Monday Night Man

by Grant Buday

  Rose uncorked the Drambuie, gulped from the bottle, and moaned blissfully.

  Rupp smelled her gardenia perfume from five feet away. Her dyed black hair was combed up in a wave off her forehead, and her purple dress shone like plastic where her belly and breasts bulged.

  “Do you need any Mr Clean?” Rose asked. “We got 45,000 two-ounce samplers of Mr Clean. I kid you not — 45,000.”

  “I got lots of Mr Clean left from last time.” Rupp set down two liqueur glasses. Rose worked at DisMar, a distributor of marketing samples — panty liners, shampoo, coupons, gum, pens. Rose was fifty, the same age as Rupp, and about a hundred and eighty pounds, the same weight as him. She’d been married four times to three men named Ray. Ray Fochuk, Ray Pelcher, Ray Volodiuk, and Ray Pelcher a second time.

  “I phoned this afternoon.”

  “Oh?” Rupp stood at the stove, staring at the pot of water on the glowing red element.

  “You didn’t answer.”

  “I was out.”

  “I heard you come in.”

  Rupp stared harder at the stove. The water was hissing and the heat rushing from the open oven door was hot against his knees. “Oh, that’s right,” he lied. “I was taking a nap.”

  “You’re a sound sleeper.”

  “I unplugged the phone.”

  Rose finished her Drambuie, ran her red tongue deep inside the glass, then poured more. “Funny. I heard it ringing.”

  “You can’t hear the phone from down there.”

  “I hear everything.” She winked.

  The water began boiling. From the corner of his eye, Rupp saw that Rose had her chin raised, watching him through amused eyes. Rupp shut the oven door, the kitchen was hot enough. The metal door clanged.

  “You,” announced Rose, smiling, “are hiding something.”

  Rupp laughed loudly. Too loudly. He poured the water into the coffee filter, watching the water fill the cone and then drain down. “Wish I was. Make my life more interesting.” He felt pleased with the calm of his come-back.

  “I think your life’s more interesting than you let on. What’s in the bag?”

  Rupp looked at Rose, then followed her gaze to the white plastic bag on the floor beside the oven. It was the bag containing Miss Venezuela.

  “A sweater.”

  “In a Safeway bag?”

  Rupp said nothing.

  “What kind of sweater?”

  “Pullover.”

  “Let’s see.”

  “It’s too small. I’m taking it back.”

  “Let’s see anyway.”

  “It’s the wrong colour.”

  “Why’d you buy it then?”

  Rupp watched Rose’s hand reach for the bag. She wore rings on every finger. She was going to see Miss Venezuela, 1990. Rupp pinned the bag tight against the side of the hot oven with his foot.

  “Hey!” Rose wrinkled her forehead looking up at him. She was almost out of her seat reaching for the bag.

  Rupp could see down between her boobs. He could also see into her hair. It was a gauzy black cloud of cotton candy.

  Rose sat back and lit a Virginia Slim, the snap of her silver lighter as solid as a door lock. Rupp heard the rustle of her dress and nylons as she crossed her legs and considered him.

  “Okay.” She blew smoke at the ceiling. “You don’t want me to see what’s in the bag. So, that means either it’s embarrassing to you, or … ” and here she smiled at the alternative, “it’s something that has to do with me.” She girlishly lifted one shoulder and blinked her eyes. “A Valentine’s Day present?”

  Rupp laughed. High and nervous. He picked up the bag. It smelled funny, and was so hot he had to juggle it.

  “Well,” Rose assured him, “don’t worry. I won’t peek.” She refilled her glass with Drambuie.

  Rupp went into the bedroom and hid the bag. When he returned, Rose was smiling. He watched her closely. Rupp found her sexy in a way. But she talked too much. She also had a mind of her own. That was a problem.

  At midnight, Rupp half-carried Rose giggling to the elevator. At the door to her apartment, she hung onto him, and then her tongue, sweet with Drambuie, was in his mouth. She sighed and pressed closer, and Rupp gave in to the hard-on standing like a rolling pin in his pants. He put his hands on her ass and pulled her tight against him.

  “Let’s go in,” he whispered.

  She smiled, gave him a last peck on the lips, then opened her eyes. “Sorry. I have to be up at five.”

  Rupp watched the door close.

