Kicking Tomorrow
Page 35
Across the hall now, he saw an entourage, a ragged, spangled rock group hauling luggage and loudly looking for the bar. They were wrapped up in scarves, dark glasses, dusters, and heavy campaign coats. One of them yawned, slipping out a great green tongue from his grey face: the weariness of a man in the saddle way too long. These dusty, aging ghosts of groove, Robbie thought. These skeletal freaks. This cool clique. Vampires eternally wandering the earth, shuffling through airports, thriving on spectral neon light, using people up, cursed by the reputation of their youth. Their clothes had that faded lustre of the 70s pop-aristocracy – Moroccan, Victorian, psychedelic. What a crippling, lingering hangover, Robbie thought. Figures from the Invisible Decade. The Great Hangover. These wealthy misfits with their utter disregard for anything. Across the way, Spit Swagger and Bile were putting their booted feet on the glass tabletops of the airport lounge, throwing lit cigarettes at one another, roaring over dried-out in-jokes, showing tombstone teeth, carrying casual to an extreme, and Jerusalem Slim was flirting with the waitress by pulling on her apron strings. This strangely knotted family tree of drug dealers, assistants, hip travelling maids, hangers-on with trans-European accents, amanuenses, biographers, reporters, and an exclusive, groovy old fraternity of chums that Keef must need at least as badly as they need him.
Then Robbie noticed a woman with them – a girl, really – in black lace and velvet, sorting out her belongings on the floor. She was transferring a jumble of books and tasseled, mirrored clothes into a flat cardboard box the airline had provided for her. She was just dumping the books – beautiful ones with satin moiré end-sheets, and fringed suede pagemarkers – in with everything else. She’d dragged a black broad-brimmed hat over her face. When she stood up again their eyes met at last, and Robbie’s heart clambered up his throat.
She looked startled, too. She stood up, blew her bangs off her eyes. Robbie hesitated, pulled a tight smile, took a step in her direction, his heart pumped up with air. Bile looked around in mid-grin, Spit Swagger, too. Keef gripped the girl’s arm in skeletal knuckles, but she wrenched herself free and stumbled forward over her baggage. Robbie stopped dead. He thought, –
Then turned on his heel, just like that. Abandoning himself. To his better instincts. And passed through the automatic doors into the fresh air and sunshine.
DANIEL RICHLER was born and raised in London, England, and spent his teenage years in Montreal. An award-winning multimedia journalist, Richler produced and co-hosted City TV’s The New Music, was Chief Arts correspondent for CBC’s The Journal, Creative Head of Arts for TVOntario, and executive-produced Imprint, Prisoners of Gravity, and Big Life. He is currently Editor-in-Chief/Supervising Producer of BookTelevision: The Channel and the host of The Word. This is his first novel. He lives in Toronto.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part II
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Part III
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
About the Author