With a grunt, LaPointe stands up from the gas fire. “There. It’ll be warm soon. You want some coffee?”

She turns down the corners of her mouth and shrugs.

“Does that mean you want coffee, or not?”

“It means I don’t give a shit one way or the other. If you want to give me coffee, I’ll drink it. If not…” Again she shrugs and squeeks a little air through tight lips.

He can’t help smiling to himself. She thinks she’s so goddamned tough. And that shrug of hers is so downriver.

The French Canadian’s vocabulary of shrugs is infinite in nuance and paraverbal articulation. He can shrug by lifting his shoulders, or by depressing them. He shrugs by glancing aside, or by squinting. By turning over his hands, or simply lifting his thumbs. By sliding his lower lip forward, or by tucking down the corners of his mouth. By closing his eyes, or by spreading his face. By splaying his fingers; by pushing his tongue against his teeth; by tightening his neck muscles; by raising one eyebrow, or both; by widening his eyes; by cocking his head. And by all combinations and permutations of these. Each shrug means a different thing; each combination means more than two different things at the same time. But in all the shrugs, his fundamental attitude toward the role of fate and the feebleness of Man is revealed.

LaPointe smiles at her tough little shrug, a smile of recognition. While he is in the kitchen putting the kettle on, she moves over to the mantel, pretending to be interested in the photographs arranged in standing frames. In this way she can soak up warmth from the gas fire without appearing to need or want it. As soon as he returns, she steps away as nonchalantly as possible.

“Who’s that?” she asks, indicating the photographs.

“My wife.”

Her swollen eye almost closes as she squints at him in disbelief. The woman in the photos must be twenty-five or thirty years younger than this guy. And you only have to look around this dump to know no woman lives here. But if he wants to pretend he has a wife, it’s no skin off her ass.

He realizes the room is still cold, and he feels awkward to be wearing a big warm overcoat while she has nothing but that oversized cardigan. He tugs off the coat and drops it over a chair. It occurs to him to give her his bathrobe, so he goes into the bedroom to find it, then he steps into the bathroom and starts running hot water in the deep tub with its claw feet. He notices how messy the bathroom is. He is swishing dried whiskers out of the basin when he realizes that the coffee water must have dripped through by now, so he starts back, forgetting the robe and having to go back for it.

Christ, it’s complicated having a guest in your house! Who needs it?

“Here,” he says grumpily. “Put this on.” She regards the old wool robe with caution, then she shrugs and slips it on. Enveloped in it, she looks even smaller and thinner than before, and clownlike, with that frizzy dustmop of a hairstyle that the kids wear these days. A clown with a black eye. A child-whore with a street vocabulary in which foutre and fourrer do most of the work of faire, and with everything she owns in a shopping bag.

LaPointe is in the kitchen, pouring out the coffee and adding a little water from the kettle because it is strong and she is only a kid, when he hears her laugh. It’s a vigorous laugh, lasting only six or eight notes, then stopping abruptly, still on the ascent, like the cry of a gamebird hit on the rise.

When he steps into the living room, carrying her cup, she is standing before the mirror that hangs on the back of the door; her face is neutral and bland; there is no trace of the laugh in her eyes. He asks, “What is it? What’s wrong? Is it the robe?”

“No.” She accepts the coffee. “It’s my eye. It’s the first time I’ve seen it.”

“You find it funny, your eye?”

“Why not?” She brings her cup over to the sofa and sits, her short leg tucked up under her buttock. She has a habit of sitting that way. She finds it comfortable. It has nothing to do with her limp. Not really.

He sits in his overstuffed chair opposite as she sips the hot coffee, looking into the cup as a child does. That laugh of hers, so total and so brief, has made him feel more comfortable with her. Most girls would have expressed horror or self-pity to see their faces marred. “Who hit you?” he asks.

She shrugs and blows a puff of air in a typically Canadian gesture of indifference. “A man.”

“Why?”

“He promised me I could spend the night, but afterward he changed his mind.”

“And you raised hell?”

“Sure. Wouldn’t you?”

He leans his head back and smiles. “It’s a little hard to imagine being in the situation.”

She stops in mid-sip and sets the cup down, looking at him levelly. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Why’d you say it then?”

“Forget it. You’re from out of town, aren’t you?”

She is suddenly wary. “How’d you know that?”

“You have a downriver accent. I was born in Trois Rivières myself.”

“So?” She picks up her cup again and sips, watching him closely, wondering if he’s trying to get something for nothing with all this friendly talk.

He makes a sudden movement forward, remembering the bath he is running.

Her cup rattles as she jerks back and lifts an arm to protect herself.

Then he realizes the tub won’t be half full yet. Water runs slowly through the old pipes. He sits back in his chair. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You didn’t startle me! I’m not afraid of you!” She is angry to have cowered so automatically after her swaggering talk.

Is this the same kid who just now was laughing at herself in the mirror? Pauvre gamine. Tough; sassy; vulnerable; scared. “I thought the tub might be overflowing. That’s why I jumped up. I’m drawing a bath for you.”

“I don’t want any goddamned bath!”

“It will warm you up.”

“I’m not even sure I want to stay here.”

“Then finish your coffee and go.”

“I don’t even want your fucking coffee!” She stares at him, her narrow chin jutting out in defiance. Nobody bosses her around.

He closes his eyes and sighs deeply. “Go on. Take your bath,” he says quietly.

In fact, the thought of a deep hot bath… All right. She would take a bath. To spite him.

Steam billows out when she opens the bathroom door. The water is so hot that she has to get in bit by bit, dipping her butt tentatively before daring to lower herself down. Her arms seem to float in the water above her small breasts. The heat makes her sleepy.

When she comes back into the living room, dressed only in his robe, he is sitting in the armchair, his chin down and his eyes closed. Heat from the gas burner has built up in the room, and she feels heavy and very drowsy. Might as well get it over with and get some sleep.

“Are you ready?” she asks. “If you’re not, I can help you.” She lets the front of the robe hang open. That ought to get him started.

He blinks away the deep daydream about his daughters and the Laval house, and turns his head to look at her. She’s so thin that there are hollows in her pelvis. The black tangle of hair at the écu has a wiry look. One knee is slightly bent to keep the weight on both feet. The breasts are so small that there is a flat of chestbone between them.

“Cover yourself up,” he says. “You’ll catch cold.”

“Now just a minute,” she says warily. “I told you in the park that I don’t do anything special—”

“I know!”

She takes his anger as proof that he had hoped for some kind of old man’s perversion.

He stands up. “Look, I’m tired. I’m going to bed. You sleep here.” While she was in the bath, he had made up the sofa, taking one of the pillows from his bed and pulling down two Hudson Bay blankets from the shelf in the closet. They smelled a little of dust, but there is nothing as warm as a Hudson Bay. There is no sheet. He owns only four, and he hasn’t picked up his laundry yet this week. He thought of giving her his, but they are not clean. Nothing in the apartment is prepared for visitors. Since Lucille’s death, there have never been any.