Featherless Bipeds

by Richard Scarsbrook

  To my left stand Tristan and Akim, my Best Men. Jimmy T and the guys from Janice’s band are the ushers. Beside Janice are several photogenic sorority sister friends from her college days, some of whom I met for the first time today. And at the end of the female chain stands Zoe, the only concession I won in the wedding party negotiations. Janice insisted on having her own band mates and even Jimmy T stand up with me, but she balked when I asked to have Zoe included.

  “She’s jealous of my success,” Janice claimed, “and I think she’s got a secret thing for you. I don’t like her.”

  Zoe doesn’t like Janice much, either. Every time Janice interrupted one of our band rehearsals with elaborate new plans for the wedding, Zoe raised her eyebrows and said, “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

  Tristan, jittering around in his tuxedo, leans over and asks me the same thing now. As a sort of pre-wedding gift, Tristan has compiled a video presentation of our romance, beginning with the footage he shot at Massey Hall on the night Janice and I first met, followed by scenes of us hanging out at the studio, sharing the stage together, and other stuff like that. He even hid a couple of cameras in my house and in Janice’s recently-upgraded apartment, hoping to get some candid shots of us being a cute, photogenic, media-ready couple.

  “Are you sure you want me to do this?” Tristan asks again.

  “Well,” I whisper, “she wants this all to be public.”

  “Come on, Tristan!” Janice interrupts, “The audience is waiting!”

  Tristan pops the videotape into the projector. The gathered crowd laughs and coos on cue as the scenes of Janice and me together roll past on the screen, and they clap along to the Janice’s synth-assisted voice, singing a thumpy, computer-programmed radio-ready pop song, written by Billy VandenHammer and recorded just for this occasion: “Love is nice, Love is fun, Baby, Love is number one!”

  The crowd applauds. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Zoe rolling her eyes.

  Now I let the smile I have pasted on my face finally fall off, and I let go of Janice’s hand. The next scene in the video is the one that has been causing Tristan all the anxiety. He retrieved it from the camera he hid in Janice’s apartment and showed it to me this morning, just hours before we all got suited up for the wedding rehearsal.

  On the screen, for all the guests to see, is Janice, naked on the floor of her apartment, with Jimmy T lying between her open legs, his big naked butt cheeks flexing coincidentally to the rhythm of the bass line thumping on the video soundtrack.

  Air and sound are momentarily sucked from the room.

  I turn to Janice.

  “Consider our engagement off.”

  Then to Jimmy T.

  “You’re fired.”

  I turn on my heels and walk from the ballroom, while Janice’s studio-enhanced voice continues playing from the video machine:

  “Love is nice, Love is fun, Baby, Love is number one!”

  I spend what is supposed to be my wedding day packing up the clothes and other stuff that Janice left scattered around my house, working in a detached and mechanical way, carrying the boxes up the street and depositing them one by one in the Goodwill donation box. I feel people’s eyes burning holes in me from a distance. They know what has happened. It’s news.

  TV camera trucks have been parked outside my house all morning. Each time an interviewer sprints from a van to assault me with questions about the aborted wedding, I answer by extending my arm, raising my middle finger to the camera, turning my back and walking away. This is expected behavior. I’m a ‘rock star’.

  Jimmy T and Janice have already taped a statement that has been playing nonstop on every trashy tabloid show, wherein Janice wrings out just enough fake tears to keep her makeup from running, and sobs in a carefully-rehearsed way that she has discovered that I am really in love with the singer in my band, Zoe Perry. “I so wanted my marriage to Dak Sifter to work, but his heart was elsewhere!” she cries. “Distraught and confused, I sought comfort in the arms of my manager and best friend, J.P. Tanner. He was . . . wonderful!”

  On cue, she collapses against Jimmy T, who bites his lip and tries to look concerned and supportive, when in reality he is probably looking down the front of her top. I picture drooling idiots all over North America shaking their heads and blaming me for Janice’s infidelity. Whatever.

