Transgression (22 page)

Adele didn’t go to work the next day. Or the next. And she was afraid to leave her room long enough to buy another bottle in case her landlady wouldn’t let her back in. She knew she had to look for a real job soon. She hadn’t eaten since her meal with Alex.

On the third morning she promised her landlady the week’s rent would be paid the very next day and she went back to the Red Cross. She would let the gods decide.

The woman at the desk told her that Alex had been looking for her for the last two days. She asked if there was anything wrong.

“I’m very hungry.”

“But dear, I can’t give you any more money.” The woman seemed more worried than annoyed.

“I know. I mean, I can’t seem to eat.”

“Do you have a doctor?”

“Yes,” Adele lied, “I’m seeing him. I have an appointment for tonight.”

That day, Adele worked later than everyone else except for the caretaker. She helped him sweep up the floor. Although it was past seven before she left, Alex was waiting for her by the gate.

“Hello, Adele,” he said. His face seemed to glow at the sight of her. “Would you like to go to dinner?” He managed to say this without referring once to the book he was still holding in his hand.

“No,” Adele said. She went up on her toes and kissed one of his flaring cheeks. Then she kissed the other one. She walked toward the hotel across the street and Alex followed her.

“Get a room,” she said to him in French.

He seemed to understand.

Adele stood in the small lobby and watched him pay for a room. She tried to feel nothing.

They walked up the stairs to the third floor. Alex unlocked a door and they went inside.

Adele crossed the room and closed the curtain.

Alex turned the light on.

Adele turned it back off.

Alex put his book and cap down on a chair. Adele wondered if he’d proceed now to undress her in a disinterested, matter-of-fact way, as if he’d just picked up a street girl, as if he were preparing to pay her a few francs.

He was just standing there, a gentle smile on his face. Adele picked up both his hands. They were large and warm. She held them against her face and closed her eyes. She could feel the soft brush of his lips on her forehead, on her nose, her lips. His lips felt as warm as his hands. Warmer.

She began to unbutton his shirt.

His hands went around her waist.

The bed creaked-it made a ridiculous amount of noise, but it didn’t seem to bother Alex. After a while it didn’t bother Adele, either.

She had thought that just the sight of his naked body would kill her, but it hadn’t. She’d had no idea how to get undressed herself, so he’d done it for her. He was tender, like some powerful animal who for some inexplicable reason had made the choice to be tender. He had a swirl of hair on his chest, and his white comfortable belly was wide and round. Warm skin pressing on warm skin, Adele had forgotten how wonderful that had felt.

His face, floating above her, still looked a little surprised. Grateful. She was giving him a gift, a surprise gift. A gift. She could feel him deep inside. She could feel his breath on her cheek, his mouth on her neck, his hand in places even Manfred hadn’t dared touch. She didn’t pull away from him. She didn’t care. It didn’t matter any more.

The bed rattled and seemed to move across the floor. Adele clung to him, dug her fingers in. The room dissolved. “Oh God,” she heard some woman say.

“Ohhhh, Jesus,” she heard some soldier say.

They lay quietly together afterward. A faint light was sneaking in through the curtains. Adele touched his broad nose. His full lips. “I think we broke the bed,” she said.

“Pardon?” Alex replied, smiling sleepily. He looked tired.

Adele smiled and shook her head. It was nothing. She continued to watch him and wonder why she wasn’t feeling despair. That feeling had become familiar enough, cold and relentless in its pull, like a whirlpool. An endless falling into nothing.

Adele brushed her hand over Alex’s chest, trailed it down his belly. He shifted on his hip. She could feel him responding under her hand.

“I’m starved,” Adele said.

They saw each other almost continuously after that evening and took no precautions. Adele knew that Alex would have used a condom if she’d only asked, and she didn’t want to become pregnant. She wondered if he thought she was trying to trap him. She wasn’t. She just couldn’t think about her future or any normal life at all.

Alex was waiting for his regiment to receive orders to proceed to England and then return home. Meanwhile the woman at the Red Cross helped Adele by giving her an acquaintance’s name and she got a job in a garment factory. She learned how to cut out patterns. Days went by. Weeks. Almost every evening Adele and Alex met in that same hotel room and afterwards they ate in various cafés and pored over his dictionary. When Adele found herself laughing, it seemed a violation, a deep betrayal of all the things she’d seen and all the things she’d done, but she couldn’t help it. Usually they had only a few hours together, because Alex had to report back to his barracks by curfew. But one night, when he was on a two-day leave, they stayed overnight at the hotel.

This was the first time they’d actually slept together. Adele woke up before Alex did. He was snoring softly, his face looking gentle in the early morning light. His blond hair was beginning to curl.

