by Eva Crocker
A few days after we took the photos, Viv called. I pulled a chair up to the wall so I could rest my sock feet on the heater and look out the kitchen window while we talked. Viv called every night after supper and I always sat in this spot until it got dark and my reflection showed up in the window. There were two grey smears on the white radiator from me resting my dirty feet there.
“Are you alone?” she asked me.
“What do you mean?”
“Is anyone around you? Like your mom?”
“She’s upstairs.”
“The police have our photo booth pictures. My mom saw it on the news.”
I squeezed a tangle of curly phone cord in my hand and released it.
“Is she going to tell my mom?”
“They don’t know it’s us, she said the police are looking for three girls who got photo booth pictures at the mall and they’re going to arrest them for indecent exposure.”
“Viv!”
“I don’t know what happened, I must have dropped it. It was an accident.”
“Did you tell Heather?”
“No, don’t tell Heather, she’ll tell her mom.”
I was tempted to tell my mom.
That night I dreamed I opened the door to the family bathroom and a wall of water crashed out. I was swept through the mall in a wave filled with scraps of shit-stained toilet paper and used tampons.
The next day Viv was late for homeroom — the teacher was taking attendance when Viv walked in wearing a chopped-up pair of red fishnet stockings on her forearms. The armbands annoyed me. I was annoyed that she’d taken time to get dressed up when we had a serious problem to address. The photos had been her idea; the fact they were discovered was her fault. She had threaded red laces through the holes in her army boots to match the sleeves. Because she was late, all the desks around me were full and she had to sit on the opposite side of the room.
When the loudspeaker crackled to life for morning announcements I was convinced the principal would call us down to the office. But it was just the usual: tickets for the semi-formal were still on sale, smoking on school property was still banned, a piece of jewellery had been found in the third-floor girls’ bathroom.
Viv and I met in the hallway when homeroom got out.
“Mom was lying,” she said.
Viv had put her jeans in the washer with the folded photo strip in the pocket. Her mother found the damp string of images when she changed the clothes over later that afternoon.
“Is she mad?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Is she going to tell my mom?”
The crowd in the hallway was thinning out; I had to get to biology on the third floor. Hannah Reese was standing at her open locker, clearly listening to our conversation.
“I don’t know, I guess not.” Viv shrugged dramatically, Hannah Reese slammed her locker shut. It was like someone had shaken up a two-litre of pop and unscrewed the cap inside my chest. A carbonated spray of relief.
* * *
Holly wasn’t around when I got home from my first sleepover at Kris’s, but Snot and Courtney raced down the stairs to greet me. They screeched angry meows about being made to wait for their breakfast. I had planned to go to the cop station again to try to pick up my things but because I’d spent the morning lounging around Kris’s drinking mango smoothie, there wasn’t time before my radio gig.
There was nothing to eat in the house, so I made a tray of muffins from an old bag of mix in the cupboard. Just add water. It wasn’t mine and I couldn’t picture Holly buying it, so it must have been left by Natalie Swanson or the other one.
I lay in bed staring at the ceiling while the muffins baked, listening for the oven timer. The baseboard heater in my room wasn’t working and even under the electric blanket, I was freezing. I missed Viv; she would be getting off the breakfast shift soon. I imagined us still living on Patrick Street and Mike being out somewhere: she would have got in bed with me and told me about all the shitty customers and how rude the owner had been to her. I would have told her about my night with Kris.
I decided to haul my mattress out into the wide hallway, where the heater worked. I flung the blankets and pillows out first. The mattress slumped into an L-shape in the doorway and wouldn’t budge; when I tried to push it further I heard the metal springs crunching together. I had to climb over the mattress to get into the hall — passing through the padded doorway, I felt like a surfer emerging from the curl of a wave. In the hall, I tugged the mattress through the door from the other side. I cranked the heat.
I looked into my bedroom: without the mattress the room looked strange, everything pressed against the perimeter to make room for an empty space. My bed frame had been in pieces in the basement since we moved in; I kept meaning to bring it up and assemble it. The oven timer beeped just as I was lying down. I waited another few minutes and a burning smell started drifting up over the stairs.
I got the bus up to Kenmount Road to record the radio ad for Marv’s Mobile Home Paradise before an evening shift at the theatre. I’d wrapped two muffins in cellophane and stuck them in the front pouch of my knapsack. I’d planned to save one to eat at the theatre but ate both on the bus, getting crumbs all over my jacket and the floor in front of me.
The first fat drops of a predicted downpour started falling as I crossed the radio station parking lot. I pressed the intercom button and looked into the glossy black bulge of the camera above the speaker.
“Stacey Power, here for the Marv’s — ” I started.
“You come right in, I remember you.” The receptionist’s voice rode out of the speaker on a wave of crackling static. A buzzing noise signalled that the door was briefly unlocked. I tugged the handle.
The receptionist’s face was powdered with dusty concealer and she had a thick line of wet-looking liner around her eyes. She had on a silky blouse and a pencil skirt. She was what my grandmother would call “put-together.”
