Kicking Tomorrow

by Daniel Richler

  “Well,” Robbie said, cautiously, “what’s wrong with – doesn’t jealous mean I like you?”

  “It doesn’t mean a thing. Just that you want me all to yourself.”

  “But you hardly give me any of yourself.” Stating this plain truth gave Robbie’s heart a little electric shock. In the Bookbinder family, no one ever really fought – Mom said that families who fight all the time, and say it doesn’t mean anything, are also the ones that hug and say I love you without meaning it either – but the consequence of constant kindness for Robbie, he realized now as the distance yawned between him and Ivy, was that he was terrified any rift, no matter how small, would be irreparable. He knew that challenging her was as bad as admitting they were no good for each other.

  “I suppose I’ll have to spell it out for you,” Ivy said, sighing smoke in streams through her teeth. “Listen. Say we’re at a party and I’m talking to someone, would you be jealous?”

  “Uhh, no,” Robbie said, rubbing an eyelid.

  “And if I talked to this guy for a long time, would you try to stop me?”

  He bought time in his beer, biting the glass. Finally he replied, “Which guy? No, course not.”

  “And if I said I wanted to stay late because we were having a good conversation, would you stick around like a watchdog?”

  “Well, no…”

  “And then if I told you the next day that we had talked till five in the morning, would you be jealous?”

  “Uh, not if you hadn’t done nothing, no.”

  “Uh, not if you hadn’t done nothing, no,” Ivy mimicked, stubbing a butt out with the particular precision of a practised drunk, aiming at the ashtray from several inches up and bringing it down hard, like a pin representing the present position of her troops versus Robbie’s on a map of ash. “Well, that makes no sense at all.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if we had been fucking all night, which is what you’re worried about, this guy and I wouldn’t have a thing to show for it in the morning. But if we had talked all that time, we would have a real relationship, and that should give you much greater cause for jealousy. Look, Robbie, face it. You haven’t the slightest clue what love is. You just want to own me.”

  “No, I don’t,” Robbie said. But he was unsure about that. He knew it wasn’t – aum – to want to own – but wasn’t it better than – fuck, his head was a misery-go-round. He looked at his beer, flat now. “K, OK,” he mumbled. “You’re right. Of course. Sorry.”

  “God,” Ivy said, getting up again. “Roll yourself a cigarette while I get us a drink.”

  One thing Robbie had learned quickly enough about Ivy was that whenever she suggested going downtown for a drink, you didn’t go for just a drink. You went for all the drinks. Life will be convulsive, remember? So, when eventually Ivy returned from the bar with burning cheeks and said, “Rockhead told me personally there’s no more drinks,” he had to dumbly follow her out to find some elsewhere.

  He followed her to L’Enfer Strip, down in the disco zone between Bishop and Peel. He’d seen it from the outside often enough before, driving past with the family on the way to the Champlain bridge. He’d seen the entrance, on which were painted several crude nudes prodded at by devils in a pit of flames, and steamily wondered about its real contents all the way to the Townships.

  “You know some people here?” he said, stamping snow off his boots. “Gee. Looks warm inside, at least.”

  It was so warm inside that most of the girls in the place weren’t even wearing clothes. At least ten of them were standing on tabletops and boxes, nude as you please but for the strapped and stilettoed shoes they perched on. They were all up to their thighs in whooping men, and on the chrome-topped stage three were insinuating a ménage-à-trois to a throbbing disco rhythm. The whooping men were folding dollar bills lengthwise, and gingerly inserting them between the dancers’ knees, and if a dancer was still wearing some thread of clothing, that’s where the bill got tucked. The dancers harvested the bills with their long fingernails and slipped them between their fingers, building Spanish fans of money. With their hands splayed out like that, and the shadowy men all jerking about at their feet, they looked to Robbie like weird, nude puppeteers.

