Girl Unwrapped

by Gabriella Goliger

  Toni is surprised to see a fat tear slip over the rim of Abbott’s left eye and roll down his soft cheek. Her father would be mortified by such a display.

  “How well did you know my dad?”

  “Not well enough,” the bookseller answers with a tragic air. “But I understood. The collector’s soul, I understood. Oh, my dear.” Mr Abbott honks into his handkerchief. “Young people can be hard. Do keep a few of his books for yourself. You’ll be glad you did when you are older.”

  Abbott squeezes his hands together in appeal. Toni laughs. She can imagine her father commenting dryly. A comical bird, that one, but harmless. I give him a year before he’s bankrupt. You realize not a soul has entered the store since you did.

  “You say you need a job,” the bookseller says, throwing his hands high as if struck by an inspiration. “How strong is your back?”

  “I’m very strong,” Toni answers, squaring her shoulders. “I do the 5BX program, the one used by the RCAF.”

  “Well, then. I could use a helper. You’re just the one.”

  “Really?”

  “So many boxes to bring up from the basement. I’m a walking ad for Ben-Gay ointment, my dear. And I’m sure you could handle the cash better than Mr Pickwick.” He gestures toward the grey cat, who has resettled in his spot. “And I have no doubt books are in your blood. Just a matter of bringing out the latent potential.”

  Abbott dances about, gesturing with excitement.

  Six months. That’s how long he’ll last, she hears her father saying. But Mr Abbott’s elation is contagious, and a job’s a job. Her very first. That’s something at least.

  chapter 23

  Sunday morning in the deep-freeze of winter—it’s the worst day of the week, worst time of the year. Toni surveys stark trees, sidewalks of hard-packed snow, cars with black slush frozen into the wheel wells. All this beneath an iron sky. She leans her forehead against the frosty windowpane until her whole face aches. On weekdays and Saturdays, she can busy herself with her bookstore job. On Sundays, there’s nothing but long bleak hours of empty freedom. “Get together with some other young people,” her mother urges. “Join a club. Why don’t you call the Nutkevitch girls?”

  Nothing changes.

  Her mother has gone to the Shape-up class at the Y—Toni can see them, a roomful of middle-aged, leotard-clad women, upside down, doing the “bicycle” to a tinny recording of the Beatles’ “Lady Madonna.” Hips propped on hands, legs churning the air with desperate determination. Pedalling to melt away fat, to banish sorrow. But fat clings and sorrow sticks. A woman of a certain age without a man is pathetic. No one says so, but everyone knows.

  Toni prowls about the house. Picks up yesterday’s paper—“Students Riot at Sir George Williams University”—throws it down again, then flips on the TV for ten seconds of The Galloping Gourmet. She drifts into her mother’s room. The closet door stands open. Her mother’s clothes have strayed across the rod. Months ago, bags stuffed with her father’s suits, coats, sweaters, and shoes were finally sent off to the Hadassah bazaar. Toni has his watch, which she asked for as a memento. The twenty-year-old Swiss Omega was his first big splurge in Canada, part self-indulgence, part prudence. It has seventeen jewels, a stainless steel casing, a black leather strap, and the last letter of the Greek alphabet stamped in gold beneath the number twelve on the watch face. A watch like that would help him look like a solid citizen, inspire the trust of clients, he must have thought. Toni punched an extra hole in the strap to make it fit her own wrist.

  On what was once her father’s side of the closet a single suit remains, along with one white dress shirt, a tie on the otherwise empty tie rack, his felt fedora on the shelf above, and a pair of black shoes on the floor. A complete outfit. Do the dresser drawers also hold one of everything? Socks, underwear, pyjamas? So that were he to suddenly materialize, he’d be perfectly equipped to walk out into the world? She can’t bring herself to look.

  The suit her mother has saved is of good grey wool, shot through with blue and silver threads, and without a speck of lint. When did he last wear it? Toni can’t remember. She’s never paid much attention to male attire before, but now she admires the subtle pattern of the pinstripes and the fine cut of the cloth while her heart aches. This mere thing has outlasted its owner. Oh, the mute, useless endurance of inanimate objects! The cruel emptiness of sleeves! She has a sudden craving to see the suit filled by a living body.