  Upstairs, Rupp paced. Finally, he went into the bedroom and took Miss Venezuela from the bag. It had been nearly eight hours. The glue must have set. He held her up at arm’s length — and groaned like he’d been stabbed. Her legs were melted together and one arm was melted across her breasts. Frantic, he pumped her up. It didn’t help. She was grotesque. The oven heat had hit her like radiation. Rupp nearly wept. He slumped to the bed and sat a long time, holding her in his lap like a long-lost lover’s blouse that still held a scent.

  HORST WONDERED ABOUTBoyle Rupp and Ray Bunce. How did they survive? Both were fifty, had complexions like fungus, and years of loneliness had distorted their minds the way greasy-spoon food had distorted their bellies. Living solo had beaten strange paths through their brains. Rupp and Bunce had “ways.”

  Rupp’s housekeeping, for instance. Within weeks his new apartment took on that “Rupp” look. The white toilet turned brown, fat dotted with mouse turds hardened in the frying pan, the sink brimmed like a backed-up sewer, and flies stuck in jam buzzed for days. Not surprisingly, Rose the Nose stopped visiting.

  Standing in Rupp’s kitchen, Horst made himself as small as possible so as not to touch anything.

  “Jesus, Rupp.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  As for Bunce, his basement suite was a fire hazard of Racing Forms. They teetered in stacks, were wedged under the couch, and filled the cupboards, like a library run amok. Yet ask Bunce who had the rail in the last triactor of the 79 -80 season, and he’d go directly to the right stack, run his finger down, and find the form.

  Bunce was a contented man. Horst didn’t understand. He could never be happy alone. But Bunce was. So, in his way, was Rupp. Horst worried. Was he on the road to Bunce-and-Ruppdom? Was it only a matter of time before he too gave in and bought himself a rubber woman and began saving Racing Forms?

  Hoist stood sideways before the bathroom mirror, measuring the undeniable bloat of his belly. He sucked it in and poked gut muscles once taut as steel straps. After a minute he got dizzy. He sat on the toilet seeing silver stars.

  THE TEARS

  OF SAINT

  LAWRENCE

  Aiming to please, Candy Floss toe-steps to the plexiglass shower stall, poses beside it like a game-show hostess next to a new refrigerator, then swings open the door. She’s working up a good thick lather when a beer mug sails across the stage shattering against the unbreakable glass. Then another mug hits. Candy Floss cowers, hugging herself, as if only now discovering that she’s naked before ninety drunken men. Three bouncers rush the table and drag out two butch-looking women, who scream: “RAPISTS! RAPISTS!”

  Everyone laughs.

  The DJ makes a joke about it being a free country. One of the waiters sweeps the glass on the stage into a dustpan, and Candy Floss emerges unhurt from the siege to a well-deserved round of applause. Inspired, hands wave for more beer. The between-performance music booms up big on the speakers, and Horst Nunn flashes on how the shattering glass spat like meteors across the dark bar.

  “There’s the Perseid meteors tonight,” he says.

  Boyle Rupp says: “Pussy meteors?”

  “Perseid,” says Horst. “Used to be called the Tears of Saint Lawrence.”

  “What was he cryin’ about?”

  “They were burning him at the stake.”

  Ray Bunce sets his forearm on the table and says, “Good.” Bunce, a Catholic, hates priests.

  “Two bee
rs says I can balance a full glass on my gut,” says Rupp.

  Horst and Bunce sit forward, watching Rupp take a big breath then push his belly out, making a ledge. Confident, Rupp sets not one but two full glasses of beer there.

  “Double or nothing you can’t stand up,” says Bunce.

  Rupp concentrates, then rises slowly, the beer swaying in the glasses like amber flames in lamps.

  At last call they buy two six-packs of Tall Boys and step out onto the sidewalk. Shattered glass glitters under a street lamp. Horst looks up: the night sky is the colour of blacktop.

  They go on a Whore Tour in Rupp’s Bug. Within minutes they spot three in an alley by a dumpster. They halt, engine idling. The girls crowd the car as Bunce rolls down the window.

  “We’re lonely,” says Bunce.

  “One bill each we can fix that.”

  “How long?”

  “An hour.”

  They look clean, too clean for Hastings.

  “You belong on Seymour,” says Bunce.

  “Times’re tough,” says the blonde. She’s going for the athletic look, with red cycling tights and a sweatband.