He looks like an exhausted bull, Adele thought to herself, a young, handsome one. Her heart felt warm but she didn’t want to call it love. Love depended on a future. Love meant hope.

Alexander Mason Wells. That was his name. He’d written it out for her. He was twenty-five years old and he came from a small town in Canada called Paris.

“No!” Adele had said.

“Yes,” Alex had replied.

After a great amount of page turning, he’d managed to explain to her that only three thousand people lived there and none of them, as far as he knew, were French.

“Why do they call it Paris?”

“There are two rivers there. One big one, one small one. There are plaster of Paris beds. They named the town after the plaster of Paris beds.” It had taken some while to communicate all this.

“That seems very strange,” Adele had said.

Adele watched the morning light creep across Alex’s face. He was in an artillery regiment. He was a gunner on a twenty-five pounder, whatever that meant. What did it mean, because occasionally and just for a fleeting moment, something troubled and troubling moved through his eyes? She’d seen him tremble once, standing outside a café, a great shiver passing through his whole body. It took only an instant and there seemed no reason for it at all.

Adele felt an impulse to move closer to him and kiss his closed eyes but she didn’t want to wake him. She lay still and wondered what kind of dream he was dreaming. He had landed somewhere in Normandy over a year ago. Was it near where Manfred had been stationed? Had he fought past the village of La Bouille? Was he one of those soldiers who had paraded through Rouen? Had he looked up at a certain window, the only window on the street where there were no flags and no one waving?

Adele closed her eyes and rested against her pillow.

Alex stopped snoring. She listened. She couldn’t hear him breathe. She opened her eyes. He was still there.

Alex and Adele were sitting at an outside table watching strangers go by and sipping wine when Alex said, “My regiment is leaving Strasbourg.”

A thin stream of sunlight was dancing on the table. It was turning the wine in Adele’s glass blood red. Adele couldn’t take her eyes off it.

“When?”

They spoke in English now. They had discovered that Adele had a facility for learning a new language that far eclipsed Alex’s. The blue book, Adele had pointed out to him, could be used either way.

“Two days.” Alex held up two fingers helpfully.

The wine pulsed in her glass. Adele tried to marshal her thoughts. Alex was going away.

“We travel to Le Havre first. And then England. And then home.”

“Oh,” she said. Of course he was going. He had to go.

“Je t’adore.”
The one phrase he had down pat. He said it again.
“Je t’adore.”

Adele looked away. Where had she been all these weeks? Where had her mind been? This was not news. He was a foreigner. He was leaving.

Adele turned back to him. “I love you, too,” she said.

Adele got up and gave him a quick kiss on both his cheeks. Almost unable to breathe, she said, “Goodbye” and walked off the terrace and down the street.

That was the way to do it, she told herself. Clean and fast. Like a knife. And then it was over. She could imagine him sitting there, his book still in his hand, saddened no doubt by this inevitable moment, but relieved as well. They’d had an intense affair but it was over. And that was that. She knew that he was already looking forward to going home.

Adele began to run.

She came to the bench by her bus stop and sat down. Now that she was working she’d been taking the bus back and forth to her room. Looking up, she saw Alex jogging along the street toward her. His face looked flushed. He collapsed on the bench and pushed his cap to the back of his head.

“I had to pay the bill,” he puffed, “the cheque.” He made writing motions.

Adele looked the other way.

“Adele,” he said, “please, Adele. You misunderstood.” He nudged her with his elbow.

Adele shook her head. Just go away, she thought.

He nudged her again. He dropped something into her lap. A small velvet box. Royal blue.

“Marry me, Adele. I want you to marry me.”

Adele opened the box. A thin gold band shone up at her.

Alex took the ring from the box, picked up her hand, and slipped the ring on her wedding finger. It fit.

Her bus stopped in a cloud of dust in front of them. Two people got off, three people got on. The bus drove away.

“Marry me?” Alex said.

“I want only for you,” Adele replied in English. The strange foreign words felt like they were tumbling over in her mouth. Burning.

“What?” Alex looked puzzled.

“To be happy,” Adele said.

“I will be.”

“No, you won’t. Not with me.”

“Yes, I will!”

Adele smiled at him. She knew she loved him. She did love him. But he didn’t know who she was.

Alex put his arm around her shoulders. It was a familiar feeling to her now. It felt indispensable.

“Adele,” Alex said, “you have to answer me.”

He was indispensable.

“Yes,” Adele said, “yes.”

T
he heat wave had returned. No matter the time of day, the sun seemed suspended in the high noon position. It blazed down on Jack’s head and followed him around. It was following him now as he walked back toward the police station. He was determined to ignore it.

