Girl Unwrapped (34 page)

“Shit!” she says aloud.

“Got some if you want,” says a voice close by.

Toni starts and rattles the trash cans again. A squatting figure leans against the alley wall. Toni sees a coat with floppy sleeves, a peaked cap like the kind she herself sometimes wears, pulled low over a forehead, a glowing ember at the end of a hand. A familiar aroma reaches her nostrils. The ember rises toward her.

“Good weed. It’ll take the edge off,” the squatting girl says.

Toni ignores the offer and flings herself at the steel-clad door, grabbing the handle. Locked. She pounds with her fists and kicks with her feet. The thick metal barely reverberates.

“Rick, let me in! I need my jacket.”

“Save your strength. Godzilla never lets anyone back in same night she’s tossed her out.”

“But I need my jacket.”

Toni hammers some more at the door. She hears muffled music and chatter inside.

“I wouldn’t do that or she’ll blackball you.”

“Yeah?” Toni wheels around. “That what happened to you?”

“Hell, no. I’m just having a date with Mary Jane. Couple of tokes left if you want.”

Again the hand reaches up. The girl’s small face wears the irrepressible, gleeful grin of the pothead.

“I don’t touch that crap anymore. With booze you know what to expect.”

“Damn right. Booze is reliable. The ten-minute glow, the two-hour daze, the rage, the blues, the black-out, the hangover. That was quite a crash landing by the way. Like in a Road Runner cartoon.”

“Very funny.”

“Hey, was I laughing? Did you see me laugh?”

The girl addresses these questions to her left hand which she’s curled into a fist and holds up in front of her face. Out of the corner of her mouth, she mutters the answer in a high, nasal voice, ventriloquist style, “No way, José.”

“Right. Thought so,” the girl says in her normal voice, still addressing her fist.

“You wouldna laugh, Seenyor, to see someone so abused and tormented,” the fist says in a Mexican accent. The curled fingers and thumb wiggle to imitate a speaking mouth, like Shari Lewis doing her Lamb Chop puppet.

“No, I wouldn’t. I really wouldn’t,” the girl solemnly nods, but then her fist uncurls, her hand flies to her mouth, and she bursts into snorts and snickers.

“Fuck you,” Toni says.

“Nice to meet you too. Name’s Robin.”

The oversized coat and the boyish cap, along with the seedy atmosphere of the alley, make the girl look like a street urchin in a Dickens novel. Her merry eyes observe Toni.

“You part of Francine’s crowd?”

“Francine’s crowd! They wouldn’t like to hear that. They don’t believe in leaders. They’re against hierarchy. Let’s see, where do I fit in? Am I politico, hippie, artsy-fartsy, or just a garden-variety pervert? Whadja think?” Robin addresses her fist again.

“Leedle bit of everytheeng, Seenyor,” the fist says. “You are schizoid, no?”

“If I’m schizoid, what are you?” Robin asks the fist.

“My name ees José Jeminez,” the fist bleats, like the sad-faced, stand-up comic from
The Ed Sullivan Show.

Robin looks up to see if Toni’s laughing yet and, finding she’s not, grins and shrugs. “Don’t worry. I’m not certifiable.”

A violent bout of the shivers seizes Toni again. She stamps her feet, hugs herself, and rubs her jacketless arms, muttering, “Shit, shit” between chattering teeth.

“Poor baby! Take this.”

Robin has risen and peeled off her coat, which she drapes over Toni’s hunched shoulders. “Come, put it on,” she coaxes, as she stands before Toni in her open-necked flannel shirt. “I’ll go around through the front and get your jacket. Rick will give it to me. Meet me by the stairs. We can go for a burger if you want. Nothing like food to warm you up. Anyway, I’ve got the munchies real bad.”

Though tight across Toni’s shoulders, the dark wool coat, still warm from the girl’s body, cuts the damp wind and brings comfort. Toni trots up the alley behind Robin’s retreating figure. Her beer glow has dissipated, replaced by wobbly knees and a dull sense of gloom.

A short while afterward, Toni and Robin sit facing one another in a booth at the A&W on Sainte Catherine Street, demolishing the midnight special: cheeseburgers, fries, large mugs of root beer. Each savoury bite revives Toni’s spirits. Robin too eats with gusto, her cheeks rosy, her lips shiny with grease. She’s not exactly knock-you-down gorgeous, Toni decides, but captivating in her own way. Dark, intelligent eyes, funny upturned nose, good skin, long black hair fastened in a loose ponytail, bold, unplucked eyebrows. Her manner of talking is quick and bright with a teasing cock of her head now and then. The name suits. There’s something of the plucky bird about her.

