Kicking Tomorrow

by Daniel Richler

  Robbie pulled a face, as if to think. “So?”

  “So, you’re a flip little bastard. You don’t care at all, do you?”

  Robbie had to think about that one. Care about what? He hesitated, looked above him. Up there at the balcony rail was a gang of Bones fans, replete with studded wristbands and top hats, feathers and coloured hair. They were leaning and watching and waiting like glittering vultures now, and Robbie wondered if any of them would have the courage to drop a pearl of spit, or, like the naked cherubs of Renaissance ceilings, pee a golden shower. He pulled a tight smile, trying to be nonchalant for their benefit: yep, no sweat, just rappin’ with the fuzz. Finally he said, “Why should I? Wasn’t my insurance policy.”

  “A person died in that fire.”

  “Right, I knew that.”

  “Oh you did, did you? How did you know?”

  “Someone told me, I forget exactly.”

  “Well, doesn’t it make your skin crawl to think of it? A – person – dying – in – a – fire.”

  “No. I mean, yes! Pends on the person. I guess. I mean who it was that bit the biscuit. You see it on TV all the time, which these days numbs young people’s emotions. You can’t afford to get upset every time it happens. For your metal health. But you’re right, it is terrible in principle.”

  Staring match. Robbie’s Man With No Name eyes vs. Gaunt’s watery red ones.

  “Metal health,” Gaunt repeated. “Oh – by the way, may I introduce Detective Sergeant Husker.”

  “Listen,” Husker said to Robbie confidentially, like they’d known one another for years. “We have a little investigation going on here, and we need your help. OK, my friend?” Up close, he had the bleeding complexion of steamed beef. Abattoir breath. Thick stringy vocal cords. Robbie nodded, and his Adam’s apple grated. “Now. Did you know the dead boy’s blood was full of heroin? When I say boy, I mean about your age. So again, for me, what were you doing up in that room?”

  “Art. Whaddo you want me to say, that we did smack? Fuckaff – sorry. Sorry ’bout that, sir. I mean, I don’t chip, I’m clean. Look at my arms. No tracks, man. Chrissake, whaddo I have to say?”

  “So you deal.”

  His breath was really appalling. Robbie stepped back and said, “You kidding? Where’s my brand new Cadillac, then? I wouldn’t be hanging out with all these low-lifes if I was dealing horse. I’d be a celebrated dealer to the stars. And don’t say I’m a pusher, neither, ’cause I ain’t. Get away, why donchou.”

  “All right, all right,” Husker said. “Go enjoy your concert, and stay the fuck out of trouble.”

  “We are on your side, you know,” Gaunt said. “There was once a time when all I wanted to see was a policeman on his backside, too. You’re quite the artist. You should put your talent to work one of these days, make a decent living.”

  “Yeah,” Robbie said. “I’m gonna forge money.”

  The other in-place to be before a summer concert was outside Atwater Park, right across from the Forum; the brimming streets, the pigs swinging their sticks like beefy promenading ladies with parasols, and the seasoned potheads smirking behind their backs. The smells of incense and reefer, of patchouli and dirty denim, of fresh-mown grass and puke. The furtive dope deals and pepsis saying under their breath as they passed you by, Ash, hacid, mesc. Crowds were massing around the main doors, under the escalators shaped like crossed hockey sticks. Rosie clung to his arm.

  “I hate it when pigs harass a young person for no good reason. What did they want from you?” She giggled. “Did they think you’re a druggie? Pigs are so dumb going by appearances. I’m the one holding, but they don’t hassle me cos I look so sweet and innocent]” Then she bit his earlobe and murmured hotly, “I get so aroused before a big show, Bob, I get premature elation.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sorry if I never made it clear,” he snapped, shrugging her off, “but I’m not going.”

  Ticketless fans hung around outside in the blistering heat, trying to outwait the scalpers who were fanning themselves with handfuls of unsold whites and blues. Robbie thumbed the ticket Rosie had slipped in his pocket. He mingled, sized up one likely innocent knob with short schoolboy hair and mumbled, “Greatest rock ’n’ roll band ever. Absolutely Very Final That’s All Folks! Tour of Triumphant Return. Ever, truly. Last chance to see a legend. Fifteenth row, hundred clams.”

  “Rip-off, man. Guy over there’s got fifth for eighty.”

