Which was mysterious in itself, and Amelie might have worried more about it … but she had other things on her mind.

First she had come in to work a little late, and George climbed down her throat about it. Then there was prep and set-up, and it seemed as if every salt shaker in the place had gone empty all at once, which was a hassle. Then Alberto, the cook, chose this terrific time to start coming on to her, and that was a balancing act you wouldn’t wish on a trapeze artist, because you have to be on good terms with the cook. A friendly cook will juggle substitutions, fill your orders fast, do you a hundred little favors that add up to tips … but when you came right down to it Amelie thought Alberto was about as oily as the deep-fat fryer, which, not coincidentally, he seldom cleaned. Alberto rolled through the steamy kitchen like a huge, sweating demiurge, when he wasn’t peeking through the door of the changing room trying to catch a waitress in her underwear. So it was “You look really good tonight, Alberto,” and winking at him, and sharing some of her tips, and then getting the hell out of his way before he could deliver one of his patented demeaning gropes. It amounted to a nasty kind of ballet, and today Amelie was just slow enough that she was forced to dislodge Alberto with her elbow—which left him in a vengeful sulk throughout the dinner rush.

Amelie was philosophical about working at the Goodtime. It was not a prestigious restaurant, but it was not a dive, either; it was a working-class wine-and-beer establishment that had been in business for thirty-five years in this location and would probably be edged out before long by the rising rents—judging by the plague of croissant houses and sushi bars that had descended on the neighborhood. At the Goodtime, there was always a fish-and-chips lunch special. Fifteen tables and a few framed photographs of the Parthenon. The walls had recently been stuccoed.

Amelie had been working at the Goodtime for almost a year now and she had a kind of seniority, for what it was worth—the newer girls would come to her with questions. But seniority counted for shit. Seniority did not prevent the occurrence of truly rotten days.

Like today, when the new girl Tracy innocently grabbed off a couple of her regulars and seated them in her own section. Like today, when she was stiffed for a tip on a big meal. Like today, when some low-life picked a busy moment to walk out on his check—which George would sometimes forgive, but, of course, not today; today he docked her for the bill.

It was maybe not the worst day Amelie had ever experienced. That honor was held by the memorable occasion on which a female customer had come in during the afternoon, ordered the Soup of the Day, meticulously garnished the soup with crushed soda crackers, then retired to the Ladies and opened her wrists. Both wrists, thoroughly and fatally. Amelie had found her there.

George told her later that this had happened four times during the history of the Goodtime and that restaurant toilets were a popular place for suicides—strange as that seemed. Well, Amelie thought, maybe a suicide doesn’t want a cheerful place to die. Still, she could not imagine taking her final breath in one of those grim salmon-colored stalls.

So this was a bad day, but not the worst day—she was consoling herself with that thought—when Tracy tapped her shoulder and said there was a call for her on the pay phone.

Bad news in itself. No one was supposed to take calls on the pay phone. She could think of only one person who would call her here.

“Thanks,” she said, and delivered an order to Alberto, then checked to see if George was hanging around before she picked up the receiver.

It was Roch.

Her intuition had been correct:

Avery bad day.

He said, “You’re still working at that pit?”

“Listen,” Amelie said, “this is not a good time for me.”

“I haven’t called you for months.”

“You shouldn’t call me at work.”

“Then come by my place—when you get off tonight.”

“We don’t have anything to talk about.”

Amelie realized that her hand was cramping around the receiver, that both hands were sweaty, that her voice sounded high and throttled in her own ears.

Roch said, “Don’t be so shitty to your brother,” and she recognized the tone of offhanded belligerence that was always a kind of warning signal, a red flag. She heard herself become placating:

“It’s just—it’s like I said—a bad time. I can’t talk now. Call me at home, Roch, okay?”

“You’ll be home tonight?”

“Well—” She didn’t like the way he pounced on that. “I’m not sure—”

“What, you have plans?”

She took a deep breath. “I’m living with someone.”

“What? You’re doingwhat?” The outrage and the hurt in his voice made her feel a hot rush of guilt. Crazy, of course. Why should she consult him? But she hadn’t. And he was family.

But she could never have told him about Benjamin. She had been hoping—in a wistful, unconscious way—that the two of them would never have to meet.

The party at Table Four was signaling for her. This was, Amelie recognized, a truly shitty day.

She forced herself to say that she was living with a guy and that it might not be all right for Roch to come over, she just couldn’t say, maybe he ought to phone up first. There was a very long silence and then Roch’s voice became very sweet, very ingratiating: “All right, look—I just want you to be happy, okay?”

“I’m serious,” Amelie insisted.

“So am I. I’d like to meet this guy.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“Hey! I’ll be nice. What is it, you don’t trust me?”

“I just—well, call me, all right? Call me before you do anything.”

“Whatever you want.”

She waited until the line went dead, then stood with her forehead pressed against the cool glass of the enclosure. Took a breath, smoothed a wrinkle out of her uniform, forced herself to turn back toward the tables.

George was standing there—hands on his hips, a monumental frown. “You know you’re not supposed to use this phone.”

She managed, “I’m sorry.”

“By the way, the corner table? The party that was waiting for the bill? They had to leave.” Now George smiled. ” Tracy took your tip.”

She was out of the place by nine.

Nine o’clock on a Friday in October and Yonge Street was crowded with the usual … well, Amelie thought of them astypes. Street kids with leather jackets and weird haircuts. Blue-haired old ladies in miniskirts. Lots of the kind of lonely people you see scurrying past on nights like this, with no discernible destination but in a wild hurry to get there: heads down, shoulders up, mean and shy at the same time. It made her glad to have a home to head for, even if it was only a shitty apartment in St. Jamestown. Shitty but not, of course, cheap—nothing in this town was cheap.

She peered into the shop windows, trying to distract herself, but it was a chilly night and she felt intimidated by the warm glow of interiors and the orange light spilling out of bus windows as she trudged past the transit station. Nights like this had always seemed comfortless to her. You could smell winter gathering like an army just over the horizon. Nights like this, her thoughts ran in odd directions.

She thought about Roch, although she didn’t want to.

She thought about Benjamin.

Impossible to imagine the two of them together. They were so different … although (and here was the only similarity) each of them seemed to Amelie endlessly mysterious.

Roch should not have been a mystery. Roch, after all, was her brother. They shared family … if you could call it family, an absentee father and a mother who was arrested for shoplifting with such startling regularity that she had been banned from Eaton’s, Simpson’s, and Ogilvy’s. Sometimes Amelie felt as if she had been raised by a Social Welfare caseworker. She’d been fostered out twice. But the thing was, you learned to adapt.