guy’s cane away from him and was whacking him. The guy had his hands up and his head bent away, but he was advancing on Billy. Ryan was doing nothing but yelling.

  The guy saw me approach and stopped short, wondering. Max came up behind me. Cane Man, still fending off blows from Billy, looked him up and down, back to me, and said, “Eat shit, all of you.”

  Then he turned, ran up to the corner, and was gone.

  “You forgot your cane!” Billy yelled. “Never seen a cripple run so
good.” He lifted the cane and cracked it in two across his knee.

  Ryan was leaning back against a parked car. A waiter came out of Schwartz’s and looked around. “No fighting here or we call the cops. Understand?”

  “Yes sir,” said Ryan. “No problem, sir.” He started crying. The waiter went back inside.

  “Ryan, what’s wrong, buddy?” asked Billy.

  “Nothing. Nothing more than usual. Fuckin’ freezing, no money, no place to sleep. What are we gonna do, Billy?”

  Billy had no answer.

  Max said, “You guys come help me finish up. There’s not much to do. You sweep my floor, you can sleep on it tonight.”

  “Really?” said Ryan. I was surprised too.

  “But you leave tomorrow. It only locks from the outside. I’m coming back at ten thirty, I’ll let you out then.” He turned and crossed the street.

  Billy yanked Ryan to his feet and they followed. I watched Max open the padlocked gate and secure it again after they entered. He led them between stacks of headstones, and then, for a moment, they disappeared. They came back into view climbing the outside wooden staircase to the balcony along the second floor, just under the Hebrew lettering. Max opened another padlock, an iron latch, pushed open the heavy wooden door, and went in. The door closed after them, and a dim light came on behind the murky windows.

  I walked north up the hill. It was just after two in the morning and the snow had stopped, but it was white along the edges of the sidewalk.

  * * *

  The next day I watched a tractor trailer snake its way into Berson’s narrow entrance, blocking the entire street. The winch pulled an enormous granite slab off the truck bed and it slowly slid across to the delivery door on the second floor. Max guided it by hand onto a pump truck. When the winch set it down, the balcony groaned and gave an inch. Max, Ryan, and Billy pushed the pump truck together. Max and Billy had their backs into it, but Ryan flitted around like a moth.

  Thereafter, Ryan slept nights in the studio. He’d come and go through the lane in the back, hopping a fence, up the fire escape, and in through a window hidden in a crook between the buildings that Max left unlocked for him.

  I wondered how long that would last.

  * * *

  It happened again, of course. I was locking up early a few weeks later. It was a Friday, in December now, and the first winter blizzard, although just beginning, had already dumped about two feet of snow in the past couple of hours. Many shops had closed before dinner, the plows were out, and traffic was a mess; no one had been in the bookstore since sundown.

  Across the street, the only place of business that still had customers was Schwartz’s, as usual, and there was Ryan, his shoulders piled in snow, arguing with Cane Man. I had to hop over drifts of snow up to my knees to cross the street. When I got there, a guy from Schwartz’s had come out to join the shouting.

  “There’s always a fight with you,” he complained to Cane Man. “Get lost and don’t come back. You’re not welcome here.”

  “It’s a free country,” he replied. “It’s a public sidewalk. You can’t stop me standing here.”

  “You can’t stop me from calling the cops, either!” the waiter shouted.

  “What for?”

  The waiter took his notebook from his back pocket. “Not paying for the smoked meat you ate.”

  “That’s a lie. I didn’t eat any smoked meat.”

  The waiter was writing in the notebook. “I got a tab right here says you ate smoked meat, fries, and a pickle. I got a restaurant full of witnesses. What have you got?”

  Cane Man swore a little, then went silent. The waiter stared him down. Cane Man finally looked to Ryan, who turned his head away. Then he turned to me. “The fuck you want?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Cane Man turned and shuffled away in the snow. The waiter went back in.

  “You eat today?” I asked Ryan.

  He thought about it. “Had a Mars bar at lunch.”

  “C’mon,” I said, “you might as well pack it in and get some food while you can.” We went into Schwartz’s. My glasses fogged. For once there were plenty of seats. We sat way in the back. We ordered the usual, exactly what Cane Man hadn’t paid for.

  The lights were bright, there was still a fair bit of noise even though it wasn’t crowded. Conversations were yelled from the patrons to the cooks, from the cooks to the waiters, from the waiters to the cashier high up on his stool in the front window beside the door. French, English, Portuguese, even a little Yiddish. Plates and cutlery, sizzling grill, the door opening and closing. Our sandwiches came.

  I gobbled mine, but Ryan ate slowly and left half on his plate. “Something the matter?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I’m saving this for Billy. He’s across the street.” He meant in Max’s studio.

  “I thought that was supposed to be just you.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t turn Billy out. Besides, Max don’t mind.”