Between mouthfuls, Robin tells Toni who among the women’s libbers and Marxist-Leninists that frequent Loulou’s are living together or have slept with one another and so weaves a tangled web of relationships in which she too has been involved. If Toni thinks those women are sexless missionaries, she’s sorely mistaken. The love juices flow as freely as the rhetoric. They are an incestuous bunch of sisters, which can make for tortured sessions at consciousness raising groups. Still, they’re more loving than hurtful of one another, Robin insists, and the urgency to fix a broken world keeps the bonds strong. Robin is in full sympathy with the revolution—who wouldn’t be, she asks—but without waiting for an answer sighs and admits that lately the intensity feels stifling. The imperative to make all personal acts political takes up so much energy. She wouldn’t mind an uncomplicated roll in the hay that doesn’t have to go through the feminist-analysis shredder in the morning. As Robin says this, she licks her thumb, and something about her direct look into Toni’s eyes hits like a hammer on a gong. Toni feels her face heat up.

“Me, I only date femmes,” she says gruffly and takes a huge gulp from her mug. The fizzy drink explodes into prickles at the back of her head. She has to close her mouth quickly to swallow a cough. When she glances Robin’s way again she can see she’s being observed with amused interest.

“How do you define ‘femme’?”

Robin strikes a pose, chin on fingertips, eyelashes fluttering. Then another: eyes wide, mouth in an “O,” hand on heart like a damsel in distress. Another still: face sideways, smile vampish, the tip of her pink tongue peeking from the corner of her mouth. The mimicry is perfect, the contrast with the boyish flannel shirt, absurd. Toni guffaws, but the tightness in her chest intensifies.

“Seriously, I’m curious. I’ve never actually talked to someone who’s into the butch-femme thing. It’s kinda out of style these days. What about it turns you on?”

“Oh, well, you know. The ultra-feminine look. Dresses, makeup, glamour. I couldn’t date a girl who looks too much like I do. Opposites attract.”

Blood rushes up Toni’s neck, into her cheeks, her eartips, in an inferno of embarrassment. She’s suddenly aware of how tall, rangy, and big-boned she is, compared to Robin’s delicate features and petite form. How stupid to have brought up the subject of dates.

“Opposites attract? Only opposites? Really?” Robin grins. “Is that what they teach you in biology? So how come mice don’t mate with elephants? Or ballerinas with road workers?” She shrugs. “I think everyone’s potentially androgynous. Straights go out of their way to accentuate differences to shore up heterosexuality. But to each her own. Personally, I like the surprise package effect.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, when a woman’s got plain clothes on, she’s like a mystery present in a brown paper wrapping. You get her home, undo the wrapping and, wow! You discover the lovely, soft body underneath. More seductive than satin and lace. At least to me.”

Suddenly, with great clarity, Toni imagines Robin lying back on a bed, her black hair loose, her plaid shirt unbuttoned. The faded green-and-brown flannel contrasts with the freshness of her skin. At the base of her throat is a delicate hollow into which the tip of a tongue would so nicely fit. Then Toni realizes she’s staring at that very spot and her heart begins to pound without mercy.

“I guess the libbers have brainwashed me,” Robin is saying. “I like a sense of equality. Oh well. It’s late.” She yawns without covering her mouth and the scrunching up and subsequent relaxation of her face are enchanting. Like a magic trick. “Time to get a move on, I guess.”

When the waiter comes with the bills, Toni tries to pay both.

“But why?” Robin asks, eyes wide. “This isn’t a date, is it?”

Toni bites her lip and agrees to go Dutch. While they’re getting up from the table, Robin asks where Toni lives.

“In Snowdon. With my mother.”

“Oh my God, that’s so butch!” Robin’s hand flies dramatically to her heart. “Do you have a curfew? Don’t look so mortified. Just kidding. Can’t help myself. You’re so kiddable.”

Snow flutters down from the heavens when they emerge onto Sainte Catherine Street. Like a zillion white moths, fat flakes fill the air, pull the city into the premature embrace of winter. There’s no wind, just this steady, dreamy rain of white. Feathery snow blankets roads, sidewalks, tops of cars, windowsills, mailboxes, fallen leaves. The traffic has thinned. A few cars sail by with a hiss of tires on roadside slush. The sky between the drifting flakes is pearly grey and luminous.

“Oh,” Robin cries. She flings her arms wide and tips her face heavenward. “Wow.”

