We All Love the Beautiful Girls

by Joanne Proulx

  Coming, boys?

  Yeah, Eli laughs, elbowing me in the ribs, we are.

  —

  THE JEEP BOUNCES along the rutted dirt track, and like a spring, Michael, who hasn’t bothered with a seat belt, bounces along inside. He’s driving fast, yanking the steering wheel only to avoid the deepest potholes. And he’s late seeing the chain slung low across the service road. He stomps the brakes and grips the wheel with both hands as dust sweeps up and over the Jeep like a dirty dream.

  Front bumper kissing chain, Michael throws open his door and steps one foot out. The churned road dust settles on his skin. He squints through the headlight haze at the scatter of kids under the bridge. All of them stare back, suspicious of the dramatic arrival. Flames flicker inside an oil drum, casting leaps of light and shadow on the dark underbelly of the bridge. Michael registers a girl in a bikini top and cut-offs bending down, a case of beer being dragged out of sight. Two boys with respirators and raised aerosol cans stand close to the wing wall; another wears a red bandana pulled up over his nose. They all look ready to riot, to do battle with police throwing tear gas and swinging heavy black batons.

  “Dirk!” Michael yells. Music pounds in from the water, a party on the beach upriver, the far-off bass throbbing like blood at his temples.

  The kid with the bandana yanks it down. “You wanna kill your lights, yo.” It’s clear he’s not asking a question but giving a command.

  Michael accidentally blasts the high beams for a few seconds—every kid wincing and swearing—before shutting them off. The under-bridge falls back to flame-lit.

  “Hey, Bunner!” the kid calls. “Yo, dude, your boyfriend’s here.”

  The kid sticks his head around a pillar, a grenade hanging like a silver sun just above his head. Michael climbs back into the Jeep and slams the door.

  The boy clowns his way toward the vehicle, gives the hood a bang before he swings alongside. “Cheerio’s got wheels.” The kid’s eyes are red slits, and a sweet pong follows him into the car. The kid must know he reeks. He hits a button and slides his window down. “No baseball tonight,” he says with a smirk.

  Michael slams the gearshift into reverse, backs up ten feet and charges forward. Two tires dip into the ditch, the Jeep tips left, the kid falls sideways, his head bumping off Michael’s shoulder. Laughing, he grabs the safety strap and hauls himself upright. They bypass the chain, hit the gravel under the bridge, ghosting up a fog of fine grey smoke.

  On the far side of the overpass the service road ends. Michael is forced to slow down. He plows the Jeep into the field of wild grasses like a scythe into wheat, the shoulder-wide footpath he normally walks each night centred on the hood. Struck white by the headlights, the grasses get chopped under the bumper, but whisper-slide the sides of the car in a defiant golden rush. The air slipping into the car is jungle-warm and prairie-scented and the night sky domes overhead, its darkness diluted by a full moon and the orange tinge of a left-behind city.

  The kid sticks his arm out the window and without even realizing, Michael slows down again. “Sweet,” the boy says. His fingers open and close, letting the feathery heads slip through his hand. “Sweet.”

  Michael watches him, his hand, the easy interplay of perfect digits and fleeing grasses, and for a second the tautness in his chest gives way and a great ache sweeps through him. He can suddenly see this moment from a different angle, in another time, when a ride through a midnight field with a kid in the passenger seat beside him might be fuelled by something other than anger or jealousy or reprisal. When, heart deep in the beauty of the world, this joyride night might be scored by something graceful and pure, untainted, like absolute forgiveness or love beyond its breaking point.

  Beside him the kid shifts and rolls and is hanging halfway out the window. “Goin’ to kick some Big Yirkie ass!” he hollers as the wind snatches at the snapback he’s got cocked sideways on his head. “Goin’ to burn us a boat!”

  Michael grabs the waistband of the boy’s shorts and hauls him back into the car. The kid just bangs him on the shoulder and laughs.

  They come to a stop over third base. Michael scrambles out and into the shed. Returns with the bag of balls and throws it into the back of the car.

  “Fuck,” he mutters, “fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” He’s forgotten the bat. When he slams the hatch, the whole car shakes. Three strides and he’s at Dirk’s window. “Did you tell your friends we were going to burn my partner’s boat? Like before you screamed it out the window?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Not really?” Michael glares at the boy. “For a kid who doesn’t talk much, you’ve got a big fuckin’ mouth.” His stupid hat. His stupid face. “Do you even know what day it is?”

