by Devon Code
On this occasion, as he ate, he observed a couple seated at another table, speaking English to one another. They were the only other patrons in the restaurant, for it was still early. When James finished eating, he ordered another beer and sat there drinking it, as if he were waiting for someone. Eventually the other couple left and a few other patrons came, some of whom spoke French, but none of whom James recognized. When his beer was finished, he paid and left and made his way down the hill, and decided, as he walked toward his flat, that he would no longer dine at the Indian restaurant. As much as he might like it, he was always ill at ease while he was there, watching and waiting for faces that grew less distinct in his memory as time passed. Whenever he left the restaurant, he felt as if he were being stood up, time and again, and just as he arrived at this conclusion he noticed them walking toward him—Jean-Marc and Mathild. As soon as he saw them, he realized he did not wish to see them at all, that waiting and watching for them had been a mistake, for he’d nothing to say to them, and they, most likely, would not be pleased to see him, not after the way he’d broken things off with Madeleine, so that he was surprised when they called out to him enthusiastically, and when they met Mathild kissed him on both cheeks and Jean-Marc did the same and shook his hand in both of his.
“Have you eaten?” Jean-Marc asked, and Mathild said “Join us,” slipping her arm through his, and she ran her free hand over James’s smoothly shaven chin, and said, “You look so respectable,” the three of them walking up the hill together as if they were old friends. When they entered the Indian restaurant they took off their shoes and sat cross-legged on cushions by the front window, and when the server came and gave out menus he made no sign that he recognized James, and James was grateful for what he took to be the man’s discretion. They ordered wine and perused the menus. James found himself ordering the same dish he’d just eaten, although he was no longer hungry. The waiter left them behind the closed curtain, in candlelit intimacy, as if they were the only ones in the restaurant. It was then James noticed that Jean-Marc’s beard had grown considerably since he’d last seen him. By all appearances Jean-Marc had made no attempt to groom it so that what once had seemed distinguished had grown feral and unkempt, bestowing upon Jean-Marc the air of an eccentric or a mystic.
“How are you?” Jean-Marc asked him, “How’ve you been?” He told them about his job at the Auberge St. Eglise and they congratulated him. Jean-Marc said that the Auberge St. Eglise was a fine hotel, that it was only ever a matter of time with these things, that there was always work to be had if one truly wanted to work. He then described the film they’d just come from, which had depicted the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War. Jean-Marc had enjoyed the film, but Mathild had not. They debated its merits, Mathild explaining the plot to James so that he could follow, and when their food came, Mathild had exhausted her criticisms of the film’s faults, while Jean-Marc persisted with his defence of its virtues, so that it seemed as if he were the victor of the debate, though perhaps, thought James, Jean-Marc was simply the more long-winded. When Jean-Marc finally paused and no new conversation resumed, James felt compelled to ask, because no one else had brought it up, if anyone had seen Madeleine recently, implying with the phrasing of his question that he had not, and as he tried to gauge his companions’ reaction to the question, Mathild said no, that Madeleine had been preoccupied with her painting, embarking upon a new series, but that she had plans to get together with her later that night, just the two of them.
The subject was left there, the three of them focussing their attention on the meal before them, which James found arduous, having already eaten, so that with each bite he wondered why he’d ordered and had not simply admitted he’d already eaten at that very same restaurant, precisely the same dish he was eating once again. What did their silence mean, wondered James, was it simply hunger, or else was it an unwillingness to acknowledge what they must have known, what Mathild, at least, would surely know in a few hours time if she did not know already? They must not know, thought James, for if they did, why was he seated there with them, breaking bread, as if he, rather than Madeleine, was their true friend? Then Jean-Marc asked him whether he was making progress with his poetry. James admitted that he’d not written a word since he’d been hired at the Auberge St. Eglise, that the work was so physically taxing, it left him little energy to think. Once their plates had been cleared, they settled their bill, Mathild paying Jean-Marc’s share. They put on their shoes and as they made the way out the door, the waiter placed a hand on James’s shoulder.