“Do they really need that whole security setup out there?” I asked as she led me down a carpeted hallway.
“There’s a lot of expensive gear in here,” the receptionist said, waving a set of pointy nails at the recording booths on either side of us. In one, a bald guy in a paisley dress shirt was laughing into a microphone.
The receptionist stopped at the door of a recording booth. There was a guy in a Gore-Tex jacket with Marv’s Mobile Homes embroidered on the breast sitting at a round table that had three mics and sets of headphones plugged into it.
“Here’s our girl,” the receptionist said, patting me on the back. I felt too old for my ripped-up jeans. I noticed how dirty my bookbag looked and hid it under my chair. The man hopped up to shake my hand. Marv had obviously sent his son to deliver the ad copy and supervise the session.
“I’ll leave you to it,” the receptionist said.
“Thanks, honey,” Marv’s son said.
He slid the paper across the table at me. “This is pretty fun what we’ve got here, I think. I actually wrote it myself, usually Dad hires someone but I was like, let me give it go, and I think what I came up with is kind of fun.”
I read the copy, Marv’s son watching me from the other side of the table.
“At Marv’s Mobile Home Paradise we’re hosting our annual May two-four big-time blowout sale. Does the freedom of the open road with all the comforts of home sound like paradise to you? On Friday May twenty-third purchase any mobile home with an environmentally friendly and cost-efficient compost toilet for twenty-five percent off. A deal so good, you’ll know you’re in paradise. Get set for summer at Marv’s.”
“Fun?” he asked when I looked up from the sheet.
I flipped the page over to see if there was more on the other side. Nothing. The receptionist came back with two plastic glasses of water. She set them down on either side of the table. Marv nodded a thank-you at her bu
t kept talking to me. “You can improvise if you want — you know, play with it.”
“Cool,” I said.
The receptionist turned to leave and Marv’s son said, “Hang on sweetheart, do you mind letting Tony know we’re ready to roll in here?”
“Sure.” She smiled.
I wondered if being called “sweetheart” pissed her off. If it did, you couldn’t tell at all. Maybe she was immune to condescending pet names from working almost exclusively with middle-aged men every day.
Marv’s son sat back in the chair, smiled and shook his head. “So you do this for a living? This is your main gig?”
“Sort of.” I took a sip of water even though I knew I should save it to drink between takes. I had a feeling Marv’s son was going to want a lot of takes.
“Sort of?”
“I bartend too.”
“But you’re hoping to make this the main gig.” He waved his hand at the microphones. “Eventually.”
“I guess, sort of.” I knew I sounded like a petulant teenager.
“Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” he said. “Right?”
Finally, Tony arrived. Tony was probably forty-five, with a greying goatee. He was wearing a T-shirt with Gene Simmons’s face on it. Gene Simmons’s tongue curved over Tony’s beer belly and Tony’s nipples were visible on either side of Gene’s painted forehead.
“Howdy,” he said, shutting the door of the room behind him. Marv’s son stood and reached across the table to shake his hand.
“Nice to meet you, man,” Tony said. “Let’s get our headphones on.”
I pushed my hair back and let the padded headphones clamp down over my ears. Marv’s son winked at me as he picked up the headphones in front of him.
“Whenever you’re ready, Stacey.” Tony flicked a switch on the table and slouched down in his chair, wrinkling Gene Simmons’s face.
I read the copy in a bright, perky voice, carefully enunciating every syllable. I imagined that I was the receptionist or someone like her. Someone who had their hair and nails done at a salon, someone who commanded a certain respect, who was about being able to play the game instead of trying to circumvent it by going around coated in grime and giving themself a shitty haircut. When I finished, Tony stuck his bottom lip out and nodded thoughtfully before sliding his headphones off.
“Sounded pretty spot on to me,” Tony said, looking at Marv’s son. “One more for good luck?”
“Sure, whatever you think, you’re the expert,” Marv’s son answered.
I read the copy a second time in the same peppy tone.
“That’s it?” Marv’s son asked Tony. He slid the sleeve of his jacket up and checked the time on an ostentatious watch with a clunky gold strap.
“Sounded good to me,” Tony said and dropped his headphones on the table.
“Well, it was a pleasure to meet you,” Marv’s son said. It sounded like he’d invited Tony up for a nightcap and been turned down.
Marv’s son and I walked down the hallway to the front entrance together. The receptionist was on the phone. Rain was beating against the glass door.
“You have a ride?” Marv’s son asked.
I thought about walking along the busy road to the bus station in the rain. There wasn’t that much time before I had to be at the theatre.
“I don’t.”
Marv’s son brightened.
“Where do you live? I’ll give you a lift.” He unlocked the car from inside the lobby with a toggle on his keychain and told me to wait while he pulled around.
“Giving you a lift, is he?” the receptionist asked. “That’s sweet.”
I turned and nodded at her — she for sure had her own car. Marv’s son had a hatchback with decals of his father’s business logo on both sides.