  Lifting the jacket from the hanger, she slips it on. Not a bad fit. A bit roomy across the shoulders and around the middle, perhaps, but the sleeves are about right, reaching to the midpoints of her hands. What’s not right is her faded orange T-shirt beneath the beautiful jacket. She tries on the dress shirt, buttoning it right up to her chin. The pants now. She must have the pants. A thrill of the forbidden flutters beneath her ribs. She steps into the trouser legs, zips up the fly, pulls tight the belt, though it’s too long for her slim waist. The pant cuffs flop on the floor. She wriggles her bare feet into the black shoes. Better. The tie next, a lovely silk one with blue, white, and wine-coloured stripes. Her nervous fingers improvise a knot. She completes the picture with his grey felt fedora.

  Hands in trouser pockets, legs astride, Toni surveys herself in the mirror behind the closet door. The sight is both eerie and exhilarating. She looks downright handsome. Were her mother to walk in the room right now, her screams would shatter glass. Toni feels she has overstepped some limit, regressed into a childish game of dress-up, but one that perverts the very idea of childhood and human dignity. What a naughty devil! She winks at herself, a wink that thrills as it appalls. How would her father feel to see her thus? Does he look down reproachfully from some heavenly realm? But he’s not here. He’s gone.

  An old, familiar sadness washes over her. She remembers this from long ago, the terrible anguish that would engulf her in the presence of her father, leaping from his skin into hers. They would be happily walking hand-in-hand on a blustery April day to the Belgian pastry shop on Côte des Neiges Road, perhaps rhyming off some comical verse from a German storybook. Suddenly, she would sense a difference, perhaps a release in the pressure in his hand, an uneasy shifting of his head. That was all it took for the atmosphere to change, and they would carry on in strained silence. She could sense the pain of loss in his bloodstream, a dripping away that whispered: You are alone, no happiness lasts, happiness is merely an illusion causing you to drop your guard, so that when the blow comes—as it must—it will fall harder than you can bear. And now that old gloom lives on. A dead brown smell, detached from its source, concentrated in the fabric of his suit, seeps into her body once more. Hastily she removes the outfit, puts everything back exactly as it was before, after a thorough going over with the lint brush.

  Several days later, she sits behind the cash register at Browsers’ Paradise observing “the boys.” That’s how Mr Abbott refers to a group of odd young fellows who frequent his store, often just before closing time on Saturday afternoons. They have narrow waists, sensitive features, giddy manners. They eye one another hungrily while leafing through slim volumes of avant-garde poetry or glossy photos of God and Adam sparking one another on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Mr Abbott doesn’t seem to mind their presence, though they rarely buy the expensive books they like to finger. He smiles indulgently and pats their cheeks. Some time ago, Toni realized these young men were homos. She was disgusted, of course. She was disgusted because anybody would be—it was a natural reaction—but also because this lot was so bloody blatant. They carried on right under Mr Abbott’s nose. Once, down in the basement, she heard a strange, unwholesome ruckus from behind the bathroom door. Bristling with indignation, she warned Mr Abbott that a certain type of clientele might scare off other customers. He put his hand to his chin and contemplated her with gentle blue-eyed consternation.

  “They do no harm,” he murmured vaguely.

  Did he know, or didn’t he? She couldn’t be sure. It seemed quite within his ch
aracter, that of a kind little elf, to look beyond the depravity to the human being underneath. She decided to tolerate the boys for his sake.

  She’s become used to them now. She even enjoys the excitement they bring into the shop, the innuendo that goes over her head but that charges the air with a sense of daring and fun. Lately too she has become intensely curious about their secret lives.

  This evening, two of the regulars—Brian and Winston—are in the shop. Brian sits in the rocker with Mr Pickwick sprawled on his lap in a posture of ecstatic abandonment. Winston bends over them. The two boys stroke the cat, their fingers ploughing through the long grey fur, and giggle while Mr Pickwick purrs at full throttle.

  “You going to the Blue tonight?”

  Winston straightens and smoothes back the long blond hair that has tumbled forward into his flushed face.

  “Where else?” Brian shrugs. “Hope springs eternal.”

  He lowers his voice and whispers something Toni can’t hear. The “Blue” they’re talking about is the Blue Nile, a nightclub in the seedy section of Sainte Catherine Street East that features bars and striptease joints. From afar Toni has glimpsed neon signs that depict nude, female dancing legs kicking up and down. She leaves her spot by the cash register and approaches the rocker and gives Pickwick a flick under the chin.