“Was everything to your liking?” the waiter asked, alluding, James assumed, to his half-finished plate, and James said that it was. Before Mathild left for the subway, she embraced James once again, telling him to take care of himself, as if he were about to embark on a perilous journey, and then she was off, leaving James to ask Jean-Marc which way he was headed.
“For another drink,” said Jean-Marc, and he invited James to join him. James found the prospect unappealing without the presence of Mathild, but he didn’t wish to return to the solitude of his flat, and so the two of them walked up the hill together. Eventually they turned off the Main as Jean-Marc directed them down a side street and then another. He asked James if he had a joint they could smoke and James said that he did. They stood in an alley, passing the joint between them and Jean-Marc asked him if he missed Madeleine. Surprised by the question, James said, he did miss her, which was true, although he didn’t regret having broken things off. Jean-Marc extinguished the joint, which was not quite finished, and James followed him up the street and into a nightclub with a neon sign that read “Jezebel’s,” his attention preoccupied with thoughts of Madeleine so that it was not until they’d paid what seemed to James an exorbitant cover charge that he realized they’d entered a strip club. They took a table not far from the stage, where two topless women wore thongs and stilettos and danced slowly to a rock ballad with French lyrics. Seated directly in front of the dancers was a party of men in business attire, several of whom James recognized as guests of the Auberge St. Eglise. Both of the dancers appeared to be about twenty-five years old, with long blond hair and large, abnormally round breasts, makeup obscuring the distinctiveness of their facial features so that the difference in their height became their primary distinguishing characteristic. James turned to examine the men directly before the stage, who looked to be in their forties and fifties, some of them old enough to have fathered the dancers, most of them, he discerned from the furtive glances they cast about the room, unaccustomed to their surroundings.
“I like to come here every so often,” said Jean-Marc, raising his voice to be heard over the music, and James nodded as Jean-Marc stared up on the women onstage. Several of the men seated directly in front of the stage looked over at them.
“It’s not what you think,” said Jean-Marc.
“What isn’t?” said James.
“The reason why I like to come here.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said James, unsure of Jean-Marc’s meaning.
“I guess not,” said Jean-Marc, smiling. “We’re here now,” and then a waitress in a low-cut halter top approached their table and Jean-Marc said, “The first round’s on me.” The waitress leaned in toward Jean-Marc, who gave her what seemed to James to be overly elaborate instructions, Jean-Marc gesturing at one point toward the stage. When James looked to the stage once more, the music had stopped and one of the dancers was holding a microphone. She spoke to the group of men seated in front of her, welcoming them on the occasion of Gerald’s bachelor party. And she invited Gerald onstage, and his companions cheered, lifting their beer bottles in the air, as they began to chant in unison, “Gerald, Gerald!” although at first none of them rose from their seats. Then several of them got up at the same time and lifted to his feet a slight, balding man of about forty years of age. The man’s companions proceeded to escort him to the edge of the stage and he gracelessly ascended, one of th
e dancers lowering her arm to assist him, his white shirt coming untucked from his khaki trousers, and as he endeavoured to tuck it back in, each of the dancers took one of his arms and escorted him to centre stage, as if he were the host of a game show, or else a contestant, which, James surmised, was closer to the truth. Each of the dancers kissed Gerald on the cheek and the men cheered, and when their cries subsided Jean-Marc remarked to James that the crowd in the club sounded just like the crowd at the bullfight in the film he and Mathild had seen that afternoon, in which the disembowelment of the matador prefigured the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, and James, because he had not seen the film, simply nodded in reply.
Then the dancer with the microphone asked Gerald if his fiancée knew where he was that night, to which Gerald replied in the negative, and said furthermore that, God willing, she would never find out. The other dancer looked to Gerald’s companions and asked if any of them intended to tell Gerald’s fiancée where they’d ended up, and they answered unanimously in the negative, and one of them (perhaps Gerald’s brother, James thought, or else his best man) remarked that what went on at a man’s bachelor party was between him and his friends and the girls who performed for them. The dancer said if that was the case then they might as well enjoy themselves, that they had a responsibility to Gerald’s fiancée to ensure that Gerald could fulfill his husbandly duties.
