Kicking Tomorrow (21 page)

The school bell shrilly rang and the shouts and stamping of students on the loose clattered through the building. Robbie took a step back and watched her go about her business: she gathered up her boxes, real slow. And meticulous. And put them one by one in her satchel. Locked her kitbox, put on her scarf. Tried tying it, twice. Slipped on her Afghan coat. Buttoned it with careful attention. Examined the frayed stitching and browning fur. Pulled the satchel onto her shoulder. Raised her head to regard Robbie with an expression of mild regret. Scrunched up her hair. And when the school was all quiet, wordlessly led the winding way down the stairs to the street.

“So-o,” she said finally. “Want to come walking? I’m going to Olly’s.”

Robbie followed her eyes. Were her pupils constricted like that because of the glare of the snow – she looked to him like she was staring through the wrong end of a telescope – or was that
the way he too appeared to straight people when he was stoned? His hands fidgeted in his pockets. He was grinding a semi-circle of dirty snow with the toe of one boot.

“Well, no. Thanks,” he said. “I don’t think you really need me around. So, mnn, I’ll see you tomorrow. I guess.” He held his hand up, palm to her. He shrugged. Made a thin smile. Said, “Bye,” turned on his heel, and left her standing there. He walked away as fast as he could, feeling his own chilled skeleton shudder as he pounded the pavement home.

OCTOBER, AND FROM HIS APARTMENT ON BERDNIKOFF HE
could see Mount Royal’s flaming trees beginning to lose their leaves, which were descending now like crumpled embers to settle on the dampening, darkening ground. It was a bad idea, he reflected, to have plugged in all those amplifiers, turned them up to ten, and kicked the guitars screaming around the floor; the vibrations from the noise had been so great that the plaster on the ceiling below him cracked. And was it ever a good thing the old folks who lived there, the Grissoms, were in the habit of rising at dawn, because neither of them was in bed when the ceiling actually came down.

He lay on his own mattress on the floor. It was very crowded; all the stuffed animals of his childhood had been neatly arranged in a row beside him. Rosie was there too. He elbowed her.

“Hey Don’t you hafta go to work?”

She rolled over and exhaled sweet-and-sour breath that he imagined he could even relish, if only he loved this person. She leaned up to look out the window.

“No,” she said. “Can’t today.”

“Why not?”

“Rain. It’s raining.”

He rubbed his hedgehog head. “You won’t melt, you know.”

He stumbled out of bed, came to a serpentine brook, busy with bulrushes and little riverbank creatures. When he bent down to look at them, he saw they had snarling faces with their skulls poking through the fur. The brook was clogged with stinging brown foam. He shrugged and stepped over it into the bathroom.

In the mirrored cupboard above the sink was his own personal tube of
PH WOW
! Green tube, menthol, 500ml – the man-sized format. He tried to read the instructions, but they were in French and it was all swear words:
câlice tabernacle hostie maudit sacrifice calvaire
.

Ever weird, eh. Rosie was in fact asleep, curled up beside him, her warm bottom pressed against the small of his back. Through the open, curtainless window, he watched a ploughed field of muddy clouds scud over the neighbouring rooftops, dark and wet in the dawn. Under the sheets his toes met with Rosie’s webbed ones. She stirred. He hugged his side of the mattress. He thought of all the chestnuts split open on the pavements, and breathed in the homey smell of soggy bonfires and leaves turning to compost, though the smell was tainted by the tang of gasoline and a stronger smell – something meaty and bad, heavy on the wind. And, he realized now, he had awoken with a nosebleed.

Rosie stretched and sat up. She reached across the bed, her breasts dangling, Robbie observed uneasily, like udders, and squeezed him from behind, reaching around to cup his penis in her hands.

“In the morning with guys,” she murmured, “I can never tell – is it me or is it pee? Hey, Bob, I have an idea. You can draw me, like you used to Ivy. I can pose. Like this.” She struck a bathing beauty pose, a leg and an arm stretched out like a water-skier in his wake.

Robbie looked at her webs. In one sense they streamlined her feet, like the fins on a classic Cadillac – and everyone should have them, really – but because they were alien they were also kind of repulsive, and Robbie felt their repulsiveness spread all the way up her skin to the limbs that were wrapped around him. He found himself bracing his body against her infirmity, and searching for an excuse to get up. She sensed his resistance, and pressing her cheek to the back of his neck, said, “You think I’m ugly.”

“No, no, I don’t,” he said quickly, guiltily. “It’s just, I have killer allergies this time of year – the annual Hay Fever Festival goes on until the first frost, fuck. So I need my mouth to breathe – mind if we don’t kiss?”

