Kicking Tomorrow

by Daniel Richler

  In class, Robbie orchestrated a pretty funny joke: he had all the kids put on their winter gear and sit nonchalantly at their desks with their pens in their mittens and their glasses on the outside of their balaclavas, and he opened all the windows to let the worst storm of the winter in. By the time M. Nul entered, there was a heap of snow on the teacher’s desk, papers were blowing all over, and everyone’s breath was visible. Thing was, M. Nul didn’t find it funny, for some unknown reason, and Robbie was out on his ear (three scumbags stooled on him at once).

  He didn’t exactly vandalize, but he did take out his frustration on things: Tuesday, he kicked his locker so hard the door refused to close afterwards; Wednesday, he watched a stray ember from a joint he was smoking tumble into the crease of one of the foam lounge chairs, and more or less deliberately allowed it to smoulder there; Thursday, he mistakenly broke a window with a grit-packed snowball, plus he spilled some 7-Up onto the blackboard eraser – just to see what would happen – and sort of accidentally turned it to rock; Friday, he misjudged his own strength and broke the fire alarm glass with his elbow, which emptied the school out onto the sidewalk. The director, M. Boutaric, called him to his office a second time, even though Robbie was the picture of innocence, and gave him a month’s worth of detentions topped off with the threat of expulsion if he didn’t reform. Which didn’t mean a whole lot to him anyhow. His mind was a heavy-duty organ grinder, full of spiked tunes, winding round and round and round. All teachers must die.

  Gaston, of course, had already been expelled, but he still haunted the area – there were at least three other schools in Outremont besides Blanchemains, and he sold ash and hacid to kids when the Dead Man’s Hands weren’t in sight. He looked like a real Cro-Magnon now, his face erupting with boils and scabby acne, his hair matted like horns; a grinning, smelly trafficker in souls. Worst of all, his elevated, if still inferior, status as a Devil’s Disciple had invested him with a cranked-up arrogance, and Robbie had to be as nice as could be. Except one time when he risked, “Gee, Gaston, do you keep your mouth open like that to catch your dinner? It’s January, dude, didn’tcha know – blackfly season’s not till May.” That’s when Gaston pulled a knife and pressed it to Robbie’s stomach and breathed in his face,

  “Ayy, parle français, maudit bloke,” and punched him in the breadbasket. Robbie didn’t fight back. Curiously, he felt sorry for Gaston – vaguely sorry – for if Ivy had in fact put him through the wringer as Rosie described, then in the most unexpected of ways, he and Robbie were buddies of a sort. And so, when a lousy seedy twiggy joint Robbie bought from him snapped like a firecracker under his nose, he didn’t even ask for a refund.

  Monday morning, by which time his memories of Ivy had already shrivelled in his guts like a bitter gallstone, and all the blacker because it was his birthday the next day, he found a note in his locker:

  i’m back. meet me after lunch?

  He spent the rest of the morning in a state of loose-bowelled consternation. He asked permission to pee, and toked up in the can. Now the desks in the classroom are bobbing about like a flotilla of life rafts. And here’s what the teacher sounds like in his ears: moombamoombaoom.

  After lunch, he grabbed his chance to sneak up to the attic, but M. Boutaric caught him in the corridor before he even reached the stairs. For the next two hours, in the chilly gymnasium, he lisdessly followed the class, doing rubber-boned push-ups and indifferent, calamitous high-jumps, escaping finally between classes while M. Nul’s attention was engaged in admiring the showering boys.

  He charged down the corridors of the school, scrambled up the old staircase, knocked hard on the attic door with his fist, once, and barged right in. Ivy was there all right, with a bunch of little red boxes opened up on the table by the kerosene burner. But she wasn’t alone and she wasn’t exactly waiting for him: she was snarling and hissing like a polecat as he burst in, pummelling Gaston’s chest and trying to scratch his face; Gaston had his baggy-ass jeans halfway down to his knees, and his Devil’s Disciple colours emblazoned on his back. He was grappling with Ivy’s hips and dry-humping her, ignoring her ferocious scratches, and making a repugnant sound, something like a laugh.

  Robbie shouted, “Hey!”