Her long black coat flaps as she gambols about. She grabs Toni’s arm.

“Let’s walk! Let’s walk!”

Down Sainte Catherine Street they scamper, past darkened shops, lampposts haloed with glitter, Saturday night stragglers rushing home. They slip and slide on their smooth-soled shoes. Snow settles on Toni’s hatless head, creeps down the back of her neck, and she shivers, but she isn’t cold. At Eaton’s department store, whose displays are well-lit despite the hour, Robin stops to mock the mannequins in fur coats. She contorts her limbs into ridiculous poses, hip thrust this way, elbows that, fingers splayed. She pirouettes, toppling backward against the window glass, and Toni doubles up with laughter. In that moment Toni sees how appreciative laughter energizes Robin’s antics, how Robin’s spirit blossoms like a plant in the sun, and Toni feels the delicious power of being sun-like in her attentions.

They meander down side streets. Where are they heading? Nowhere, it seems. Wherever their feet will take them, for as long as this mood of abandonment lasts. Nothing matters to Toni but this white magic all around and this bold frolicking imp at her side. They walk through alleys where snow transforms garbage into cuddly creatures, down the middle of streets following tire tracks of packed-down slush. Robin’s unabashed chatter—now pure clownery, now interesting revelations— is a key that turns locks. Toni finds herself talking too, about adolescent longing and high school misery. Stories of pain and loneliness that shared become badges of honour.

“Yeah, that was me, all right. It was hell … ”

How wonderful to have a hell to describe to another who understands and nods and grins. And interrupts so charmingly.

“Jewish camp, no kidding? You’re Jewish? So where are your horns? Don’t tell me you don’t have horns, I’ll be very disappointed. According to the nuns, I’ve been hankering for the devil all my life. I’m a failed Catholic, thanks be to Christ. Came out at boarding school. The Sacred Heart convent on Côte des Neiges. Yes, the building on the hill that looks like Dracula’s castle. I was sixteen. Me and my roommate Mona cuddled under the covers at night, dying with lust and fear because Sister Agatha patrolled the halls in running shoes and held onto her rosary beads so you couldn’t hear her coming. Mona finally cracked. Guilt ate her up. Made me join her in self-imposed penance. Cold showers, kneeling on bare floors, fasts. We’d make love, then she’d wake me in the night for Hail-Mary marathons. Looney-tunes. But I couldn’t let her go. Thought I’d have to throw myself out the fourth-storey window. Finally, Mother Superior realized something was up and sent Mona home. Exhaustion, they said. Maybe she had the saint’s calling, but in the meantime she was suffering from nervous strain. We were to pray for her
mens sana in corpere sano
. I begged my parents to take me out too, which they did, thank the Goddess. Best thing for me, going back to a normal school with normal delinquents. What about you? Did you see that counsellor again? Did you and her finally get it on?”

“Well, sort of. It was, it was in Israel,” Toni falters.

“Outta sight! And?”

“A long story. I’ll tell you another time.”

“Ah, the pain of first loves,” Robin says gently.

On and on they drift, through a night as dazzling as the Milky Way. Presently, they’re on Sherbrooke Street, heading for the massive stone gates of the university. Robin falls silent, lost in thought, though she walks with purpose. Toni doesn’t ask where they’re going, but a hunch grows and her heart beats fast. Beyond the snowbound campus they arrive at a neighbourhood called “the Ghetto,” a moniker that always struck Toni as odd. Nothing here calls to mind the seething ghettoes of medieval Europe. Elegant rowhouses of grey stone line the quiet residential streets. Some buildings were once manors but have since been subdivided and served as digs for generations of students. Long outdoor staircases with graceful wrought-iron banisters stretch from the street to upper floors. At the bottom of one of these Robin stops.

“Here’s where I live.”

Toni can’t speak. All through their long walk, she’s been chanting an inner prayer:
Take me home with you. Take me home.
Now, as they stand at the foot of the snowy stairs that lead to Robin’s door, Toni grasps the icy banister to keep from sinking to her knees.

“Your feet must be freezing.” Robin smiles and begins to climb the stairs. “Mine are. Coming up?” Toni clings to the banister.

“But you’re shaking like a leaf. What’s the matter? Why don’t you come?” Robin descends a few steps and peers at Toni’s face. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Say something. Oh no! Now I’ve got it.” Robin strikes her forehead. “You’re a virgin. ’Course you are. Why didn’t I realize? All that butch-femme bravado and the way you were blushing at the restaurant. I thought it was shyness, but shit, you’re not even out.”