Apparently I have an inner real-estate agent who’s decided to come out and play today.
“So you really think it’s worth my time and hard-earned money to keep dumping resources into something that’s not giving me any returns?”
I nearly snort. His money is hard-earned all right; just not byhim.
“It will,” I reply, as convincingly as I can. “It will give you returns. Just give me two months to get the sales up.”
What the hell I’m going to manage in two months, I don’t know, but now is not the moment for hesitation. Fournier settles back in his chair and runs a hand over the grizzled five o’clock shadow creeping along his jaw. Somehow his facial hair always gives the impression of being overenthusiastic sideburns rather than an actual beard.
“Why do you care so much about thismauditplace anyway, Monroe? Can’t be because of how much I pay you.” He roars with laughter like he’s just made a fantastic joke.
Ha ha. My lack of a competitive salary is indeed hilarious.
“I...”
I trail off for a moment. The answer to his question is more than a word or a sentence. It’s a feeling so complex it would take a whole damn book to explain, and even if I was willing to put in the time or effort to write it for him, Félix Fournier isn’t someone I would or probably evencouldshare that story with.
To understand what Taverne Toulouse means to me, you have to appreciate history. You have to appreciate connection. You have to know what it is to look at someone everyone else has written off and still see something worth saving.
There’s more to life than numbers and thresholds. There are things more important than goals and personal milestones. We live our lives so focused on the big picture, on that bright shiny future we’re all striving to achieve, that any person or place who can’t keep up gets left in the dirt when all they really needed was a hand to pull them up. At the end of the day, that’s what we give people here: a chance to put everything else on pause, to accept that even for just a few hours spent in good company with a cold beer, they areenough.
That’s what I want my customers to feel when they walk in the door. That’s what I want my staff to feel when they’re punching in. I want this bar to be a place where you can raise a toast in triumph or find consolation in defeat. I’ve spent most of my adult life working to make it that way. Taverne Toulouse is all I’ve got to show for myself. This place and these people are everything I’ve worked for. If I lose it, what am I?
“I like my job,” I finish flatly.
Fournier just stares at me for a moment, shaking his head.
“Voyons.Two months, then.” He smacks my desk with his palms before pushing himself up off the stool. “And I don’t just want to see a return to last year’s sales. We need to surpass them.”
“Anything for you,MonsieurFournier,” I can’t resist replying.
“Very funny, Monroe. I hope I don’t regret this decision.”
I follow him out of my office to where he pauses just before entering the front of house. I’m too short to see over his shoulder, but I can spot enough through the gap beside him to know the crowd has already shrunk considerably from when he arrived.
I hope I don’t regret his decision either.
“You should tell that kid to shave his beard,” Fournier comments, nodding over to where Zach’s serving a table. “He looks like a farmer.”
He makes his exit before I run out of the patience necessary to resist telling him he’s not in a position to be criticizing anyone else’s beard. Fournier’s wiry whisker patches make Zach’s dirty blond scruff look like the epitome of follicular charm. Really, Zach’s beard is quite cute. It’s not as striking as, say, a magnificently trimmed, lustrously brown, woodsy-yet-refined style, but it works for him. It matches his rye-and-ginger-on-a-Thursday-night persona, all smiles and open book honesty.
You have to be more smoky whiskey or dry red wine to pull off the woodsy-yet-refined look.
Not that I have any particular woodsy-yet-refined beard in mind.
I shut myself back up in my office, doing my best ignore the mental images of the very last person I should be thinking about. My brain gets the memo after a moment and switches gears to focus on the task at hand—namely, paperwork— but memories of Julien hover on the peripheral of my thoughts. He’s been hovering there a lot there lately, and my fiasco of a meeting today is just more proof it’s the last place I should be allowing him to take up residency.
I have another hour of work to get through before I can go home, but Fournier was right about one thing: we don’t have enough business tonight for me to keep five of us on the payroll. I clock myself out before I get started. I’ve cut so many people’s hours lately that I can’t bring myself to do it again, not when they’re probably making their first decent amount of tips in weeks.
I trudge through the rest of the paperwork and then stop in behind the bar to make sure everyone’s up to speed on the closing duties before heading out. There are still a few clumps of snow left on the curbs, but they’re disappearing fast. The cool air that rushes to fill my nose is scented with more than just the jagged chill of winter; I can catch a hint of ripeness, of mud and melting and the thrum of green things poking through the earth, even here in the heart of the city.
My apartment’s stairway is still a slippery death trap, despite the bag of salt sitting at the top courtesy of Roxanne. Turns out not only am I too preoccupied tobuythe things necessary for my survival, but I also seem to be too preoccupied to actually use them.
I make it to the top without fracturing any vertebrae and pull my key out of my pocket. The place is old, a typical Montreal brick walk-up three stories high. My neighbour’s terra cotta plant pots are wrapped in garbage bags for the winter and take up most of the free space on the balcony at the top of the stairs. There are three doors: mine on the left, Plant Lady’s on the right, and the door that leads to the two uppermost units in the middle. All the frames are slightly crooked and warped with age. I have to boost my door handle up and jiggle it just right to get inside.
It makes for a cheap anti-theft protection device.
I slide my hand along the wall of the entryway to reach the light switch before pulling off my boots and coat. My book collection is constantly expanding like some sort of literary fungus and reaches almost all the way to the front door. Sometimes I think I’m going to come home one day and find a floor to ceiling wall of paperbacks sitting on top of my welcome mat.