  Robbie took twenty.

  Rosie looked at him, all forlorn. “Hey. I bought you that ticket.”

  Robbie shrugged back at her sharply. “I never asked you to. You know I hate these guys with a passion. I’d kill Keef fucken Richards with my bare hands if I had the chance.”

  “Aren’t you going a little overboard?” Rosie said with an indulgent smile, trying to take his hand. “Your anger’s way out of line. And you’re scary when you get like this. Please, Bob – talk to me.”

  “If I have to explain, then you don’t deserve to know,” Robbie mumbled, unconvincingly.

  “What did you say?! If you what? Now, where have I heard that turn of phrase before?”

  Robbie turned abruptly and lost himself in the crowd. He felt cheap and desperate, leaving Rosie like that, but he couldn’t help himself. For if he could find it in himself to turn back now, what would his anger have been worth in the first place?

  He was the only one going this way, wriggling up the thick stream of bodies to spawn his rage. He wove around back to the Forum’s stage door, and lurked by the Bones’ fleet of equipment trucks. Back in ’72 some wigged-out pepsi bozo had placed a bomb beneath one of them and blown it up. That had been political, that act, though Robbie couldn’t say why exactly. But he could think of other reasons to do it again, now. He read the sign in the window of the roadie tour bus where the destination is usually slotted:

  GASHMOBILE

  He spat at the windscreen. His spittle flew low, into the dead insect-fur on the radiator grill. Then a long black limo, so long it had a double set of wheels at the back, slid around the corner, silent as a shark in black water, and paused in the driveway, shitting a white cloud of exhaust behind it, while the aluminum stage door rolled clattering open. Robbie ran over and hammered his fist on the car roof. It bonged like an Indian drum. He pressed his nose to the window, but it was opaque. A security guard shouted and chased him away.

  The sun had set a virulent blackened red, as if its rays had sliced the sky and soaked the cotton clouds with blood. He launched himself off for the comfort of the Roxy, stopping at a dépanneur for a six-pack along the way. What was playing tonight, he wondered. Farm out: Woodstock.

  He slouched in the back row and got systematically ripped. Besides him, only five people were watching. By the time the scene with all the melancholy sixties garbage came on, he had peed three times and passed out on the sticky, gum-pimpled floor. The usher, shutting the place down for the night, didn’t see him there and left him alone in the darkness.

  His stomach ached, and his gums still bore the tang of raw onions from the maror that morning. The saliva in his mouth was so thick and viscous he could run it between his teeth like sour Jello. He shivered vigorously in the dank air. Hey, he thought blobbily, this wouldn’t be such a bad place to live. And tumbled into a bitter foaming sleep, as if someone had stuck a straw in his brain and blown hard through it…

  … he’s with the family, waiting for a flight to leave from Dorval airport. Quebec is seceding to become the fifty-first state of the U.S. Indignant, rather than becoming Franco-Americans, the Bookbinders are moving to Ontario.

  A siren goes off that sounds a lot like an industrial vacuum cleaner. There’s an announcement over the PA that Ghadaffi has lost some weight, but not enough; now he’s feeling forlorn and declaring war on everybody. The air is thick with grief. Robbie feels so profoundly sad it’s like a stone is lodged in his throat. He’s sitting on the floor beside the luggage and Mom’s ruffling his hair. Everyone in the departu
re lounge knows it’s the end of the world, and they’re very quiet. But Dad’s trying to pretend things aren’t all that bad. He’s yammering with all the forced gaiety of a hostess at a dreadful cocktail party.

  “So, Robbie!” he says. “Ahh, do tell us about Hell’s Yells’ plans for their incredible World Domination Tour!”

  8

  THE MORNING AFTER IVY HAD POINTED OUT THE DEAD Man’s Hand, and been so deadly serious about Gaston Goupil, he ignored his Sugar Krunchies and headed out early for Pendeli’s. There he sat, finger-painting the formica tabletop with grease, his stomach clenched sick from the acid coffee poured there. Ivy didn’t show until the last minute. She was red-cheeked and breathless, her white pancake visibly splotched onto her ear-lobes. By that time, in spite of himself, Robbie had whipped himself into a sweat picturing Gaston and her in bed making dirty love, this way, that way, this way again; he tortured himself as they smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, drank brandy for breakfast, and arrived late to school together. Yes, because come to think of it, she was almost always late. Her eyes were always puffy, too, like any serious toker. Obviously she and Gaston were a secret number. Why else would she refuse to explain a thing?

