by Terry Griggs
He’d utter a crudely vile overture, his lower lip sticking to a wonky canine.
This would make me want to shriek with delight, but instead, in no mood (long day) to be wooed by a steaming pile of do-do, I’d enquire, primly, “You think so?” And, possibly inspired by the store mannikin game, would add, “Don’t see how you’re going to manage that, pal. With your dick stuck up your nose.”
Then, during the brief interval in which he reaches up reflexively to check this surprising anatomical arrangement, I’d take my leave. Fast.
Thus prepared, I turn and clap my eyes on an utterly gorgeous boy, some mysterious transformation having evidently occurred. Long-limbed, curly blonde hair, tanned, full lips (no scabs) shaped into a winning smile. Does Mary Smith have a brother? Mary, whom we’d taken to calling The Virgin Mary Smith given her gloss of impenetrability, her celestial remove. To be sure, despite her avowed orientation, she seemed a different order of being, untouchable. Her heavenly counterpart, on the other hand, appeared to be more willing to engage with the descendant of a hominid.
He says, softly, “How about it?”
“It?”
“It.”
Such a dinky word ‘it’, downright itsy, a mere toy, lexically speaking. But… hey! why not! ohhhkay wonder boy, let’s unpack that baby and see what’s in it. Let’s be it, do it, fly it high!
He takes a step closer. I gaze into his marvellous eyes and see… strange to say, something slither away, something dark and quick that’s gone into hiding somewhere in his ocular recesses. Nothing as material as an eyelash. Which reminds me, before leaving work, Mary had mentioned a meeting, or some such, up at the hotel bar. She said it with a wink, and I had assumed she was teasing me, inviting me to play along with what I increasingly took to be her suitor-repelling ruse.
Mr. Beautiful places his hands lightly on my shoulders and presses down with an equally light, yet firm, touch. My knees buckle slightly.
“It?” I say, as comprehension dawns. “It!” A word now so pointed with indignation that, if possible, I’d stab him with it. Speech begins to boil in my chest like heartburn. Words, none of them appreciative, rush into my mouth, but that wretched “it” acts as a kind of plug, and I repeat “it” again. A couple of times, trying to spit “it” out.
He frowns and gives me a troubled look, perhaps wondering if he’s encountered a mono-verbal idiot, the stammering town fool. (We do have a few of those.) Readily enough, his expression shifts into a craftier mode, for who in his right mind is going to come to the assistance of someone gibbering a personal pronoun?
Right, so, what did the girlfriend of Homo erectus do when words failed her? She grunted, I suppose, and tried to grow a bigger brain. I didn’t have time for that. Instead, I stomped on my man’s sandal-clad foot (he grunted), and, turning tail, appropriately enough, took off. I pelted down the dock, past the public washrooms—where the original threat still loitered—and up the hill, hustling straight back to the Hotel.
I had a date! What Mary had said to me after work, purposely misleading or not, had finally sunk in.
As I crossed the street, my cousin Nile cruised by in his black Buick. I gave him the finger. He gave me the finger. We laughed. Communication at its finest.
Entering the lobby, I turned toward the bar opposite the restaurant where I’d been earlier. Ladies and Escorts. No lady, no escort, and underage, but in dire need of a drink, I pushed through the heavy doors and through the haze of smoke that met me, wending my way around the tables until I found them in a corner, blockaded behind an array of empty beer glasses and pissed to the gills. Clearly, they’d had less trouble getting these glasses to their lips than the coffee cups that morning.
“There you are,” my mother said. “We were beginning to wonder.”
“Nice of you.” I sat, crossed my arms, and glared.
“Hungry, sweetheart?” My father rose, a tad unsteadily, and listed toward the bar.
A bag of peanuts for my trouble. Great. My glare powered-up a megawatt. “I was almost molested!”
“Were you, dear?”
Dream come true for her, I’m sure. “Have you guys been here all day?”
“Practically. We live here now.”
“What?”
“Upstairs. We rented some rooms. Cheap, too. There’s a hotplate and everything.”
