Chump Change

by David Eddie

  “I have an idea! Why don’t we take in a show? I love the theatre!”

  “O.K.” I said. “Let me treat this time.”

  I was bluffing. At this point, I was down to about $75. Two theatre tickets would ruin me, bring my house-of-cards financial empire down in a clattering heap. I’d have to create some sort of distraction at the last moment, suddenly remember another appointment, something like that.

  “There’s a matinée of Les Miz in Concert at Skydome. How would you like to see that? They sell tickets right here at the O’Keefe Centre.”

  As we approached the ticket window, I started rehearsing my excuses. Oh, damn, Kim, I almost forgot, I have a meeting with a prominent editor at exactly —

  “Don’t worry, it’s my treat,” she said, seeming to read my mind. “I’ll buy the tickets. After all, I invited you.”

  Les Miz in Concert turned out to be a medley of the songs from the musical extravaganza Les Miserables. Just the songs, sans the story in between. It was horrible, incomprehensible, an utterly empty cultural experience. This is what theatre has come to? I thought, watching it. What had the tickets cost for this travesty? We had fairly good seats, 20th row centre, but we wound up watching the whole thing on the Jumbotron, like everyone else. It was too hard to watch the tiny human beings onstage, strutting around with their microphones like little trained chihuahuas, when you could see them three stories high on the TV screen behind and above the stage.

  It was a warm day, and the roof of Skydome was open. I looked up at the CN Tower, looming over us all like a giant pointy penis. Sorry to use such an obvious simile, but after Les’s torments that’s how it seemed to me: like a big dick and Skydome, at its base, was its single, swollen, herniated testicle. Yes, and all of us, everyone inside, the “fans,” we’re the sperm, waiting to be shot into the sky. Doomed, all of us, like sperm, (except maybe one or two) to lead short, fruitless lives.

  Sorry, but I was bored, and when I’m bored my mind tends to wander, mostly down unpleasant alleys. I looked over at Kim. She was enraptured, gazing at the stage, her eyes moist with appreciation, lips slightly parted in amazement at the spectacle taking place before her. Once in a while, a pointy pink tongue peeked out of her mouth, brushed her lips. Her lips were full, red, her hair glossy, rich and oily, blackest of black. She sat erect, alert, her breasts thrust in front of her, heavy yet light, defying gravity. Her clavicles, her cleavage, all coated in this soft-looking, yellowed-ivory skin.

  Suddenly she became aware of my gaze, turned her head and looked over at me inquiringly.

  “Kim,” I said, “I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  She smiled a Mona Lisa smile, then turned her attention back to the action onstage.

  Afterwards, we went back to Palmerston together for a drink. Nothing much happened there, except I had sex with her.

  Yes, I finally got laid, and it was a tremendous relief, I admit, after Les’s torments. However, the experience itself wasn’t anything to write home about.

  We sat outside, in the backyard, sipping glasses of wine. It was a warm day, flies and bees buzzing around, and eventually Kim said:

  “Oh, Mr. Henry, I’m sleepy. I’m not so used to drinking in the afternoon. Do you mind if I take a nap here?”

  “O.K.” I said.

  I took her up to my crazy tilted room with the cheesy wallpaper. There go any final illusions she may have about me as a successful writer, I thought.

  But Kim hardly seemed to notice her surroundings. She crawled into bed fully clothed, shoes and all. I pulled the shade. I sat on the edge of the bed, and we talked for a while longer in the crepuscular gloom. Eventually, I got up.

  “O.K., Kim. Have a good nap,” I said, with my hand on the doorknob.

  There was a pause. Then her voice floated up from the semi-darkness.

  “Mr. Henry?”

  “Yes?”

  “Aren’t you going to join me?”

  I was right about one thing. Kim’s underwear was complicated, but not in a good way. Sweating and grunting in the semi-darkness, I wrestled with her underthings, tugging and pulling. Something was wrong, things were attached to places they shouldn’t have been. Kim lay silent, like a sack of potatoes, waiting for me to figure it out. Finally, I got to the source of it: she not only wore her panties over her stockings, but they were pinned together, for some reason. Finally, with a heroic effort, I got it all off.

