Chapter 67

Since she often worked late, she said that she would probably be spending the night at the hospital. I checked the odometer of the car before she went to work: thirty thousand five kilometres. I was going to check the odometer again when she came back, after she was supposed to have been working.

The children were spending the night with friends, so I went to a club on St. Catherine Street to check out some of the dancers there. There was one in particular, a brunette with a button nose and small brown eyes, that attracted my attention. Around the age of twenty-five, she looked like Chantal in the body: the same breasts, the same ass, even the same belly. She was about the same height as Chantal, but not as pretty. She was cute, however, with a mischievous smile. It was the smile.

I watched as the dancer strip little by little to the music on the jukebox until she was dancing completely naked. After she was finished dancing, she smiled when she saw me and sat down next to me. There was the intoxicating scent of perfume, and the bright red gloss on her thin lips. Her dark hair was in a queue — I liked her hair and her neck. When we introduced ourselves, she said her name was Désirée — a prostitute's name, I thought, not her real name. I introduced myself as Mr. Dégas. Smiling, she asked, "You have a first name, Mr. Dégas?"

"Edgar," I replied, "my name's Edgar..."

The drinks were really expensive here — outrageous — but I bought her a drink. When she said that she was a single mother with one child, I immediately had the image of Chantal as a single mother, dancing naked in a club like this one to support herself. Lots of dancers are single mothers, I'm sure, working regular jobs in the daytime, then dancing at night; Désirée also said that she was a nurse. I complimented her on her appearance and sang the apple a little; she flirted back. Then I suggested, "Hey, what do you say we go to a hotel after you get off work? I can pay the hotel..."

She said, indignant: "At the price of three hundred dollars, Mr. Dégas, I might sit with you the whole evening. Otherwise, I doubt that you could afford me. But excuse me, monsieur: I have to go dance now..."

She stood up to go dance on stage again. "The whore," I swore under my breath.

So I left the club and came home with my bitte under my arm, not very lucky that evening, then I fell asleep. I woke up the next morning, surprised to find Chantal sleeping next to me. I really had the demon, so I gently nuzzled her earlobe with my lips until she began to respond. Lazily, she let me feast on her body, set like a table before me. After she sent me off, I stood up and got dressed for my class that morning. She sighed with contentment and went back to sleep. She said later that she didn't remember it. I left the house with her stickiness and scent still on my body. But before I walked to the campus that morning, I checked the odometer of the car again: thirty thousand eight kilometres. I couldn't believe it! Though she was supposed to have been working in the States the night before, working the night shift, it was evident that she hadn't even left Montréal. Right away, I suspected her of infidelity again. "The whore," I swore under my breath.

I was soon back at the club, sitting with "Désirée," sitting with one or two other dancers also calling themselves "Désirée." I can be very charming, you know. In the end, I talked the first "Désirée," the brunette with the small eyes and the button nose, into going to the Lord Berri Hotel with me a few times, me, paying the room. I always gave her some money afterwards: "For the kid," I always said. "I like children..."

I was always tbe gentleman, because even ballerinas are human. However, I didn't like her after a while, because we couldn't talk; Chantal was a much better conversationalist. As well, Désirée was only mediocre in bed, and she didn't even like to kiss. Towards the end, she only wanted time to get used to having me inside her before thrusting. She wasn't having orgasms, I thought, and she didn't seem to care — she just laid there. But that's the way of prostitutes.

Finally, I asked, "You don't have bad knees, do you?"

"No, monsieur..."

So I asked her to get on her hands and knees on the bed, and I took her en lèvrette. She moaned with pleasure a few times, then she let out an extended wail as she came. As she panted after we were done, still on her hands and knees, I smacked her on the ass with my hand lightly and said, "You have a nice ass; you should have it bronzed."

But in the end, I didn't want to pay a ballerina who took herself for a high-class prostitute — not when I already had a ballerina at home. I wasn't a rich man, you know, and there wasn't a Maria da Conceição among those dancers. There was none to compare to Chantal either; who was much more intelligent, much more beautiful — much more adventurous — than Désirée.

The whole thing was a great disappointment. Since I wasn't seeing Chantal much that winter, I started seeing Arlette again, because we both wanted love without involvement. "I don't like to turn away a hungry heart," she said. "I'm a Florence Nightingale between the sheets..."

Nor did I want to deny a woman with a similar need. It wasn't the first time for us: we had been lovers even before I met Katrina, my ex-wife. We were old friends, but she always insisted that she didn't to be conjoined twins with me. After I married Katrina, she got married, then divorced. We had sex a few times while we were married to other people, and after we were divorced.

One night, she said to me, "Daigle says he and his wife saw Chantal with a Latin American type in the souterraine. I thought it would be better if you heard it from me than from someone else..."

"Old man Daigle?" I asked in disbelief. "Ouf!"

Then Arlette touched me gently on the arm and said, "She still loves you, Bob."

"How do you know?" I asked.

"I just know," she replied. "Even when I was fooling around behind my husband's back, I still loved my husband. I'll always love him..."

But with us, it began to feel like incest after a while: "It's the first time I've every felt dirty," she admitted.

So we decided to remain just friends. But the last time we "committed incest," it was the best. Arlette really let go.

Finally, I confronted Chantal with my suspicions about the odometer. Very indignant, she replied, "With who — José? I've found a new position. I work at Royal Victoria now. I didn't tell you because we haven't talked very much lately, you know. And you: haven't you been unfaithful to me? Haven't you been sleeping with Arlette all these years?"

"That's a lie!" I replied, angrily.

"Have you ever been unfaithful, Robert?" she asked.

I admitted to having been unfaithful with Flora in Rio, since she had always suspected anyway. She called me a hypocrite and slapped me hard in the face. Then she started crying. I felt like a goblet of shit.

Then she said, "Julie and Camille have flown in all the way from Sri Lanka, so I'm going to show them a night on the town. Don't wait up..."