Chapter 22: Ch 17 p.1 [Qc]

The boss is not happy to receive the piece of paper instead of a blank cheque, but he confirms that it is still valid, and goes to put the info into the payroll system. All in all, Leah counts that as a success, and she fetches and cleans with extra vigour as she privately celebrates her new permanent job.

Walking home once again, this time without a wad of cash in her pockets, Leah feels more relaxed; she does not have to worry about being robbed, as she has nothing to steal. Nonetheless, she does notice someone following her for a few blocks. Jogging a bit around a corner and taking a side street off her usual path, she loses him easily enough, and slows back to a walk.

She notices, with some shock, that a building she is passing is open.

The lights are on, and there are people inside. Slowing to observe, she sees them lifting oddly shaped metal things, or running in place on moving ground, or rowing pretend-boats, or stretching. One large half of the building is empty, and features padded floors, coloured with geometric shapes. The walls are covered with unfamiliar-yet-not shapes, and after a moment Leah recognises them as a sort of padded helmets, poleyns, and couters.

Not needing to see any more, she veers to the door and enters.

The man at the counter greets her, and Leah asks about the fighting area.

“That’s only during the day and evenings, but you can buy a package of classes now if you want, or wait to sit-in on one and decide if it’s for you. Have you ever taken a wrestling class before?”

“Only mounted combat and crowd-breaking.”

The man laughs. “What are you, a mountie?” He collects himself. “Sorry, I…sorry, that was rude. But do you really do horseback fighting stuff?”

Leah considers. She has seen no indication of a private militia, or an army. Only once since arriving has she seen a pair of city guards on horseback, carrying some sort of club but not much else. She errs on the side of caution. “More performative than functional. Hard to find a good cavalry charge these days.”

The man laughs again. “Oh my god, are you a medieval re-enactor? Like, Medieval Times or whatever? Renfaire?”

“I dabble,” Leah says, non-committal. The man finishes laughing after another little bit and brings up some papers. He tells her to sign and put her contact info – Leah puts her address, unsure what else this could refer to – and that she can come in for a free trial class sometime this week. He asks what day she’d like, and Leah draws a blank, not knowing what the days of the week are called yet. Hesitantly, she suggests the following afternoon – not of the day, as she needs to sleep and prepare, but the next. The man writes the note and says he’ll inform the teacher they’re getting a “newbie.” He wishes her well as she leaves and she returns it.

Finally home, she undresses and goes to sleep at around five. Waking up at noon, she dresses in summery colours, including a cloth bracelet she finds hanging around a doorknob. She eats a breakfast of rice cooked in broth, and reflects that she needs to go shopping for food soon. But where? And how?

At one she leaves and goes to knock on the door she has discovered is the one of the owner of the building. After a long pause the landlady opens the door.

“What’s the amount again?” Leah asks with forced confidence, wallet in hand.

The landlady looks confused. “Don’t you usually do a bank transfer?”

Leah shrugs. “Paying cash this time. My new job paid in cash and I figured ‘hey, this seems easier.’”

The landlady looks extra confused. “Oh. Well. Congratulations on the new job.” She pauses. “Seven hundred and eighty.”

Leah blanches a bit at the number. She’d counted the amount in the jar – four hundred and fifty-six – and had taken along two hundred of it, not sure what to expect.

“Well, here’s the first two hundred,” she says, covering her mistake desperately. “And I’ll do the…bank transfer?…later today.”

The landlady looks at her in deeper confusion. “Is everything alright? You’ve never been late before, and I appreciate that, and even now you’ve found a new job on short notice…where is it that you’re working now?”

“The Chantilly club, on Delacour.”

The landlady seems mildly shocked. “Oh, well, um…wow. Yes, okay, paid in cash, yes.” She takes the bills gingerly, as though they are filthy. She hesitates before closing the door. “You know, if you’re really that hard-pressed for work, you could have asked me. I have a cousin in the food business, and if your French is any good he could use a bilingual sales rep…”

Leah tries to follow but can’t. “No no, it’s alright, I have a job. I’ll send the rest soon.”

They part, both feeling confused. Leah counts that as a half-win, but panics about the “bank transfer” reference. She’d managed to find out her card code, or PIN, or whatever it is, but she isn’t sure that will be enough.

She returns to the bank, this time with fifteen minutes in line spent in a state of high anticipatory stress. At the desk is a different woman than the day before. Leah explains that she needs to be shown how to do a “bank transfer.”

