Her parents support her; they’re proud to have an artist in the family. She takes pictures of alleys, messy rooms (like our living room), that kind of thing. She also likes to create still lifes with naked people and standard embarrassing items: vibrators, pig’s heads, money, blood. Simone’s art practice involves frequent trips to the butcher shop. She doesn’t have a lot of imagination. But then, who am I to judge? I’m just a two-bit translator.

Not to oversell myself; I’m actually a five-cent translator. See, at the time I’m writing about, we translators bill by the word. Five cents a word, in my case. I’m one of those people undercutting my fellow professionals, but what can I do? I have to pay my share of rent somehow, until I finally get the diploma declaring my fitness for the job I was already doing. In the meantime, I work for the kind of people who think it’s a good idea to entrust their translation work to a college student. Most of my clients are travel agencies, beauty parlours, and car dealerships. I advertise my services on the bulletin boards at colleges and universities, and on a few other specialized websites. I also edit people’s term papers, but that doesn’t pay very well. Students are cheap. I live with Gus and Simone because I was the first person to answer their little ad. I took a trip with my parents to check out the city three weeks before class started, and that was when I saw the letter-sized sheet stapled to a hydro pole in front of the pub across from the college.

Room Available. Apartment just shitty enough for a self-respecting student. 2 inbred unambitious roommates. No cat allergies.

Also on the poster: the price of the rent and a photo of a turkey. Typical Gus. His sense of humour is pretty off the wall. (He took the photo because Simone’s an Artiste, so her work is too “important” to be subjected to a photocopier and the elements.) The bottom of the sheet was cut into strips with the phone number. I tore the whole sheet off the pole. This place had my name on it.

It turned out that there was no cat. They wrote that just for fun, or maybe to fuck with people. Simone believes you can’t trust people who are allergic to animals, people who convert their unhappiness into psychosomatic symptoms. She also doesn’t want anyone’s hyperactive glands standing in her way should she ever want to adopt a kitten.