  During what would have been our wedding reception, I thrash around on the drums in my basement, pounding and smashing, sweat and hair and limbs flying, for hours and hours until I am out of breath and my muscles simmer. I should still feel angry, or at least sad, but now I am just tired.

  I drag myself upstairs to the living room, sit cross-legged in front of the fireplace, and pop open the bottle of Dom Perignon that I had planned on sharing with Janice in our wedding night suite at the top of the Royal York. I finish the bottle, and light a match.

  There is a knock on the back door. Probably Janice. I’m surprised she didn’t come to the front door, to try to get some more camera time out of this. I’m not letting her back in.

  I hear the door creak as it opens. I guess I didn’t remember to lock it. I start to get up to meet Janice, to tell her to get lost, to push her back through the door if I have to. But it isn’t Janice. It’s Zoe.

  “Hey, buddy,” she says, “how you doing?”

  “On top of the world,” I say. “The tabloid shows will get a kick out of showing you coming to my house, eh? Won’t hurt Janice’s story any.”

  “Nobody saw me come,” Zoe says, “I snuck through your neighbour’s back yard.” She places her hand lightly on my shoulder, sits down on the floor beside me.

  “What are you doing with the matches?” she asks.

  “I’m burning these so-called lucky boxers,” I say, holding the match to the faded shorts, then tossing them into the open fireplace. Within seconds, they are engulfed in flame.

  Zoe slips her arm around my back and leans against me. I look at her, see the reflection of the flames in her almost-black eyes. There is nothing left but shriveled, smoking bits of burnt polyester before she says anything. She turns her face to mine, and now I can see reflections of myself in her eyes.

  “I’m so sorry, Dak,” she says. “I wish I could have . . . ”

  “I should have seen it coming,” I tell her.

  “Tristan is sick about it,” she says. “Akim wants to kick Jimmy T’s ass.”

  “What about you? You never liked her.”

  She sighs, pulls herself closer to me.

  “This is probably the worst possible timing, Dak,” she says, “but I didn’t realize how much I loved you until you promised yourself to her. I don’t know why I didn’t say something sooner.”

  “Janice eased the pain of not being able to have you,” I whisper.

  “Well,” she says quietly, “I’m rescinding Rule Number One. Billy VandenHammer can go to hell.”

  I wrap both of my arms around her, and the rest of what was contained now spills out into the open. We hold each other, sobbing, gasping and shaking, crumbling onto the floor.

  When it is all over, when all the clawing demons in our lungs have been released back into the darkness, we lie together on the floor, breathing in synch as if we’re sharing a single pair of lungs.

  Gently, only slightly louder than a thought, Zoe begins softly singing, no words, just a melody. I wrap my own voice around hers, the harmony more powerful than our embrace. The melody grows louder, reverberating through the room, filling the house, carrying us both through the air, into each other, becoming one.

  It’s all about the music.

  Beautiful Lies

  Lyrics — D. Sifter, Music — A. Ganges, T. Low, D. Sifter

  (From the album Harmony, recorded by The Featherless Bipeds)

  All of the flowers that you planted

  keep coming up weeds

  None of your moonlight promises

  become daylight deeds

  Just as I think I’ve found you<
br />
  You change your disguise

  And you re-invent yourself

  With your beautiful lies

  You’re full of sunlight forecasts

  During weeks of rainy days

  You talk a closet full of rainbows

  While you’re wearing clothes of grey

  Just when I think I know you

  You change your disguise

  And you re-invent yourself

  With your beautiful lies

  My poor mind becomes delirious

  gets lost in promises of light

  But then your shadow plays turn serious

  and I can’t tell the darkness from light

  No more beautiful lies

  No more beautiful lies

  LOLA’S GREATEST HITS

  Zoe spends the night with me, and years of pent-up passion and longing come rushing out of us both. For the first few hours of our new life together, we are swept away. But then morning arrives, and the TV vans come back, and the tabloid reporters resume their vigil on the sidewalk in front of my house. The phones around the house ring and ring until I finally pull the plug on every one of them.

