47. Rosalie

Broken Bells - October


JORDAN'S POV


After listening twice to Ella’s voicemail kick in I decided I needed a new approach. I had tried from the house phone and my new cell but she wasn’t accepting either numbers. I needed a new way to contact her. Gina suggested using Félix and calling him either first thing in the morning or last thing at night as his hours as a med student didn’t leave him much free time at home.

I thanked Gina and began to plan exactly how this was going to work. Eric had told me, judging from what I had told him, that if I wanted to win Ella back, I had to go about it slowly. That meant no big romantic gestures, no grand declarations of undying love and promises of eternity – that wasn’t going to cut it. Eric had told me to think back to the beginning to the time when I had been trying to persuade Ella to be with me. I knew that she liked me, but it felt that there was always something holding her back whilst I was the one pushing the relationship forward. Having said that, she said ‘I love you’ before I did, if you discount the time I said it in the middle of sex.

Eric had echoed Gina’s words about not rushing to Montreal and surprising her or sending her bazillions of flowers every day. Tanya told me that if she received hundreds of flowers a day from Eric and she was single and in a different city she would be more than a little freaked out. Eric said it might push her in the opposite direction, and that I had to win her trust back one step at a time. I didn’t know exactly how I was going to do that, seeing as how I was in Northern Ontario and she was in Montreal, hundreds of kilometres away.

Tanya and Eric had suggested the simple option of calling her. It may sound simple but what the hell was I supposed to say? “Er hey Ella, I was just wondering how your summer went? Can’t stop thinking about you” or “Ella, do you still love me?” I had plenty of questions I wanted to ask her but I didn’t know if it was possible to say any of them judging by the way she had left things.

For all I know there could be another man in her bedroom right now – a thought which made me feel sick to the stomach thinking of Ella with some greasy French man, who looked like a weird mix between Tanger and Max, feeding her strawberries dipped in chocolate and whispering dirty things in French in her ear. I shook my head, ridding my head of that horrible notion before walking downstairs to find Tanya or Eric. One of them had to be around somewhere.

“Jordy, everything OK?” Eric said as he sat at the kitchen table looking at the morning paper with a cup of coffee. My brother acts like he’s forty sometimes as well as being too domesticated. Marriage has whipped him into shape.

“Yeah, Gina just gave me Félix’s number to call. She said it was better than using her home phone and getting the crackpot mother.” Eric laughed at the thought. Somehow I didn’t find it that funny – I just wanted to know what to say.

“So you’re gonna call Félix?” Eric said, as I picked up the home phone and walked around the kitchen with it, staring at it in my hands.

“Well you gotta dial the number first lil bro,” Eric joked. I shot him a burning glare, partly at taking the piss out of me and secondly for calling me ‘lil bro’. Everyone knows I’m the tallest in the family so he can stop that shit.

“Anyway just call Félix and ask him if you can speak to Ella. It’s what, Sunday? Odds are she won’t be working, it’s half eight in the morning.”

I nodded, retreating from the kitchen through the dining room and into the hall wondering where I would have enough privacy to make this phone call. Mom had gone into town to visit the weekly farmers’ market and Dad was probably outside messing around with a tractor or something.

Taking a deep breath I picked up the phone, glancing at the slip of paper on which I had scrawled Félix’s number. Slowly I entered the number, five, one, four, making sure I had entered the exact number. I sunk onto the couch, barely breathing as I listened to the call connecting followed by the slow ringing. C’mon, I willed Félix to answer, crossing my fingers on my left hand as I listened to the phone ring again and again. Just as I was about to hang up, I heard someone pick up.

“Oui, allo?” Fuck! French, I thought as I listened to the voice on the other end of the line. It didn’t sound like Ella but I had only ever heard her speak French once or twice.

“Er, salut,” I said, thinking back to my two semesters of French at junior high which I had quickly dropped so I could do extra hockey. I tried to think of what the guys on the team said to one another as they talked in French in the locker room. I don’t know. I have no idea.

“Is er, Félix, there?” I said in English, praying that whoever it was would understand English. I briefly remembered Ella telling me that ninety percent of people who lived in Montreal were bilingual and I prayed that whoever was on Félix’s phone understood.

“Non, he is in the shower. Can I take a message?” the voice replied. Thank fuck she had understood. Did I want to leave a message, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t even know I was speaking to.

“Who is this?” I asked, wanting to clarify I wasn’t speaking to the crackpot mother or one of Félix’s friends who was having a joke at my expense.

“Rosalie,” she breathed down the phone. “And you?”

“Jordan,” I replied, now knowing that I was speaking to Félix’s stripper girlfriend. I don’t think I’ve ever actually spoken to a stripper before, so this was a first, and not in the scenario I would have thought I would be speaking to a stripper.

“Well I wanted to talk to him about Ella,” I went on, hoping her English was good enough to comprehend what I was saying.

“Ella is not here at the moment. She is out,” Rosalie said in a rather harsh voice.

“Oh, OK.” Well I had wanted to speak to Félix really, not Rosalie or Ella. “Can you tell me one thing, is Ella seeing anyone or is she still single?” I felt bad checking up on her like this in a way which was bound to get back to her. This was going about the phone call in the worst possible way, and not what I had hoped to get out of it.

“Yes, she was out with a guy yesterday evening and they didn’t come back till late,” she answered in a sickly sweet voice that reminded me of an evil Véro.

“Can you tell me what he looks like?” I asked, now verging on stalker territory. Maybe it was someone I might recognise, or know the description of. Maybe Rosalie had seen Ella with a friend.

“Dark hair, tall, tanned, well dressed, speaks French, so he’s from Montréal. La, c’est tout,” Rosalie said.

Fuck. I didn’t know what to say. Ella had moved on, she had replaced me, found a frog that was the opposite of me, tall, dark and speaks French. I didn’t know what to do.

“Thanks, tell Félix I called,” I said before hanging up. I didn’t wait to hear Rosalie’s response as I dropped the phone on the cushion beside me and leaned back, taking a big sigh. I’m too fucking late, just too fucking late, I thought as I played over the conversation with Rosalie in my head.

About five minutes later, Eric walked into the room, holding out a plate with some toast on it. I grinned looking at the peanut butter he had lavishly spread onto the warm toast. Eric might be whipped but I kind of liked the whipped, thoughtful Eric who brought his brother breakfast.

“Thanks dude,” I said as I took the plate.

“How did it go?” Eric asked, taking a seat on the couch opposite me and focusing on me. I took a bite of the toast before answering him.

“You want the bad news or the shit news?” I asked once I had swallowed a mouthful. Eric just shrugged as he weighed up the options.

“Rosalie, Félix’s girlfriend answered -”

“-The stripper?” Eric answered. I nodded, still not smiling.

“Yeah, and Félix was in the shower or something. Anyway Rosalie told me Ella was out last night with some guy, tall, tanned, Frenchie, so it sounds like she moved on. I felt like shit asking if she was seeing someone,” I said, looking at my plate as the toast became more and more unappetising.

“Shit Jordy, you OK?”

I nodded, knowing I wasn’t OK. It fucking hurt, it felt like someone had got a knife and wrenched it into my heart and pulled it out, pulling half of my heart with it. I didn’t want to show Eric that it hurt – it really fucking hurt. I just wanted to forget about the phone call, wishing I hadn’t been so fucking nosey as to as that.

“’Kay, well if you want to go fishing later, let me know, I’m thinking about going just to get a break from the farm.”
I nodded, I needed an escape and fishing sounded good.
Thank God for Eric.