Midday

The doctor in the turtleneck came a few times a week, and the blond boy served her masala chai. On slow days, she requested that I keep her company at her table, and I complied at Alain’s insistence. We discussed my literary pursuits and my reasons for coming to Montreal, all in French. Hortus’s dictionary came in handy when I was stuck, for it seemed she understood no English beyond a word here and there; if I spoke a full sentence in English, she stared til I tried again in the language of la belle province.