“A travesty!”
“And like, take this, this tower bullshit. I have to work the counter while you guys get to do this? Like, what’s the implication here, huh? Women aren’t good at construction?”
“Exactly. Blatant discrimination. Unchecked tyranny. Let’s get ourselves some union cards.” Ben punctuates his excitement with a resounding and conclusive clap.
“Well hold on, Ben, I’d like to be looped-in on the whole process. I don’t want to be railroaded into anything.”
“Wonderful to hear. We’ll embark on the journey together. Why don’t we draft an exploratory email to the union after the shift … if you have the time?”
Appeased by inclusion, Megz relaxes her stern look into a half smile. “I guess I could make the time to do that.” She flicks the tower and watches it wobble. “God, this is stupid.”
“The stupidest,” agrees Lyle.
Ben takes a step back to better view the five vertical feet of bagels in front of the boarded-up window. “Yes, comrades, this may well be the single most retarded idea the woman has had yet.”
Even before Megz says anything, Ben can feel the shift in the group. The mood turns tense, fraught.
“Whoa, whoa, hey there,” says Megz.
“What?”
“Retarded? No. You can’t say that, Ben.”
From up on the chair, Lyle weighs in: “Yeah, buddy, you really can’t say retarded anymore.” Lyle says this. Lyle, who a few hours ago masturbated into a tub of cream cheese.
Ben picks the sketch up off the table and holds it up to them each in turn. “Look at this structural rendering and tell me it’s not retarded.”
There’s a sharp intake of breath as Megz clenches her jaw, and Ben can see from her blistering expression that he’s taken a step too far. “Okay, my apologies, mea culpa.” He places a deferential hand over his heart. “Let’s not squabble over language. Let’s just forget about this and return our focus to the union question.”
“No, Ben, we can’t just forget about language. Language happens to be very important to me. It’s, like, my trade.” As Megz walks back to the counter, Ben looks at the tattoo on her nape: Lush Words inked out in a cursive script.
Later, while clocking out in the staff room, Ben makes a stab at smoothing things over. “Megz,” he says in his most sincere tone, “I recognize that I pissed you off earlier, for which I am truly sorry.”
“It’s fine,” she says in a clipped tone that suggests it is not actually fine at all.
So he offers an olive branch, the thickest he can extend. “There’s a defective smoked meat sandwich in the fridge.” He exhales deeply, summoning the strength to continue. “It’s yours, if you’d like it.”
“I don’t eat meat, Ben.”
Shit. “Right. Oh right. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve told you that at least twice,” she says and blows out of the staff room.
As a rule, Ben tries not to be selfish with the defective spoils. Before he wraps up his smoked meat, he forces himself to offer half of it to Paulie, who, as usual, has been working out of sight for most of the shift.
“No no,” says Paulie. “Debbie says to put defects in the garbage.”
“Yes, but that’s wasteful. So I saved it. You want half?”
Paulie wavers for a moment, but his anxiety over the possible consequences of a broken rule soon prevails. “No. No.”
“All right then.” Ben tosses his loot into a paper bag, swinging his spoils as he leaves the shop.
But then, on the way to the streetcar stop, the derelict who camps out on the sidewalk near The Poppy Seed, whose decline over recent months has been startlingly swift, calls, “Any change, man? Got anything today?”
Ben checks his pockets, but the only tender is a nickel and some subway tokens. He has nothing to offer the man, nothing but the smoked meat. “I got a sandwich.”
“No change?”
“Just the sandwich.”
“Yeah. Okay then. I’ll take that.”
And so blow the winds of fate. No smoked meat for Ben this afternoon. Instead he grabs three slices of pizza from a dive up on Bloor so that he won’t arrive hungry and grumpy at Joly’s, forced to nibble on overpriced snack food that will indebt him to that parasite—her beloved brother.
9
BEN SEARCHES THE kitchen drawers for a meat thermometer, but there is little of actual use in Yannick’s remodelled kitchen. It has a six-burner range, a built-in steamer, and a wine fridge, but no meat thermometer, nor even a potato masher. Ben has had to roast the potatoes instead, a second-rate side dish to this beautifully cooked coq-au-vin.
