I, for one, do not mind a bit of jiggle.
She shrugs her shoulders and begins tossing other slight, clingy workout shorts from a dresser drawer and onto the bedspread. She shimmies out of the shorts she’s wearing and surveys the others on the bed beside me. She is practically naked from the waist down. Her behind is round and smooth, an upside-down Valentine heart. A few dark pubic hairs poke out from under the thong.
“No panty lines now?” she says, after snapping the spandex shorts into place. “No bulges?”
There is one major bulge, but it’s not on her.
“Adeline, is there a washroom nearby?”
“Oh, yeah,” she says. “The en suite is right behind you. I guess those beers are coming through you now, eh?”
My legs feel like rubber, and my heart is thumping like I’ve just run a relay race, but I manage to shut the washroom door behind me and drop my shorts just in time for the pearly fluid to gush into the marble sink. I rinse out the sink, then flush the toilet.
When I emerge, Adeline is turning in front of the mirror, pushing her breasts up, running her hands over her stomach and hips, evaluating herself one last time for bulges and jiggles.
“Philip, you need to come more often.”
“What?” I blurt.
“You should come to Toronto every weekend,” she says. “You’re missing out on so much in Faireville.”
From her father’s condominium, Adeline leads me along the monument-adorned boulevard between the north and southbound lanes of University Avenue. At Dundas, we stop to observe a tall, tapered sculpture of a featureless, human-like form stretching upward, holding an object that resembles the hood ornament of a late-1970s Thunderbird.
“What’s it supposed to be?” I wonder.
Of course she was hoping I’d ask.
“It’s officially called Per Ardua Ad Astra, the slogan of the Royal Canadian Air Force. It’s supposed to be a tribute to airmen who won the Victoria Cross, or something like that. The local nickname for it is . . . ” she pauses as if waiting for a drum roll,
“ . . . Gumby Goes to Heaven.”
I have to laugh at that. The nickname fits.
“This whole section of University Ave, by the way, is filled with famous research and specialist hospitals — Mount Sinai, The Hospital for Sick Children, Princess Margaret . . . ”
“Should we go take a look?”
Adeline rolls her eyes. “They’re just hospitals!” she says. “Unless you’re sick, I’ve got something better to show you.” She turns onto Queen Street, and speeds past the Old and New City Halls of Toronto, then left onto Yonge Street. “The longest street in the world,” she says grandly.
I try to soak in as much of this new scenery as possible, but Adeline races forward, weaving around street signs, fire hydrants, and slower pedestrians like she’s running an obstacle course. In my military-style shorts and clunky sandals, it’s difficult to keep up with her, especially since her lipstick, credit card, digital camera and cell phone are crammed into my side pockets; there isn’t a spare millimeter of cargo space in her own clingy shorts.
“There’s the Eaton Centre,” she says, as we stride past the famous downtown mall.
“Can we look inside?” I ask.
“Maybe tomorrow,” she says. “Right now we’re on a mission.”
The Eaton Centre is covered in colourful advertisements several storeys tall. They scream at passers-by: Perfume! Lingerie! Designer jeans! Lipstick! Cellulite-reducing cream! You NEED them! You NEED THEM ALL! We walk alongside a plywood wall erected between the sidewalk and a construction site. Despite the warning “POST NO BILLS” stenciled every few feet, the wall is plastered with overlapping posters and handbills, advertising every conceivable service and entertainment. One poster appears at regular intervals. It’s printed on simple lime-green photocopy paper, with outline illustrations of male and female figures coupled in various imaginative sexual positions.
Toronto’s
HOMETOWN
HARDCORE
HERO!
www.hornydennis.com
I pluck the staples from one of these small posters, fold and slide it into my back pocket. When Adeline gives me a strange look, I explain: “Dennis will get a kick out of this.”