“Thank you,” I said when I climbed in, holding my filthy bookbag in my lap.
“You know, I take photos,” Marv’s son said.
“Oh cool, landscapes or?”
“Landscapes, people, you know — portraits,” he said. “I’m just saying, I could have pursued that.”
“Yeah.” I tried to sound encouraging.
“I felt all this pressure to like, get a real job,” he said. “I guess I’m saying I find you inspiring, life doesn’t have to be about making money.”
We came to a long line of traffic waiting on a red light.
“Lunchtime, see,” Marv’s son said. “People on their lunch break. But like boudoir photography is huge right now.”
Traffic was backed up so far it looked like we might have to wait for the light to change twice before we made it through the intersection.
“I could be doing that, I’d be good at it because I make people comfortable. That’s one of the things you learn in business school, actually.”
“In theatre school too,” I said.
“It’s not pervy,” he said.
“It’s empowering? For the subjects?” For some reason I was trying to help him out.
“Yeah, exactly. It’s all about making them feel sexy.” Marv’s son laughed and bounced his fingers on the steering wheel. “That’s what you mean by ‘empowering’?”
The light turned red again when we were just three car-lengths away from making it through. Rain blurred everything outside the windows.
“Kind of.”
* * *
When I arrived at the theatre for my shift there were about thirty women in the bar, most of them wearing bodysuits held together at the crotch by a set of silver snaps.
They all wore their long hair down. Later I’d realize hair-tossing, a slowed-down version of a move I’d seen guys do at metal shows, was a big part of the performance. They all wore dark eyeliner and a block of red eyeshadow.
Two people were always scheduled to be on bar during Saucy Soldiers because the audiences were usually big drinkers and sometimes got rowdy. I was relieved to find out I was working with Dana. She knew how to void drinks and how to shimmy the cash drawer when it got stuck. We restocked the coolers and did inventory and unloaded the dishwasher. It went quickly because there were two of us and when it was done there was nothing to do but stare out into the bar and wait for someone to order.
There wasn’t enough room for all the performers in the dressing room, so until about an hour before the show started they used the bar as extra changing/warming-up space. Women were stretching on the floor, legs open in a V, working their hands down one calf and then the other. Others were practising a dance — staring into the distance, twitching a hip and doing a series of wrist flicks.
I’d read in the program that Saucy Soldiers was supposed to be body-positive, all body-types welcome or something, and some of the girls were bigger but mostly they were thin and white and very put-together. One woman whipped off a baggy T-shirt and rummaged through her bookbag in her body stocking.
“I like to think I don’t objectify women but I do find this kind of —” Dana paused, looking for the right word, “distracting.”
I laughed.
Soon boyfriends and mothers started arriving, ordering beer and white wine respectively. The boyfriends wore striped dress shirts with dark denim and some of them brought bouquets. One asked me if I could stick the flowers in the cooler for him; he leaned in and asked like me and him were in it together. I could feel Dana watching protectively. I eased the flowers into the fridge, squishing the bouquet between the bottom rack and some tins of pop. The boyfriend winked and dropped a toonie in the tip jar.
Eventually an instructor moved through the bar, ushering women into the stairwell that led up into the theatre. Dana left to hand out programs because we were short on volunteers — none of them had wanted to work Saucy Soldiers. The volunteers were mostly in their fifties and sixties; some were married couples who did shifts together. In exchange for taking ticket
s at the door and leading latecomers to their seats with a small flashlight, volunteers got to see the play for free and received a complimentary beverage of their choice afterwards. Lots of them had been doing it for years. When I’d hand them their flashlight they’d say, “Now, are there fresh batteries in this one?” like I was trying to pull one over on them.
Tonight there was only one volunteer, a woman with purple in her short grey hair. After the first show she came down to collect her free drink; she chose a club soda. Music was pounding through the ceiling and you could hear high heels stamping on the stage.
“A lot of energy goes into these shows,” she said.
I flipped up the tab on the mouth of the tin before passing it to the woman. She cheersed the air with it.
“The first time I saw it I was horrified, I thought this is everything we’d fought against,” the woman said. I looked around the room — there were a couple of girls who had already danced but none of them were paying attention to the conversation.
“I haven’t seen it,” I said.
“I mean I guess they enjoy it,” the volunteer said. “The women.”
The music stopped and there was stomping and applause. Dana appeared and slipped behind the bar.
“They’re on their way down,” Dana said. “Put the music on.”
I flipped the switch on the soundboard and turned on an eighties dance playlist. The opening to “Don’t You Want Me” by The Human League pounded out of two speakers in the front of the room. Dana grinned at me.
“I was just saying,” the volunteer said, speaking loudly to be heard over my music, “I used to find this show horrifying but I guess the women enjoy themselves.”
“I just hate the boyfriends,” Dana said.
“What are they thinking? Do they go home with the women after and think, well, she’s just the hottest thing?” the volunteer asked.
“They fucking better,” Dana said.