“Ben! Guess what I am?” cries Yvie, lying in her pyjamas on the shiny hardwood floor.
“I have no time for guessing games,” says Ben. “Can’t you see I’m tending a stew?” Given the voyage this already-expired chicken has undergone, he would like the certainty of a thermometer reading. But he did give the half-cooked chicken a thorough sniff earlier … and the nose knows.
Yvie elbow-crawls her way over to Ben and nips at his ankle bone. “Guess what I am, Ben?”
“You are a strange little creature.”
“Hahaha. Nuh-uh. I’m a snake!”
“An Yvie-snake,” shouts Joly from her place at the island.
“Yeah! An Yvie-snake,” Yvie slithers all the way around the island before she springs up to her feet and returns to Ben’s side. “I want to help!” she announces, straining on her tiptoes and groping at the counter’s edge.
“I don’t see how.”
But Joly, more indulgent, picks Yvie up and sets her on the countertop, next to some thyme sprigs, so that the child can peer into the pot. Ben lets slide this gross contravention of kitchen etiquette.
“So I might have a job,” says Joly, sniffing at the stew pot.
“What job? Praise be to God!” Ben worries about her, specifically about what will happen to her when Yannick finally decides to expel her from the pleasure palace. She has never had to fend for herself. She has always had this big cushy safety net waiting to catch her, and she doesn’t yet know what life is like without that comfort.
“Writing up product descriptions,” she says as she wanders back to the island. “For a giftware company. One of Karen’s friends was looking for someone, so … she says I’m a lock. It’s part time. But it’s something. Could lead to other things.”
“Part time, huh?”
“Yeah, freelance.”
“Ah.”
“What’s a freelance?” asks Yvie. She has picked up a thyme sprig and started to tap it against her tongue.
“It’s a kind of job,” Joly says.
“Not just any kind of job,” says Ben, swiping for the sprig—but Yvie’s fast. “Part of the neoliberal labour model. Designed to get employers out of basic workplace obligations. Like paying proper wages and offering benefits and job security.”
“Oh.” Yvie stops mid-lick. Her forehead rumples. Ben likes this expression of hers best, this contemplative frown that bears an appropriate hint of displeasure with the world. The child, despite her spoiled upbringing, shows promise.
Ben gives the rich brown stew a sprinkling of black pepper and Yvie leans perilously over the pot. “That’s right, Yvie,” he says. “Take in the well-balanced aromatics, the whole glorious bouquet.”
But when she turns her face to him, her small nose is wrinkled in disgust.
“What do you know about cooking, you little gremlin? Away with you!” He scoops her up over his shoulder, like a potato sack, and deposits her in front of the cutlery drawer. “Make yourself useful. Set the dining room table for us.”
The child manages this task, under Joly’s heavy guidance, then disappears under the table, where she carries on a muted conversation with herself. Ben, meanwhile, plates their dinners and sets a basket of warmed bread on the table as a rustic accompaniment. “Coq-au-vin,” he announces with a flourish.
Ben studies Joly attentively as she spoons her
first mouthful; he is gratified to watch her steely grey eyes grow with sensory pleasure. “As it happens,” he says, basking in the wholesome atmosphere of this well-prepared feast, “I have news of my own.” He pours the leftover red wine into two of Yannick’s long-stemmed wine glasses, and swirls the plonk around the crystal glass. “I am to give the sermon this Sunday.”
“You?” Joly drops her fork, which thumps loudly against the solid wood table.
“I!”
“But … why? You’re not a priest.”
“The Reverend Roberta, in her wisdom, asked me to deliver it.”
“Why would she do that? Is she sick?”
Ben grunts, snorts. The lack of enthusiasm! For his career as a prophet! He swallows the entire contents of his glass. “I suppose she thinks I have something to say.”
“Do you?”
“Much! I have much to say!”