  My eyes were getting used to the darkness. I looked at her body, naked now. Her breasts were beautiful, as I imagined; big, pointy, low and heavy on the ribcage, tipped with beautiful brown nipples. But a couple of wiry hairs made their way to the area around her nipples, and she also had a furrow of hair from her bellybutton down to her quite hirsute merkin. She couldn’t help these details, of course, but neither could I help it if they turned me off a bit.

  Still, I soldiered on in the usual fashion, kneading her breasts, nibbling on her neck. I tried to stick my tongue down her throat, but she would have none of that.

  “No, Mr. Henry, let me show you,” she said. She pressed her tightly closed lips against mine, lightly, several times. “Like a butterfly, see?”

  We kissed like that for a while. It wasn’t very erotic, true, but it was sort of an O.K. sensation. What the hell, when in Rome. She seemed to like it. I tried to slip my hand between her legs but she wasn’t going for that. She kept them tightly closed, like a vice, and stared at me with frightened eyes every time I tried.

  Finally, I managed to work my hand in there. To my surprise, she had a burning Krakatoa between her thighs. Is that what she was trying to hide, I wondered, and, if so, why?

  Suddenly, I just wanted to get it over with. I was getting tired of looking at her face, the actressy surprise, so I nudged her a bit, then flipped her over, stuck it in from behind.

  Gripping her butt, I thought: Lord, this is dull. I moved it back and forth. Kim seemed to go into a sort of frenzy, tossing her head from side to side, clutching and clawing at the pillow, all in dead silence. It seemed phony, rehearsed, learned from a movie, but that didn’t stop me from finally becoming turned on. I gave her a few strokes and felt myself about to come. Not inside her! a voice commanded, so I pulled it out and shot it on her back and hair; a few pearly drops even glistened on the wall above her head. As I say, it had been a while.

  “I’d better get some toilet paper,” I said, getting up. I went to the bathroom, came back with the toilet paper, wiped her — and the wall — off. Just at that moment, a key turned in the lock downstairs.

  Kim sat up, startled.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Oh, it’s my roommate, Max. He’s just getting home from work.”

  In a flash, Kim was out of the sack, pulling on her things.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I must go, Mr. Henry.”

  “Why?”

  “I must, I must.”

  She seemed on the verge of tears.

  “Anybody home?” Max called from downstairs. Kim threw open the window and stuck a leg through it.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I must leave, Mr. Henry.”

  I watched in amazement as Kim, in her cocktail-party get-up, scurried down the fire escape and scuttled into the alley and was off.

  “Anyone home?” Max asked again.

  “Upstairs,” I said.

  Max strode up the stairs, two at a time, and poked his head in. He sniffed the air, suspicious.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Just taking a bit of a nap,” I said.

  His eyes narrowed. He looked around. Finally, he withdrew.

  And in the end, the lie became a truth. Anyway, I took a nap.

  I knew from the start it was wrong, foolish, perhaps even bad karma to continue seeing Kim. We had nothing in common. I wasn’t really attracted to her; in fact, she got on my nerves. At first, I tried to do it the cowardly way, I screened her calls, then didn’t call her back
, assuming she’d get the hint. But Kim was not a hint-getter. She took to dropping by unannounced at lunch-time, with a bag from McDonald’s in her hands. I’d be sitting at my desk, writing, and there would be a tap-tap-tap at the window, there she’d be, in full cocktail gear, staring up at me crazily.

  “What are you doing? Are you writing? Can I come in, Mr. Henry?”

  We’d eat lunch, outside or in the kitchen, then repair to the living room. She’d make a grab for my zipper, then fish out my dick.

  “Ooh, it’s so BIG, Mr. Henry,” Kim would say.

