Chapter Six

Two months passed by, and days got warmer—or rather, less harsh. When the temperature rose from the average of minus 15 to above zero, some people had already started to put on spring dresses—to Joe’s amazement. Their smile went wider as the sky turned brighter and the grass grew greener.

Joe eavesdropped from some customers in a café that a very popular parade would take place two weeks on Saturday in Street Saint-Catherine—a few blocks away from where they lived. He decided to take the girls with him to watch it together. It would be fun, judging from the fervour with which people talked about it, and it would harm no one to relieve the tension between them a little bit. Besides, he hadn’t found any opportunity to ask them for Ariana’s number yet.

**

The special Saturday finally came. Elena got up rather early in the morning. She was excited to watch the parade that was scheduled to commence at noon. She secretly hoped to see her uncle drop his jaws when he saw the boldness of the display.

“Let’s go watch the LGBT parade next weekend,” he’d said to them. When he’d asked Elena what “LGBT” stood for, she’d only shrugged her shoulders, pretending to have no idea. In truth, she possessed full knowledge of it. It was an event organized once every two years by lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and trans-genders, who spared no effort to express their pride and felicity in being who they were in every such march.

Elena stood before the sink in the kitchen, washing the coffee kettle while humming a song that was all the rage now on TikTok. She wanted to prepare a latté for herself. Her parents forbade her to have any caffeinated drink, but she’d received Joe’s acquiescence when she’d asked for his permission—it seemed that he was a total moron as a guardian.

When she closed the kettle filled with fresh water, she suddenly saw the reflection of a man’s face on the surface of the silver metal lid—for just a split of a second. It disappeared so fast that she couldn’t decide whether she’d seen the face before or not, but she was sure that it was not a friendly one, even hostile. She turned around quickly to check the room but saw no one. Was it a joke made by her idiot uncle? She walked toward his room. Through the crevice of the door, she saw him just getting out of his bed, stretching and yawning. Could it be a burglar? A burglar in the morning on weekend? Unlikely. She drew in a deep breath and shook her head, deciding to forget about it. Maybe she’d slept too late last night or watched too many horror dramas recently—again thanks to her uncle’s zero discipline.

**

The three of them and the cat arrived at a McDonald located on the same street of the parade to have lunch while waiting for the show to start. This was the first time ever they ate out. Joe decided to show more patience to the girls today since it was a sunny weekend and something entertaining was about to happen.

“What do you want, girls?” asked Joe who was checking the menu on the electronic board behind the counter.

“Fries and ice cream,” answered Wendy and Elena in chorus.

Not a bit surprised, Joe gave them a nonchalant look, pretending that he didn’t notice the mischievous sparkles in their eyes. “Nothing else? No salad? No vegetable burger?”

“Uh-uh.” Both of them turned their heads from side to side whilst Elena avoided his eyes and Wendy grinned like a Cheshire cat.

“Fries and ice cream it is! Plus a cheeseburger for me and a salad for Doodle.” Turning a deaf ear to the grudging noise produced by the cat from Wendy’s arms, Joe moved to the counter to place the order.

As Joe started to bite down on his delicious burger—something that regrettably lacked on the Moon—an orange-haired young woman in a black dress entered the fast-food restaurant. Despite her attractiveness, something about her expression was off, although Joe couldn’t put his finger on it. She looked at the menu with both curiosity and confusion in her eyes, then pointed at Pepsi coke and a chicken wrap on the electronic board. When she finally sat down and had the first mouthful of her wrap, she made a loud and satisfied noise, but after she got a sip from the cup of coke, she spat it out instantly, inviting puzzled stares from several customers.

A few claps and cheers sounded from people who were watching out of the window. Outside from the far end of Street Saint-Catherine, a long line of flamboyant display of strangely dressed people accompanied by bright-colored bandwagons were moving closer at an easy pace, with frequent pauses on the way to allow interactions with the audience.

Elena and Wendy stood up and rushed outside, followed by Joe and Doodle.

When the music from the floats became deafening, Joe was able to see clearly the bizarre costumes flaunted by the participants. A young man with a green wig was in a skin-tight black suit that exposed every curve of his muscular body. A woman with heavy makeup wore a nurse’s uniform—a very short and close-fitting type—that squeezed out her breasts and displayed half of her tiny panties. Another woman was covered from head to toe in a large white cape; while her face was under the shadow of the hood with only her red lips visible, her ample bosom was entirely exhibited from two big holes cut out from the fabric at chest. Another one—whose gender couldn’t be identified by Joe—hardly had anything on that could be called clothes, except some leather straps barely covering the genital part that looked like a man’s and the breasts that looked like a woman’s.

Joe was more than flabbergasted by the audacity of the display. This was unthinkable if it was on Magic Moon—anyone dressed in such unorthodox manners in public would be banned from any social rank and treated as an outcast or even a criminal. But here, no one cast a disdainful look or even raised an eyebrow at any of the performers; most people were singing, clapping, and dancing with the music; some of them even jumped onto the wagons to celebrate side by side with those on stage.