  “Well,” Zoe says, standing in the oblique morning light, peeking through a tiny slit in the curtains of the bedroom window at the media phalanx below, “what do we do now?”

  I can imagine the celebration those mudslingers outside will have if they see Zoe and I emerge from the house together. If Zoe is spotted with me anywhere, any time, it will make Janice’s story of her infidelity seem truthful, and I will become the villain of the piece. Janice and Jimmy T have really stuck it to us.

  Zoe sits down on the bed beside me, puts her arms around me, nestles her face against my shoulder.

  “Well,” she sighs, holding out a plane ticket to Ireland, “what am I going to do with this? I was going to take a vacation while you were away on your honeymoon, but now . . . ”

  Downstairs, the doorbell is ringing. Damned tabloid vultures.

  “Look, Zoe,” I say, pulling her closer, “This whole nightmare with Janice and Jimmy T is my fault. There’s no reason that you should have to suffer.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Maybe you should go on your trip like you planned to. At least until the dust settles.”

  “You think so?”

  “It’ll probably be easier for both of us that way.”

  “Can you survive without me until I get back?”

  “I’ve been waiting my whole life for you, Zoe. I think I can endure another couple of months.”

  Zoe eludes the TV hounds the same way she had when she came in, and the next day she flies away to Ireland. I manage to duck past the cameras by sneaking out of my house late at night, and rent a room under an assumed name above a tattoo parlour on Queen West. Whenever I go out, I wear a felt cowboy hat, cop-style mirrored sunglasses, and some old, beat-up clothing I’ve picked up at the Salvation Army store. I grow a thick beard, let my hair go wild, and soon I am unrecognizable even to myself.

  I am not in the sunniest mood as I walk away from my dingy temporary home. The glare of headlights and traffic signals on the rain-glazed streets make my eyes sting. Icy rivulets of rain trickle through my collar and down my spine. Everything is conspiring to piss me off. Slouched over, trying to hide inside my overcoat, I can’t look up at the reflection of myself in the passing shop windows. I don’t want to recognize the shivering, shadow-eyed loser who will be looking back at me.

  As I near Yonge Street, I duck into a faux-British pub called Foster’s to relieve the pressure from my aching bladder. As I stand in the men’s room with my piss angrily hissing against the white porcelain, I read the graffiti in front of my nose. “Young bich you make me ich!” reads one boldly scrawled statement. How poetic. Someone else has etched this bit of wisdom on the wall: “If you voted for the Prime Minister in the last election, you can’t piss here — ’cause your DICK is in OTTAWA!!”

  I pull a pen from inside my overcoat, and add the words from one of my songs to the bathroom wall:

  I will swallow this sadness

  before it ferments

  into bitterness

  I will savour the aftertaste

  the lingering

  pain of this loss

  Alone in this crowd

  I will practice

  appearing uninjured

  I will drink this glass empty

  and wait for myself

  to return

  I find a shadowy back-corner table in the empty bar, and don’t even look up at the waitress as I order a pint of Guinness. I wonder if Zoe is drinking the same thing over there in Ireland, and if she is missing me as much as I miss her.

  “Holy shit,” the waitress says. “Dak Sifter! Is that you?”

  I looked up from under the old cowboy hat.

  “Lola! Shhhhhhh! Not so loud — I’m in disguise.”

  She sits down at the table across from me, whispering, “Shit, Sifter, the outfit’s great. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “So,” she says, “I guess Jimmy T screwed you almost as bad as he screwed me, eh?”

  “He’s a prince,” I say. “So, what’s new, Lola? When did you become a waitress?”

  “Just after I lost my presidencies at the Women’s Issues Commission and the Minority Rights Alliance. Word got back to them about my performance at the Twelve Tribes, and I got impeached. Twice on the same day. I couldn’t show my face around campus anymore, so I just dropped out.”