  I’ve never had any illusions, it’s average, but of course His Royal Highness was mightily flattered. These types of compliments go straight to His head, and the next thing you knew I would find myself wrestling with the Chinese puzzle of her underthings. “The stiff prick has no conscience,” as someone once said — but actually, through almost yogic self-control and a lifelong habit of thrice-daily masturbation, I’ve found I can pretty much do the right thing with a lazy-on, a half-chubby; even, half the time, with a full-bore erection. But when it starts to drool, forget it, all bets are off, I’ll skateboard over the blazing corpse of my grandmother to achieve my goal, to get my prize. Most men are the same that way, I believe.

  Once, I woke up to see Kim standing at the foot of my bed, in white dress, white pumps, Joan Collins shades, and McDonald’s bag. I looked at the clock: 8:30 a.m. I blinked, shook my head, but she was still standing there. It was no dream.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s time to get up, Mr. Henry. I brought you breakfast.”

  She sat down on the side of the bed, watched me eat my Egg McMuffin, Tater Tot, sip my coffee. After a while, she reached over, started kneading my Johnson through the bedclothes. I pulled her towards me, she gave me a couple of her patented butterfly kisses, then pulled back.

  “Not now, Mr. Henry. Morning is the time for work.”

  I tried to pull her towards me again but again she resisted. Finally I laid back, gave up. Then she started kneading my member yet again. So, of course, I tried to pull her towards me, and again she pulled back.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I finally spluttered.

  “You must use that energy for writing, Mr. Henry. Later, if you work hard, you can get your reward.”

  Ah, so that was it. The old “jism-conservation” school of literature, a theory particularly popular among Orientals, in my experience. My old grad-school friend, “Stan,” Chinese-Canadian, subscribed to the same school of thought. He wanted to be a writer, too. Sometimes I’d come over to his little cubicle apartment to pick him up for class. He’d open the door, half-dressed; in the background, a woman would be sprawled on his pull-out bed.

  “There goes another short story, Dave,” he’d say.

  “Kim,” I said, trying to pull her to me. “You know what I’m doing all day, sitting at my desk? Writing letters. That’s not going to make me rich, or famous, or anything.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Now, you write letters. Later, maybe you will write something bigger.”

  I knew almost nothing about her. I never saw her apartment, never met any of her friends. One day, I found out I didn’t even really know her name.

  We were heading out of the house one afternoon, after having sex. I wanted to buy some cigarettes. On the way to the variety store, Kim said: “This is Koreatown, Mr. Henry. You better watch out you don’t double-cross me. I know everyone in this area, the stores and restaurants are my eyes and ears. If you try to go out with some other woman, some big blonde girl, I will find out about it right away.”

  As if to illustrate her point, the man behind the counter in the variety store, always impassive and taciturn with me, greeted her warmly. They chewed the fat in Korean while I flipped through magazines. I scored the smokes, then as we were leaving the guy behind the counter said: “See you later, Gloria.”

  “Gloria?” I asked her, outside. “I thought your name was Kim.”

  She shrugged.

  “Kim or Gloria…whatever.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She stopped in the street.

  “Look, Mr. Henry. My Korean name is —” Here she said something impossible to render in English syllables. Her mouth worked like it had a harmonica in it, and emitted a similar range of tones. “But in English it’s Kim, or Gloria, whichever you prefer.”

  I thought about this a moment.

  “Well, I guess I prefer Kim.”

  None of my friends ever met her. Max never saw her, she always scooted off before he got home. I never saw her at night, come to think of it; perhaps she was some sort of Oriental reverse Dracula. Sometimes I played Max her telephone messages to prove Kim wasn’t just a product of my overheated imagination.

  Oh, one friend met her: Doug Seltzer. I knew him through Elliott Zimmerman, a friend from journalism school (my second M.A.). One day, Doug and I were out back at Palmerston playing “drink-pong.” You put your gin-and-tonic or whatever on the corner of the table and if the other guy hits it, it’s his point, and you have to down the contents. If you knock it over, you have to go make another drink. Suddenly, the Oriental Joan Collins appears from the laneway.

  “Oh, Mr. Henry,” she said. “I didn’t realize you had a guest.”

