The Brutal Telling

He poked Olivier. “Wake up.”



Nothing, just a snort.



“Fire!”



Still nothing.



“Ethel Merman!”



Nothing. Dear Lord, was he dead?



He leaned in to his partner, seeing the precious thinning hair lying across the pillow and across the face. The eyes closed, peaceful. Gabri smelled Olivier, musky, slightly sweaty. Soon they’d have a shower and they’d both smell like Ivory soap.



The phone rang again.



“It’s your mother,” Gabri whispered in Olivier’s ear.



“What?”



“Get the phone. It’s your mother.”



Olivier sat up, fighting to get his eyes open and looking bleary, as though emerging from a long tunnel. “My mother? But she’s been dead for years.”



“If anyone could come back from the dead to screw you up, it’d be her.”



“You’re the one screwing me up.”



“You wish. Now get the phone.”



Olivier reached across the mountain that was his partner and took the call.



“Oui, allô?”



Gabri snuggled back into the warm bed, then registered the time on the glowing clock. Six forty-three. On Sunday morning. Of the Labor Day long weekend.



Who in the world would be calling at this hour?



He sat up and looked at his partner’s face, studying it as a passenger might study the face of a flight attendant during takeoff. Were they worried? Frightened?



He saw Olivier’s expression change from mildly concerned to puzzled, and then, in an instant, Olivier’s blond brows dropped and the blood rushed from his face.



Dear God, thought Gabri. We’re going down.



“What is it?” he mouthed.



Olivier was silent, listening. But his handsome face was eloquent. Something was terribly wrong.



“What’s happened?” Gabri hissed.



They rushed across the village green, their raincoats flapping in the wind. Myrna Landers, fighting with her huge umbrella, came across to meet them and together they hurried to the bistro. It was dawn and the world was gray and wet. In the few paces it took to get to the bistro their hair was plastered to their heads and their clothes were sodden. But for once neither Olivier nor Gabri cared. They skidded to a stop beside Myrna outside the brick building.



“I called the police. They should be here soon,” she said.



“Are you sure about this?” Olivier stared at his friend and neighbor. She was big and round and wet and wearing bright yellow rubber boots under a lime green raincoat and gripping her red umbrella. She looked as though a beachball had exploded. But she also had never looked more serious. Of course she was sure.



“I went inside and checked,” she said.



“Oh, God,” whispered Gabri. “Who is it?”



“I don’t know.”



“How can you not know?” Olivier asked. Then he looked through the mullioned glass of his bistro window, bringing his slim hands up beside his face to block out the weak morning light. Myrna held her brilliant red umbrella over him.



Olivier’s breath fogged the window but not before he’d seen what Myrna had also seen. There was someone inside the bistro. Lying on the old pine floor. Face up.



“What is it?” asked Gabri, straining and craning to see around his partner.



But Olivier’s face told him all he needed to know. Gabri focused on the large black woman next to him.



“Is he dead?”



“Worse.”



What could be worse than death? he wondered.



Myrna was as close as their village came to a doctor. She’d been a psychologist in Montreal before too many sad stories and too much good sense got the better of her, and she’d quit. She’d loaded up her car intending to take a few months to drive around before settling down, somewhere. Any place that took her fancy.



She got an hour outside Montreal, stumbled on Three Pines, stopped for café au lait and a croissant at Olivier’s Bistro, and never left. She unpacked her car, rented the shop next door and the apartment above and opened a used bookstore.



People wandered in for books and conversation. They brought their stories to her, some bound, and some known by heart. She recognized some of the stories as real, and some as fiction. But she honored them all, though she didn’t buy every one.



“We should go in,” said Olivier. “To make sure no one disturbs the body. Are you all right?”



Gabri had closed his eyes, but now he opened them again and seemed more composed. “I’m fine. Just a shock. He didn’t look familiar.”