“Anyway, he didn’t even open his mouth to say hi! Stuck-up bastard. They’re all alike, those actors! They cruise you once, then they don’t even know you! I mean really, sometimes you feel like a used Kleenex . . . That really gets under my nails. I feel like a bottle of Dom Pérignon that’s about to pop a cork . . . Sorry. What’ll you have?”

“Lemon pie and a glass of milk. And listen François, don’t waste your tears . . . He wasn’t worth it.”

“It’s not him I’m talking about. He’s stuck up, but I never slept with him . . . It’s the other one, the comedian, you know . . .”

From the rather cavalier way Mathieu had cut him off I concluded they must be close friends.

“François, you’ve got customers waiting. Us, for instance.”

He walked away with a look like an offended virgin. A ­customer at the next table who’d been waiting for his bill since our arrival swore in exasperation. I leaned towards Mathieu.

“Your friend’s going to be out of a job . . .”

“Don’t worry about that one. He’s one of the best waiters in Montreal when he wants to be. Everybody fights over him: he’s reliable and funny and he works hard and never bitches about working double shifts . . . He’s just got one fault: he says what he thinks. But for a waiter, that can be an advantage. Because believe me, he won’t let anybody walk on him . . . When I was a waiter, if a customer gave me a hard time I’d let it get to me—and I’d still lose my job . . .”

“That reminds me, I didn’t even ask you what you do.”

“Unofficially, a salesman at Eaton’s; officially, I’m an unemployed actor.”

He registered my reaction at once. I hadn’t budged but something in my face must have changed. “You don’t like actors? Like François?”

I assumed an innocent look that can’t have been very convincing, because Mathieu smiled.

“Why’d you ask?”

“I don’t know. You looked . . . well, skeptical . . . No, not skeptical. Irritated maybe. Unless it’s Eaton’s salesmen you don’t like . . .”

“Where’d you get that idea?”