“OK, Bob,” she said, “so now let’s work out if I’m
safe
. I release one egg each menstrual cycle, right, ’n my egg has only twelve to twenty-four hours to be fertilized.
OK
. So under favourable
cervical-mucus
conditions, your sperm can survive four or five days, tops, inside my uterus and fallopian tubes,
so –
I’m actually
fertile
about eight to ten days.” Rosie counting it out on her fingers, squinting at the ceiling. “But lemme see, I finished my period only one, two… 
six
days ago, so
OK
,
hi ho Silver!”

Rosie had already introduced him to her bodily signs several weeks earlier – because, she said, the man’s not sexually sharing unless he participates in the contraceptive process. K, thought Robbie at the time, but he didn’t know this was her idea
of foreplay –
that she couldn’t ever get aroused without reaffirming her personal femininity like a proud gardener in a greenhouse bursting with hothouse tomatoes.

He watched her gel and insert the diaphragm. Then he, he himself, shook the bottle and filled the applicator with stinging contraceptive foam and gently –
gently, Bob! –
injected it into her vagina. After that, she tore open the little square package and he extracted the cold wet lambskin. He held it in the air like a biological specimen for several minutes, while she coaxed him back
up, and made a game Smiley face as she rolled the chilly squiggly thing down.

Eventually they were humping. Robbie pushed her head back in the pillow to bite her on the neck. Trusting this to be an expression of tenderness, she gasped and sent her legs up into the air with her toes fanned out. And Robbie, hating himself, thought, Where’s Ivy. She’s betraying me, and probably in a much smarter way than this; sitting up in bed in Sumatra, in a silk kimono with a dragon on the back. Sipping jasmine tea. Anyway, she’s definitely not puffing or panting or slapping her belly against whoever or perspiring in the pits of her arms or making her delicate passage sore in frantic search of that elusive friend the orgasm. No, she’s having a
convulsive conversation
. “Don’t stop,” Rosie said hotly in his ear. “Just a little more, sweet Bob.” Robbie picturing Kiki Van Garterbelt in her most wanton
Bosom Buddies
centrefolds. Finally Rosie shuddered and grabbed, several times, going off like a string of firecrackers thrown into the street on Chinese New Year, and gasped, “Lions 1- Christians 3. Mmmn.”

After she’d gone, he surveyed the place, which he’d not exactly found time to clean up since he moved in a month ago: black broken record shrapnel lay everywhere, still; butts were strewn all over like spent cartridges; a pizza was on the turntable, the spindle neatly piercing a piece of pepperoni; a black bra hung from the handle of the
Cocaine
machine; and the black issue of an aerosol can’s aluminum bladder was all over the walls and ceiling.

He started by picking up a few empty stubbies, but the odour of their dregs echoed the residue in his own gullet, and he lay down feeling nauseous, the mouths of six bottles stuck to his fingertips, three on each hand, like electric milkers clamped to the teats of two cows. The room swirled around. The noise-pollution machines sat stacked silently in the hall and in every room. Robbie looked at them and wondered if he’d not been rash. A
stink of gasoline blew in from over the rear of the Parthenon Fil-U-Up, where an enormous tanker was nursing the pumps now, like a great smelly pregnant iron pig. He closed the window, got himself a fresh beer, a therapeutic brew, and told himself it was time to get serious, to do something of importance.

Hell’s Yells. Brat and Louie Louie had not been impressed with the concept, so he’d just have to paint some inspirational images for them, in the same way stained-glass windows once told religious stories to illiterates. He’d design costumes, a stage set, record jackets, T-shirts. He’d get specific, write down lyrics, liner notes, souvenir program notes, a philosophy. And he knew that, just as urine was once used to make the golden glass glow, he’d have to pour the whole of himself into his work.
Convulsive, or not at all
.

No table, so he sat on the floor. He stirred a cup of tea with a pencil and chewed on the wood. Here he goes, he’s free, he can think of anything he wants, anything in the world. This is a historic occasion, a big day, the first of the rest of his life. Life will be what he makes it. He’ll prove himself now. He sat. Chewed the pencil. Got up for another beer. Sat down again.

