A Great Reckoning (8 page)

“I heard noises and thought you might be sick,
ma petite
,” she'd said, the scent of urine, soaked into the carpet in the hallway, wafting in with her.

Her small eyes scanned the room.

Amelia had closed the door in her face, seeing the plump cracked lips, the veined and bulbous nose, the blotchy complexion. And those runny eyes. Filled with guile and plans.

Since then, Amelia had been sure to lock the door as soon as she entered, and whenever she left, even if it was a quick trip down the hall to the toilet or the shower.

Amelia despised the landlady. And she knew why. As soon as she'd walked through the door of the rooming house, Amelia had the instant and overwhelming certainty that she would never leave.

The landlady was her.

And she was the landlady.

Amelia suspected that the woman had also been young, slender, in from the country. Looking for a job in Montréal. A typing course certificate in one hand, a small suitcase in the other.

She'd taken a temporary room there, not realizing that she'd crossed a threshold. And there was no going back.

She'd never left. She'd rotted there.

And Amelia would too. It had already begun.

After four months of applying for all sorts of unskilled jobs and not getting them, Amelia began lowering her sights to just above blow jobs on rue Sainte-Catherine. Until she'd finally taken the pail the landlady held out.

That became her job. To clean the toilets. And showers. To unclog the drains, pulling out stringy hair and other things.

Some nights she sat on her knees in the men's shower and wept into the drain. Her life, she knew then, was as good as it was going to get. At twenty, the best was behind her.

She began numbing herself with dope, bought from the ragged man down the hall in exchange for blow jobs. She'd promised herself never to stoop so low, and now she wondered how low she was going, and where the bottom might be.

So far she'd resisted crack and heroin, but only because she couldn't afford them and wasn't yet prepared to do what was necessary in exchange.

But finally the need to numb had overwhelmed all barriers. The weed wasn't working anymore. In what she knew was her last act of self-respect, and recognizing how ludicrous it was, she'd showered and put on clean underwear, before going out. The point of no return was right in front of her. She would at least cross that line smelling of soap and baby powder, though she suspected the scent of stale urine followed her everywhere now, like a vestigial tail.

She walked down the stairs she'd only just scrubbed.

They were cleaner than they'd been since she'd arrived. As were the toilets and showers and carpets. The other residents began to notice and some even started cleaning themselves.

But it would always be a losing proposition. The filth of the place was not on the surface. It could never be disinfected. The rot went too deep.

“Where're you going?” the landlady had called through the crack in her door.

“None of your fucking business,” said Amelia.

“Don't swallow,” said the landlady, laughing, sweaty legs spread wide on her Barcalounger. “But you know that, little one.”

Her television was on and there was a report of a murder in a village south of Montréal. First the body of a boy had been found, thought to be an accident and now known to be murder. And then a second death.

Amelia had paused, and through the crack in the door she'd watched. And seen a youngish woman being interviewed. They identified her as the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec.

Amelia took a step closer.

The woman wore a nice suit. A skirt and light blue top and a jacket that draped. Not at all masculine. A feminine cut. Practical, yet attractive. Simple.

There was a badge on a string around her neck and a holster on her hip.

Large men in uniform stood behind her. Respectfully.

The landlady twisted in her chair, her naked legs squealing on the Naugahyde as she moved.

“What do you think she had to do to get that job?”

The plump lips glistened with spittle and the laugh followed Amelia down the hall and out the door.

Amelia found the answer to that question that night.

But not on rue Sainte-Catherine. She found it in the apartment of her only friend, a gay man from the same village she came from. He'd come to Montréal a year ago and was dancing in a male strip club. It was a good job and he could afford his own small place.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he demanded, handing her a spliff and leaning over her as she tapped on his laptop. “You're googling the cops?”

Amelia didn't answer.

By the time she returned to her room she had a sheaf of papers, each explaining the entrance requirements for the various police schools. The next day, as she scrubbed, she composed the letters. The résumés she'd send off.

They were not, of course, completely accurate.

“They'll never take you, you know,” her friend had said. “Look at you. You're on the wrong side of the prison bars. You're the one they're trying to arrest.”

They'd both laughed at that, knowing it was true. But unlike her friend, Amelia thought maybe she could get to the other side. And be the one with the nice suit and clean hair. With large men behind her, not leering at her ass but there to follow her orders.

Maybe she could be the one with the power. And the gun.

That was before the rejections started. First the Montréal Police College rejected her. Then the Sherbrooke Police. Then the Quebec City Police. And even the tiny private college, apparently in some fellow's barn in Rivière-du-Loup, didn't want her.

The Sûreté Academy didn't even bother to reply. Of course.

She'd gone back to the floors, and down the drains. And one cold night she found herself on rue Sainte-Catherine. There, behind a strip joint, she'd done the very things she'd sworn never to do. And worse.

And with the money she'd bought cocaine. And then heroin.

She'd had two hits in two days, and while it freaked her out, the goal wasn't to enjoy it. It was to end the pain.

One more, she suspected, and there would be no going back. There was nowhere to go back to anyway. And no forward.

And then, as the snow began to fall, the letter had arrived.

Inviting her to the Sûreté Academy for the winter term. And saying that she had a full scholarship. For her knowledge of Latin. It was all paid for.

“
Futuis
me,” she muttered, sitting on the side of her bed. Clutching the letter and staring into space.

She'd put the letter in her pocket and carried it with her as she cleaned and scrubbed. Not daring to read it again, in case she'd got it wrong. But finally, in the men's shower, she'd brought it out, and read it. Sinking onto her knees, she'd wept into the drain.