  Scotch-taped to the walls were Bosom Buddies centrefolds. He averted his eyes from them, like old friends you don’t want to admit having ever associated with. Beneath an illuminated plastic Molson clock there hung a Businessman’s Lunch-Special menu. Above the stage a banner was strung that read in glitter-glue letters:

  TITS FOR TOTS

  X-MAS CELEBRITY STRIP-A-THON

  and everywhere, instructions written on white cards in fat magic marker:

  DO NOT TOUCH THE DANCERS

  DO NOT ASK FOR THE DANCERS PHONE #

  THE DANCER’S CANNOT LINGRE AT YR TABLE

  TIPS ARE NOT INCL IN THE PRICE OF ALCOOL

  NO SPITING OR SWARING

  THE MORE U PAY HER THE MORE SHEL’L SHOW U

  YOU MUST DRINK TO SIT AT THE TABLE

  THERE IS NO WALKING ROUND WITH DRINKS

  NO COVER CHARGE

  TIPING IS NOT A CITY IN CHINA

  It was worse than school.

  Now there was a ruckus at the lip of the stage, and suddenly three bouncers were roughly ejecting a man with several cameras around his neck. They dragged him shouting past Robbie and Ivy and threw him through the swinging doors. Robbie cringed at the thought of all that equipment scraping on the icy sidewalk. “I’m PRESS,” the photographer was protesting. “You have no RIGHT.”

  “J’t’ai averti,” one bouncer hollered as the other kicked the fallen man’s feet out from blocking the door, “Not de hathletes!” Then, extending a heavily tattooed hand and forearm, he kissed Ivy’s fingers and courteously led her and Robbie to a table at the back of the room beneath the Molson clock. Robbie fished in his pocket for a tip, but the bouncer waved him off.

  “And a-nowww, ladies an GENNELmen, mesdames ET messieurs,” the emcee announced with the fluency of a racetrack commentator, but with the sort of sleazy innuendo that would not have been appropriate for horses, “veuillez bien réclamer pul-ease welcome all de way from Shawinigan Québec de lovely la CHARrrmante… Chastity CHURCH!”

  Robbie felt weird about the gratuitous biographical detail the emcee felt everybody should know about Chastity Church – that she came from somewhere called Shawinigan – as if anybody cared! The expression, ‘wearing nothing but your birthday suit,’ entered his head and he considered that, while most performers are introduced by way of their childhood origin, it was pretty disturbing to even consider that these ones, spreading their thighs and yanking their pubic hair aside to demonstrate their inner genitalia for this whooping gang of men, had ever been born like regular little girls, anywhere.

  Chastity Church, from Shawinigan, burst out of the dressing room over to the stage, bumping into tables. And ouch! it looked like she gave herself a real bruise banging against the fin of that jukebox. She stood over it, rubbing her thigh, made a selection, thumped it into life, and tottered up the stairs to the stage. She was dressed in a bishop’s outfit, like a bizarre black chesspiece – chasuble, maniple, tunicle, the whole kit and kaboodle, all black, plus a satin biretta on her head mounted with little electric jewels, and a plastic light-up Virgin Mary. She held a black crosier in one hand, the coiled frond wound around with Xmas tinsel, and a Bible in the other, with which she bonked the heads of the men in the first row.

  The emcee began to auction off Chastity’s clothes, item by item, as she slipped them off in a dance of the seven cassocks. The response from the crowd was half-hearted, Robbie would even have said cowed; her black alb went for only a dollar, the chasuble too, the frock for not much more. But when she got down to her Merry Widow the place went wild. One black stocking went for fifty dollars, the other for eighty, and when the winners stood up to twirl them above their heads like windsocks, flashbulbs went off. And there, Robbie saw, down by the stage, looking bemuse
d but not at all involved, Olly Mills in a dark grey suit, arms folded, smiling coolly, sweeping his eyes around the room, like a man with shark’s sonar. He stopped at Robbie – or was it only Ivy he recognized? – nodded, or maybe not, and continued sweeping, real smooth. Robbie wished he could be so smooth – to stand like that, crotch-high to a carnal vampire priestess unpeeling her stockings, and not bat an eyelid, cool as death!

  “K, let me guess,” Robbie shouted into Ivy’s ear. “Olly’s the boss here, right?”

  “Not at all,” Ivy shouted back, jabbing him with her elbow. “He owns the place.”

