Mama's Boy, page 4
She rushed through the introductions and let me leave without even a kiss, nothing. I’d told her my whole life story. I thought it was more serious, the two of us. But I didn’t give a shit. At the end of the day she was too skinny and a bit of an idiot.
5
Adaptability
The bedroom was small and damp. The whole basement smelled of old wet wood. It wasn’t unbearable, but it still showed the place was prone to mould. But unlike the wood, I didn’t plan on sitting around here rotting for long. Especially as I’d forgotten to refill my inhaler prescription. I was already spitting up my lungs, and some blood, when I got up. It wasn’t as bad if I woke up after noon. The bird who gets up catches the worm, as Shakespeare, a European author, said.
Leaving the capital for such a tiny village was disorienting. I noticed a lack of stores and things to do. It was a problem. I’d borrowed enough money from Aunt Nicole to buy up the local dealer’s entire amphetamine stock, but I was seriously bored. I needed to get hold of a computer to feed my passions, both pornography and reading, and soon. I could also use it to get back in touch with the world and, eventually, with a nice fat cash cow.
I roamed the fields, surveying the houses. I kept a respectable distance back from residences. Shadow was my friend. After an hour of scouting, I stumbled across the ideal place. All the lights were off, no vehicle in the drive, no dog in the yard. I moved closer and my enthusiasm grew. A nice lower-middle-class bungalow with no alarm system. It’s always easier to rob poor people, the government will confirm that. No doubt I'd find a laptop and some bottles of alcohol. Screwdriver, plastic frame, pressure, window open, go in, bingo! I didn’t even need my flashlight. The full moon was enough to light up the place. It was a sign.
A good looter knows how to find the treasure in five minutes, tops. I did the whole thing in four. Three Coors Light in the fridge. What kind of imbecile tries to get drunk on four per cent alcohol? You’d drown first. An old PlayStation console in the living room. Not worth much, but easy to sell. In the main bedroom, a handful of jewellery and a basket of dirty laundry.
I extracted four G-strings from the basket and pressed them to my face. This little lady had had some long workdays. The smell was strong and persistent. I stuffed the swag in my pocket and continued exploring.
I sensed movement in the basement as soon as I set foot on the stairs. The flashlight, an industrial one, would do. I got it out of my bag, grasped the long steel tube, and leapt the last few steps. If there was a troublemaker in the cellar, I’d need to overpower him before he could call the police.
It was a cat, of course. I didn’t track it down, but there were two litter boxes next to the dryer. Bastard cat. I pissed over its turds just to annoy it. I also pissed in the open washer. There was a big load of whites waiting. I laughed. I’m easily entertained.
I didn’t find my much-wanted laptop, but I could make do with an old Pentium tower and flat screen. It was hard to carry, but I wouldn’t attract too much attention going back through the fields.
* * *
I discovered love on a dating site. I met—virtually—an unbelievable number of extremely rude women who stopped writing to me for absolutely no reason. I’m a persistent man. I got back in touch, as determined as an obese person at a buffet. Finding love was practically a full-time job. I spent days on those sites looking for that precious stone. Okay, semi-precious. No need to fool ourselves, there’s a ton of lard-asses and desperate people exposing themselves on there. It had taken me dozens of hours, and nearly as many identity changes, but I’d finally made it.
I felt too isolated in my little bedroom at the bottom of the little house in the little village. Me, I think big.
After we’d lived together for a month, Aunt Nicole turned out to be far less cool than advertised. I always had to pick up after myself and wash my own dishes. At least she let me be in charge of cleaning my own room, which I never did. I also stretched out the rent a little, telling myself I’d fly by night one of these evenings. Love arrived just in time.
When I met Audrey, my profile said I was an engineer; I could clarify later that I was an engineer looking for work. I was actually planning to study engineering and then look for work in the field afterwards. So it wasn’t entirely dishonest.