  Gaston turned around, his grin dissolving. Ivy shoved him with a shriek. He fell backwards, tripped up by his dangling belt so heavy with keys, and banged the back of his head on the workbench, where Ivy had been doing her batik. He flopped stupidly on the floor and lay still.

  “God,” she said. “Fuck!” She was breathing rapidly, one overall strap off her shoulder. She blew the bangs off her forehead and looked at Robbie with a wild expression. Her cheeks were flushed, and her fists were clenched like she was holding a pair of grenades. Robbie was frozen to the spot. It had all happened in the space of two seconds. A dreadful thought flashed through his head: in two seconds, our lives are utterly changed. He went over to Gaston.

  “Chrissake,” he said. “What’ll we do?” He crouched down. Gaston was breathing. Robbie looked up at Ivy. “What happened? What happened?”

  “What do you think? He wanted my ass. He wanted my boxes. My stuff! God, he’s been waiting for me all this time.” She trembled violently. She was scraping her body with flattened palms, as if to scoop off muck. Now she was looking at Robbie as if he were a werewolf, too. Her mouth wobbled open, gasping for air, chewing feelings to make digestible words. “He snuck up here during lunch hour. I was expecting you, so I opened the door. He was decent at first, and I thought I could get rid of him if we talked. He said he wanted a hit. The goof. I thought that would take care of him for sure, especially if I gave him too much, but he did it himself, then he got horny on me. How disgusting!”

  “Chrissake, Ivy,” Robbie said again as she began stuffing boxes into her satchel. He shook his head. “This whole scene and everybody in it. Sometimes I feel like burning the entire fucken place down.”

  She turned around. They watched each other. Robbie stood up. He wished he hadn’t said that. They were on either side of Gaston’s body, like coyotes circling. Ivy looked crazed. Those wary eyes of hers, the fox in the grass.

  “Don’t dream it,” she said flatly. “Be it.”

  She knocked over the kerosene burner with the back of her hand. Just like that. Never taking her eyes off Robbie’s. The flame slithered across the tabletop like a blue snake spilled from a basket.

  “What’re you doing?” Robbie shouted. “Don’t be crazy!”

  “What’s wrong with crazy,” Ivy said. She stepped over Gaston, grabbed Robbie’s hand and hauled him out of the room. She locked the door from the outside, took Robbie’s hand again and pulled him into the little room across the landing. She kicked the door closed behind her, and slipped both straps off her shoulders. Then she was on him, biting his lip, pulling his ears, knocking their foreheads together. She was halfway between tears and giggling. She kicked Robbie in the shins and said, “Come on!”

  Robbie dumbly obeyed, fumbling with his jeans, crouching to pull them down, fending off her kisses, trying to do everything at once. Ivy was shaking her head vigorously with her eyes closed, like someone needing desperately to pee. She dragged her dungarees down to her ankles and pulled him close to her. They plopped onto the coarse wood floor, clothes around them like straitjackets. Ivy parted her legs under Robbie, and speedily guided his wagging penis inside her. He was amazed how easily she swallowed him up. He pushed his nose to her breasts like bobbing for apples. With his groin he bounced up and down the way he thought he should, feeling ridiculous, but Ivy threw her hands on the floor above her head and whimpered. It was boiling hot in the room, and their bodies were slickening fast. Robbie kissed and kissed, expressing in kisses all the desperate, pure, unadulterated feelings he had ever had for her. He felt an orgasm rising in him, tried to suppress it. Ivy gripped his buttocks and pulled him in and out of her. He closed his eyes and held her slippery hips and felt the great swell suspend him, like a surfer coasting out on his boar
d for the mondo waves. He was plunging, plunging, his heels in the air behind him, defying gravity and all good sense, and as he ejaculated he moaned and heard Ivy whimper again in his ear, caressing both sides of his face at once, squeezing him to her chest. What, he thought, did she have an orgasm too, or is she just pleased that I did? He felt like he was being petted for having done something good. He opened his eyes to sneak a look, but in the early darkness of winter dusk, it was hard to see her face.

  “Happy birthday,” she said grimly. He looked up into her nostrils. Now she was sniffing the air. He sniffed too, and there was smoke. He pulled out of her. It was baking in this room. His skin seized up and crackled with fright. He stood up, switched on the light. Tendrils of smoke were creeping around the door.