“We already have a whole house rented, remember? With a stove.”
“We got kicked out. The mayor. You know what he’s like.”
I nodded, getting interested. The house on the hill belonged to him.
“He’s always had his eye on me.”
“Gross.”
“Not that I’d ever, you know—”
No comment.
“Anyway, something snapped. He came by after you left for work and told us to get out. Gave us to the end of the week. If you can imagine!” She seized her glass and knocked back a last swallow of foam.
“So you left this morning instead?”
“We showed him.” She slapped the glass down.
“Sure did.”
“Don’t know how we managed it, Hero. But, you know, it was kind of fun. Nile helped. We threw all our stuff in the truck, stored it in Albertha’s barn. I’m sure she won’t mind. I mean, she will, but enh… here we are!” Mother made an expansive gesture in celebration of the ambience. “Our new home.”
I looked around, noting several features: the disabled chairs, the burns on the floor, the ashtray cornucopias of stubbed-out butts, the signed Tommy Hunter photo nailed to the wall and curling at the edges, the nub of fossilized barf stuck to our table, the gathering of pie-eyed and hee-hawing—or quietly weeping—members of this dismal club.
“When I’m a lawyer I’ll sue the pants off him.”
“Good girl.” She patted my knee. “Not to worry. I’m sure he’ll be dead by then.”
“Ladies,” my father said, sweeping in with a tray of drinks.
Before me, with a flourish, he set down a Shirley Temple, topped with a twee, pink paper umbrella. Of all humiliating things that had happened to me that day, this had to be the worst. How old was I? Eight? I didn’t even get the bag of nuts. Admittedly, matters improved after I took my first aggrieved sip. The Shirley had matured considerably, having been spiked generously with vodka. I glanced over at Phil the bartender and he gave me a friendly nod. Very gratifying to receive some respect not generated exclusively by myself for a change. The drink, and the one to follow, soothed all of my major organs, unhealthily rattled by the day’s trials and tribs. And, later that night, while I didn’t exactly tap dance up the stairs on my way to bed, “The Good Ship Lollipop” eased my passage all the same.
My room looked out over the back parking lot. Having already tested the hotplate, thumbed through the Gideons Bible, and checked the mattress for creepy-crawlies, I stood for a long time at the window, hugging the thin hotel pillow to my chest and taking in the view. I watched as they emerged from behind the bushes, the storage shed, the garbage cans, shadow- swift in their tens, then hundreds, wave upon wave.
Charcoal-furred, barbed tails, horns.
In Other Words
For a time I performed my inquisitional duties publicly, the better to get my hands on the goods. I had established my office in the restaurant of Neath’s Hotel at the table nearest the kitchen where the staff sat when they had a moment to grab a smoke or flip through a movie mag or consider the placemats. This prestigious spot I’d secured via a slow and steady infiltration. During the weeks that my family remained homeless, we took up residence at Neath’s downtown, which gave me my first in. Once I’d absorbed the weirdness of our new arrangement and mastered the art of lighting a cigarette on my room’s single functioning hotplate burner without setting fire to my hair, I began hanging around the rest of the joint, making myself useful as opportunities arose. For Beth,
the switchboard operator, I fetched Cokes and ham sandwiches from the kitchen, listened at length to her domestic woes, and filled in for her when she needed to retreat to the ladies’ room (which was a lot). Research heaven. As Victor, the dishwasher, liked to say—with much less cause—I know what I know. You bet. After enough forays into the kitchen (“Onions! No fucking onions! Excuse my French, dear, but could you run down to. . . ?”), I was in like a dirty shirt. (And all too frequently wearing it, my mother being notably lax in the clothing care department.) In due course my school texts began to appear on the staff table, marking my spot and handily dog-earring my squatter’s rights when required to be elsewhere. Before long, elsewhere began calling to me less and less.