  “Damn. That sucks.”

  “Yes,” she says, “it does suck. But I’m sure glad Jimmy T’s life is going so well.”

  Jimmy T’s career, of course, is soaring high alongside his new girlfriend and top act, Janice Starr. The publicity created by our cancelled wedding has caused Janice’s second album, an overproduced electronic monstrosity called Love is Number One, to go straight to number one on the charts. Billy VandenHammer has put all of his resources behind Janice, and hasn’t returned calls from the Featherless Bipeds. It looks like the band’s relationship with Big Plastic Records had come to an end.

  “I’ll get you your beer,” Lola says. When she returns, she sets two Guinness on the table, one for her and one for me, along with a newspaper.

  “You’re probably okay to go home, now,” she says. “The papers have got a new story to chase.”

  The front-page headline reads, “DOWNTOWN RAPIST STRIKES AGAIN!”

  “The Downtown Rapist,” Lola whispers, “would I ever like to get my hands on that bastard. All of the attacks have been right here in my own neighborhood.”

  “Holy crap,” I say, “doesn’t that worry you?”

  “Actually, there’s been a guy following me home from work at night. He fits the description the other victims have given.”

  “Jesus! Did you call the police?”

  “They put a couple of plainclothes officers on the street along my route, but of course my stalker didn’t show up on those nights. I mean, he probably could tell these tall guys with neat haircuts had to be cops.”

  “Maybe the police scared him away.”

  “He started following me again two nights ago.”

  “Did you call the cops again?”

  “They said there’s a lot of paranoia around right now, and they just don’t have the resources to provide an escort for every woman who has to walk home at night. They told me to carry a cellphone, and call if anything actually happens — you know, like, ‘Hello? I’m about to be raped. Oh, sure, I’ll hold.’ I mean, it’s a little too late at that point, right?”

  “Why don’t you take a cab home?”

  “Try to find a cabbie at 3 am who will pick you up for a three-block fare.” She squints into her glass. “Besides, I want to catch this bastard, not run from him. And I think I know a way you can help me do it.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve got a plan. What have we got to lose?”

  A homeless
person is sitting on Queen Street, just inside a delivery alley. He is mumbling nonsense, with a vacant look in his eyes. He sits on a subway grate, warming his body with the secondhand heat, the salt-and-vinegar smell of his body wafting thickly into the air. There are several signs that he is a legitimate street-dweller, and not just some scam artist working for pocket change: he has wild, unwashed hair, and a scruffy beard. All of his clothes are frayed and have turned the colour of dirt. He is gnawing on a chicken bone he’s retrieved from a nearby garbage can.

  He’s the sort of person that hundreds of people pass by everyday, like the same old scenery. And he is, of course, me.

  I’ve gone to great lengths to blend into the street scene here. I’ve chosen a spot with a clear view of Lola’s route home, a spot which is not already some other street person’s turf. I dragged my clothing around a muddy condominium development site before putting it on, and my crappy, untrimmed beard makes me look like a street-dweller anyway. I’m even pretending to eat out of garbage cans, but my sterile middle-class upbringing prevents me from eating the stuff, so what I’m doing is starving.

  At first, I had been playing a version of the wigged out Hamlet I once did in a high school play, but now, after four days of not washing or eating a decent meal, I’m starting to feel the part.

  Since it would not make sense for a street person to wear a wristwatch, I have learned to measure the day by the tolling of the bells at Old City Hall. It is 3 am, and, shortly after the last peal of the bell has faded, Lola turns the corner and walks this way. Tonight, though, a solitary man follows her.

  I rock on the balls of my feet, ready to spring up at the right moment. Lola’s pace quickens, and the man following her speeds up. He doesn’t look like what I would have pictured a rapist to look like, but I guess that’s part of his cover. With his little glasses, thinning hair, and slouching shoulders, he looks more like a nervous bean counter than an elusive criminal. At the rate he’s moving, he will catch up with her right in front of where I’m squatting. Perfect.