  “Saturday.”

  “Right. Saturday. It’s the weekend, correct? So even if we wanted to, we won’t be kicking Big Yirkie ass tonight.”

  The kid peers at Michael with half-mast eyes. “Well that fuckin’ sucks.”

  Michael stands lost for a minute, unsure what to do next. Go back to the house and grab the bat? Throw the balls themselves? How long would that even take?

  He gives himself thirty seconds to come up with a plan. In twenty, he yanks open the rear door. Flips down the back seat, considers the space. Roomy enough. He’s squeezed in a double mattress before, hauled a load of paving stones up to Peter’s cottage.

  The boy turns in the passenger seat. “So what’s the deal?”

  “Get out of the car,” Michael tells him. “Go get your friends. We’re going to need some help.”

  —

  THREE ABREAST, the boys lumber through the swath of grass flattened by the Jeep. With their low-riding pants, their shuffle, they’d be cartoonish but for the respirators pulled up onto their heads. The breathing vents point skyward, like blunted antennae. As they emerge from the field, they’re end times threatening, flanking Dirk, who without the headgear looks like a child hostaged between men. Michael recognizes the one from the first night he came down to the river, the one who’d been smoking a joint with Dirk. Chubby, olive-skinned, Middle Eastern maybe, strands of long black hair escape the sides of his rubber mask like oil-slicked seaweed. The other one looks older, college age. And tougher. Tattoos crawl from his shirt and spread like blackened flames onto his skull where the ink blends with the thick straps of the respirator to form a new, more intricate pattern.

  Neither of them even glances at Michael as Dirk makes the introductions. “Rae Chan, Big Bill Brown, Cheerio. Cheerio, Rae Chan, Big Bill Brown.”

  “Hey,” Michael says. “Thanks for lending a hand.” Christ, he sounds ninety years old.

  Rae Chan pushes his respirator higher on his head as he considers the pitching machine, standing grim and graceless a few feet from the Jeep’s rear bumper. He lays one hand, fingers capped with black paint, on the frame and gives it a push, testing the weight.

  “Bunner,” he says. His voice is surprisingly deep and rich, like an old-time radio announcer’s. “In the back. BB, other side. You”—he nods at Michael—“same.”

  They take directions from the radio voice. They bend their knees, they lift on three, they watch their fingers, and the kid, Bunner, gets a grip—no not there, there—and pulls, guiding the Arm flat and square into the back of the Jeep while the others push. When the job is finished, he advises on how to best get the machine out of the car, then shuffles over to Bunner and sticks out his hand. “Give it.”

  The kid pulls a small Ziploc from the pocket of his jeans. He takes a long, appraising look at the tangle of mossy buds clumped in one corner. “Generous.” He smiles widely as he tosses it over.

  Rae Chan snatches the bag from the air. “Seriously?” he says. “Haze? That all you got?”

  He’s centre field when he turns, and for the first time lets his eyes rest on Michael. “Slow the fuck down under the bridge,” he calls, resonant and booming, a profane god issuing commands from the outfield. “Your dust messed up my work.”


  Big Bill Brown fist-bumps Dirk before following Rae Chan through the field.

  “He’s a mover,” the kid says. In the aftermath of the radio god, his voice sounds tremulous and light. “So he’s, you know, good at moving stuff. And he’s a killer tagger. And he’s totally dope on drums.” There’s no need to clarify who he’s talking about. “We’re all going to party at his cabin, next week. Should be sweet.”

  “I bet.”

  In the car, Michael roars the Jeep to life. When the kid turns on the radio, he doesn’t protest the volume or the choice of rap music. He likes the pound of noise, the way it distracts. He drives slowly back through the grass field, the load taxing the engine, compressing the shocks. He slows down even more passing under the bridge. The gravel barely shifts beneath his wheels and all the dust stays low.

  —

  IN SUMMER, the laundromat turns Mia’s studio swampy. It’s one of the reasons she started shutting down in July and August. Even in just underwear and an old White Stripes T-shirt, she’s hot. The air conditioner at the front rumbles loudly, but its putter of cool air doesn’t come anywhere close to making it back to the mattress: David’s old one, covered with threadbare sheets and a patchwork quilt originally intended for Value Village.

