Читать книгу The Supreme Orchestra - David Turgeon - Страница 16

At one point in the meal, people believed they heard a muffled detonation, surely from outside somewhere, but not one word was uttered on the subject, and the festivities were not interrupted. Faya wondered what had possessed Simone to invite her wet-blanket drawing teacher friend with the repellent habit of incessantly rubbing his wrists, though she was cheered by the presence of The Bear, who was taking all the man’s sadsackery for the team. Simone herself, sitting across from Faya, seemed somehow absent, though the party was in her honour, in a sense, but no, she was off somewhere, forgetful of her barely touched dragon bowl, half-listening to Faya’s relentless monologue. It was the kind of day when nothing stuck, connections failed to take, one cast around and tried to fathom the vagaries of life in a vain search for some means to tie the disparate strands into a knot.

The quartet sat in silence around a table for two in a packed vegan restaurant. The Bear, crammed into an unaccommodating corner, had to regularly shift to make way for employees haughtily noting orders on white pads, or carrying soups, salads, and chapati in outstretched, disapproving arms, or tardily dispensing condescending bills. They were lucky to have been seated so quickly: a lineup was now forming in front of the restaurant.

Faya had chosen this uncomfortable eatery – Simone would have opted for the pizzeria now familiar to us, which would have suited Pierre-Luc much better as well. But Faya was determined to cross the street the moment their late supper was finished to a dive-bar-slashintimate-music-venue called Au Carouge, where already, behind his mixing board, the sound tech was marking levels with a felt pen on the masking tape covering his knobs. The barroom was still empty. The musicians stood waiting for their audience to deign to appear.

On the evening’s bill was a group called Poupée Sincère that, Faya had heard, was debuting a new singer freshly arrived in town who had offered her services at the very moment when her predecessor decided, to her bandmates’ disappointment, to move to the country and study agronomy. This frontwoman, a stunning blonde of towering stature, had quickly learned the band’s list of songs, which were now, thanks to her whisper-like voice, getting a whole new lease on life. She showed up on time for every practice but slipped away right after, spending very little time with the group who, while not holding it against her per se, did have to wonder what sort of future was augured by this aloofness, which in the right light could look almost like contempt. Her sisters in song had chosen to treat their new bandleader like a creature parachuted from another planet.

Pierre-Luc had gone with the flow, from restaurant to bar. He’d paid his cover and offered his still-sore wrist to the doorwoman who had summarily stamped it. He was still regretting not having waited for Sarah-Jeanne Loubier at the gallery, and thus failing to keep what he considered a promise, though in point of fact no promise had been made, and he brooded over his student’s (hypothetical) disappointment when she arrived to find him gone – that is, if she eventually made it to the gallery, the devil in Pierre-Luc’s ear replied; but she swore she would, the angel countered; and so on and so forth it went as the ancient foes bickered away above Pierre-Luc’s head.

The room had filled up. The party settled in at the aluminum bar. Pierre-Luc turned his attention to the generations of silkscreened prints for shows long past on the walls. He liked the faux-tin ceiling.

It didn’t take long for Faya and Simone to start bickering over what seemed to Pierre-Luc like a trifle. Perched on an uncomfortable bar stool, The Bear was persisting in his relentless attempts to engage him in conversation; Pierre-Luc, resolved to drown his stabbing pain in alcohol, threw in what he could. He felt strangely at home in this place he was getting to know, and had no problem being half a generation older than the rest of the crowd, as he threw back his g&t and told himself taking a cab home wouldn’t be the end of the world.

The first set started, performed by a young man who was also manifestly a shy man, since he was all but hidden behind his collection of laptops and equipment, his absence compensated for by the faded colours of a Super 8 film projected onto his great wall of gear. White waves of sound emerged from the speakers, mostly in the deeper bass frequencies, and in the centre of it all there was a hesitant interplay of rhythms that Pierre-Luc tried to piece together over his neighbours’ yammering and cash registers clanking whenever someone bought a drink. Pierre-Luc had always wanted to like musique concrète. He’d never quite managed to wrap his head around any of the recordings he’d tried to listen to, but the style seemed to come into its own here, in situ, with the added layers of the visuals and the cacophony of chatter that seemed not to undermine but rather to uplift the composition. Pierre-Luc was so absorbed in the music he barely noticed Faya and Simone digging in their heels. The only reprieve in their flow of invective came when they chose instead to seethe awhile.