Audrey was a nurse, but most importantly she was blessed with enormous breasts. Women’s chests reveal a lot about their personality. I’ve surveyed a lot of data on discussion forums to back up this theory. Audrey proved that women with a big chest tend to be generous and shy. For me, these are the top two important qualities. Massive boobs are the third and fourth. Incidentally, Audrey had curly red hair but no freckles.
Right from our first date I knew it was the start of a passionate affair. She was looking for a serious relationship, spent a lot of time playing sports, and loved animals, just like me. She worked nights in a hospital emergency department. It was perfect, since I always got up around noon, so I could meet up with her at the end of the day and spend my evenings at her place. Audrey came to pick me up in the village and drove me to the capital. I always arranged to meet her in front of the nicest beautiful house in Saint-Agapit.
Audrey was pretty bad at cooking, but she had a beautiful apartment high up, with views plunging down over the town. I don’t know why, but nothing made me feel more rich and powerful than standing by that window. I dominated the capital. With some decent rocket launchers and a few cobalt machine guns, I could have done some serious damage. Audrey was clueless about weapons and video games. Women rarely get good at these things.
Her cats were not as well brought up as Princess; they were constantly climbing onto the counters. I swept them off with the back of my hand whenever Audrey’s back was turned. If she was in another room I gave them a good thump.
Audrey also liked me to hit her, take her from behind, bite and insult her, within the limits of consensual politeness. She was very sexual for a nurse. She worked out all the stress of hemorrhages, resuscitations, and other hospital crises by offering herself up like that, her head stuffed into the pillow. She truly was an amazing woman.
I’m an intense man. I think a lot. My way of life forces me to be resourceful, creative, and practical. I welcome every chance to save a bit of time. Even when it comes to sex. Women who fuck like it’s a sport, who throw themselves into it violently, are perfect for me. There’s nothing duller than endless candlelit massage sessions. I like women who know what they want, especially when it’s the same thing I want.
I was ready to move in after a few dates, but I found she was becoming more distant as the relationship matured. The devil is in the detail. The way she looked at me and how often she didn’t, her remarks about my personal hygiene, some little note she left for me. She didn’t even have time to read my poems anymore. And yet I’m a great poet. She still hadn’t introduced me to her parents, or to her friends. She no longer listened so devotedly when I told her about the things I was doing to find my mother.
After two weekends when she absolutely couldn’t get away, I was seriously having doubts. So naturally I started spying on her. I had lots of time to analyze every possible infidelity scenario. Hitching from Saint-Agapit to Quebec City when you’re as big as me isn’t easy, it can take a while. Those good Samaritan fuckers have got better things to do than help a man get his love life straightened out.
Often her car wasn’t there. They said she was unavailable when I phoned the hospital, no matter what time I called. I went there faking a sprain. Audrey threw a little tantrum. She didn’t want to see me. I had no business being there. She would call me when she wanted to get in touch. It was a complete load of crap. Didn’t I have the right to be injured like everyone else?
We’d been dating for three weeks. That’s not nothing. I had the right to know what was going on. Thanks to the personal information she’d shared with me, I was able to answer the security questions for her email and change her password in the process.
I don’t know what I was expecting. The worst, I guess. It was worse than the worst. The amphetamine I’d swallowed before embarking on this archaeological enterprise was astonishingly good. I spent all night researching. I must have read close to two thousand archived messages. For a self-taught guy, I’m pretty good at psychoanalysis. I filled out her psychological profile with numerous details. I knew her better than she knew herself.
I discovered the emails she and her ex had written to each other during the two years they’d been together. It was kitten this and pussycat that, love letters as long as your arm, and promises straight out of the sappiest romance novel. Page after page of declarations of love. Page after page she’d never written to me.
I felt profoundly betrayed. Deep down, I’m a sensitive guy. She loved Gregory, or had loved him, more than me, that was obvious, and it was unacceptable. She’d cheated on me in some way. In the worst way. She’d given herself to me when she was no longer hers to give. Being unfaithful sexually is one thing, but infidelity of the heart is unspeakably disgraceful. I wrote down that sentence, it’s worthy of Oscar Wilde—or Orson Welles, I get them mixed up.
