My October Read Online Free PDF Page A

Lévesque had risen each morning to the lonely cries of ships’ horns.
    Beyond the tracks, a figure came into view. Dark hair in a pink kerchief, a slender body in a tapered pink skirt. She was waving.
    Luc watched Marie-Soleil pick her way over the debris andgravel. “Salut!” she called out. As she approached, he saw that her lips were smiling, moist.
    â€œI know I should have waited until this afternoon,” she said. “But I couldn’t. I had to tell you immediately.” She had moved up close enough that he could smell her. She was wearing something musky and spicy. The muscles of his belly tensed. He turned to look at the house.
    â€œNoisy,” he said.
    â€œThat didn’t bother Jean Lévesque.” She smiled up at him, obviously enjoying his look of surprise. “Frédéric told me,” she explained.
    He could picture her standing here with Frédéric Axe, gazing up at him in exactly the same way she was gazing now— as though Frédéric were such a genius.
    â€œBut I’m the one who saw the À louer sign,” she went on, “and of course I thought immediately of you. It’s fate, Luc. What else can it be?”
    At the sound of her speaking his name, he felt that pleasant tingle again. Fate. He was willing to forgive whatever she had done with Frédéric Axe.
    He was choosing the words to tell her how pretty she looked when she rose up on her toes and squinted at something behind him.
    â€œGood,” she said. “He’s here.”
    A corpulent man in a suit was fighting his way out of a blue Chevrolet Cavalier. Once on the sidewalk, he came toward them, walking gingerly, as if his feet hurt, stopping now and then to grimace at the sun. Jowls hung over his shirt collar. Buttons strained. He was probably not much older than Luc.
    â€œMonsieur Lévesque,” he said, sticking out a hand. Hisgrip was stronger than Luc had anticipated. He nodded at Marie-Soleil.
    The man’s name was Gagnon. They followed him up the broken concrete walk to the door, where he stood jiggling the key, trying to turn it in the lock until his face went red. Eventually, he got it open. The house seemed to exhale, releasing the mixed and not entirely pleasant odours of industrial cleaner, paint, and something under the chemicals—something stale and dark. Dampness? Mould? Luc turned his face away, looking over at Marie-Soleil. She didn’t blink. If she smelled anything, she was too polite to show it.
    The walls were an atrocious hospital green. He would have to whitewash the whole first floor, pretend he was a student again, purchase rollers and a tarp. Gagnon sensed Luc’s disappointment. “The previous tenants left this place in a terrible state, I am afraid to say. I was glad to be rid of them. Indians or Pakistanis or something. So many of them crowding in here all at once, I couldn’t keep track of them. They do that, you know,” he said, stopping midway up the stairs to the second floor and turning to Luc. “You rent to one in the morning, and by nightfall there’s half a dozen of them camping on your property, waiting for the government to tell them they can stay for good. They get medical care. School for their kids. Free French lessons for themselves and their wives. They’re not stupid, non, monsieur . They know a deal when they see it.”
    Luc and Marie-Soleil exchanged a glance. Slurs like this were commonplace, not that this excused them. Back in the fifties and sixties, when Gagnon would have been young, like Luc, Montreal had been predominantly white. Now it wasn’t.Gagnon probably had no clue how ignorant he sounded. Luc watched as he turned his big body forward and wheezed up the remaining stairs.
    The staircase had no runner, which was probably a good thing if the previous tenants had been as unhygienic as Gagnon claimed. The floor in the hall upstairs was oxblood red, but at least the