Back in 2002, I moved to a little enclave nestled behind the cigarette factory on Ontario St. The neighbourhood was pretty sketchy, but my immediate block was idyllic: a tiny little nest tucked in the elbow of Ontario and Iberville.
Out front, old people watched TV on their front porches and surveyed everything that went by. The depanneur downstairs did a fast trade cashing in empties. Out back, a community garden huddled in the shadow of the giant old church no one went to. And out back, the girls visited their shooting gallery.
Idyllic the rest of the time, things got busy in my neck of the woods every morning between 5 and 8 a.m., when the girls dropped in around the corner to get their fix.
It went like this: at the crack of dawn, truckers would come into town across the Jacques Cartier bridge. Starved for, uh, female companionship and other delights, they'd pay a quick visit to the girls of Centre Sud in the early hours before delivering their goods.
And then the girls of Centre Sud would pay a quick visit to the guy behind my apartment. If you were up early enough, you would see them, all skinny bones, wandering off their fix. If you were up after 8:00, you'd never know they were there.
Sometime around Christmas, things started to get a little strange. One morning, the police cordoned off our little corner. The guy who lived in the shooting gallery (or whatever it was) had lost it. They were trying to talk him down from doing himself some serious harm.
After that, the girls disappeared. The house that was a shooting gallery stayed filthy, but quiet. No one came and went. Nothing happened.
Until the fire trucks woke me up. It must have been February or March... and again, our corner was cordoned off and filled with men, hoses, giant fire trucks. The shooting gallery was on fire.
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