mme desrochers
Tonight on my way up from the métro Mme Desrochers knocked on her window and waved me in. First time in eight years I've been inside. It smells like oranges and floor wax. There's a picture of her husband on top of the TV, and the TV is on with no sound, subtitles only.
She gave me a tin of sucre à la crème for salting the stairs. Then she said, in French, slowly, so I'd get it: "Vous jasez, la nuit." You chat, at night. "Avec quelqu'un." With someone.
I said I talk in my sleep, sorry. She waved that away. Her husband talked in his sleep for fifty years. And M. Albert, before me, she said, he talked too, every night. "Ils sont toujours deux, en haut." They're always two, upstairs.
I told her Élodie moved out. She nodded like she knew.
I don't know who M. Albert is. Élodie and I took the flat over from two McGill students.
The sucre à la crème is excellent. Half the tin is gone.