  She retreated. From the shadows of the laneway I heard her say: “Can I speak to you a moment, Mr. Henry?” I put down my ping-pong bat, headed into the laneway, where I found her fishing in her purse.

  “I just wanted to give you this,” she said, handing me two $20s.

  “What for?”

  “I think you need it.”

  The odd thing was, she was 100 percent right. That day, I’d spent my last cent, the last vestige of my advance from This Land of Ours. At first, I pretended to refuse, but then I thanked her and put it in my pocket. She gave me a “butterfly” kiss, and took off, promising to phone me later.

  Doug looked like he’d seen a UFO.

  “Who was that?”

  “I’m sort of seeing her,” I said. “Her name’s Kim, or Gloria, whichever you prefer.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  I explained. This took a bit of time.

  “Why is she wearing a cocktail dress in the middle of the day?”

  “I’m not sure. She’s not from an escort service, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Dave, if she was from an escort service I don’t think she’d be giving you money.” I still had the $40 in my hand. “Anyway, forget it. My serve.”

  Then one day she went too far.

  We were sitting in the backyard and Kim was talking, I had no idea about what, I had a hangover, I was tired, I wasn’t really listening. I sat slumped in my chair, half-dozing behind my Armani shade-attachments, sometimes burning myself awake as the end of my cigarette touched my naked leg.

  Then she said something that made me prick up my ears.

  “You know, Mr. Henry, sometimes I just want to shut you in my apartment, lock all the doors and windows, and keep you there, like a pet.”

  I sat up straight. A little voice said: do it now.

  “Kim, I just don’t think this is working out.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think we should see each other any more. I’m sorry. I think we should be just friends from now on.”

  At first, she didn’t understand, or pretended not to. Then she seemed to take it as a joke. Finally, something in my tone made her take me seriously and she became angry.

  “You fool, Mr. Henry! I could have made you famous, a famous writer! But you love everybody, you go out all the time. Without me, you will always be nobody.”

  Maybe so, I thought. But right now this “nobody” wants nothing to do with you. A one-sided argument ensued, she battered me with hail-balls of anger, but I kept up my cold front. Finally she cracked, realized it was over, that there was no point. She stood up and stalked out of the backyard. Not without a parting blow, though. />
  “You were a rousy ruvver, anyway.”

  I’m not trying to make fun of her accent or her ethnicity, believe me. But that’s how she said it, that’s how I remember it, and so that’s how I pass it along to you.

  12

  The Rent-Day Miracle

  Nothing but letters. Try as I might, that’s all I could write. I was intimidated, I guess. Supreme Court judges read This Land of Ours, cabinet ministers read it — the prime minister himself probably read it. Who was I to pontificate to them on the topic of Toronto?

  So I’d take a little break, write a letter. Who was it who said: “If you want to get a flow going, first write a letter to someone you love.” Rilke, maybe. I’d write a letter and the pages would come flowing out. It was like dropping an axe into the ground and hitting a geyser of oil.

  And that’s how I put the final nail in the coffin of my relationship with Ruth. I wrote a letter to our mutual grad-school friend Jennifer in Montreal. She was working as a reporter at the Gazette. In the letter, I made a couple of joking references to my misadventures with Kim-or-Gloria. Just my luck, Ruth was visiting her and found the letter. Jennifer says it was an accident, that Ruth found the letter on the dresser. I don’t know if I buy it, but if she showed it to Ruth, I don’t blame her for showing a little sisterly solidarity in the face of my caddish callousness. Ruth phoned me up from Montreal, and tearfully dumped me. That’s when I found out she believed my “necessary fictions” and had been waiting for me all along, all summer long. I felt terrible.

  My advance was by now a distant memory. To stay alive I started borrowing from Max, so often that to keep track of it all we installed a “Debt Clock” on the wall of my office, with two hands, one for hundreds, and one for increments of five dollars. I kept asking, he kept it coming, and pretty soon the big hand was rounding the $2,000 mark.

  One day, Max came in after work.

  “Man, you’re really going at it. I can hear you hammering that typewriter all the way out on the street. How’s the article going?”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Seriously, how much have you written?”