She points to another poster stapled onto the plywood wall:
tick, tick, tick
ROBERT RAYCROFT
and the
RUSTY RAZORS
at SNEAKY DEE’S
This Fri and Sat
buzz, buzz, buzz
“That’s the band I’m taking you to see tonight,” she says. “Robert Raycroft is amazing. I’ve seen him three times already. He’s a great guitar player, his lyrics are thoughtful and intelligent, and he’s an awesome singer. God, I love him.”
“You love him?”
“Okay, I love his music,” she says, shrugging. “Don’t get jealous.”
She blasts off again, practically burning sneaker rubber. I swat sweat from my brow as I rush to keep up with her. We’ve probably walked a couple of kilometres by the time we reach Carlton Street, where a flashing red “Don’t Walk” signal momentarily interrupts Adeline’s Olympic speed-walker pace. She points to the right and says, “Maple Leaf Gardens is just a couple of blocks that way.”
This is something that my brother Michael, a life-long Toronto Maple Leafs fan, would enjoy seeing. “Really? Let’s go take a look!”
The signal changes to “Walk” and Adeline is already half-way across the street when she says, somewhat impatiently, “Maybe later.”
“What’s the big hurry?” I ask. “I’ve never seen any of this before.”
“Just follow me. We’re on a mission.”
So I just follow her.
As we approach a street called Wellesley, the landscape changes to sandwich and falafel shops, tattoo parlours and tarot card readers, shops selling sex toys and cheap lingerie, knock-off sports jerseys and rock band T-shirts. Same-sex couples walk together, hand-in-hand. Adeline announces that this is the epicentre of one of the world’s biggest gay communities.
“The Tabernacle wouldn’t get many signatures on their trailer in this neighborhood, eh?”
“Don’t remind me,” she says. “It’s too depressing.”
My stomach growls. All this walking has made me hungry again. Adeline must be starving by now. “Want to stop somewhere for a snack?” I suggest. “I’ve never had a falafel.”
“No time for dawdling,” she says. “If we want to get any aerobic exercise, we’ve got to keep up a pace of at least 120 steps per minute. For actual weight loss, it should be 140.” She weaves around a heavy, slow-moving woman. “It’s hard to get going that speed with all these street cattle in our way.”
“Adeline, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she snaps, “but I don’t want to stand in front of Robert Raycroft tonight looking like a beached whale. So let’s keep it moving.”
We eventually cross Bloor Street, and the atmosphere changes again: manicurists, estheticians, upscale boutiques, quaint cafes and little restaurants with cutesy names.
“The Annex and Yorkville are just to the west, and Rosedale is to the east,” Adeline says in an acidic tone, “home to the city’s rich girls and trophy wives. Born beautiful, fashionable, and skinny. I hate them all.”
As we stop for another “Don’t Walk” sign, Adeline sways from side to side. First I think she’s just doing it to keep her leg muscles moving, but then she takes a couple of awkward steps backward. She stumbles toward a sign-post, grabs at it and misses. She is just out of my reach as she tumbles onto the sidewalk, arms spread wide, one leg folded behind the other.
I drop to the pavement beside her. “Adeline? Adeline?”
I got her to her feet and walked her to the sidewalk patio of a café. I’ve managed to get her to drink most of a bottle of orange juice, but her pupils are still dilated and her eyelids are heavy.
“Eat this,” I tell her, holding a c
innamon Danish in front of her lips.“No no no,” she slurs. “I’m okay. Feel better. Don’t need food.”
“Eat.”
“No no no,” she burbles, “Not hungry.”
“Your eyes look like two piss-holes in the snow, Adeline. Eat.”
She takes a small nibble from the Danish. Then another. She gestures toward the bench. “I just want to be like her,” she says hazily.
Across the street is an advertisement that depicts a bikini-clad model astride a blatantly phallic palm tree, which sticks out of the white beach sand at a forty-five degree angle. Her behind is raised to create the illusion of curves on her bony body, and she sucks seductively on the straw in a tropical drink. The advertisement is for some sort of “skin revitalizer.”
“She’s probably about to pass out from starvation, too,” I say, “so you’re already alike in that respect. At least the sand will cushion her fall. Have another bite.”
Adeline takes another nibble from the Danish.
