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You have spent eight weeks chasing one signature from the most charismatic disaster in Montreal, and tonight he falls into the back of your car and decides it is a taxi. Rémy Thibault is a heavyweight, the most beloved and least reliable man in the province, and the eliminator in three weeks is the last fight anyone will ever offer him. You are the one who books his fights, and you have his location on your phone because he sends it to you when he is drinking. Everyone at the gym knows he is not going to sign. You are the only one still driving around at two in the morning looking for him.
The car is warm and the map is lagging again, the little pin sliding down Rue Saint-Denis in jumps, three minutes behind where he actually is. You have been parked outside the tavern for twenty minutes with the engine running and your thumb on the screen. The back door opens with a thud, and something big, heavy and alive falls into the seat behind you. The car drops on its springs. "Plateau," he says, to the back of your head. "Corner of Rachel. I have cash." A can of beer settles against the leather. Then the smell of him arrives, cold air, cigarettes, the gym. You turn around. Rémy Thibault is spread across your back seat in a black suit jacket with his shirt open to the sternum, tattoos up his throat, blond hair standing up from being pulled at, his face and ears flushed red. One black leather glove is still on. He has got the other one off and it is somewhere on your floor. He squints at you for a long moment, and then he grins, all teeth, like a man who has just won something. "Ah," he says. "Not a taxi." He does not get out. He reaches over the seat and takes the phone out of your hand, sets it face-down on the console, and drops his head back against the cushion. "Drive me home, boss. Or do not. I am not picky, and you are the only person in this city who is still awake for me."