High school, basically a petting zoo, had squat to offer someone who was keeping her eye, rather than her hands, on the local fauna. Everyone passed through the restaurant at some point, their crimes, no matter how mild or rank, intact—hence the ideal lookout for a round of moral winkle-picking. The coffee may have been ghastly, but the fries were hot, and the view even better.
One day, Vic noticed me observing a table of Hydro guys who were snickering slyly amongst themselves—the subject a female, no doubt—and felt moved to offer me advice.
“Hero, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“Yeah?”
“Men.”
“Uh-huh?”
“Don’t trust what they say. They’re after one thing and one thing only.”
I gave this utterance some thought.
“You mean like a tool? A drill, say? Or a Thompson screwdriver?” I was a big fan of the hardware store.
“Well, yeah, I wouldn’t mind a decent drill myself, but that’s not what I, uh—” Blushing ensues.
I was delighted to discover that I at least looked innocent. “So this ‘one thing’ applies to you too, Vic?”
“No, of course not.”
“My dad?”
“Geez, Hero. Morland? He’s a nice man. So what if he did kill that—”
“A rumour, Vic, remember that. How about Doc McIvor?” He happened to be seated at the front of the restaurant, endangering his own health by digging into yesterday’s ‘clam’ chowder.
“Gosh, no. A doctor would never—”
Au contraire (excuse my French). Our good doctor had been after ‘one thing’ of mine and got it. My tonsils. My first intimate experience with a man and I’d been out cold the whole time. I sometimes wonder what he did with them. It’s disconcerting to lose bits of yourself.
“What about Nile?” My cousin had the reputation of being a ladies’ man.
“Nile?” A look passed over Vic’s face that would have befitted a timorous faun catching sight of Pan, rock star of the hedonistic woodlands. “Uh, Nile doesn’t need to—”
“Never mind. I know, I know.”
“And I know what I know. Don’t forget what I said.”
So there we sat, steeped in knowledge, although none the wiser about what the Hydro guys were saying. And it should be noted that while men remained something of a mystery to me, I was far savvier about the ways of the world than dear, sweet, walleyed Victor. You couldn’t live in a hotel, slowly navigating the hallways and attending to the racket humans made when they got together in a depressing room with a bed centre stage and nothing else to do, without knowing what was what. On top of that I had access to a wide range of educational reading material, including Beth’s copy of Peyton Place, the expired men’s magazines sourced from the garbage cans behind the drugstore, and the Bible in my night table so helpfully provided free of charge by the Gideon Society and in which one might encounter an inordinate amount of begatting.
For all I knew the Hydro guys might have been sniggering about Vic himself, no he-man with his messed-up eyes and clubfoot. He’d been gamely serving tables, helping Maxine get through the lunch crowd, and when he lurched into action, the lads could barely contain themselves. Bad enough a male doing women’s work, but a physically damaged one at that. A joke in slo-halting-mo.
“Tip?” I asked, although not requesting further advice, as Vic blundered past later carrying the guys’ dirty plates. Grim-faced, he pushed through the swing doors into the kitchen.
“Pigs.” Maxine landed in her chair at the table with a laden plate of spaghetti.
I don’t agree with disparaging animals, but let it go. “No tip?”
“Condom.”
She menaced a meatball with her fork, harrying it around her plate. Good thing those guys weren’t from here and not likely to show again. Maxine had a wicked serving arm and a style that brought decapitation-by-crockery to mind.
“Vic tells me that men only want one thing.”
“Sweetheart, I could of told you that.”
“But it’s not true, is it? It’s got to be more complicated, they’ve got to be. What about Einstein?”
“He’s dead.”
“Uhh, right. What about… the Pope?”
“He’s fixed.”
“He is? Wait, not that—”
“Look Hero, it’s true, true and true. I oughta know, dear. Don’t think you won’t find out yourself, either. Just you wait.”
Yet wasn’t that precisely what I was after, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but?
“Man, Letty’s a lousy cook.” Maxine pushed her plate away, retrieved her smokes and lighter from her apron pocket, lit up. I loved watching her—the languid draw, the smoke curling out of her nostrils, the delicate ash at the tip of the cigarette growing longer and longer—suspense!—until finally, before it tumbled off and shattered, she flicked it smartly onto her plate of spaghetti.