“Are you up to the challenge?” she asked Gerald, holding the microphone toward him so that he might respond.
“I guess we’ll see,” he replied.
“Do you like to dance?” asked the dancer.
“Sometimes,” said Gerald, and the dancer explained that she and her companion would perform a series of moves that Gerald would be expected to emulate. Then the same man, James noted, who’d spoken of the sanctity of discretion with regard to the goings-on at bachelor parties loudly inquired what would happen if Gerald should fail to execute the moves satisfactorily, to which, without hesitation, the dancer with the microphone replied that Gerald would be disciplined accordingly, eliciting a cheer from the crowd as it caused the colour to drain from Gerald’s face, which, James observed, was the inverse of a blush, but which nevertheless indicated Gerald’s embarrassment, or else mortification, and Gerald’s knees buckled, as if he’d had much more to drink than it had seemed a moment before, compelling the dancers to adjust their hold on his arms so that they were no longer escorting him but supporting him, or else restraining him as bailiffs might restrain the accused while judgment was read out, so that Gerald might continue to stand before the assembled crowd, if not of his own volition then out of the collective will of those who wished for what was best, who wished the twilight of Gerald’s bachelorhood to be truly memorable.
As the dancers held him, James thought that Gerald’s eyes might have begun to moisten, though it was difficult to tell from where he sat, but when the dance music began again on cue, its relentless pounding seemed to strengthen Gerald’s resolve, so that when the dancers released their grip on his arms he did not collapse upon the stage, nor did he flee, as the shorter dancer assumed the position of prominence at centre stage, her hips gyrating as she fell into the rhythm of the music before she ran the toe of her platform-heeled shoe along the length of her other leg, from ankle to knee, and then, in the direction of the admiring crowd, kicked her foot in the air with the facility of a football player, while Gerald, once his instructor stepped aside, wordlessly assumed her position. He executed a bumbling facsimile of that same move, the toe of his tasselled loafer awkwardly ascending the length of his khaki-trousered left leg in anticipation of the culminating kick, which he rendered with greater force than he intended, so that his follow-through left him teetering on the edge of the stage, Gerald stopping abruptly just short of collapsing into the crowd, the first dancer holding her arms up in the air in his direction, palms facing upward in a gesture of presentation.
Jean-Marc’s attention remained intently focussed on the stage as the dancers alternately performed a serious of progressively more intricate and exotic moves, Gerald doing his utmost to repeat them, much to the amusement of his companions. The waitress approached their table, bearing on a tray three highball glasses filled with a dark-tinged milky liquid, and when he asked Jean-Marc what he’d ordered, Jean-Marc said vodka paralyzers, a beverage with which James was unfamiliar. He took a tentative sip, finding it unbearably saccharine, as he watched the server approach the stage and deposit on its edge the third highball glass, just as Gerald faltered in the execution of the latest trick and fell to his knees, failing to perform the swivel motion that had been modelled for him, prompting the dancer who held the microphone to signal for the music to be stopped. Then she asked Gerald, in a tone of condescension, whether he needed a rest. Gerald nodded silently, with downcast eyes, rising slowly to his feet as the dancer took the glass from the edge of the stage. She motioned as if to pass the glass into his outstretched hands but instead deliberately poured its contents down the front of Gerald’s khaki trousers, causing him to gasp with shock, the dark stain blooming outward from his crotch as the liquid ran down his legs and dripped on the stage.