  Meanwhile, the elbow-length gloves went for a hundred dollars each, and when Chastity pulled off her black panties and ceremoniously crowned the top bidder with them, more cameras flashed. Finally, the corset. Whoops went up as the price escalated, and at last the emcee announced, “… GONE! Sold for two hundred fifty dollar to our fameux gardien de but de goalie number TIRTYTWO ladies an GENNELmen remember no photographs pas de photos S’IL VOUS PLAIT.” And sure enough, there was another face that even Robbie, to whom sports were of unbelievably small interest, recognized. And when she awarded him her final stitch, he gave her nude body a bearhug that the bouncers didn’t intercept. When he released her, she straightened out her headgear and walked right off the stage – she simply stepped out into the darkness and was gone. The room exploded with laughter. All the men in the room stood up to get a better look and thrust their beers into the air and whooped. Robbie couldn’t see over their heads, but by the time they sat down, Olly was guiding Chastity by the arm back to the dressing room.

  “C’mon, let’s go say hi,” Ivy said, and got up without waiting for him. Robbie followed her faithfully, and following her like that, backstage, in front of all these people, made it necessary for him to act extremely cool: he tossed his long hair behind his shoulders, wove around chairs smoothly like a wolf around trees, tucked his thumbs into the pockets of his hipsters, surveyed the room coolly, read the signs and assessed the Scotch-taped centrefolds with amplified boredom, and sniffed vigorously, wrinkling his nose, like he had just been out in an alley snorting heavy amounts of cocaine.

  The dressing room was drab, smoky, cramped, and, he judged by the frost at the tiny window, would have been cold, too, if it weren’t for all the hot bodies in there. There were reporters, hockey players, some heavy-looking guys with beards and greasy jean jackets, Olly with Ivy in tow, plus five girls sitting at the bulbed mirror, chatting in French as they applied sequins and makeup. And in the middle of the room, Chastity, enthusiastically displaying the bruises on her thighs for a photographer.

  Robbie watched Olly from the corner of his eye, as the cool smooth guy massaged the shoulders of a stripper, whispering a cool joke in her ear and making her shriek rudely. When he winked back at Robbie in the mirror, Robbie took his big plunge.

  “Hey, oh, Mr. Olly. Um, I was wondering -”

  Olly smiled and held out his hand. Robbie was taken aback. Should he shake the hand in the conventional fashion? Or should he do it the cool way, hooking thumbs? He chose the formal option, out of deference, really, but Olly had stuck out his thumb, and Robbie ended up grasping it like a child will grasp his daddy’s as they prepare to cross a busy street. Olly pulled away, swatting the air with something between amusement and irritation.

  “ – I was wondering. You ever hear of a guy called Gaston? Gaston Goupil, pimply dork. Goes to Blanchemains with Ivy and me?”

  Olly smiled indulgently and shook his head. “No-o.… He steal your tuque in the playground, Robbie?”

  “Well, not exactly. I’m only mentioning this by the way ’cause of how he hits on Ivy all the time, eh. I can take care of myself of course, but I can’t always be with her, you know.”

  Olly put his arm around Robbie’s shoulders. Robbie caught their reflection, and Olly was almost twice as big as him. Two of the strippers bumped heads together, giggling as they checked him out in the bright mirror. His gaze darted to the floor. There, at their feet under the makeup counter (five pairs of bare ankles, high heels and shoe-straps, one lost garter) he saw a brown paper bag lurking on its side, darkened at the bottom by some viscous liquid that had pooled stickily onto the linoleum.

  “Tell you what,” Olly murmured, winking at the girls. “You don’t worry no more about Gaston, OK? Just go have fun with my sister. OK?”

  “Yeah,” said Robbie, pulling his lips down firmly in confirmation, pleased that he was party to an understanding. Whatever that understanding was. “Yeah, whatever you say. K, thanks. OK.” They shook hands. He turned, bolstered, to Ivy, who frowned. “Chrissake,” he said, pointing under the counter. “We know what this is.” He opened it with the toe of his Beatle boot. Inside were several dead, blood-bloated mice. “Blecch. Just like Keef,” he said grimly.

  “God. I told you that haemorrhage thing’s just a rumour,” Ivy replied. “Right, Olly? Didn’t the Bones just keep him on ice like Walt Disney until their career took a nosedive and they had to thaw him out?”

  Olly smiled his cool avuncular smile as if to say, who’ll ever really know, and isn’t it cooler not knowing?

  But Chastity got Robbie’s real point. “Gross, isn’t it? Some of us want to get a union together, you know.” She said this with a steely look in Olly’s direction. “But the girls get so scared it’s hard to organize.”