  The bedding isn’t the only thing Mia’s rescued for the studio. On the counter, beside the coffee maker, sits an old toaster oven, like a block of darkness now. And the Anne Fontaine blouse Michael so pointedly rescued from the garbage bag dangles from the coat rack by the door.

  Mia flops around on the makeshift bed. If she were in the mood, if she weren’t so hot and twitchy, she’d get up. Turn on the chandeliers—she’d snapped on the goose-neck desk lamp when she’d come in, spotlighting a stack of Slate v. Conrad documents. She should get up and turn off the lamp. Turn off the air conditioner. So loud and useless. What she should do is adjust the lights until the room looks candlelit, and in that beautiful glow she should pull on the old Doc Martens she keeps stashed in the back and kick the fucking air conditioner out the window. Pitch all the legal shit through the hole it leaves behind. Throw out the lamp once all the paperwork had landed.

  Jesus. She never thought she’d end up like this. A frustrated woman. A distraught woman. Dependent on her husband for money and still counting every goddamn cent. A woman recently playing around at bagging a wealthy man with, let’s face it, her waning sexual currency. If that’s what she’d even been doing. Sometimes she thinks all she wanted was a bit of fun, freedom, easy sex that wasn’t hurtful or complicated or loving.

  Another thing Mia can hardly believe about her life: how easily she and Michael assumed their positions after she quit her job. Husband and wife, father and mother, man and woman—the only things missing were her apron and his goddamn slippers and pipe. She bought the groceries, looked after the house, cared for Finn, made ninety percent of the meals and did ninety percent of the worrying. At least she had, before her recent, unauthorized maternity leave.

  And Michael. He’d made ninety percent of the money. Took out the garbage, looked after the cars, drove Finn to his hockey practices. She’s a feminist, for god’s sake! A feminist with a science undergrad and a master’s degree in finance, a feminist decades before the internet twisted the word into a slander.

  If they don’t soon settle with Peter and Michael doesn’t find a job—as far as she knows, he’s not even looking—she’ll have to go back to banking. Even when she’d been working steadily, her photography business never cleared more than $38,000. Hard to live on that. Impossible to stay in this neighbourhood.

  She’ll have to go back. To the world of men, that soulless business, because that’s where the real money’s at, her eighty cents to their dollar. She’ll give the Little Red Ferrari an overhaul, get it back on the road. Put on her navy suit, her silky blouse, nylons, high heels, feign interest in golf scores and borrowing rates. Laugh at their jokes, curb her opinions, pretend she isn’t just herself inside. Let them condescend, not take her seriously, explain things she already knows. She’ll blow-dry her hair, polish her nails, harness herself into a pair of Spanx every morning for the next five thousand mornings of her life. Sure, they might want her brains, but that’s just the beginning. Play pretty, play nice, play along. She wonders if it’s too late to start sleeping her way to the top.

  No quitting. Simple as that. Mia imagines Toma’s mother, squat and resolute, fleeing her homeland so her son might have a better chance at life. A tatty suitcase, a warm woollen sweater, one sturdy pair of shoes. Mia has a hundred pairs, but not one that would carry her to the closest border, a child’s hand in hers. She’s too soft. Too spoiled. She wants to run when things get hard. Ran from the bank rather than fighting for more room at the table. Slapped her husband away well before their accounts were empty. Yanked Finn’s sock off her hand after what? Five minutes of struggle? After a toothbrush tipped into a sink?

  Mia flails about, kicking at the bedspread, unable to get comfortable. She will never, ever shoot another goddamn wedding. When she stopped to pee on her way out, there was a turquoise-gowned bridesmaid on her knees in a cubicle, the damp square of toilet paper spiked on her dyed-to-match heel shivering every time she retched. It was Mia’s favourite shot of the night. A bead of perspiration tickles across her forehead, like a spider scrambling for her hairline. She swipes at her face, and as if on cue, the air conditioner starts thwacking.

  In the cramped back room, she yanks on a pair of old jean overalls. Her elbow bangs the wall when she bends to roll up the legs. On her way down the stairs to the laundromat, her Docs hit every step hard.