  “You float with the market tide,” says Bunce, as if reciting the first line of a poem. “Got a place?”

  She leans close. “Just across the street and up. Very clean and discreet.”

  “Hawaiian,” says the shortest. She puts her head in the window, establishing eye contact and displaying her cleavage, which is deep, tanned, and smells of frangipani. The third steps to the back-seat window so Horst can have a look. She wears a white bodysock and a black choker. She peers in, raises her eyebrows and mouths: Hello there …

  Bunce looks at Rupp; Rupp catches Horst’s eye in the rearview mirror; Horst shrugs. They look good, yeah, but Jesus, a hundred bucks …

  Bunce, however, gets out and tips the seat forward. Two climb in back. Horst is suddenly surrounded by sweet-smelling female. There’s nothing to do but give everyone a beer. Rupp puts the car in first, and the blonde, sitting up front in Bunce’s lap, pushes the chat with professional ease.

  “What’s your name?”

  “John.”

  She clucks and groans, as if to say — Come on, I’m not like the others. She slides her hand through Bunce’s hair. “You a lawyer? I need a good lawyer.”

  No one asks why. Bunce states that he’s a market analyst.

  “Dow dropped again this morning,” she says. “Losing my shirt.”

  “You’d look good without your shirt. What’ve you got?”

  “Glenborne. Four thousand shares.”

  “What’d you get in at?”

  “Dollar-seven.”

  “Sell.”

  She shakes her head. “I’ve seen it before. I’m ridin’ it out.” Horst’s girl presses against him with her shoulder and thigh. She smells of vitamin E shampoo and a perfume that reminds him of the past. At first she rests her hand on his knee, then she advances it slowly up his leg, stopping just outside the city gate. Horst gulps his entire beer in the time it takes to drive a block and a half and pull into an alley behind an old apartment.

  They climb rickety wooden steps to the third floor, then go into a hall stale with ancient linoleum. The blonde leads the way into a suite done in red and black. It looks more Pizza Parlour than Polynesian. Red lamp shades, red shag rug, a pineapple clock ticking on the glass coffee table. The blonde swings open the fridge, which casts Arctic glare, and pulls a bottle of Absolut from the freezer. Horst’s girl sits beside him on the leather couch, hand on his leg.

  “My name’s Sue.”

  “Harry,” says Horst, not sure why he’s lying.

  “Harry used to teach school,” laughs Bunce.

  “What subject?”

  “Science,” says Horst, which is true. Fourteen years ago. He didn’t last long.

  “We had to cut up cow eyes,” says Sue.

  “Gentlemen!” The blonde passes around vodka and pineapple juice.

  “Make Henry’s a double,” says Sue.

  “Harry,” says Horst.

  They sip and chat for about a minute and a half according to the pineapple clock, then the blonde, judging that to be long enough, bounces up, bright and casual. “Just take care of financial formalities here and we can get to the fun.”

  They pay.

  The blonde takes Bunce into a room while Rupp’s woman pulls out the roll-away. Sue leads Horst by the hand into a room that smells of incense. Horst notices that it’s 1:05 by the pineapple.

  At 1:16 Horst, Bunce, and Rupp are on their way down the steps. Back in the car, Horst opens the last three beers and passes them around. They’re silent for a while as they drive.

  “Mine was the shits,” states Rupp.

  “It’s always the shits,” says Bunce, gazing off out the window. “What did you expect?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then you got what you paid for.”

  “Was still the shits. I’ve had better for fifty.”

  “The only way to get a hooker into it is a couple of rails of coke,” states Bunce.

  Horst leans back looking out the rear window, hoping to catch the meteor showers. There’s nothing though. Sue had made a few noises at first, pretending to be turned on. But she’d kept calling him Henry. Horst’s orgasm had all the sparkle of flat pop. He’d kept on going to get his money’s worth, until Sue slapped him on the shoulder, like a tag-team partner, and jerked her head, meaning — That’s it, get off.

  At half past three Rupp drops Horst off at the end of the street. Horst plods up the alley to his place, past dented garbage cans that lean together in two’s and three’s like old men, their lids slanted like rakish caps. He’s starved and exhausted and depressed. On the grass, beside his Pacer, he sees a body. He halts. Every month or so some piss-tank’s passed out along the alley here. Horst even finds them under his car when it’s raining. When he steps closer, however, he recognizes that this time it’s Fat Brigette, who lives in the rest home up the street. Brigette is about forty and slightly retarded.