K
, seriously now…

The apartment was chilly; a faint smell of gas emanated from the kitchen. Periodically the radiators made a sound:
tank
. The window was a carapace of grime, the pale October light diffused through it dirtily. He sat, cozy in a luxurious Italian cardigan Mom had given him several Xmases ago. He picked at a cuticle, and noticed how the night’s drinking had caused his fingers to swell up around his nails. He caught a whiff of Rosie’s violent vagina on the tips. He drifted off, thinking about her cervical-mucus conditions…

Snapping back to attention now. Getting up and cracking open a fresh brew. Blank sheets lay on the carpet in front of him.
His eraser stood up fresh and pink. He pulled a fresh pencil straight from the box. And sharpened it. No wastepaper basket either, so the shavings dropped onto the carpet. He ground them in with his knuckles. The radiator went
tank
. He pressed the lead to the paper.

Hell’s Yells. To start: their outfits.

He chewed that ragged cuticle some more, and now blood crept under the fingernail. He went for a Band-Aid.

On the way to the bathroom, he noticed an article on an open page of
Blow Up
magazine, a thoughtful piece about French Canadians’ passionate response to the Strolling Bones. Which he got to reading. Apparently, the sight of Keef with his arms outstretched, and Bile with his whip, and Spit Swagger at his electric organ (resembling an illuminated cathedral, in the writer’s opinion) provided a significant benediction for pepsi fans who, in spite of the way they aggressively ignored their Catholic heritage, unconsciously desired it.

Robbie wondered what the writer would say about Hell’s Yells. He plugged in one of his rented guitars and gave it a strangle. He made a lot of noise, but found himself quickly frustrated by the effort it took to make noise with any kind of significance. The effort left him feeling defeated, his fingertips smarting, his stomach craving lunch, and Mrs. Grissom thumping on her newly plastered ceiling with a broom.

Fish fingers for lunch, a knucklebone of ice in each one, warmed-up ketchup with grated parmesan on top. Plus another beer. Then he sat down again, pencil poised. He wasn’t going to let himself get bogged down, just because his attempt that morning at imagining outfits had been a pathetic failure; he’d simply put outfits aside for the moment and move on to stage design. He cranked a new record up extra-loud, to concentrate.

The phone was ringing. He had barely heard it above the din.

It was Mrs. Grissom. She sounded quite hysterical. “Whatsamatter with you, dammit? You deaf or somethin?”

“No, dammit,” Robbie replied calmly. “But if you are you old cow I can turn it up for you.”

He’d really been too well brought up to speak so rudely, but he did it anyway; for a start, he’d heard her swear way worse, round the corner at Wu’s grocery – she seemed to have that condition where people haul bags full of newspaper, and swear non-stop in the street – and he reasoned that this way, at least, he was speaking a language she understood. Then he hung up on her.

He couldn’t seem to get started. Frankly, he had thought that working here, alone in his brand new apartment, would be way easier. For one thing, he had not expected the sounds of the radiators to bug him so much. He guessed their
tanking
sound was made by the metal expanding and contracting as they heated and cooled. So he tried walloping them with a frying pan to settle the excited molecules. That worked. But not for long, and it painfully jarred the bones in his hand. He found that with a pair of pliers he could twist a valve at the base of the radiators, which let a rush of hot oily air out, and that made them go quiet for a little longer. Manipulating the pliers was a tricky operation, however; he pinched his fingers so badly he got black bloody marks in his flesh. Bummer. Then he had trouble twisting one valve closed again, and the rush of hot oily air became a jet of hot oily water, that spattered all over the carpet and the wall. Major bummer. He went back to the more cathartic solution: throwing the frying pan right across the room as soon as a rad made the slightest
tink
. The eighth time, or the ninth, he hurled it with all his might, and the pan glanced right off the rad, smashed through his front window, and landed with a clang on the street below. Seething, he patched the damage over with garbage bags and a great stretch of Scotch tape. And sat down again.

Smoke break. The piece of hash he had was as big as a golf ball. Soon the carpet before him was scattered with burnt matches,
SUCCESS WITHOUT COLLEGE
matchbooks, cigarette ash, flakes of tobacco, the fluff of torn-out filters,
Bambù
rolling papers, little copper screens, and smudgy pellets of hash. And the radiator going
tank
. He emptied out a
Ship
matchbox, broke off one end of its tray, and slid it back in so the box was open at one end; he poked a hole in the top of the box, inserted the joint, lit it, and sucked in the smoke from the open end of the box. Tell the truth, he’s not overly keen about this method – when you put your lips to the box, you taste the sulphur from the match-strike panel – but it does make for a good strong toke and saves you in the end from burning your fingers on the roach. Go ahead, he thinks (the afternoon is wasting away, he’s starting to feel dreadfully self-conscious, as if the ghosts of his own self-reproach are finding substance in the smoky air), try it sometime.