Free Just Fine by France Daigle, Robert Majzels Page B

breathe from my diaphragm as all anxiety manuals instruct you to do. A lovely song is playing on the radio. This helps. On the other hand, sometimes it’s silence I need. Nothing is predictable. Sometimes neither works. Sometimes every little thing is too much and nothing suffices: an innocent thought, a slight emotion, and I’m gone. So I slow down, I take my foot off the gas. At times, when I have the presence of mind to advance slowly, things fall back into place, take on more reasonable proportions, and it becomes possible to continue going forward. The error may be to want to go too fast, or simply to want too much. This is what I tell myself in the shopping centre, when I lose my courage in those unending corridors, when this thing wells up in me and pushes me once again toward despair. I tell myself everything is all right, everything is fine, I just want to buy myself a pair of socks, I have every right, and there’s no hurry.
    *
    At the end of the cruise, instead of disembarking, Carmen Després stationed herself at the bow of the boat and studied the mouth of Hall’s Creek. Terry kept his distance. He was afraid of being drawn into her delta thing again. Not wanting to appear rude by asking her to get off, he pretended to be busy adjusting the Beausoleil-Broussard’s cathode screens.
    After a while, the young woman from Grande-Digue marched to the plank, then changed her mind and turned back toward Terry. “Back there, when you talked about the fish in the river, did you say there were still some?”
    â€œTruth is, there’s only the eel, really. There’s other kinds but you don’t want to go and eat them. Once, there was plenty of smelt and shad, even salmon and trout. All that’s gone now, on account of the causeway down there.”
    Carmen had been watching Terry while he spoke. She’d measured his profile against the brown of the water, the green of the shore, and the blue of the sky. As a result, she was taken by surprise when silence came so quickly on the heels of his words. Looking at the causeway, she tried to think of something to add, to show Terry that his words hadn’t fallen on deaf ears. “Well, I guess so. Those gates aren’t exactly wide.”

3 Gallimard . . . Hot Stuff

XIII
    Ã‰ LIZABETH IS LYINGin the arms of Hans in an unmade bed. Dawn fills the white-walled room. In the distance the sea rumbles, or perhaps it’s just the wind. Elizabeth isn’t quite ready to open her eyes. Hans, on the other hand, is wide-awake.
    â€œSo, you don’t like labyrinths?”
    â€œNot particularly, no.”
    â€œThey’re complex universes.”
    â€œIs that why one ought to like them?”
    â€œIt’s not required. Some people like them naturally.”
    Hans had hesitated a while before initiating this morning conversation. Now that it was started he saw no reason to hold back. “Do you like chickens?”
    â€œI like that they peck and lay eggs.”
    Hans uses the formal vous when he addresses Elizabeth. In a way, he dreads the moment when they will lapse into the familiar tu. For now, he enjoys this formality of love between them. “Do you like volcanoes?”
    â€œNot especially. But, yes, a bit.”
    â€œAnd deltas?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œEven though there’s something labyrinthine about them?”
    â€œYes. I like them on account of the water.”
    â€œDo you like diamonds?”
    â€œNo, not really. They’re too shiny.”
    *
    One night at the end of August, Terry Thibodeau walked alone into one of the town’s billiard parlours. Establishments of the sort had sprouted like mushrooms lately, turning the once suspect game into a perfectly respectable pastime for everybody, including women. There were even more and more children in the pool halls. Some were learning to play; others, who were still in swaddling clothes or recently out of diapers, simply tagged along