“You can’t walk this distance at the pace we’ve been going on the energy from a few leaves of lettuce,” I tell her.
She waves the remainder of the Danish away. “That thing is worth two starches and two sugars on the Barbie scale. Not worth it.”
“I’m not walking a step farther with you until you eat it.”
“Fine,” she says, “but it’s going to go right to my ass.” She reluctantly takes the pastry from me, and gradually eats the whole thing. The colour starts to return to her face. She glances at the model on the park bench ad again. “Compared to her butt, mine should have a sign on it that says ‘wide load.’”
“You don’t need to look like that!”
“Need has nothing to do with it,” she counters. “I want to look like that. I like the way that men look at me since I’ve lost weight.”
“Exactly — you look great now.”
“I want to look better. The only difference between the girl in the ad and me is ten pounds. I want to look like that.”
“That’s what all the companies selling cosmetics and diet pills and workout clothes and gym memberships and diet consultations and all that other crap want you to want to look like. That’s why the standard they set is so impossible to attain.”
“You think it’s impossible for me to ever look that good?”
“It’s impossible for anyone to look like that! The photo of that model was taken with perfect lighting, at the perfect angle, then it was digitally altered to remove even the slightest blemishes. The woman on that ad isn’t a woman at all. She’s a design. An impossible standard.”
“So, what? You think I should start wearing my Tabernacle uniform again, and gain back the thirty pounds I lost?”
“You know that’s not what I mean. It’s great that you are exercising and taking care of yourself. But if you’re doing all of that, and you still happen to be slightly bigger or smaller or shorter or taller than this artificial standard, you shouldn’t feel compelled to change yourself to fit it.”
“So,” Adeline says, “you’re not going to get your face fixed when you turn eighteen?” She folds her arms across her chest. She has laid her trump card.
“No,” I say. “No I’m not. My face is going to stay exactly the way it is. I’m not getting it fixed, because it isn’t broken.” Until I said it out loud just now, I didn’t realize just how strongly I feel about this. “If other people don’t like it, they can look at the fake, digitally-altered, perfect models instead.”
“Well, Philip, if that’s really your philosophy, I respect it. I really do. But,” she says, pointing again to the billboard, “I still want to look like that, and I only need to lose another ten pounds to do it.”
“Fine,” I say, “just make sure the next time you pass out from hunger, it isn’t in front of a speeding truck or something, okay?”
“I feel better now,” she says. “Let’s get going.”
Finding the Angel
Much farther up Yonge Street, Adeline stops beside an imposing gateway made of black and brown brick, with a Neo-Gothic arch and twin turrets. It reminds me of the Anglican Church in Faireville; but a mere gate here is as grand as an entire building back home. The lettering carved at the top of the gateway reads Mount Pleasant Cemetery.
“Do you think it’s weird that I like exploring cemeteries?”
“No.”
“Good!” she says, clapping her hands together. “In that case, I am going to introduce you to some of the most famous people in Toronto. Don’t be offended if they don’t say much.”
I stop to read the bronze plaque to the left of the arch, which tells me that “the first interment took place on March 13, 1876,” and that “by December 31, 1965, 117,705 interments had been made in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.”
“Wow,” I say. “Old and big.”
“More impressive than the cemetery in Faireville, that’s for sure,” Adeline says.
We’ve only been walking into the lush cemetery grounds for a few minutes, and already Yonge Street seems miles away. The cemetery is a virtual arboretum; there are hundreds of huge old trees of every variety, with leaves of dark and light green, purple, red, yellow, and even a few with pink cotton-candy-like fuzz growing on them. Birds twitter, the wind hushes through the leaves overhead, and well-fed squirrels scurry around in the grass.
“This is the older half of the cemetery,” Adeline says. “Some pretty expensive real estate in here, eh?”
Between the huge trees and winding pathways are hundreds of towering monuments, most of them taller than the statue of Jeremiah Faire. There are monoliths and obelisks, Roman columns capped with orbs, stylized urns and vases, Scottish and Irish crosses, representations of Christ and many sculptures of angels. We pass the ornate entrances to three crypts built into the side of a small hill, dated from the 1870s.