“No obits today?”
She shook her head. “Not in the mood.”
Maxine had this pastime which kept her agreeably occupied during her breaks and from which I’d learned a thing or two about euphemism, a linguistic device that formed a rind of respectability over many a juicy situation best given an airing. Flipping her receipt book open to the back, chuckling, and often humming Frank Sinatra’s version of “Fly Me to the Moon,” Maxine composed obituaries for those customers unfortunate enough to catch her eye—or ire. For some reason—okay, I asked, didn’t I—she shared these with me, although not with the others. This is how I learned that the mayor was a ‘powerful negotiator’ (bully), the druggist a ‘confirmed bachelor’ (homo), the United Church minister’s wife ‘utterly carefree’ (off her rocker), and that Beth’s husband, while ‘convivial’ (a drunk), had recently become a ‘marital enthusiast’ (bigamist). After a while you got the hang of it, language embedded in language: swordsman, working girl, free spirit. Following this formula, my immediate family, if wiped out, would at best, and most kindly, be summed up by the phrase ‘of no fixed address.’
While evasive obituary code amused her, Maxine dished out her designated deaths in a more straightforward manner, with none of this ‘passed away’ or ‘met his maker’ business. She was the maker in this reckoning and, like one of the Fates, an extremely efficient one—no holding back in the detailed dispensation of car crashes, house fires, heart attacks, stabbings (one with a fork), drownings. Sobering to think that the one taking your order and chatting you up might also be sizing you up for a bespoke wooden suit.
Harmless fun all in all, but it no doubt encouraged this tendency I had toward investigative activity. What less generous souls might call, oh, I don’t know… prying, snooping, sticking my nose in other people’s business. Be that as it may, I did like to get to the bottom of things, although the particular one I got to during my time in the hotel was vexingly dark.
What’s newsworthy? Violence, scandal, celebrity, sex—preferably all in one big grotty package. Not much in that line happened in our town outside of the heated goings-on at euchre parties or in the dance hall. Likewise, not much of lurid interest transpired in our only hotel. Hardly notable were
the everyday comings and goings of salesmen, tourists, curlers attending bonspiels, hockey players snowed-in, government functionaries checking up on us. There might be the occasional girls’ night out, or stag, or quaint tryst among the married-to-others, or the odd male slipping like a shadow down a certain hallway to visit a certain woman.
If you care to know, the certain woman occupied Room 29 on the second floor and was registered under the name of M. Jezebel—so either in possession of a sense of humour, or taking advantage of the free Bible, same as me. Regarding the humour, I never heard her laugh while I hung out in the vicinity, although I’m aware that some people keep their amusement to themselves. Also, in her line of work conceivably not a good idea, a fit of laughter during an awkward or fumbled transaction. I’d say it’s a safe bet that this is not the one thing a man wants.
What bothered me at first, outside of the fact that no one seemed to care about what happened to her, was the other fact that I, the unofficial house detective, did not once lay eyes on the woman—alive or dead. During the brief period that her fate retained titillating value, everyone I interviewed claimed to have seen her and their descriptions all varied, taking full advantage of having a deceased stranger to work with. One would describe her as being busty and bouncy—“Watched her comin’ down the stairs, whooee!”—while another countered with, “Not enough meat on them bones.” One swore her to be a flaming redhead, another a bottle blonde. Short, tall, too young for the business, or too old. The only thing everyone seemed to agree upon was the manner of her death. Died suddenly, which is to say, by her own hand. I didn’t buy any of it.
“Real pretty, yeah,” said Vic, going on to describe someone I had seen plenty. “Leaving by the back way with this guy, not sure who he—”
“Sounds more like Hero’s mother.” Maxine took a long drag, squinched up her eyes, and gave me a shrewd look.
“Hey… you know, I think it might’ve been your mum, Hero. Huh. But who was that guy she—”