Sliding out from beneath the table, Yvie clambers up onto Ben’s lap, a brazen ascent, which he observes incredulously. “What is this? I’m eating! You can’t interrupt a man when he’s with his chow.”
She looks up at him with eyes as large as Joly’s, the same shade of blazing grey. “I’m getting bap-sized.”
“Ah yes, so I hear.” Ben’s invitation to the baptism arrived last week, in a square envelope, on thick card stock. The baptism itself is at their parish church (Catholic! Pah! They might as well pitch the child straight into the fires of hell), but for the ensuing reception, these people have rented a room at no less a landmark than the CN Tower, successfully transforming the quiet dignity of a sacrament into a garish public spectacle.
Yvie’s expression turns very serious. “Are you coming to watch me, Ben?”
“Would you like me to come?”
“Yeah-huh.”
“Well … I’m very busy, you understand. I have all manner of important business to attend to. But I think I can squeeze it in.” He has, in fact, already put in a day-off request with Dickhead Debbie.
With this bit of business resolved to her satisfaction, Yvie slips off his lap and returns to her place under the table. But she keeps her feet elevated, kicking her heels on Ben’s kneecaps.
“You know, I like this idea!” Joly suddenly exclaims. She’s tapping the back of her fork against a perfectly roasted potato. “You giving a sermon. You have a beautiful voice, I’ve always said that. Haven’t I always said that?”
“You have.” Ben allows a soft, dignified bow of the head, careful not to betray how tickled he is by this sudden show of gusto. “And you are not wrong.”
“I can’t wait to hear you up there.”
“Oh … no, you don’t have to come. That’s hardly necessary.”
“You’d be a great priest! I don’t know why we didn’t think of this before!”
“Well now, let’s not get carried away. I’m not a priest. I’m just a man delivering a soaring sermon.”
“But you could be! You could become a priest! Why not? That could be a career. It’s perfect.”
Ben has already weighed and dismissed this option. Apart from the difficulties inherent in a return to academia, even the seminary, pastoral care isn’t booming. Few job openings exist in the diocese; the newly-ordained are left twiddling their thumbs until one of the old guard dies and opens up a vacancy, preferably before the parish gets amalgamated.
“Priests must earn a living wage, right?” she presses. Her thoughts seem to be moving rapidly; she has forgotten about her stew. “They get free housing too, don’t they?”
Yvie ramps up the force of her heels against Ben’s knees. Relieved by the distraction, he wraps his hands around her ankles and tugs her out from under the table to her screeched delight.
“Now this is how one slithers.” He tows her to the left, to the right, and all around the kitchen by her ankles, moving in ess-curves, careening around the furniture; she glides easily across the floor, which must recently have been buffed. Soon her giggles explode into shrieks of wild laughter, the purity of which stokes laughter in Ben as well. After their second tour of the kitchen, all three of them are laughing, but the good cheer of the evening, the warmth of the domesticity, triggers in Ben a silent alarm. It is not a good idea for Joly and him to be playing house, with this child, when they will never have either—not house, nor child—just when Joly suddenly seems to be longing for both.
ONCE YVIE IS in bed, they settle in front of the wall–sized flat screen TV and watch half of a Cary Grant feature that neither of them recognizes, sipping on beer—Ben’s beer, his honey brown. He brought a couple of bottles with him, but he restricts his drinking to a single small glass. Despite recent events, hope springs eternal for sexual congress, and should he be called upon, he wants to be firing on all cylinders. And Joly is sending strong signals. Dragging her palm up and down his thigh, undulating slightly against him. His eyes are on the screen, but he is unable to follow the film’s confoundingly complicated story.
His restraint with the alcohol is rewarded when Joly turns off the TV, leads him down to her bedroom, and springs on him like a tigress in heat. She’s pushing right into him, her mouth on his, but he proceeds with caution. Slow steps, slow and steady. Hands are kept above the waist while they kiss on the plush mattress. He waits for her to break this boundary and demonstrate an interest in something more, and after a very long time, what might be forever, she dips a hand into his boxers.