  Stumbling back into their clothes. Ivy was the first out. Dark on the landing. Robbie fumbled for another light switch. Now they could see the haze of smoke, collecting above them in an angry restless ceiling; it was claustrophobic here, the attic was a hot lung hissing, and Robbie and Ivy were stuck to the floor, like in a nightmare. They could still see the stairs. He pushed her towards them, but she resisted. She pulled the art-room key from her pocket and inserted it in the lock. She put her hand on the brass doorknob to push the door open, but withdrew her hand with a scream.

  “So OK, fuck,” Robbie said, “let’s go, for Chrissake!”

  “No!” Ivy snapped. “Give me your parka. I want my stuff!”

  Robbie stripped it off again. Ivy wrapped it around the doorknob, twisted and pushed. Robbie helped her. The door opened almost two inches, but stopped. Something heavy was on the other side. They pushed again. It gave, a foot or two. The room was full of smoke. Fragments of carbon floated about like in zero gravity. As Ivy squeezed in there was a terrific whooshing sound. Robbie could feel air sucked into the room from behind him, and a great tentacled arm of fire scrabbled across the ceiling, reaching for them from the far side. The flames illuminated the room. They looked surreal and dry, thickened with smoke, boxed up in this room with the sloping eaves, like a set in an infernal theatre, the whoosh like the audience’s collective reaction as the safety curtain is lifted. And now he could also hear a fire alarm ringing distantly.

  That great flashover had singed his eyebrows and the top of his head, but it took him a moment to realize it; his body seethed with heat and fright, and when he reached up to wipe the sweat from his face he discovered his forehead was smooth and raw. Ivy, meanwhile, had swooned in the heat, and now lay prostrate, clutching her satchel under her. The smoke had almost filled the room, from the ceiling down, leaving five feet or so of penetrable, breathable air. He was nauseous. He kneeled down and crawled over to her, dragged her back out by her wrists. They were slimy as eels, slipping from his grasp. He grabbed her sleeves instead, and by the time they were out on the landing, he had pulled her Afghan coat over her head. He pulled the door shut to contain the flames. He started hauling her down the stairs, like a sack of potatoes, but the back of her head bumped on every stair, so he strapped the satchel around his neck, and lifted her up in his arms. Down the attic stairs now, into the darkened building and already sensing the cooler temperature of the lower corridors; past the director’s office, past the eerily empty classrooms and halfway down to the main entrance. There he met the first fireman, a giant in massive flapped armour, looming up out of the shadows, who grabbed Ivy and slung her over his shoulder. A second fireman did the same to Robbie. He squirmed as the blood rushed to his head. He felt stupid and childish. The world was upside-down and bouncing like a rubber ball. Out in the street the whole school was teeming. There were fire engines and squad cars with blue lights flashing, crowds of neighbourhood rubberneckers, and policemen making cordons. Robbie wanted all of them to know he was in control of this thing, he didn’t want to be seen coming out like this, like a child deserving of a spank. The fireman set him down at the back of an ambulance and wrapped a heavy blanket around him, and someone else slapped an oxygen mask on his face.

  “I’m OK, fuck,” he yelled, but no one understood him through the mask. The pure oxygen made his head swim. The air was swelling in front of him and popping, displaying for his enjoyment the elastic surface tension of enormous soap bubbles. He was shivering violently. He could feel his nerves and muscles slamming and shunting around, like tracks in a haywire train terminal. He looked up to watch the aerial blaze, the gables and wrought-iron trellises of the old school silhouetted against the stony sky like an antique fire grate. A colossal rope of bright smoke twisted heavenwards, fraying on high and weaving into the wind and clouds. Firemen were on ladders with their hoses; streams of water collected in titanic icicles on the building’s windowsills, filling up the gutters and freezing over the parking lot and sidewalks.

  He was grateful for the oxygen now, struck by how delicate his stomach and lungs must be, how paper-thin, how outraged. And now two policemen were guiding Ivy past him. She was trying to wrench her arms free, hissing and spitting. He caught only a glimpse as they put her in the ambulance; her hair was singed and shrivelled, and her face was wet and flecked with ash. She struck out with her elbows until she was allowed to stand on her own. Then she walked, without assistance, without a look to the left or the right, into the ambulance.