  Emboldened, thrilled to be talking to a stripper, Robbie heard himself say, so maturely, so gallantly, “Scared of what? Why not get the hockey players to pick up the cause. Everyone out there thought you were great.”

  Chastity beamed at him. She told him all about the hypocrisy of family entertainers, and sportsmen and businessmen and politicians who go for the lunch specials but never ‘fess to their wives, and the scum-bucket bikers who run the club really are scary, and Robbie was seized with pleasure because up until then he had been sure his innocence was peeking out like a soft pink baby’s bottom for all the girls to see. Now he was like a reporter – intervening on their behalf, scratching his chin, super-concerned, just like Mom on TV, saying somebody really should do something about all of this, noting the rusty nails in the wall where their clothes hung, the frosted window too high up to look out of, the lack of a private toilet – only barely aware now of Olly’s thinning smile, and the fact that Ivy was in the corner and having a demonic sulk.

  By the time Robbie shook Chastity’s hand, she had been standing around nude for so long that it began to look like a nude outfit, not real nudity at all, and when he took the hand it felt weird, like a glove, a glove of flesh.

  “So!” she said. “You know the Millses, I guess. Boy, I can tell so MUCH about a person by the company they keep – I mean, I believe in reincarnation, but I still think it’s the quality of your life that counts, eh, not the quantity! Just call me Rosie.”

  Out in the street two minutes later, Robbie slipped over the ice, calling after Ivy, “Whaddido, whaddido!”

  She stopped and hissed, “I never want you going to that club again.”

  “But why?”

  “If I have to explain it to you, then that’s double reason why you shouldn’t go.” She walked away fast.

  “Are you jealous?” Robbie shouted out, unable to conceal his joy, but she didn’t answer. She stomped on, leaving him in her hot visible breath, disappearing several blocks later, near Ste-Catherine and Tower, through a cracked glass door marked Judy’s Bar. At first he didn’t follow her in, but leaned against the cinder-brick wall, picking at the weathered posters glued there, asking himself if he’d not be better to just go home. By the time he gave in, Ivy had already selected a table and was rolling another cigarette.

  “Want one?” she said, all natural and nice, as if nothing had ever passed between them.

  Robbie nodded, guessing she was pleased he had chased her so hard – that he had exhibited a sufficient amount of grovelling. He sat there panting like a whipped, resentful, but still faithful hound-dog, and hated himself for not just walking
out on her.

  “Look around you,” she said confidentially, and he was grateful for the distraction. “Entire alcoholic families drink here.”

  He looked around. Elbows on their knees like marathon chess players, the families clustered around cathedrals of glasses on small, circular tables.

  “Look at their incredible faces,” Ivy whispered. “Like convicts transported to Australia, plotting. You’re an idiot if you don’t draw them one of these days.”

  A dented jukebox played Elvis records, so worn out that the scratches were louder than the music – shredded music, thought Robbie foggily – and couples, threesomes, foursomes, held each other up on the chipped-tile dance floor – blood-spattered like a butcher’s shop – chewing butts like gum. Their cigarette breath burned his eyes. He could hardly see them for the haze. Ghosts going up in smoke.

  Ivy said, “Look. They Shoot Horses Don’t They?”

  “They shoot what?” Robbie said, filled with weariness suddenly. “And how do you know they’re alcoholics?”

  Ivy blew her bangs up off her forehead. “I met some of them at AA, if you must know.”

  “You know these people?”

  “Well, I took the mother.” She raised her glass to her lips and drained it, watching Robbie over the rim with the alertness of a fox in the tall grass, as if, with her arm raised like that, she knew her soft neck and belly were rendered vulnerable to attack. She set the glass down and said, “Please stop thinking up questions about me. My life is boring. I have no stories to tell. Listen, I was reading Sartre. He’s incredible. I wish I lived with him. He said that setting yourself at the centre of your own life story is like trying to catch time by the tail. He hated all the bourgeois getting drunk, and swooning over saxophone solos, like it was some soundtrack to a movie about them. He said, Only idiots find consolation in the arts.”

  “Right,” Robbie said. “Like people who go drippy when they listen to the HeeBeeGeeBees. Heh heh.”