  “Does he know?”

  Ryan shrugged. “I guess so. Hey, why don’t you come on over, I got something I want to show you. Something I’ve been working on.”

  We had the waiter bag the leftovers. Outside, the snow was still falling. Light from the streetlamps bounced around painfully. It was still night, but the street shone without shadows. Big plows were grumbling up the center of the street, smaller ones on the sidewalks. Trucks were being loaded with snow—they’d be at it for days, according to the weatherman.

  We had to go down to Pine Avenue and up the lane, which hadn’t been plowed. At least the snow covered the garbage and mud, which was all I ever saw there in the summer. But it was a hard slog on the uneven ground for a quarter-mile back to the rear of Max’s. We cleared a path with our knees. Halfway there I was soaked from the upper thighs on down to my boots.

  Ryan reached over the wooden fence, clicked something, and the framed door jerked open. He pushed it back, crushing away the snow behind it. I bent my head and followed him through, trying to step in the footprints he had left behind. I pushed the door shut behind us.

  He started up the iron fire escape, waving his foot back and forth to clear each step. On the landing he reached around the corner of the building and into a light well affixed to the adjoining building. He hauled himself around the corner.

  “What the fuck?” I said.

  Ryan popped his head back. “It’s easy, there’s a one-foot drop to the bottom.”

  I reached over and found the window frame easily. I swung myself around the corner and placed my foot exactly where I expected to find the sill. Ryan had the bottom half open already and was hopping in as I crouched and followed him. We were inside.

  I waited in the dark while Ryan shuffled around bumping into things. The light came on with a loud click. He was standing beside a wall switch. I stamped the snow from my boots. Over on the couch, beyond the partially sculpted stone, was Billy, one foot on the floor, asleep or passed out.

  Ryan called, “Hey, Billy, it’s us,” but he didn’t move. We went over to take a look. He was perfectly still, I couldn’t tell if he was breathing or see his eyes fluttering. His good eye was closed. The bad one was popping out of his face like a dick through foreskin, but it had still managed to turn up. At least I couldn’t see a pupil. On the coffee table beside him, his things were set out: an open bottle of Griffin, some change, a bus ticket.

  The matches, the bent spoon, the plastic bag, the syringe—they were all there too.

  “Jesus Christ, Billy.” Ryan jumped on him in a panic.

  Billy woke fighting. “Cocksucker! What the fuck?”

  Ryan leaped off him, gasping. “I thought you were fuckin’ dead.”

  Billy was wide-eyed, crouched with his fists up, red-faced with tension and anger. “The fuck? You fucking idiot.” He relaxed, but he was still angry.

  There was one shabby chair. I sat in it; Ryan took a pillow and sat at the short end of the coffee table. “What did you want to show me
?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Ryan, who got up, shuffled through a pile of stuff tucked against the wall, and brought out some papers.

  Despite Ryan’s habitual tremors, the lines of his drawings were elegant and fluid. The pictures were simple, almost outlines really, big loose suggestions of figures, objects, buildings. The people were all naked; their feet were never on the ground, and their limbs seemed to float away. They were like cartoons, the colors indicated by the thick strokes in different pens. I couldn’t see anything different about these, they were just like any others of his I’d seen—beautiful.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “You’re looking at the wrong side.”

  I turned them over and saw charcoal sketches of the studio with Max’s stone in it, newly delivered through the process of sculpting, like a record of watching Max work. I glanced from the statue to the sketches, and back. Ryan’s drawings looked less finished but more natural, yet the face emerging from the stone was not a clean, young, hard face, it was a square grim face, with broad flat cheeks and dead eyes. On some of the sketches Ryan had scrawled odd birds or swirls in the air.

  “Kind of grim,” I said.

  “I got the idea from the letters outside on the sign and staring at that stupid statue. You ever see this old German movie about the golem? Old Jewish legend from the ghetto?”

  “I know it—I read Meyrink and saw the movie at Concordia.” I peered at his drawings again and could now imagine the little swirls as Hebrew letters. I looked at Max’s stone, the figure was still only roughed out but you could already see the upturned face of an idealized man looking to the heavens, like a worker in a Soviet poster, and even more prominent, the rough mass of his up-thrusting phallus, like a prod, and I said, “You know, Ryan, Max is an asshole. But you made art.”

  Billy opened his stamp and tapped the remaining few grains out onto a clean spot on the coffee table. He picked up the foil of Ryan’s crack, found a few tiny rocks, put them down with the dark powder, and crushed it all together with the back of his spoon. It was a tiny pile. I took my dime bag out, dropped the last few crumbs of bud into it. Billy mashed it all up. I gave him my papers and he deftly slid the powder into the crease of the Zig-Zag. He rolled, licked, lit. We smoked. I went to the fridge. Max had a few bottles of beer in there. I grabbed three and twisted off the caps.