“You want to?” he asks. “I mean … you ready to?”
“Mm-hmm. I think so.”
Ben hops out of bed and gropes for the condoms in his backpack, which he locates after several clumsy stumbles. When he crawls back into bed, he’s relieved to find them resuming their positions directly, both on their sides in full embrace. This time when Joly’s hand migrates downward, he reciprocates the gesture on her, and—oh my!—finds her very wet. Up on his knees, he rolls the condom down his cock, while she shifts to her back, her knees are bent and—look at that—splayed. Here we go, he’s going, in a slow corkscrewed approach, and … there it is! Ah, that’s good. Eyes closed, he yields to this much-missed sensation, moving faster now, and deeper.
So perhaps he is not paying enough attention to her. Or perhaps it is too dark to see the expressions on her face. Because a suppressed sniffle pierces the bubble of his pleasure, and when he touches a hand to her cheeks, his fingers come back wet.
“Hey now.” He arrests all hip action, but stays inside of her. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No. No, it feels good.”
“You want me to stop.”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m scared.”
“Scared?”
“Like what if the condom breaks? Or what if you didn’t put it on right? Or what if we just get unlucky again?” Her voice buckles on the last what-if. “I’m too scared.”
He pushes back a few inches and lies on top of her, his head on her chest. “No problem, Joly. We don’t have to do anything.” But a searing discomfort spreads through his gut. He is not sure if this is guilt over making her cry, or making her pregnant, or if it is something simpler: the primitive disappointment of thwarted desire.
“We could do other things,” she says with a stifled sob.
“Oh yeah?”
“Mm-hmm.”
He turns his face into her chest, kissing the underside of her breasts, drawing his beard across her skin, which he knows she likes, then zigzagging his way down her abdomen. He can smell her long before he gets to the source, which beckons to him forcefully. When he is pressed right up against it—well, this too, he likes. This fleshy softness against his face, this singular taste. He likes it all. Oh, and what’s this? There go her hands under her hips, a predictable movement. Her fists always disappear under her hips, lending them a slight elevation, when she’s about to come. And she does come, squeezing her thighs tight around his head. But just for a mome
nt, then she releases. Then she squeezes again, with less force this time. And releases. And again, even softer now. And again and again and again, in a dissipating pulse, her thighs lapping rhythmically against the sides of his head.
With lingering notes of her in his beard, and with her lying next to him, naked and in post-orgasmic glow, his cock stiffens uncomfortably, begging for release. She must sense this, because she puts a hand around him.
“You don’t have to, Joly.”
“I want you to come.” She says the words, but she’s offering no more than a few tired tugs. “Will you get yourself off for me?”
It’s something she likes to watch sometimes. So she tucks herself against his side and kisses his neck and his earlobes and watches as he masturbates. It’s not intercourse, but it’s a level of intimacy that has been absent. With his left arm he pulls her in close. He sniffs her hair, which always smells faintly of chlorine in the summer, and comes with his face pressed to her head.
10
A GENTLE STREAM of sunlight awakens Ben, who rolls over, grasping for Joly. But he’s alone in the big bed. It takes him longer than usual to pull himself into consciousness; the mattress is too comfortable, the sheets too soft, the pillows too plentiful. He loathes these luxuries and their sweet tranquilizing effects.
He throws on yesterday’s clothes and plods up the stairs for breakfast, pausing on the staircase to pass judgment on the display of framed wedding pictures—at least a dozen—mounted on the wall. As he scrutinizes one close-up shot, he hears his name drop in the kitchen.
“So Ben’s here, huh?” Yannick is saying.
“He helped babysit,” says Joly. “He’s amazing with Yvie. She’s obsessed with him.”
They must not have heard his ascent. It’s this new staircase. The pre-renovation staircase was a creaky artefact, but now even a man of Ben’s build can move up and down them like a cat.
“So you’re back together then?” Yannick asks.
“What do you mean? We never weren’t together.”
The Towers of Babylon Page 17