Guttmann can’t believe she ever made a living selling herself. Her face is like an aged boxer’s, a swollen, pulpy look that is more accented than masked by thick rouge, a lipstick mouth larger than her real one, and long false eyelashes, one of which has come unstuck at the corner. As they walk on, he asks LaPointe about her.

“Her pimp did that to her face with a Coke bottle,” LaPointe says.

“What happened to him?”

“He got beat up and warned to stay off the Main.”

“Who beat him up?”

LaPointe shrugs.

“So what did she do after that?”

“Continued to work the street for a couple of years, until she got fat.”

“Looking like that?”

“She was still young. She had a good-looking body. She worked drunks mostly. Hooch and hard-ons blind a man. She’s a good sort. She does cleaning and scrubbing up for people. She takes care of Martin’s house.”

“Martin?”

“Father Martin. Local priest.”

“She is the priest’s housekeeper?”

“She’s a hard worker.”

Guttmann shakes his head. “If you say so.”

Back on St. Laurent, they are slowed by the last of the pedestrian tangle. Snakes of European children with bookbags on their backs chase one another to the discomfort of the crowd. Small knots of sober-faced Chinese kids walk quickly and without chatting. Workingmen in coveralls stand outside their shops, taking last deep drags from cigarettes before flicking them into the gutter and going back to put in their time. Young, loud-voiced girls from the dress factory walk three abreast, singing and enjoying making the crowd break for them. Old women waddle along, string bags of groceries banging against their ankles. Clerks and tailors, their fragile bodies padded by thick overcoats, thread diffidently through the crowd, attempting to avoid contact. Traffic snarls; voices accuse and complain. Neon, noise, loneliness.

“Now that is something,” Guttmann says, looking up at a sign above a shop featuring women’s clothes:

The business is new, and it is located where a pizzeria used to be. The owners are greenhorns newly arrived on the Main. Older, established merchants refer to the shop as “the shmatteria.”

“Shmatteria?” asks Guttmann.

“Yes. It’s sort of a joke. You know… a pizzeria that sells shmattes?”

“I don’t get it.”

LaPointe frowns. That’s the second time this kid hasn’t gotten a street joke. You have to have affection for the street to get its jokes. “I thought you were Jewish,” he says grumpily.

“Not in any real way. My grandfather was Jewish, but my father is a one-hundred-percent New World Canadian, complete with big handshake and a symbolic suntan he gets patched up twice a year in Florida. But what’s this about… how do you say it?”

“Shmatteria. Forget it.”

LaPointe does not remember that twenty-five years ago, when the now-established Jews first came to the Main, he did not know what a shmatte was either.

They climb up a dark flight of stairs with loose metal strips originally meant to provide grips for snow-caked shoes, but now a hazard in themselves. They enter one of the second-floor lounges that overlook St. Laurent. It is still early for trade, and the place is almost empty. An old woman mumbles to herself as she desultorily swings a mop into a dark corner by the jukebox. The only other people in the place are the bartender and one customer, a heavily rouged woman in white silk slacks.

LaPointe orders an Armagnac and sips it, looking down upon the street, where one-way northbound traffic is still heavy and the pedestrian flow is clogged. He has got off the street for a few minutes to give this most congested time of evening a chance to thin out. Friday night is noisy in the Main; there is a lot of drinking and laughter, some fighting, and the whores do good business. But there will be a quieter time between six and eight, when everyone seems to go home to change before coming back to chase after fun. Most people eat at home because it’s cheaper than restaurants, and they want to save their money to drink and dance.

Guttmann sips his beer and glances back at the customer in conversation with the bartender. She seems both young and middle-aged at the same time, in a way Guttmann could not describe. A dark wig falls in long curls to the middle of her back. He particularly notices her hands, strong and expressive, despite the big dinner rings on every finger. There is something oddly attractive about those hands—competent. Periodically, the customer glances away from her talk and looks directly at Guttmann, her eyes frankly inquisitive without being coy.

As they walk back down the long stairs to the street, Guttmann says, “Not really what you’d call a bird.”

“What?” LaPointe asks, his mind elsewhere.

“That barfly back there. Not exactly the chick type.”

“No, I guess not. Women never go to that bar.”

“Oh,” Guttmann says, as soon as he figures it out. He blushes slightly when he remembers the expressive, competent hands covered with dinner rings.

It is nearing eight o’clock, and the pedestrian traffic is thickening again. Blocking the mouth of a narrow alley is a knife sharpener who plies his trade with close devotion. The stone wheel is rigged to his bicycle in such a way that the pedals can drive either the bicycle or the grinding stone. Sitting on the seat, with the rear wheel up on a rectangular stand, he pedals away, spinning his stone. The noise of the grinding and the arc of damp sparks attract the attention of passers-by, who glance once at him, then hurry on. The knife sharpener is tall and gaunt, and his oily hair, combed back in a stony pompadour, gives him the look of a Tartar. His nose is thin and hooked, and his eyes under their brooding brows concentrate on the knife he is working, on the spray of sparks he is making.

He pedals so hard that his face is wet with sweat, despite the cold. His thin back rounded over his work, his knees pumping up and down, his attention absorbed by the knife and the sparks, he does not seem to see LaPointe approaching.

“Well?” LaPointe says, knowing he has been noticed.

The Grinder does not lift his head, but his eyes roll to the side and he looks at LaPointe from beneath hooking eyebrows. “Hello, Lieutenant.”

“How’s it going?”

“All right. It’s going all right.” Suddenly the Grinder reaches out and stops the wheel by grabbing it with his long fingers. Guttmann winces as he sees the edge of the stone cut the web of skin between the Grinder’s thumb and forefinger, but the old tramp doesn’t seem to feel the pain or notice the blood. “It’s coming, you know. It’s coming.”

“The snow?” LaPointe asks.

The Grinder nods gravely, his black eyes intense in their deep sockets. “And maybe sleet, Lieutenant. Maybe sleet! Nobody ever worries about it! Nobody thinks about it!” His eyebrows drop into a scowl of mistrust as he stares at Guttmann, his eyes burning. “You’ve never thought about it,” he accuses.

“Ah… well, I…”

“Who knows,” LaPointe says. “Maybe it won’t snow this year. After all, it didn’t snow last year, or the year before.”

The Grinder’s eyes flick back and forth in confusion. “Didn’t it?”

“Not a flake. Don’t you remember?”

The Grinder frowns in a painful bout of concentration. “I… think… I remember. Yes. Yes, that’s right!” A sudden kick with his leg, and the wheel is spinning again. “That’s right. Not a flake!” He presses the knife to the stone and sparks spray out and fall on Guttmann’s shoes.

LaPointe drops a dollar into the Grinder’s basket, and the two policemen turn back down the street.

Guttmann squeezes between two pedestrians and catches up with LaPointe. “Did you notice that knife, Lieutenant? Sharpened down to a sliver.”