He had just been investigating a crime at Johanna’s Dress Shop. Johanna herself had been in the washroom at the back. She’d heard the bell jangle over the front door as someone had come in and she’d hurried things up as best she could but apparently she hadn’t been fast enough because before she was finished she’d heard the bell again. It had taken her only a few minutes to realize that something was missing, the mannequin closest to the front door and all the clothes it was wearing.

“Who would do such a thing?” Johanna had asked.

“I guess that’s why I’m here.”

“And in broad daylight.”

“That’s peculiar, all right.”

Jack continued to walk through the sun-bleaching heat along the main street. Jesus Christ, he said to himself. He’d give the case over to the mayor’s nephew. Maybe between him and his fucking uncle, they’d solve it. Jack had better things to do with his time.

The previous evening he’d gone over to the Legion Hall. It was a rare appearance for Jack. He was better known there, or at least more warmly regarded, as the father of a fellow serviceman killed in action than as the
chief of police. Some of the young men in the boisterous room had graciously come over and had sat down with him to keep him company. After a few beers, Jack had brought the conversation around to the dead man he’d found out along the river. No one had known anything about how that man had gotten there. And no one had shifted their eyes or cleared their throat or shuffled their feet.

Some of the other men hearing the drift of the conversation had come over to the table.

“Where would I get a list of the men who were in POW camps?” Jack had asked.

“Try the armoury in Brantford,” one of the ex-soldier’s had offered. “They should have a record of most everyone.”

“Or the War Office in Ottawa,” someone else had chimed in.

And not a whiff of anyone hiding anything.

Jack turned off the main street, pushed through the side door of the town hall and walked down the stairs to the police station. Harold Miles was standing there going through the papers on his desk.

“Hello, Jack,” he said, just as cool as a December breeze, “I was looking for a note, since the place was empty.”

Jack took off his cap and hung it up, as always, on the top hook of the halltree. He took off his jacket and put a hanger through it and hung it on the second highest hook, as always. And almost immediately he regretted doing this. He was sweating like a hog underneath.

“A note about what?”

“When you or somebody else might be back in the station.” Miles was dressed in some kind of seersucker shirt the colour of a Popsicle, like he was planning to go to the beach later.

“Unfortunately, unlike some people,” Jack said, unbuckling his holster, “we don’t have a surplus of manpower around here.” Jack pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk and put his revolver inside it.

Miles moved away a little. “Lucky to be in a basement this time of year,” he said. He leaned against the other desk, the one used by either White or Westland depending on who was on duty. “How’s the case going?”

“Which case is that?”

“I hear you were out talking to Joe Puvalowski the other day.” Miles smiled. He wasn’t much shorter than Jack. His neck was thick enough, his bare arms looked strong.

Jack measured him with a side-long glance. He’d go toe to toe with him, he’d go toe to toe with any man alive. “Is that right?”

“He said that you said they could depend on you to get their landing papers back.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Do you know what I think? I think we’re working at cross purposes here, Chief.”

Jack could feel the familiar hit of adrenalin jolt his heart, could feel it being pumped into every place it needed to go. He’d been feeling that feeling all his life. It was his stock in trade. “Do you have a problem?” he said.

Just like always, Jack could see everything before it happened. One more word of disrespect, followed by a left fist coming in low and crashing into the solar plexus hidden under that seersucker shirt. The young man would try to respond, nothing would work, not even his breath. A hand on the back of his neck. The office wall coming up fast. And that would be that.

Jack didn’t want to think beyond the broken plaster, the welt of blood, the young detective sliding slowly down the wall. It was all going to be so goddamn immensely satisfying.

“I need your help,” Miles said.

Jack’s heart was pumping too fast, it couldn’t reverse gears, he could feel his eyes bulge. “How do you figure that?”

“You obviously have some kind of history with Joe Puvalowski. He trusts you. Maybe you can get something out of him. And you know the town. You’ve been asking the same questions I’ve been asking but you know these fellows. You can read them. Am I right?”

Jack sat down on his swivel chair and rolled it back and forth a little, waiting for his heart to slow down. “What kind of fellows?”

“The soldiers back from overseas. We’re both thinking the same thing, Jack.”

“I haven’t come up with much to this point.” He looked at Miles. “How about you?”

The young detective was looking steadily back at him. “I thought I’d send you my notes, the lab reports, everything we’ve got. If you’ve got the time, I’d appreciate you looking them over. Maybe you’ll come up with something we haven’t. We’ll have a supper meeting. On me. Could you do that for us, Chief?”

Let him think he’s fooling you, Jack thought to himself.

“That’ll be just fine,” Jack said.