Luc wiped his hands on the red rag from his back pocket. He looked at her, and at the car, and at the temporary license still tucked in the corner of the speedometer, and he folded the rag and put it back.
"Nothing at all," he said. "Just drive carefully."
Vivienne stared at him.
"Don't be ridiculous," she said. "You were up until two in the morning. That man drove a water pump forty miles in a truck held together with stickers. Doris gave me a room and a chicken pie. I've been eating your daughter's strawberry lip balm by inhalation for a day and a half. Tell me what I owe you."
"You don't owe me anything."
"Everybody owes somebody something. It's how the world works. I have sat through four hundred hours of trade negotiations, Mr. Beaulieu, I know exactly how the world works."
"Bool-yer," he said. "Around here."
"Don't change the subject."
And it was at this moment, as if she had been waiting in the wings for her cue all morning, that Georgie Beaulieu jumped down off the workbench, marched across the bay, took the chalk from the ledge under the chalkboard, rubbed out the 99 with the side of her fist, and wrote, in figures a foot high, 100. Then she drew a circle around it, and another circle around that, and a series of lines coming off it like the rays of the sun, and then she turned around with chalk dust on her jacket and her face shining like a lamp.
"YOU'RE NUMBER ONE HUNDRED," she shouted.
Vivienne looked at Luc. Luc had put a hand over his eyes.
"I'm sorry," Vivienne said. "I'm what?"
Georgie was already running. She ran into the office and came out with a fat green ledger book, the kind with a cloth spine and red corners that bookkeepers had used since the invention of bookkeepers, and she opened it on the hood of the Alfa, carefully, on top of a rag so as not to scratch the paint, and turned it around so Vivienne could read.
It was a list. The first page was in a man's hand, square, block capitals, a carpenter's printing, and the first entry was dated March 3, 1978. MRS. A. LAFLAMME, ROCHESTER. DEAD BATTERY. JUMPED. The second was a week later: KID ON BICYCLE, FLAT. PATCHED. GAVE HIM A SODA. Then a family from Quebec whose station wagon had lost its muffler on the frost heaves: GOOD PEOPLE. 4 KIDS. ALL SANG. Then a nun. Then a veterinarian whose truck had gone into a ditch with a calf in the back. Partway down the third page the handwriting began to change, the block capitals giving way to an enormous, looping, crayon-then-pencil-then-ballpoint child's hand, and the entries grew longer and more opinionated. #61. MAN FROM NEW JERSY. FLAT TIRE. HE WAS GRUMPY BUT THEN HE WAS NICE. #74. LADY WITH 3 DOGS IN A VOLVO. DOGS NAMES: PEPPER, GINGER, MR. BIGGS. #88. A HIPPY. HIS VAN SMELD.