“Having a good time?” asked someone out of the crowd close to Joe. It was the cop, Andrew, in his rumpled uniform. Beside him were two other cops trying to empty enough space in the street to allow the wagons to pass.

“Hi, Andrew,” greeted Joe, a little awkward as he saw Andrew staring at his nieces—maybe it was inappropriate to bring two young girls to such an unconventional event, although there were abundant other kids in the gathering.

However, Andrew only made a quick gesture of goodbye to Joe and moved on to help his colleagues. Whereas Wendy was fully engrossed in the march with wide opened eyes, Joe noticed that Elena had lowered her head to avoid eye contact with Andrew as soon as she’d seen him.

“Is there anything wrong, Elena?” asked Joe.

“Nothing.”

“Do you know the cop?”

“Sort of. He lives only a few blocks away from us.”

“Are you scared of him?” Joe bent down to get closer to Elena. He had a bad feeling about this man. The more he could learn about the cop, the easier for him to stay clear of unnecessary trouble in the future—his identity was fake after all.

Elena hesitated a bit, then stood on her tiptoes to talk into Joe’s ear, “Not really. But ... his son passed away a couple months ago on the surgery table.” She paused a second and added, “Mom was the surgeon.”

“Oh, so he’s angry at her?”

“Kind of. Actually, very much. He blames Mom for his son’s death, but I’m pretty sure that Mom didn’t do anything wrong.”

“She’s right,” a woman behind Elena spoke out to Joe, although he was sure he’d never met her before.

Elena turned around and called out gleefully at the sight of the woman, “Aunt Olivia!”

Wendy also cracked a big smile when she was collected into the woman’s arms for an intense hug.

“My dearies, nice to see you both,” said Olivia. “This young man must be your uncle Joe.” She put Wendy down, extended her hand to Joe, and introduced herself, “I’m Olivia—your sister’s colleague. Jasmine told me a lot about you. I hope everything is alright between you and your nieces.”

“Nice to meet you, Olivia. So far so good.” Joe couldn’t let go of the disrupted topic that tugged at him, so he pressed on, “Sorry, what did you say just now—about my sister and Andrew?”

“Oh, right. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop by the way, but you two were literally shouting—because of the loud music.”

Olivia’s expression turned more serious. She told Elena to watch her sister and gestured Joe to follow her to a quiet corner of the street where they could talk without having to yell at each other. “Jasmine is a good surgeon, but what the boy got was fatal. I’d never seen a brain tumor of that size before. It was already a miracle to be able to operate on him. Any other doctor would have recommended to give up treatment in this case. But Jasmine never gives up on any patient, and without surgery the boy couldn’t have lasted more than a few weeks anyway, so she insisted on giving it a try, of course with the full consent from the father and complete disclosure of the huge risk. She did everything she could during the 8-hour operation—I was there assisting her the whole time—but after it happened, Andrew still totally lost control. He almost hurt Jasmine on the spot in the hospital.” Olivia shook her head with mixed emotions, as if the drama still rattled her. “Although he apologized to her later, it was plainly a forced act. He is still under the shadow for sure—he couldn’t even say ‘Hi’ to her if he met her in the street.”

She gave Joe a level look and continued with a thin smile, “Since you are new in town, I figure it’s necessary to fill you in about what just happened that’s relevant to your family—you know, to avoid any misstep.”

They forced their way back into the crowd beside the girls. While Joe was pondering what Olivia had just told him, he got an unexpected smack on the lips from a man wearing only a pair of tight shorts. After the sneak attack, the man climbed back onto his wagon and continued his quirky performance, leaving Joe blushed and disoriented.

“He likes you!” concluded Wendy who pursed her lips to mimic a loud kiss, making Elena and Olivia hoot with laughter.

“I guess you kind of know the nature of this march now.” Elena turned to look up at her uncle.

“Kind of.” Joe exhaled, wiping his lips with his palm.

“Oh, that’s my friend over there,” said Olivia, pointing somewhere on the other side of the street. “I gotta go and meet him. Take care, girls.” She blew a kiss to Wendy and Elena, then disappeared in the crowd.

The line of the parade slowly reached the end of Saint-Catherine, turned onto the perpendicular street, and eventually was lost to sight.

At a leisurely pace, they walked home side by side. Although no one talked, it was unmistakable to Joe that the atmosphere of tension between them was no longer as nail-biting as before. It turned out that Doodle was right—doing something fun together did help to improve relationships.

They ambled by the edge of La Fontaine Park. A gnarled willow beside the pond was swaying against the gentle wind; some sparrows up in the tree and a group of wild ducks down on the water were twittering and quacking in concert, as if trying to decipher each other’s language; the whole world in front of their eyes was covered anew with green sprouts and tender buds. What an amazing season—spring! If only it also existed on the Moon!

When they passed by The Sunrise—the small café that Joe sometimes visited—he suggested to the girls, “Wanna have a muffin and a cup of hot chocolate here?”

“Yay!” cheered Wendy as Elena voted with her feet and directly stepped inside.