They were eager to get back to the Volkswagen. The man took the wheel. After glancing at a map of the city, he decided to drive along Bay Street for a while, but he turned right and took Columbus when he saw a sign indicating that North Beach was in that direction. The name North Beach evoked memories of the beatniks and Jack Kerouac.

On the Road was one of the books La Grande Sauterelle had “borrowed” during their journey because it was mentioned in the police file in Toronto. She had found a French translation of it in a Kansas City bookstore; she knew it already, but she had enjoyed reading it again. “If you haven’t reread you haven’t read,” she would say. As for the man, he had preferred to keep intact the memory of his first reading: he recalled a journey that seemed like a continual party, described in a powerful style that was as tangled as the vast roads of America; he had merely reread the preface, where he had underlined this sentence:

The road has replaced the ancient trail of the pioneers heading West; it is the mystical link that joins the American to his continent, to his compatriots.

They saw at once that North Beach was a very special neighbourhood, so they left the old Volks in a Safeway parking lot at the corner of Chestnut, pulled on sweaters and set off down Columbus Avenue. Even though the black cat had grown since the start of their journey, he still allowed himself to be carried in La Grande Sauterelle’s hood: instead of sleeping curled up in a ball in the hood, now he stood up, his chin and front paws resting on the girl’s shoulders.

They passed a red brick building that housed a neighbourhood library. A little farther, on the left, was a park called Washington Square.

“Ah, yes,” said the man, “Kerouac used to come here often.”

He talked as if Jack Kerouac were an old acquaintance; in fact, he had read only two of his books and a few magazine articles about him.

“Once, he had bought a gallon of white wine,” he said. “His favourite wine at the time was a cheap brand of Tokay. So he went into the park with his jug of Tokay and he started drinking. He sat at the foot of a tree and drank until there wasn’t a drop left, then he was completely drunk and he fell asleep in the grass.”

Washington Square was an ordinary park, a square of green with trees, benches, a few statues and a corner for children, but all at once, with Kerouac’s presence, everything was transformed. Suspicious forms lay in the grass. The grass must have been wet from the fog, yet old men and bums lay there asleep, wrapped in newspapers or canvas. The park was filled with ghosts of the past.

La Grande Sauterelle reflected.