*   *   *

And now here she was. Late January. Sitting in a classroom, shoving the stud up and down in her tongue, clicking it against her teeth. Arms tight across her chest. Staring at the professor under half-closed lids.

Feigning boredom, but taking it all in. Every word, every action. Everything.

The keen young man beside her, with bright red hair and a gay vibe even the blackboard could feel, tsked at her.

“Jealous of my stud?” she hissed in English.

When he turned a violent red, she wondered what he was more ashamed of. Being gay or being an Anglo.

She liked him. He was different, though clearly fighting hard not to be.

“Pay attention,” she said, pointing to the front of the class, and saw him huff in annoyance.

The commander of the academy himself was teaching this course, though it was far from clear what the course was about.

Not target practice, that much was obvious. They hadn't yet got their hands on a gun, though Commander Gamache had made some passing reference to the “aimed word.”

“I didn't feel the aimed word hit,”
he'd said when a student had asked when they'd get some weapons. The professor's voice was deep and quiet and calm.
“And go in like a soft bullet.”

He'd smiled at them and then turned and wrote a phrase on the blackboard.

That had been the first day. And every day after that he'd written a new phrase, erasing the previous one. Except that first. It had stayed at the top of the chalkboard, and was still there.

Amelia wondered if this man with the graying hair and thoughtful eyes had any idea that he'd quoted a poem by her favorite poet.

I was hanged for living alone,

for having blue eyes and a sunburned skin.

Amelia could quote the whole thing. Had lain in bed, memorizing it. And when the wretched landlady had surprised her by suddenly opening the door that first night, Amelia had shoved the book under the bed.

Not food. Not dope. Not some stolen wallet.

Something far more precious, and dangerous.

The poetry book had joined the others hidden under there. Books in Latin and Greek. Poetry books and philosophy books. She'd taught herself the dead languages, and memorized poetry. Among the filth. Shutting out the sounds of sex, the mutterings and shouts and screams of other boarders. The flushing toilets and obscenities and stench.

All erased by poetry.

Oh yes, and breasts,

and a sweet pear hidden in my body.

Whenever there's talk of demons

these come in handy.

The landlady was afraid of rats and cops.

But what she really should have been afraid of was words, ideas. Amelia knew that. And she knew that that was why drugs were so dangerous. Because they blew the mind. Not the heart. But the mind. And the heart followed. And the soul followed that.

Amelia leaned forward and, while the professor's back was turned, she hurriedly wrote down that day's phrase.

It is the chiefest point of happiness
, she scribbled quickly, before the Commander could see,
that a man is willing to be what he is.

Amelia stared at the words and then, feeling eyes on her, she looked up and saw him regarding her.

She put her tongue out, exposing the stud, and shoved it up, and down. For him to see what she was.

He nodded, and smiled. Then turned to the rest of the class.

“Who here knows the motto of the academy?”

“When're we getting guns?” a kid yelled from the back. Then on seeing the look on the Commander's face, he added, “Sir.”

Amelia snorted to herself. Be insolent or not. But don't do it, then suck up in the same breath. It was pathetic. Either commit or don't do it.

“I am giving you weapons,” said the Commander, and Amelia snorted again, louder than she meant to.

As she watched, the professor turned his considerable attention to her.

It was like seeing a mighty ship in a storm. Steady, strong, calm. It would survive not because it was anchored in place, but because it wasn't. It could adjust. In that calm there was immense self-control. And with that, she realized, came power.

He was more powerful than anyone she'd ever met because he wasn't at the mercy of the elements.

Now he stared at her and waited and she knew he was capable of waiting forever.

“
Velut arbor aevo
,” Amelia mumbled.

“That's right, Cadet Choquet. And do you know what it means?”

“
As a tree with the passage of time
.”

It was the most she'd spoken since she'd arrived.

“
Oui, c'est ça
. But do you know what it means?”

She was about to make something up. To say something either clever or, failing that, crude. But the fact was, she didn't know and she was curious.

Amelia looked at the board behind the Commander, and the words he'd written there. About the chiefest point of happiness.

She shook her head. “No, I don't.”

“Would you like to know?”

Amelia hesitated, sensing a trap. But she gave one curt nod.

“Let me know when you figure it out,” he said. “And see me after the class, please.”

Well, fuck him, she thought, sinking down in her chair and feeling the other students' eyes on her. She'd exposed herself, shown ignorance and worse. She'd shown interest.

And he'd told her to go figure it out for herself.

Well, he could go fuck himself and fuck the academy while he was at it.

He was about to kick her out, she knew. For insolence. For her tattoos, her piercings, the stud in her tongue.

Whenever there's talk of demons

these come in handy.

He was about to toss her overboard.

And she realized then, watching him at the front of the class, listening closely to some student drone on, that he wasn't the ship. This apparently calm man was the storm. And she was about to drown.

At the end of the class, Amelia Choquet gathered her books. When the other cadets had left, she went to the front, where Commander Gamache was standing behind his desk, waiting for her.

“
Mundus, mutatio; vita, opinion,”
he said slowly.

She cocked her head to one side and stopped fidgeting with the skull ring on her index finger.

“My Latin isn't very good,” he said.

“Good enough,” she said. She understood perfectly. “The Universe is change. Life is opinion.”

“Really?” he said. “That's not what I meant to say. I thought I said,
Our life is what our thoughts make it
.”

He brought a thin book out of his satchel. Studying it for a moment, he extended his hand, offering her the tattered volume.

“What we say and what we mean can sometimes be two different things,” he said. “Depending on what we want to hear.”

“Yeah, right.”

“The quote came from here,” he said. “I'd like you to have it.”