“Notice a similarity between this old section of Mount Pleasant and the cemetery back home?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer. “Everybody buried here was white and spoke English. Toronto in the 1880s was the same as Faireville is now! Our home town is only a century behind the times.”
We stop in front of a small but impressively carved mausoleum with just the name “CAPTAIN FLUKE” carved in block letters into the granite over the arched metal doorway.
“This will be your nom de plume,” Adeline says.
“Huh?”
“Captain Fluke. It sounds kind of like a superhero, don’t you think?”
“Maybe like a superhero who stops criminals by accident, like accidentally opening a car door and tripping up a mugger. “Do I really need a fake name?”
“Come on, Captain. It’s just for fun.”
“Maybe the bad guys freak out when they see my face, and they just trip themselves up.”
“Oh no,” Adeline says, “Captain Fluke’s facial disfigurement is a sign of his courage and chivalry! His scars are respected and feared by men, while women find them dashing and virile.”
Maybe I like this game after all. “Do I get to have a first name, or will you just call me ‘Captain’?”
“Your nom de plume will be Captain Tobias Fluke?”
“Tobias?”
“It sounds dashing!”
“Ah. And do I get to pick your assumed name?”
“Mine will be Cassandra Silverstone. She’s beautiful, sophisticated, charming, and in desperate need of saving by a hero like Captain Tobias Fluke.”
Okay, I do like this game.
“So here is your mission, Captain,” she says. “I’ve got a favourite angel in this half of the cemetery. If you can find her, you will win a special prize. You get ten guesses.”
“There must be a hundreds of angels in here. The odds are not exactly in my favour.”
“I’ll give you some hints along the way.” She smiles coyly, and wanders up a twisting side path. “Well, come on, Captain.”
I point to an angel engraved onto the face of a modest sandstone marker.
“Nope,” A
deline says. “Nine guesses left! Now follow me — there’s somebody up ahead that I want you to meet.”
We stop before the grave of William Lyon Mackenzie King.
“Didn’t you do a presentation on him in grade ten history class?” Adeline remembers.
“I did.” I put on my presentation voice: “King was one of Canada’s longest-serving and shrewdest politicians. King was Prime Minister through half the Depression and all of the Second World War.”
For such a famous person, I’m impressed at how simple his grave marker is. Just his name and the dates. Just the facts. He still seems to have his admirers; dozens of tokens have been left at the foot of the grave — little Canadian flags, flowers (both plastic and real), a small potted tamarack adorned with embroidered white doves, artfully arranged stones and pine cones, and, strangely, a freshly-cut house key.
“That’s the way to do it,” I tell Adeline, “live a life so big that all you need is your name on a slab, and generations later, people still remember you.”
“Not for me,” Adeline says, “I want a house-sized mausoleum with arches and Greek columns and roses and vines and religious icons, stained glass windows and a tower with a bell, at least a dozen sculptures of horses and dragons and fairies and cherubs, and my name, Cassandra Silverstone, lit up in pink neon for all eternity!”
“What about Adeline Brown?”
“Oh, Adeline doesn’t care what you do with her body after she’s gone. Grind her up and use her to fertilize a vegetable garden for all she cares. ‘My,’ the guests will exclaim, ‘aren’t these tomatoes to die for!’ ”
She laughs at her own joke and scampers away from King’s grave, through a grassy area bristling with tall, elaborate monuments. One of the stones is sculpted in relief with a portrait of a male angel playing an intricately carved harp.
“No,” Adeline says. “My angel is a girl. Eight guesses left, Captain.”
We cut back onto a path. Atop a large pedestal is a life-sized sculpture of an angel with wings spread fully open. Her granite robes appear as if they are being swept back by a strong wind, her sharp-featured face looks upward in an expression of triumph. Her right hand is raised high as if it may have once held a sword that the elements have since knocked from her grip.
The Monkeyface Chronicles Page 15