  “Hey.”

  Horst nudges her with his foot. He waits, then nudges her again — nothing. He gets down beside her and, smelling booze, slaps her cheek. Still nothing. Horst sits back on his heels. The thing about Fat Brigette is she’s not all that fat, and if it wasn’t for the pig-shave she wouldn’t look half bad. Horst glances around. They’re down between the car and the fence, completely hidden. She’s snoring. He reaches to touch her breast, but stops and gives her another shake instead. She snores on. So Horst gives her a feel. Fat Brigette. He knows for a fact a bowl of French Vanilla ice cream and she’ll do anything. Hell, you can’t get rid of her. Whenever Brigette sees Horst she asks for a loonie for a loony, and says, “I’m handy-and-capped!” as if she just won first prize in a contest.

  Horst glances around again. She’s lost one of her shoes, and her purse, a small red plastic one, lies half under her. Horst slips it free and finds a paper bag inside with a wedge of ham and pineapple pizza in it. There’s also a pair of panties in the purse. He looks at the hem of Brigette’s dress. Then he reaches down and pulls it up. Bush. All the way. He slides the dress back in place, returns the panties to her purse, and waits, eyes wide and innocent, hands folded neatly in his lap, listening to the night, and feeling the blood beating in his ears. After a minute he pulls her dress up again. Then he unzips his pants. He kneels on the burnt prickly scrub staring at himself. No. He can’t do it.

  What Horst finally feels is the emptiness in his stomach. He takes that piece of pizza, sits back against the wheel of his car, and watches the sky. Horst has always been fascinated by astronomy. He still has his star charts, though he sold his telescope years ago to buy Corinne an engagement ring. He recites the names of the planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and finally Pluto, God of the Underworld, dwelling in darkness farthest from the sun. It’s been a long time. He listens to Fat Brigette snore, feels that cold pizza like bones in
his belly, and watches the Tears of Saint Lawrence spray like foundry sparks across the night sky.

  HORST USED TOsmoke a lot of pot He also used to do a lot of acid, MDA, mushrooms, and even some smack. No needles though. Horst hated needles, he just “chased the dragon.” But that’s all past. He didn’t even toke anymore. In his middle age, Horst had settled down to drinking. He’d become pretty good, too. Horst wasn’t big — five-nine, one-fifty — but, over an evening, he could put back a litre of red and be perfectly straight. He was a little proud of that.

  “Of course,” said Bunce, sitting with Horst in the Astoria, “the only way to really get drunk is hard liquor. Single malt scotch.” Bunce raised his forefinger: “Scotch is to beer as hash is to pot.”

  Horst agreed. Still, he liked beer, especially on a hot day in a cool dark bar. On a summer afternoon, the last place you’d find Horst Nunn was the beach.

  KISS YOU

  FOR A

  QUARTER

  Horst hikes toward the Astoria with fifty-eight bucks in his pocket. He hits Hastings, passing Funky Winker-beans, the Sunrise, the Smilin’ Buddha. The Smilin’ Buddha’s not there anymore, but it’ll always be there in Horst’s mind. The fat neon Buddha waving to the fat neon pig at Save-On-Meats. On Hastings the crowd slides slow as sewage, and curious eddies clot up the doorways: a blow job, and the woman glancing up, like — Hey! How ‘bout some privacy here! Horst keeps walking. It’s July, and the reptiles sun themselves on the hot cement. He passes the Balmoral, the Empress, the Patricia, then reaches the Astoria.

  Horst enters the Astoria’s beer-soaked-carpet-and-smoke smell. A sign says “Chicken Wings 25.” A young couple shoot pool. They both have pig-shaves. She’s wearing a ballerina tutu over black jeans that are torn at the arse. The tutu bobs about her hips as she circles for a shot. Horst has to admit that she looks good in that pig-shave, though she’s lousy with a cue. An old guy with white sideburns and ears like punched dough watches her. Each time she stretches across the table for a shot, that rip in her pants opens wide revealing pale thigh. The old guy’s raincoat is open, revealing his gut-sack belly. On his table two packs of Export Plain sit neatly stacked. A lit one is wedged like a post into the crotch of his fingers. His other hand lies on its back on the terry-cloth like a dead white guinea pig, legs in the air.