One Toward noon, Florentine had taken to watching out for the young man who, yesterday, while seeming to joke around, had let her know he found her pretty. The fever of the bazaar rose in her blood, a kind of jangled nervousness mingled with the vague feeling that one day in this teeming store things would come to a halt and her life would find its goal. It never occurred to her to think she could meet her destiny anywhere but here, in the overpowering smell of caramel, before the great mirrors hung on the wall with their narrow strips of gummed paper announcing the day's menu, to the summary clacking of the cash register, the very voice of her impatience. Everything in the place summed up for her the hasty, hectic poverty of her whole life here in St. Henri. Over the shoulders of her half-dozen customers, her glance fled toward the counters of the store. The restaurant was at the back of the Five and Ten. In the glitter of the glassware, the chromed panels, the pots and pans, her empty, morose and expressionless ghost of a smile caught aimlessly on one glowing object after another. Her task of waiting on the counter left her few moments in which she could return to the exciting, disturbing recollections of yesterday, except for tiny shards of time, just enough to glimpse the unknown young man's face in her mind's eye. The customers' orders and the rattling of dishes didn't always break into her reverie, which, for a second, would cause a brief tremor in her features. Suddenly she was disconcerted, vaguely humiliated. While she had been keeping an eye on the crowd entering the store through the glass swing-doors, the young stranger had taken a place at the imitation-marble counter and was calling her over with an impatient gesture. She went toward him, her lips slightly open, in a pout rather than a smile. How maddening that he should catch her just at the moment when she was trying to remember how he looked and sounded! "What's your name?" he asked abruptly. She was irritated, less by the question than by his way of asking: familiar, bantering, almost insolent. "What a question!" she said contemptuously, though not really as if she wanted to end the conversation. On the contrary, her voice was inviting. "Come on," said the young man, smiling. "Mine's Jean. Jean Lévesque. And I know for a start yours is Florentine. Florentine this, Florentine that, Florentine's in bad humour today, got a smile for me, Florentine? Oh, I know your first name all right. I even like it." He changed tone imperceptibly, his eyes hardened. "But if I call you miss, miss who? Won't you tell little old me?" he insisted with mock seriousness. He leaned toward her and looked up with eyes whose impudence was apparent in a flash. It was his tough, strong-willed chin and the unbearable mockery of his dark eyes that she noticed most today, and, this made her furious. How could she have spent so much time in the last few days thinking about this boy? She straightened up with a jerk that made her little amber necklace rattle. "And I guess after that you'll want to know where I live and what I'm doing tonight," she said. "I know you guys." "You guys? What do you mean, you guys?" he mocked, looking over his shoulder as if there were someone behind him. "Just . . . you guys!" she said, half exasperated. His familiar, slightly vulgar tone, which put him on her level, displeased her less than his usual behaviour and speech. Her smile returned, irritated but provocative. "Okay, now!" she said. "What do you want today?" Once again his look had that brutal familiarity. "I hadn't got around to asking what you're doi Excerpted from The Tin Flute by Gabrielle Roy All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