The woman at the desk takes her card, gives her the pass-code machine, and Leah enters the code. This time the woman turns the big screen around so Leah can see it; lots of text in boxes, none of it making any sense. The woman points to a box on the side, with a big blue spot labelled “transfer.” She asks who the transfer is going towards, and Leah nearly runs away in stress, realizing she does not know the landlady’s name, but on the drop-down menu she sees many already-established recipients for transfers: a school name, a man’s name, a “savings account,” a “credit card,” and a woman’s name. Leah chooses the woman’s name.

The teller asks the amount, and Leah cites the remaining amount, five hundred and eighty. With the click of a “confirm” button, it is done.

“See? Easy.” The teller smiles at Leah.

Leah smiles back, and swallows a response that she has never seen a more convoluted and less logical way of dealing with money.

She also sees something else, however: there is a chequing account and a savings account listed in the squares, with a number listed under each heading. Together, and after the transfer is deducted, they total barely six hundred dollars, most of that in the savings account. Leah tries to do the math in her head, but can’t keep track of all the numbers.

She leaves the bank and goes to the cafe on her way home. Feeling a strange longing for fresh vegetables after eating mostly grains and cheese for the past week, she buys a salad for her lunch. Mary says hello, but can’t take a break because they are understaffed.

“Too bad you’re not still looking for a job!” she jokes. “You sure you like working at Chantilly?”

“Why does everyone say it like it’s something scary? My landlady looked like she didn’t even want to touch my money when I told her where I worked.”

“The older generation is ickier about it, I guess. It’s close to sex work, and the legal situation around that is…in flux, right now.” Mary’s voice has dropped a bit, in secrecy.

“Sex work?” Leah asks, baffled.

“Well, striping is…kinda…” Mary trails off. “You’re not working as a stripper, are you?”

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“No? The girls are nice, but I don’t think I’d be strong enough to do some of the stuff they do on the poles. Also the shoes scare me. I just work the bar.”

“Oh! Oh, I didn’t even consider that, God, I mean shame on me.” Mary laughs it off, going back to normal volume. “Not that it would have mattered if you were working as…I mean I just, I guess I heard the name and assumed.”

Leah takes her salad and finds an empty spot to sit down. Taking out the receipt and a pencil from her bag, she scratches out a calculation of her budget.

$780 for a living space, $0 for travel since most of what I need is in walking distance.

Working five days out of seven, with a wage that I finally got the boss to specify at $13.10 per hour, and eight hours a night.

Ten times eight, 80. Three times eight, 24. Ten cents…80 cents. So 104.80. Times five, 500…520…uhhh…524? Per week. Four weeks to a month, 2,000…2,080…16…2,096. Okay, so I’m more than fine. Phew. Now to find out how much food costs.

Leah returns to the counter once she’s done her salad and has put away her calculations. Asking Mary, she learns that there are a number of expensive food places nearby, with limited selection – “bougie-ass hipster stores” is actually what Mary says, but Leah understands by the tone.

“But there’s a good wholesale mart on Repentigny, everything’s in bulk, priced by weight. I go there for pasta and rice, mostly, but they also have spices, dried fruit, candy, flour, even laundry detergent – whatever you need, except fresh veg. Oh!” Mary’s eyes have drifted down and caught sight of the bracelet.

“What’s wrong with it?” Leah asks, wondering if it’s not a bracelet at all and actually something stupid to wear on one’s wrist.

“Nothing, I was just surprised to see a pride bracelet. I mean, especially since you said you’re from Morocco. I’m not sure what the queer rights movement looks like there, but I know in very religious countries it tends to be…well, less of a movement and more of a quiet underground, I guess? Although I’m just assuming.”

Leah shakes her head. “No, it’s…well never mind Morocco, I’m here now.”

“Ohhhhhh,” Mary says with understanding, which Leah can almost guess at. “I get it now. Honestly then, congratulations on being here! That must be so weird, to go from secrecy to openly being allowed to be gay.”

Having read the romance novel on first arriving, Leah has the vocabulary to understand what is being discussed. However, she is baffled that Mary lowered her voice to talk about sex work but not to talk about this. “Honestly I’m still not sure how…open…people are here. Like my landlady…like you said, the older generation…I just don’t want to be too open about it until I know how people will react.”