  Someone in a uniform bent down in front of Robbie, hands on knees, and said, “Qu’est-ce qu’y s’est passé, p’tit gars?”

  “Don’t ask me, man,” he replied. The tumult on the streets made an insulating wall of sound around him. He slapped his shoulder instinctively to ensure the satchel strap was there beneath the blanket. And then a lie came to him, a simple lie told in a moment of utter enervation, for which he could hardly take responsibility:

  “I was in the can, eh, when I heard screaming upstairs. So I went up to save her. Good thing, too. She was all alone and almost passed out. No one hurt? Too much, man. Quel miracle.”

  17

  HE OPENED THAT THIRD PACKAGE FROM MOM AFTER ALL. Kelp, bag of dried figs, bag of Jerusalem artichokes, some other useless junk labelled dulse. Chrissake. He read the letter. It was more hurried than ever, terse even, and no “Dear anything” at the top:

  Don’t improperly combine foods. Digestive j’s overworked. Food may be forced undigested into intestines. Animals don’t need Rolaids: in fact carnivores go for predigested veg. in victims’ stomachs first…

  He stopped. What was the point, this made him want to rowlf. There was another page, but forget it, she had obviously got her poo in a knot about that birthday business. He tossed it aside. What was the big deal. The country will be full of flowers in the spring, don’t you worry.

  Dolores’s leather-brown leg was nestled up between his thighs, and his warm erection was riding it like the pommel on a saddle.

  Rosie was shaking him. And there was someone banging on the door. He got up, resentfully. It was early – about one in the afternoon. Rosie leaned up on an elbow, squinted around, and rekindled a roach from the night before that lay beside a hardened blob of bubblegum on the bedside table.

  Two earnest-looking ladies stood to attention at the door, offering copies of The Watchtower and any amount of spiritual enlightenment for absolutely free, or a small contribution, if he wished.

  “Yeah, sure, step right inside,” Robbie said. “My friends are keen to learn, too.”

  He led them to the bedroom. It smelled heavily, muskily, of sleep and hash and Rosie’s patchouli body oil. A veil-thin canopy of smoke hung above the mattress. Rosie and Dolores were nuzzling in the sheets, Dolores curled up like a seahorse, Rosie hugging her from behind with her Medusa hair, all sharp-headed adders, a black nest between the pillows.

  The Watchtower women fled.

  Robbie returned to bed, and Rosie was asleep again. He stood by and watched them. He scratched his head, crusty-dry, as congealed and spiky as yesterday’s muddy cleats, and thought with satisfaction, They say when people cuddle in bed they’re like spoons, but we’re a drawerful of knives and forks. Then he fe
tched a pad and several sticks of charcoal, and sat cross-legged by the bed. The charcoal was loud against the paper. He sketched lightly, gently, so as not to wake them.

  He woke alone, with a full bladder and a dribbling, inflamed nose. His arms were burning, he had been scratching them in his sleep. He held them out above him, and there was a rash in blotches from his elbow to his fingers. What time was it, the middle of the night. He went to the toilet. Squinting in the light as he peed, what’s in the sink? Sea sponges. Rosie uses these because she refuses to get toxic shock from tampons. In the living room, he could hear her voice speaking low.

  Stealthily tiptoeing down the hall. He stood naked in the dark – holding his bag, his belly like a fireplace full of smouldering coals, as it struggled to digest the spicy souvlaki he punished himself with yesterday – to eavesdrop.

  “He won’t even touch me sometimes,” Rosie was saying. “I only ask for backrubs sometimes because my doctor says I have a pinched nerve, but Bob treats me like a leper.”

  “Ow long you been going togedder?” Dolores said.

  “Since last summer. St. Jean-Baptiste. We’ve seen each other almost every single day, but I don’t feel I’ve even scratched the surface, ’n I know he screws around. I don’t care about that too much, I guess, it’s just when he makes like I’m invisible. He’s worse than my Daddy, I think. The more freedom I give him the more he thinks I’m penning him in. We haven’t kissed in months. I’m doomed to compete with the ghost of sweet little Ivykins. Boy, did she ever do a number on him,” Rosie whispered, and maybe now she’s drying her eyes, Robbie can’t tell from around the corner.