The set ended, and Pierre-Luc filled the intermission with a trip to the bathroom. Around the urinal the white tile was decorated with political slogans and promotional stickers. He took a drawnout piss and felt like a new man.

Upon his return he found no sign of Simone, just Faya, who turned her back on him. At first he thought Simone had gone to relieve herself as well, but he soon saw that her handbag had also vanished, along with her coat and other accoutrements.

The Bear had disappeared as well, but his things were still there. Most mysterious, thought Pierre-Luc, shrugging his shoulders and turning toward the barkeep, who was simultaneously swamped and in no earthly hurry. Next to Pierre-Luc stood a woman of tremendous height in a black leather jacket whose long blond hair was topped with a backward beige cap. The woman, who seemed to be in the same limbo as Pierre-Luc, waiting for a bartender to notice her, inexplicably turned toward him and flashed a coruscating smile.

Many an author of the male persuasion has waxed lyrical on the staggering power exerted, often unwittingly, by tall blond women, as if this hypothetical society could be viewed as a homogeneous species, entitling us to objectify each member to our ends – a stance that, by the by, would make every individual tall blond woman an iconic paradox, wielding ultimate power over the very desires of men they ever remain accessory to. And yet there simply was something formidably luminous about the woman who that evening graced Pierre-Luc with her smile, an ineffable splendour that partook of the extreme confidence certain people feel in every one of their movements, a purchase she seemed to have over all creation.

‘Good crowd,’ she ventured in the direction of Pierre-Luc, who would never have dreamed to expect as much.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ answered Pierre-Luc. ‘It’s my first time here. Is it always like this?’

‘It’s my first time too.’

‘I’m Pierre-Luc.’

‘Célestine,’ replied the woman, who had finally caught the bartender’s eye. ‘A big glass of water. The kind with bite.’

‘And a gin and tonic,’ Pierre-Luc managed to squeeze in, pointing at his empty glass, which the employee flipped upside down on the drain rack where it would wait to be run through the glass washer.

‘Are you staying for the next groups?’

‘My god!’ said Pierre-Luc, pinching himself.

‘You won’t regret it,’ said Célestine with a smile, before slipping off into a crowd whose density had swollen tenfold.

Pierre-Luc swivelled around on his stool again. Faya was gone. What was going on? The background music ceased, the hum of conversation lulled, all eyes turned stageward. A woman whose features led us to infer she had not been born thus had taken to the stage. After introducing herself as MC Blais, she freestyled for a good forty minutes over noise-heavy beats she handled herself. The audience became a crowd; Faya was still nowhere to be seen; the empty bar stools soon filled up, which didn’t bother Pierre-Luc, whose sole concern was keeping alive some shred of the elusive Célestine’s memory, though he sensed that any hope of reciprocal concern on her part would be foolhardy conjecture. Still, he spent a good part of MC Blais’s set lost in dreams of Célestine, and opted for another (dangerously inexpensive) gin and tonic. If Pierre-Luc remained glued to his seat at the bar he would have every chance of crossing paths with Célestine whenever she felt the need for a fresh drink. And indeed a young woman came in his direction and recognized him before he did her.

‘Didn’t expect to see you here!’ exclaimed Sarah-Jeanne Loubier.

‘Some friends dragged me,’ was the best Pierre-Luc could come up with, pointing vaguely at a hypothetical place in the room.

‘Sorry,’ Pierre-Luc’s student yelled over the din, ‘I couldn’t make it to the gallery. I had some work to finish. But then I felt like going out. I like this place. Do you know the bands?’