  “Hey, fellas,” she says as casually as she can. “How’d you like some company at the Blue tonight? I’ve got this old suit of my dad’s I tried on the other day. I’d blend in—look just like one of the guys. Wouldn’t it be a gas?”

  She kneads the cat’s ears the whole time she speaks. When she’s done her little speech, she dares to look at Winston. His arms fold over his chest and his mouth twists into an expression of amused surprise. He and Brian exchange glances.

  “Well!” Winston says dramatically. “Well! I never thought I’d live to see the day. I could see her blending in. Eh, Brian? Don’t you think?” He gives a mighty wink. “But believe me, darling, you’d really be much better off at Loulou’s.”

  From this casual remark, Toni learns about a world beyond anything she had ever imagined.

  chapter 24

  Loulou’s is on a marginal strip of Dorchester Avenue, an area in transition: part commercial, part residential, with ma-and-pa grocery stores and shabby rooming houses that have seen better days. A few blocks away, Sainte Catherine Street hums and glitters, but in this pocket of the city the traffic is sparse. Only now and then a shadowy figure rushes by with collar pulled up against the ear-chewing wind. Toni stands on the corner behind a telephone pole, scanning a row of modest buildings that are neither one thing nor the other: neither swanky downtown, nor racy east end, neither English nor French, but something in between. The linguistic dividing line used to be Saint Laurent Boulevard—the Main—but lately the French have come west. A new sense of pride and entitlement has awakened among the masses, bringing their fast, loose-vowelled lingo into territory that was once almost exclusively English. Among the thoughts that tumble through Toni’s brain as she lingers in the shadows is the question of what language they speak at Loulou’s. If French, she’s not sure how she’ll manage because, though she did well enough in the subject at school, there’s a world of difference between passing an exam and understanding the argot of the street.

  Toni trots back and forth, casting quick glances at the door that will lead her to happiness or perdition. It’s on the ground floor, half hidden by a long flight of outdoor stairs. The sign above is so discreet it’s easy to miss, spelling out Loulou’s Lounge in faint, flickering blue neon, a colour like the last light of an evening sky. If you weren’t looking for that sign, you’d be sure to miss it, and even now it seems like a mirage. She has lingered on the corner and wandered around the neighbourhood and frozen her butt for over half an hour. The evening is slipping by, and still she can’t make her move. She watches as several couples arrive, knock, and are admitted, while a brief gust of chatter and music blows into the street. Then silence once more. Blank walls and a dark closed door.

  Finally, numb of toe, trembling of limb, Toni scoots across the road and into the gloom beneath the outdoor staircase. Shortly afterward, she hears footsteps, someone striding down the street, who stops just inches away from Toni’s hiding place and stands in the ghostly pool of light cast by the neon sign. It’s a woman with dark, handsome features— long, strong face, hawk’s-beak nose, conquistador’s mouth, thick eyebrows. Her hair is cut in a short masculine bob, and she wears a black leather jacket that gives extra heft to her square shoulders. If she’s noticed Toni, she pays no attention, but instead whisks out a comb from her back pocket and rakes it along the sides of her head. One hand combs, the other smoothes in quick, self-assured movements. On the pinkie finger of one of those powerful hands a gold ring flashes. Toni holds her breath, weak with excitement. She’s aware that had she seen this manly woman on Saint Catherine’s an hour ago she might have thought her freakish and averted her eyes. But now, suddenly, perhaps because of the place and time and the gesture with the comb, Toni sees something new, the compelling appeal of ambiguity. It is a face that breaks the rules.

  The woman draws herself up, trots down the steps, and raps a smart tattoo on the door.

  “Ben, Juanita! C’est toé!” a deep, heavily accented voice booms out. “About time. Get your ass in here. Your gang’s waiting.”

  They speak English at least.

  Again, from inside, banners of carefree noise issue forth—clinking glasses, laughter and dance music—and are abruptly cut off when the door slams shut. Toni’s heart thunders against her ribcage. Perhaps, beyond this threshold, an underground of toughs, gangsters, and freaks awaits. Army boots and switch blades and bearded ladies. Perhaps she’s arrived at the gates of hell, but she must go forward. She hurls herself at the door, pounds with her fist.

  The door opens a crack and a pair of eyes sweeps up and down her like a policeman’s flashlight, taking Toni’s measure.