I’d decided to kidnap her cats. The following week, on Thursday evening, during her shift at work. I’d written her a letter explaining my grief, setting out my reproaches. I’d weighed my words carefully. The note was in no way hysterical. She wasn’t investing in the relationship as she should have done and as she’d led me to hope during our first exchanges on Network Contact. Above all, she was offering me a second-hand love, a thrift-store passion, in which I was only useful for filling the void left by her wonderful Gregory.
As a postscript, I explained that I was taking her cats because she cared about them more than she cared about me, until she decided to put more effort in and not contact Gregory anymore. I left the letter under the key to her apartment, which I was leaving at the same time. I’d had a copy cut that morning. You can never be too prepared.
I only found one of the cats, Ti-Gris. The other one must have been hiding under the furniture. Too bad, but then again so much the better: one hostage is easier to carry than two.
Ti-Gris was overexcited and threw up on the passenger seat of Nicole’s Corolla, which I'd convinced her to lend me by pleading exceptional circumstances. My ex’s cats were very badly brought up. Especially Ti-Gris. And then, as I was shoving his face in it to teach him a lesson, he scratched my arm. That did it; I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and threw him out the window onto the highway. In the rear-view mirror I watched him roll and bang into a guardrail. I immediately felt a huge relief, and a great emptiness as well. I dithered for a bit about whether to go back and get the other hostage.
I was smoking one cigarette after another, driving along the 276, when my phone started vibrating with Audrey’s first calls. She was already home. Maybe a neighbour had told her about my visit. I was worried about her reaction. I didn’t know how to tell her that Ti-Gris had escaped. I decided to let my voice mail handle the situation.
In the end, the content of Audrey’s messages showed me she was too emotional to get involved in a serious relationship. She shouted at my voice mail and threatened me with all kinds of bad things, in particular reporting me to the police. It was clearly exaggeration and I never replied to her. It’s better to let a fire die out than to suffocate it with dead wood.
I still sometimes feel sorry for myself or stroke myself when I think of Audrey. It might have been a brief love, but it was love all the same.
6
Hope
I’ve found your mother, I really have. Marie-Josée’s gravelly voice reminded me of her thin body and soft tongue.
Be careful what you say, Marie-Jo.
I’m totally serious, I’ve done some research and I’ve found her. You were right, she’s in the Eastern Townships. Her aunt Nicole, who’d handed me the telephone, was watching my reactions out of the corner of her eye. She never came down to the basement normally. I lit a cigarette without noticing there was already one burning in the ashtray.
First off, why are you meddling in this?
I’m not meddling in anything, you’re the one who said you’d always promised yourself you’d find her. I thought it was sweet. I just wanted to help you.
Nicole turned on the television for show, wedged hypocritically in the least comfortable corner of the couch to get a good angle, as much on me as on the conversation.
You didn’t even want to see me again. You dump me and then you go poking around in my life?
Are you paranoid or what? You’re the one who never got in touch. I haven’t seen you at the bar for a month. You’re the one who’s sulking.
Nicole couldn’t keep up the pretence, she turned to face me and lowered the volume on the TV. This was something of major interest. I stood up and went to my bedroom to continue the conversation. The volume of La Poule aux oeufs d’or went up dramatically, to a level that could only signal annoyance.
How did you find my mother? Social services always told me that that kind of information is confidential, that they couldn’t give it to me.
You think I called social services? I just did some Google-stalking, which led me to Canada 411. Marie-Madeleines are pretty few and far between. The only one I’ve found is in the Eastern Townships. There’s no such thing as coincidence. It’s your mother. You have to go and find her.
It was too stupid for me to have thought of it myself.
