Brouillard

Nobody knows where Brouillard comes from, starting with him. He tells of a childhood by the river, in the Industrial zone, where fog rises off the cooling ponds and swallows silhouettes whole from November on; he also tells of a photo booth that handed him four blank pictures at sixteen, and how he cried, then thought it over. The night recruited him the way rain recruits water: naturally, no paperwork required. Bouncers swear they let him in without ever seeing him, and the city’s records hold nothing of him but a first name in pencil.

He works the hours when dusk takes over, in clubs whose address nobody quite remembers. His gift rubs off: walk next to him and glances slide away, cameras fog up, face-readers lose their words. The squads that cross the city under his blanket of mist arrive like a draft of air — you know a door opened, you just never know for whom.

He never forces anything. He waits for the light to drop a notch, for the crowd to make its wave, and he slips into the fold. The brim of his hat covers only one eye: the other sees everything, notes everything, and the curtain has never once caught him off guard.

Anxiety is his permanent roommate: he checks the exits three times, counts faces, imagines the worst with a real screenwriter’s flair. But he’s signed a truce — fear keeps watch, Brouillard handles the rest. During slow hours, he sits in the laundromats open all night, alone under the fluorescent tubes, to prove to himself he exists enough for a machine to hand him back his change. And should anyone ever trust him with delicate passages, they’ll find he doesn’t sneak into places: he convinces the places he was always there.