  —

  SO MUCH TO look at. So much to take in. The girl circling the brass pole. The two tit-heavy blondes cat-crawling along the front of the stage. At one point, I slam right into Eli, who I thought was following Summer, her sequin skirt, but he’d actually stopped to watch the girl doing the splits up the pole. Legs so long I’m pretty sure she must be a high jumper. A thin gold chain dangles between her tits, and there’s another one glittering around her waist, and yeah, that’s pretty much it. Except for the gold heels, which look like they’d slit you to the bone if she dragged one down your shin.

  Her hair is the only thing that isn’t tight. It drifts out like a long black cape as she swings around the pole. Standing in the middle of the club, in a room full of dark tables and dark chairs and dark men in dark corners with dark fantasy girls, I think for a minute that I can actually smell it. Cutting through the stale, windowless air, the spill of beer, the men, their reek, their breath, their bodies, their drippy dicks, their spiced deodorant, the alcohol, the puke, the pissy washroom, the disinfectant, the soapy bucket, the industrial-strength air freshener, the pineapple wedges behind the bar, the smoke, the perfume, the girls, the girl on stage, her black hair clean and fresh and swinging at me like something out of a kinked-out, nature-dipped dream.

  I think she sees me staring. For a second, I think she’s dancing just for me.

  Oh my fucking god, Eli says. I’m pretty sure she likes me.

  Let’s go, Summer says, her voice loud above the music. I drop my eyes and concentrate on her butt, the sway of glittery sequins slipping across smooth flesh.

  A big dude standing V-legged blocks the beaded entry to a private room at the back of the club. He leans down and smirks as Summer whispers in his ear. Unless you have to piss—he jerks his head at us—you stay in here for the rest of the night because you look like children.

  Fuck you, Eli says, slapping the beads out of his way. I slide in behind him and I have to admit, despite all the drama on the way here, I’m impressed with just how ballsy Eli’s been since we arrived. And yeah. The VIP room is pretty all right. Low leather couches along the dark red walls—a colour my mother would like—with lots of hard little platforms between the cushions so the girls giving lap dances have somewhere solid to stand.

  I don’t recognize any of the guys in the room, but it’s kind of hard with all that ass so close to their faces.
A couple of vodka bottles decorate the low table in the middle of the room, lots of tall, ice-filled glasses. Eli grabs a bottle and sits down, but I just keep moving until I bump into the bar.

  A girl in a black leather bikini with super-short blond hair who looks like she could be Swedish or, shit, I don’t know, something, some blond nationality, asks if I want a drink.

  Beer, I say, happy to get the word out.

  You have a favourite? She smiles a perfect Swedish smile. Or you want me to pick?

  I nod. She leans over so her black leather boobs are really close to the trough of beer and ice.

  You like Stella?

  Are you Stella?

  She laughs. No, I’m Hannah, and she twists off the cap. Drinks are on Eric tonight.

  Eric?

  Yeah, Eric Kelly’s picking up the tab. She gives her shoulders a little shake so her tits shake a bit, too. But we do appreciate tips.

  I stuff my hand into the pocket of my jeans—of course it’s Eric’s party, of course it fucking is—and fish out a bill, a five, so dirty and crumpled it looks like I wrestled it off a junkie. I try to smooth it out on the bar, transform it into something worthy of a spot in a G-string, but it slips over the edge and flutters into the ice.

  Sorry, I say, and Miss Sweden plucks it up with her long black nails and stuffs it into a big mason jar.

  I tilt my head back and drain my beer.

  Again?

  Yes.

  Don’t worry about the tip, she says. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a guy blush.

  I pound back two more beers before I work up enough nerve to turn around and check out the rest of the room. And fuck if Eli isn’t sitting thigh to thigh with the girl from the stage. She tilts her head when she sees me and pats the cushion on her non-Eli side.

  And I’m thinking about going over, I’m actually thinking about it even though Eli’s not looking too friendly, and I’m thinking about the missing hand, whether or not she’s noticed the empty end of my sleeve, and I’m thinking about how Jess would feel if she saw the way this girl was looking at me, when the beads on the door part and Eric steps in. A fading Vegas tan. He’s shorter than me, but fitter, stronger, more ripped. Bulging biceps and shit. If I wasn’t wearing his shirt he’d be way better dressed.