LITMIR.BIZ

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thumbed through it with interest, enthralled by this woman’s pain at the monument to failure that was her son’s life.

      “Every letter, every article is glued with my tears.”

      Once more, Juliette felt bad that she’d lied again. Rodger had done the same so many times in his life. Whatever nonsense her son had been up to, his mother didn’t deserve this. Juliette’s head was spinning. She should have stopped before her last cup of tea. All of a sudden, she felt like throwing up. Then she passed out.

      When she came to, Madeleine was holding out a damp towel: “You’re pregnant.”

      Back in the car, Juliette began to cry long and hard.

      19

      Temagami Penitentiary was on the edge of a forest, and beyond that, farther north, tundra, glaciers, and the North Pole. In winter, Max O’Brien’s cell window provided him with glimpses of deer, caribou, and moose as they ventured into the world of men in search of more food. He felt as though he were in a zoo, a prison invented by some wild-animal lover or by one of the animals, reincarnated as a prison architect. Yeah, why not? Did their ferocity and cruelty condemn them to live out their karma the same as humans … rebirth in that avatar of destruction, mankind, the worst of all animal species? Had wild animals really driven the gods to this level of desperation?

      Max was trying to survive here the best he could: walls around his cell, around the workshop where he made key chains no one would use … Santa’s workshop filled with shiftless young delinquents, a sort of North American gulag where porn films and disco music took the place of forced labour.

      Far removed from the city and life itself, Max, at twenty-six, felt like he was dying a slow death. He blamed himself for what had happened, for trusting that greenhorn, what’s-his-name. The idiot who worked on two contracts at the same time, a no-no under the agreement he’d sworn to, same as the others. Then it happened, the slow decline into the utterly ridiculous. The idiot got caught speeding while under the influence — another rule broken. The cops checked his identity and found he was out on parole, something Max hadn’t been told, naturally.

      Sitting in the Toronto patrol car on his way to booking, the cretin was scared stiff … of what? The speed the cops were driving, their nasty smiles, the leaden darkness that fell around the car? Anyway, instead of shutting his yap and taking the fall, he spilled it all.

      “Hey, if you let me off, I’ll tell you everything about a job, a really big one — names, details, everything.”

      The cops probably looked at him sideways with a grin. Deals were usually made further down the line, at least after you’d been charged and knew what kind of time you were looking at; and even then, it was your lawyer who did the dealing, not the joker in the deck. This one couldn’t wait.

      “You know Max O’Brien?”

      Of course they did, but they figured he was in Mexico.

      “No way,” said the ding-dong. “He’s in town, and he’s getting something set up on Bay Street.”

      The two cops were amazed and delighted to hear it, already seeing themselves honoured by the Kiwanis Club of Greater Toronto or cast in bronze facing the CIBC, their reward for saving an unscrupulous banker from the shame and humiliation of his board of governors.

      “You accept my offer, and I’ll tell you how you can pick him like a daisy.”

      More like a pimple.

      Max and Pascale had just taken shelter at Harbour Square on the 32nd floor of a brand-new building. It felt like a holiday. From the living-room window they could see the ferry shuttling to and from the Toronto Islands, sailboats going by, and the splendid sky of an unforgettable summer. They ate out on the terrace each evening, sometimes chatting about the con that Max and his team were about to pull off. Mostly they talked about what they would do afterward: Hawaii, Guadeloupe, Turkey, or Bermuda? There were long moments of silence. Chit-chat was for jobs, just a tool of the trade, nothing else. Silence was the most precious thing of all. When Max held Pascale in his arms, he couldn’t utter a word. Neither of them even tried. They just rolled together like down a precipice, so was this love or vertigo? An endless spiral Max let himself in for, embroiled in a passion he’d never known before.

      One last perfect moment to savour, almost as though they suspected what was to come. Max would remember every single detail for the rest of his life: the colour of the sky, the shapes of the clouds, the heat of the sun, but also Pascale’s smouldering look as they pulled themselves out of the tangled sheets, and the feel of her soft, trembling skin beneath his fingers. She smiled enigmatically when he asked what she was laughing at, and she said, “I’m not laughing. I’m just happy.”

      This was normally a word that scared Max, but coming from Pascale, it was the best in the world, the “truest.”

      “I’m simply happy because you’re here and I love you.”

      He took her face in his hands, and they gazed at each other. Her eyes were brighter than ever, and her face shone with a glow he’d remember always. “I love you, too.”

      It seemed funny to be saying these words and believing them, knowing that she also believed them. For once, words weren’t being used to manipulate someone. He kissed her in a way he never had before. And then they dived back into it.

      The next morning, Pascale got up early to go to the gym at the far end of the complex. From her stationary bike, she saw the police storming into the building. Without taking time to change, she ran across Queen’s Quay and got on a bus. She looked like an ecology-minded jogger, but also a lazy one who was taking transit to Cabbagetown. That was the location of Max’s hideaway and “base camp,” a place to ride out the storm. This one was a tornado. The entire gang was arrested, and they all had the fifteen minutes of fame they never wanted on page one of the papers.

      When she realized things were going south, Pascale contacted Antoine, who came in from Montreal with Bruce Clayton, a lawyer who was refreshingly down to earth. He advised her to turn herself in. After all, what had she done beside take off when she saw the police coming? She had no record, and for once she wasn’t actually part of the plan, so no one could turn on her, and he was right. It was the only smart decision in this whole business that had collapsed with everyone inside, including the pigeon, whose wife left him when he was fingered. The bank put him on ice.

      Clayton explained that Max could be tried in Montreal for crimes committed elsewhere and eventually sent away. The Quebec Ministry of Justice only had to make the request to Ontario. Roberge, however, did not come to put his hooks into Max — on the contrary, he wanted him as far away from Montreal as possible, so the trial took place in Toronto, and he was locked up in Temagami. Max was off to the Arctic Circle.

      A whole pile of crap, that’s what the greenhorn had got Max into — and worse than that, three years at the other end of the world — gee, thanks, Roberge. Max kicked himself for hiring this disaster-prone nitwit. Still, no point in beating yourself up every day.

      No sense crying over spilled milk, he told Pascale when she visited him. At first she came by plane, which set her down in North Bay, where she rented a car to drive the rest of the way. After a few months, she settled for the bus: nine hours from Montreal, where she was living near Mimi and Antoine. One day, Max asked her if she had money problems, but she said no — she said she used the long ride to calm herself and do some thinking. He didn’t know why, but he felt she was slipping away.

      Looking at the forest with her in his arms, he knew he couldn’t reach her anymore. She was going through the motions of a ritual she no longer believed in. She had taken up her spiritual quest once more. What was it again? Being reincarnated a hundred times, seated in the lotus position with eyes closed, living in the present, the only time that really exists, and awaiting the bodhi, awakening, illumination like Siddhartha. So this cut-rate Buddhism she’d practised before had come back to haunt her, was that it? Antoine swore it hadn’t. He put her coolness down to the time and distance that separated them.

      Free at last after

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