Immediately the crowd grew silent, the dancer with the microphone declaring that the quality of Gerald’s performance was not befitting the standards of the stage, that there was a penalty to pay, just as he’d been warned. As she spoke the other dancer attended to the front of Gerald’s trousers as if to clean up the spill, although she had nothing with which to blot the liquid. Instead she unbuckled Gerald’s belt, removing it from the loops of his sopping trousers, as she instructed him to get down on all fours. Gerald complied, facing stage left as he rested on his hands and knees in the milky puddle. The dancer who’d removed his belt fastened it around his neck like a collar, the length of it running through the buckle so that it tightened at his neck. She held the end of it like a leash, commanding Gerald to turn and face the crowd. Then the dancer who held the microphone instructed the two of them to promenade the length of the stage, which they did repeatedly, Gerald barking upon command, while some of the spectators applauded. What could only have been another vodka paralyzer was produced for Gerald, along with a bowl, into which the paralyzer was poured, but not before the dancer gestured with it in the direction of James’s table, Jean-Marc raising his own glass in the air, as if acknowledging that he was the one who’d orchestrated Gerald’s humiliation, Gerald’s companions cheering and hoisting their steins, toasting the spectacle to which they bore witness, so that through his association with Jean-Marc, however tenuous, James felt a degree of complicity in what was transpiring onstage, and as he drank the last of his paralyzer, it didn’t taste nearly as bad as it had at first.
“Howl for it,” the dancer commanded, and Gerald complied, his forlorn and wolfish cries resonating throughout the club, sounding neither animal nor fully human, a cathartic expression, it seemed to James, of the myriad indignities Gerald must have suffered throughout the course of his years, Gerald’s companions looking on with a rapt attentiveness born of what James interpreted as a mixture of disgust and awe. When Gerald had howled to the dancer’s satisfaction, he was told to drink and he lowered his face to the bowl, lapping up as much of the contents as his ill-adapted tongue would allow, and when he was sated, or else entirely defeated, he raised his head, paralyzer dribbling down his chin and staining his shirt with a dark yoke. It was then that Jean-Marc leaned over and said quietly and with surprising vitriol, that it was a wretched thing James had done to Madeleine, that she refused to let on how much she’d been hurt but that James had acted very cruelly, that it was strange that James would share a meal with Madeleine’s friends without acknowledging what had happened, and abruptly Jean-Marc got up and walked away. James immediately followed him, surprised and angered by what he’d said and the circumstances under which he’d chosen to say it. As he approached the door to follow Jean-Marc out into the street, the bouncer placed his hand upon his shoulder and told him his tab
had not been settled.
Once James had paid, the bouncer’s demeanour changed entirely. He asked James if he’d enjoyed the show and James said that he had. Then the bouncer, in a conspiratorial tone, suggested that it would be a shame if James left without a visit to the V.I.P. lounge, while in the background James could hear one of the dancers congratulating Gerald for his performance, assuring him that his future wife was a lucky woman indeed, that he’d proven before his friends that he had nothing to be ashamed of, and James turned to see Gerald standing centre stage, once again flanked by a dancer on either side, each of them holding his arms upward in triumph as the pulsating music resumed once more. James told the bouncer that he’d come back another time. He was surprised to find Jean-Marc waiting for him outside the club, smoking a cigarette, and while he considered what he should do, Jean-Marc threw his cigarette down, crushed it with his heel and said that he was sorry he’d lost his cool. He asked if James had another joint that they could share. They smoked together in a nearby alley, the tension between them dissipating in the shared silence. Jean-Marc offered to buy James a conciliatory drink at another, quieter bar and James agreed, not wanting to end the night on bad terms. They went to another bar no more than half a block away, a bar that could not have been more different from Jezebel’s, populated as it was by well-dressed couples conversing quietly at candlelit tables while flamenco music played in the background. When the waitress came to take their order, Jean-Marc said that he would have a glass of sangria.
“James?” said Jean-Marc. “What would you like?” and James said that he would have the same. James asked Jean-Marc if he’d known in advance what was going to happen at Jezebel’s that night and Jean-Marc said that he hadn’t, but that he’d not been all that surprised, that spectacles like that were not uncommon at Jezebel’s. James said he thought it was a strange way to celebrate one’s engagement and Jean-Marc agreed, though he also said he thought there was a certain logic to it.