“Well, there are a lot of conservative-minded people, who think it’s an abomination and disgusting and an affront against god – ” Finally, Leah feels, this is something familiar. “ – but this is a more forward-thinking part of the city. You’ll be fine here, especially if your definition of ‘too open’ is to wear a tiny bracelet with a non-rainbow pride flag. Trust me, I only recognised it because I’m in the know, and the people who’d be offended by it usually aren’t too knowledgeable about things like this.” She finishes by reaching out and flicking the dangling O+ charm on the bracelet.

Leah, oblivious, thanks her for this advice and leaves to go shop. She finds the place with difficulty; it is much smaller than Mary made it sound. However, rightly enough it does have inexpensive bulk food, in more varieties than Leah can count.

She begins filling up bags with tiny portions of things she’d never heard of before – dried mango, pecans, pretzels? – and larger portions of the familiar ones – almonds, jerky, raisins, dried apples, sunflower seeds! – taking all the bundles back to the front to pay. She taps her card to the little rectangle to pay for her twenty-one dollars’ worth of food, and feels a bit of chagrin for the loss of money for what amounts to maybe three days’ worth of snacking. She appreciates Mary’s advice, but decides to still seek out somewhere she can buy fresh food. Maybe some peppers, or potatoes, or beets. Olives, if I’m lucky.

She drops the food off at home, tastes a bit of everything to see what’s interesting, completes her one-hour exercise regimen that she has settled on in order to bring the body up to her standards, then reads a bit more from the bookshelf until it’s time to go to work. She reflects that having those martial classes, whatever they end up being, will be a great way of filling the time.

At work she has gotten used to the strange bottle shapes and colours, and for some reason this day is much busier.

“Well, yeah, Friday night,” one of the girls says, a new one. “End of the work week. One of the best-paying days. All the big businessmen coming in to unwind, avoiding their wives, you know. They just need a kind ear to listen, and an ass to grab.”

Leah returns to her work, smirking at the good humour of the girls, but also rankling a little to now be able to notice this behaviour in the customers – they don’t look any different from other nights, except for maybe a higher percentage of ‘suits’ versus other clothing styles.

During closing, the last half-hour of the shift, she overhears conversations in both Volsti and another language, not unlike Devadiss in some ways – although she supposes it isn’t called Volsti, here. One of the clients, making a fuss about leaving, calls one of the girls something, Leah can’t tell what, and the manager drops what he is doing to approach the guy. The man continues to be aggressive until the manager is about three steps away, and then he suddenly turns docile and quietly leaves, staggering out into the high-summer heat.

“That happen often on…Fridays?” Leah asks one of the more familiar girls – darker skin, but long black hair in gentle waves as opposed to Bairish curls.

“Happens often all days. The bartenders are supposed to cut them off when they’ve had that much, but if they’re a good tipper they sometimes let the bugger buy one or two more.”

“What was that word he used?”

The woman shakes her head, laughing a bit. “Nothing we don’t hear daily. You need help with the glasses? I can reach the top shelves if you want, I’m six-foot-two in these shoes.”

“Are you kidding me? You must be aching, go sit down, I’ll be fine.” Leah hurries back to finish putting away washed glasses, while the girl takes of the shoes with a little smile. She punches out a few minutes later, and is about to start the walk home, when the same girl calls out again.

“Wanna try them on?”

Leah turns back to look at the nightmare shoes. “Would they…would they fit me?”

“What size are you? Come back, Vanessa, I may need to borrow your shoes, she’s a bit bigger than I am.”

“Oh, newbie is trying on shoes?” The new girl doubles back right away, and pulls her shoes out of her bag. “Here, try them on.”

The two girls coax Leah into putting on the shoes, then taking a few steps along the sidewalk in them, holding her hands the whole while as she tries to balance. “Step with the balls of your feet, not your toes, not your heels, there you go,” Vanessa says encouragingly

Leah toddles along, heart pounding, and gets from one end of the building to the other without falling. Calling that a success, she sits back down to take the shoes off – feeling like she has a long way to go to reach the ground, but luckily with both laughing girls to help her along.

“Gods that was terrifying,” Leah mutters, which just makes the girls laugh more. Putting her comfortable shoes back on, the three part ways and head home, the other two wishing her a good weekend. “Huh?” Leah asks, and the new girl, Vanessa, turns back.

“Yeah, you’re replacing Pierre? You’re only working weekdays, right? Don’t let the boss force you to do six-day weeks, even if he begs!”

Leah realises then that this is what the boss meant by a five-day work week. Weekends. Days off. I thought I would just be working unpaid the other two days. “Huh,” Leah repeats to herself, alone in front of the club. “This is new.”

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