  “If I have to explain,” she said when she saw his long face, “then you don’t deserve to know. The sneaky mother counted the tampons in my box in the bathroom. We had the fight of the century.”

  “Really? So –”

  “So she should know better. Ever since I was anorexic my periods haven’t come regularly. I get maybe eight a year, tops. You’d think she’d be relieved for me, but no, she had to say something. I bet she’s told all of her seven good Catholic sisters on the phone about it, too.” Ivy licked a rolling paper so angrily that Robbie feared she might cut her tongue.

  “Uh, well, how long’s it been? It.”

  “Three months, I guess. Big deal.”

  “Well then,” Robbie said, tentatively. “There’s no chance of you being pregnant by me; ha ha. Is there.”

  “Well, no-o. I mean there was only that once, at your house, and you didn’t even go inside. God, this is embarrassing. Look, it’s such a tiny hole. I sit in the bath and soap doesn’t go up, it’s against gravity.”

  “Well, did you maybe sleep with somebody else?” Robbie asked. Casually as possible.

  Ivy gave him a fox-in-the-grass look. “What’s the difference,” she said. “Maybe I’ve slept with lots of guys. Maybe not.”

  “Well, have you?” Despite himself, he had let an accusatory tone into his voice. His stomach dropped.

  “I’m not going to give you the satisfaction of an answer,” Ivy hissed. “If I have to tell you…”

  Outside the school, as the bell rang, he stuck his neck forward to kiss her, tentatively and not a little guiltily. She grabbed him like she was saving herself from falling off a roof. She unzipped his parka while they necked, opening her dufflecoat and pressing her body to his. She clutched his hands and guided them under her shirt and urgently thrust her knee between his legs. Robbie, grabbing a breath, looked over her shoulder and saw they had attracted quite a crowd. Kids were smirking, several wiping their noses on frosty mittens. And now Ivy was biting Robbie’s neck.

  “Hey,” he said. “Don’t be crazy.”

  Abruptly she withdrew. “What’s wrong with crazy,” she snapped, and shot him an almighty expression. Then she pushed him off and slipped away over a snowbank to the girls’ way in.

  He chased after her, calling out, “Sorry! Sorry!”

  “OK,” she said. “You want to fuckse with me? I’m in the art room after lunch.”

  Robbie’s teacher this morning is Monsieur Nul, who throws things at the slightest provocation, whose fly is permanently, maybe deliberately, undone, and who daily exhorts the kids to excel at their studies before the Chinese and the Jews take over the world. There’s a test re: hypotenuselesses and angles of complete irrelevance, but Robbie’s stoned again, having toked up in the can on some fine Afghani smash, and is busy being FUCK the outlaw biker with his skull ring and oil-caked jeans, singing, under his breath, “Getcher motor ruh-nin, headout onna highway…” He’s slouched way down in his seat, with his blue Beatle boots propped against the back of the chair in front of him, his arms slung high up over the desk top like he’s straddling a cool chopped hog fuelled and vibrating with sheer anticipation – a Harley-Davidson ’59 DuoGlide with mile-high custom handlebars and a low-rider seat over a flaming gas tank – tearing a strip down the tarmac.…

  FUCK pulls over to prop the bike up on a hill overlooking a playground by the side of the highway. Up at a window, an imprisoned schoolboy is watching him: poor Robbie Bookbinder wishing he, too, were out here enjoying the smells of the roasted earth and the bike’s ticking hot engine. FUCK crooks one finger at a sullen-looking girl with a face like a fieldmouse who’s refusing to join in an organized game of volleyball. What a bitchin’ split, ain’t she one hot mama. He swings her into his bucket seat and squeals off down the road. Robbie, meanwhile, has some trouble putting his gentler ache into words. He looks on longingly and considers how edible the surfaces of her must be. Sweet and bitter berries. He passes a hand over his chest and cups an imaginary breast. Closing his eyelids, slow and contented as a lion on a sunbaked rock, and wishing, wishing he could for once be possessed of the comfort he imagines sexiness gives a girl. And when he opens them again, there’s M. Nul smiling behind his beard. And the whole class is looking too, among them the impeccably neat Nono, sporting a nifty pair of mustard double-knit slacks and a case of acne like an all-dressed pizza; Pharte, with four eyes and a spine so straight you’d think his bowels were rock hard from end to end – who plays, it is rumoured, le soccer all alone with his mother after school; and Boniface, as skinny as a praying mantis, poised above his test paper like he’s saying grace before gobbling the baby answers alive. Robbie shoots glares all around, like, what is this? I honestly cannot relate! What have you geeks got that makes you so damn superior?