‘No,’ Pierre-Luc admitted. ‘Just checking them out.’

‘I came to see Poupée Sincère,’ said Sarah-Jeanne, who seemed to glow, as if invigorated by the venue and Pierre-Luc’s presence there. ‘I heard they have a new singer.’

Pierre-Luc hailed the barkeep, who was becoming quite familiar with her new client. The student, thus solicited, ordered a pint and disappeared.

This night was taking an unusual turn, decided Pierre-Luc, already tormented by feelings of a nature difficult to explain.

As MC Blais’s final number ramped up in intensity, finally delivering the long-promised catharsis, the crowd thinned slightly in anticipation of the next act. Faya and The Bear reappeared. Faya looked like she’d been crying.

‘Want to sit?’ asked Pierre-Luc, perturbed.

‘They got in a fight. A bad one,’ The Bear explained to Pierre-Luc while Faya made her way toward an empty stool where, once seated, she assertively hailed the bartender.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Pierre-Luc. ‘Is Simone gone?’

‘I tried to stop her,’ said The Bear apologetically. ‘She wouldn’t listen. She jumped in a taxi and made me promise to look after Faya until tomorrow. It’s complicated,’ he added.

‘I don’t get it,’ Pierre-Luc said inanely.

‘Go, go, go!’ said Faya, counting the shooters of tequila she handed out. ‘Cheers!’ she screeched like a banshee.

The two others did the same. Pierre-Luc choked a little.

‘Another round!’ said Faya, her hand already raised above the bar.

‘What are you going to do?’ Pierre-Luc asked The Bear.

‘Honestly,’ said The Bear, ‘I have no idea. My place is tiny. And I don’t know, it’s really … you know how Faya is.’

‘How Faya is,’ Pierre-Luc acknowledged.

‘One more!’ Faya said, returning with two more glasses.

‘Damn,’ Pierre-Luc assessed, after round two.

‘Party!’ observed The Bear.

‘Not sure how that happened,’ Pierre-Luc admitted.

‘And how’s your wrist?’

‘My wrist,’ Pierre-Luc continued, contemplating his hand without identifying any cause for concern.

‘Ooh la la,’ sighed The Bear, who had also moved on to other cares.

‘You’ve got to admit,’ said Pierre-Luc, giving his new friend a gentle elbow to the ribs. ‘Faya’s funny. A great girl.’

‘One of a kind,’ said The Bear.

‘She’s got a certain … grace,’ said Pierre-Luc.

‘Round three!’ said Faya, appearing with new drinks for all.

Pierre-Luc choked again.

‘Want something else instead?’ asked Faya, refreshed.

‘Not quite yet,’ Pierre-Luc gasped.

‘Whatever you want,’ said Faya. ‘You’ve got a tab going.’

The crowd was set in motion again and the three friends leaned up against the bar as best they could. On the stage the musicians were assuming their positions: drum, bass guitar, electric guitar. Two Casios stood within reach, stage left. The guitarist hit a couple chords, twiddled a knob on his amp, struck a few more chords. The drummer started in on a basic beat, accenting the offbeat, which the bassist was also hitting, after which it was the turn of the guitarist who, apparently satisfied with the sound, jumped into the mix. At this point the new singer took to the stage and threw Pierre-Luc for a loop. This night was granting no emotional quarter.

‘Célestine,’ he uttered.

‘Gorgeous,’ chimed in Faya, startled.

Under ardent spotlights, Célestine soon removed her leather jacket, leaving only a grey hoodie that half-covered a long white Tshirt whose bottom draped over pink cigarette-cut jeans above a pair of white half-leather and half-canvas high-tops. She clenched the mic in a manly grip and started singing in a high-pitched, aspirated voice, a flow winnowed to a vaporous stream her tightening larynx would periodically cause to crack, erupting into a keen wail that, just when it seemed poised to slip her control, would come back into key, a sinewy sigh freshly exhaled from a private reservoir of oxygen normally inaccessible, save perhaps for creatures from another world.