* * *
When you repeatedly commit suicide, you end up dying. That’s what I used to tell myself, that she had to be dead, her as well. Like my father. It was reassuring to say that to myself regularly. She wasn’t suffering anymore, she’d left for good and I was alone. But knowing that she was alive, in the Eastern Townships, surely hopeful of finding me and picking up our family life where we left off, was overwhelming.
She’d probably tried to find me when I turned eighteen. The social workers wanted to protect me from her, just like they claimed when I was younger. Those dirty hell rats. I immediately put everyone whose name I could remember on my revenge list. Along with some of the foster parents, some jerks who’d stabbed me in the back, and some fuckers who’d unfairly turned me down, they’d be in good company.
Poor Mama. She must have made as much effort as I had to celebrate our reunion. Maybe she’d managed to get my contact details in the last few weeks. She might even have gone to my apartment. I hoped Mr. Paul hadn’t told her what I’d done to Princess, that might give her a bad impression of me. I’d be able to explain it to her, though. She’d understand.
Twelve forty-six Prospect Street, Sherbrooke J1J 1J4. I even had the phone number: 819-555-4412. When I was a teenager, I was constantly bugging the social workers to find out this information. To the point of exhaustion—theirs too. And in the end it was some coked-up barmaid who’d given me the grail.
I wrote the information down on three different scraps of paper. I wanted to be sure I wouldn’t lose it. I knew it all off by heart in less than a day anyway. I smoked and panted all week long. I was struggling to contain my joy. It stopped me from sleeping, suppressed my appetite, and chipped my nails. I masturbated even more than usual, and usual was already quite a lot. I got up to four times a day, sometimes five. Luckily I had my zinc cream. The foreskin soon gets irritated and the skin on the head splits when you call on it too often. I’d also started stuttering again. There’s no doubt about it, I was very happy.
I was going to find my mother.
* * *
First of all I needed to rustle up some cash for the bus. I couldn’t hitchhike at night with my bag full of objects of peculiar origins. The end justifies the means: I swallowed two amphetamines and got ready for a night of shopping in the country.
I made sure to fill my big canvas bag before setting out on this new quest. I stuffed everything I owned inside—in case I had to leave that same night. That way I could grab my things and hide out near the bus stop, get on the first one that came along, and, once morning came, start my new life. Clothes, porn mags, and cigarettes. All the essentials.
My jaw was working by itself. That was a good sign, the pills were getting into my bloodstream. My nerves were soaking up energy. The night would be lucrative, I could feel it. I pulled on my boots and my black hoodie, shoved my gloves and the screwdriver to the bottom of my pockets.
As soon as I heard Nicole’s bed creak, right over my head, I pulled myself out through the window, went along the fence, and slipped into the woods behind the house. I lit a cigarette. The night is mine, as Al Pacino might have shouted, but I couldn’t draw attention to myself. I rejoiced in silence. You can’t imagine the power of the prowler, the freedom and euphoria that mingle in the heart of someone who’s ready for anything. I got drunk on these thoughts as I moved through the backyards, looking for someplace that suited my needs. Time was passing and I wasn’t finding anything. The night was turning out to be chilly. I’m not a wimp, but I was afraid of catching a cold.
Just as I was on the verge of getting discouraged, the idea of a holdup came to me. There’s rarely any hard cash in houses. Unless it’s jars of coins that are really heavy and really annoying. And I couldn’t burden myself with things that I’d need to fence. I wanted to hit the road as soon as possible. Yes, what I needed was the contents of a cash drawer. I looked at the time and—like a sign from heaven!—the village convenience store would be closing in twenty minutes. All the day’s takings were sitting waiting for me.
I pushed my hood down, went back to the road, and picked up the pace. It would be moronic to get there too late. A rusty pickup skimmed past me. It’s a poor village, but still, they really ought to put in sidewalks. It’s dangerous for honest citizens. The truck turned into the parking lot of the store, a hundred metres ahead, but did a U-turn right away. It was coming back toward me. I wrapped my fist around the screwdriver in my pocket when the pickup slowed down alongside me.