  At lunch he went to the neighbourhood dépanneur run by les p’tits juifs, which means the little Jews; they were very little, indeed, the old man and his wife – when they reached their hands over the counter for money, their tattooed wrists slipped out from their sleeves, and that made all the pepsis smirk.

  There are winter days in Montreal so cold you can crack the air over your knee. Robbie frequently split at lunch hour, insulating himself as he did now, by chug-a-lugging three or four stubbies of Champlain porter as he circled the block, duh-dumming heavy nose guitar solos under his visible breath, knapsack clinking in rhythm with his step. When this time the bell finally rang, he was affectionately writing Ivy’s name across a snowbank in hot, steaming pee.

  The art room was six storeys up, in the old building’s attic. He pushed through the clot of students, raced up the twisting stairwell, and hid in an upstairs can. Well, what was the point of sitting at his desk, now? His fingers were so numb he could barely fish out his little hardened weenie (Ivy’s name being so short he’d returned with a still chilled and swollen bladder), let alone hold a pen in class. He snuck up two more flights to the uppermost landing. From so high the clatter of the classrooms sounded remote. His rock ’n’ roll heels were loud on the creaking wooden floor, and left coins of slush behind him. He crouched, listening to doors close, one by one. He felt like a lurking young ghost, a poltergeist from some earlier century’s educational system; the victim of one brutal thrashing too many, doomed to wail over an eternally stinging bottom.

  The attic door was locked. He knocked and waited. Ivy opened it a crack.

  “Come into my parlour,” she whispered.

  “Too much,” Robbie whispered back.

  “I’m wasting my time in English class, so they let me. Like I said, being smart is an incredible excuse to be bad.”

  “Far out. I’m gonna tell ’em as far as English, eh, tests and that equal a ditto waste for me, too.”

  She locked the door. “Come see.”

  She h
ad spread a large sheet of cloth over a table and, copying from a book, was well into an intricate design; an interlacing of tendrils and bunches of fruit and flowers – mango, pomegranate, banana, hibiscus – populated by a variety of beasts.

  “It’s batik,” she said. “Lookit. In Indonesia they use metal printing blocks, but if you’re a purist, like me, you use this.”

  She held up a wooden-handled tool with a small copper vessel at the end, pointed like the nib of a busted fountain pen. The vessel was hinged with a simple copper tab and filled with molten wax. Ivy demonstrated, pulling back the tab with her thumb and drawing the vessel carefully across a length of half-finished cloth; she left a shimmering snail’s trail of wax that dulled as it sank in and dried. “Then you dunk it in the dye. Colour by colour. The dark colours, like indigo, they go on last. Finally you boil off the wax. Up comes the pattern, like magic.”

  “Like an Easter egg,” Robbie said. “Far-out smell. First thing I noticed about you.”

  Ivy frowned at her design. “Beeswax and paraffin, from Sumatra. It’s imported specially. There’s a company.… Look how when you crack the wax like this the dye seeps in and makes a marbly effect. This is supit urang, which is pincers of the lobster. See. Here’s a peacock. Here’s a phoenix – “

  “You should add a TV set, and some hockey sticks. That would make it a truly Canadian work of art.”

  “ – and a kala mask. It’s supposed to look like a lion.” She stopped to glare at him. “You’re right, I’m useless. I bet you could do a better job.”

  He hooked his chin over her shoulder. “No,” he said. “It’s really well done.”

  “God,” she said, shrugging him off. “I hate when people watch me. So quit. Lookit, there’s paper and pencils in the drawers over there. Why don’t you do something for yourself?”

  “K, I’ll draw you.”

  “I’ll kill if you try.”

  He laid out several sheets and sharpened a pencil. While she worked he sat poised, looking her over, following the curves of her, weighing the air around her.