  “Ouai?” says the same husky voice that greeted Juanita. And when Toni just stares, “You look for someone?”

  “Can I come in?” Toni breathes.

  The door opens a touch wider. The person behind the voice leans forward into the gap. In the dim glow of the entranceway, Toni makes out a tall, hefty build, a broad face, a squashed-in nose, and a thatch of straw-coloured hair tumbled over the brow. Shrewd lines crinkle the corners of the eyes.

  “How old are you, kid?”

  “Eighteen,” Toni answers, without thinking to lie.

  “Tell me another! Anyway, even if you are eighteen, you’re underage for this établissement. And you’re wearing jeans. I have a dress code. No jeans.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  Toni swallows down the sob rising in her throat. She notices now that her interrogator wears wine-red slacks, white loafers, and a gaily patterned shirt with the sleeves rolled up. There’s a heavy gold chain around her neck and another on her wrist, but these ornaments look more like weapons than jewellery.

  “Tough luck,” the woman snorts as the door begins to close, but Toni’s foot juts forward of its own accord, wedging itself against the jamb.

  “But I’m a friend of Juanita’s.”

  The words have come out of nowhere.

  “Heh? That so?”

  The woman sounds doubtful, nevertheless she turns and shouts, “Hey Juanita! Viens icitte. Someone here says she knows you. Ever lay eyes on this kid before?”

  The Spanish-featured woman appears in the doorway. She has shed her leather jacket and now stands before Toni in a man’s suit—solid black, the pant legs pressed into razor-edge creases—and a white, open-necked shirt. She regards Toni blank-eyed, stone-faced, and Toni can only look back at her in trembling silence.

  “Sure, I know her. This one’s trouble,” Juanita finally declares in a slow, firm voice.

  “Thought so,” says the doorkeeper, crossing her arms over her chest. She has biceps as big as Toni’s knees.

  �
�But I’ll keep her in line. She’ll answer to me. Give her a break, Rick.”

  Juanita still doesn’t crack a smile, though a twinkle has come into those obsidian eyes.

  “Eh, ben, it’s cold standing here. Come in if you’re coming.”

  The door swings open.

  Toni’s in.

  Hand clamped on her shoulder, Juanita steers Toni through a long, narrow, crowded room with dark-painted walls and wreathes of smoke snaking up toward the ceiling. There’s a bar on one side, a small scuffed-up dance floor beside a juke box, and a few tables at the back where Juanita’s friends sit waiting.

  “Hey gals, look what the cat delivered. Fresh meat. Okay, this here’s Maggie. That’s Rhonda and Renée. Me, you already know, right? So what’s your name?”

  Toni tells them.

  “A first-timer, gals, fresh from her mommy’s tits. ’Course I know. Saw you shivering under the stairs with your eyes big as hubcaps. Welcome to our den of iniquity.”

  Juanita bends in a mocking bow.

  “Come sit on my lap, honey,” Maggie says, winking and patting her knees. She’s a chunky older woman—forty at least—with short, curly, muddy-brown hair. She’s wearing a tartan blazer with brass buttons and a lapel pin that’s halfway between a cross and a dagger.

  “Don’t trust Juanita, she’s an animal, but I don’t bite. Not unless you ask nicely. Har, har. Poor kid, doesn’t know what to make of us. She’s going to faint or run screaming out the door.”

  “No I won’t,” Toni mutters, but sidles away from Maggie to an empty chair near the other two—Rhonda and Renée—who sit pressed close together like lovebirds on a wire. Rhonda, who’s clearly the “guy” of the couple, though she’s pink-cheeked, baby-faced, and skinny, extends her hand for Toni to shake. The grip is surprisingly firm. Her sweetheart ignores Toni. In her own way she is as arresting as Juanita. Renée is tiny and ultra-feminine, wearing a low-cut cocktail dress that shows off the tops of voluptuous breasts but also a knobby hump at the summit of her spine. She hunches at the table, a cigarette balanced between white fingers that end in scarlet nails so long they curve inward. Heavy makeup, swirls of stiff black hair, a pouting mouth, and a seemingly permanent morose expression complete the vampish picture. Rhonda’s arm rests protectively on the back of Renée’s chair. They seem an unlikely couple, the one an exotic bird, the other like a little boy dressed up for a birthday party in a blue suit and red bowtie. Toni can imagine her mother’s hissed verdict: Grotesque.