Kicking Tomorrow (31 page)

The group had developed an appetite for Northern African food during their Morocco days. Now an indecent heap of it was loaded, à la Bones, on an oak table that ran the length of the room: Spit Swagger was carving into a platter of
b’stila –
cuts of cornish hen, lemony scrambled eggs, and crushed almonds, layered between pastry flakes, dusted with sugar and cinnamon, and spread out on a thick, undulating coverlet of white lacy lingerie; Bile was pulling a boiled rabbit by the ears from a sauce of spiced tomato and honey, grinning at it, nose-to-nose; and Jerusalem Slim was using his spoon to cut up two molded aspic breasts, rising up like denuded islands out of a libidinal salad of eggplant
zaalouk;
guests were feasting, too, with honeysticky fingers, on
briwat al hobb
, “love letter” pastries; and at each end of the table, a marmalade gelatin mermaid bathed in a brass basin of orange-flower water.

Dishing out the feast were several little girls (as close to eighteen as possible, the contract stipulated, but not a day younger), wearing ribboned frocks of rose satin hiked high to show off their stiff muslin petticoats, filigreed garters, and just an inch of tantalizing thigh. Their hair was artfully disarranged by the famous Michel Froufrou who travelled with the band, their faces daubed with thick white pancake and smudged black
lipstick, their eyes hidden behind black webbed domino masks.

And boy, standing there in his lobby concession Bones Tour T-shirt, did Robbie ever feel dumb.

Ivy was already off talking to a spindly man with a peacock green hairdo. He wore Saigon mirrors and a ruffled shirt, a death’s head coke spoon around his neck, and shells bristled from the shoulders of his jacket like a stegosaurus. He was dreadfully pockmarked, a real crater-face, and he looked very sly.

Chrissake.

Keef Richards.

Robbie insinuated himself at Ivy’s side. He said to her, super-nonchalant, “Oh, hi. I am look you for all the place, uh. It’s so crowded here there’s no room for your litle panties.”

People say pretty stupid things when they’re nervous, eh? And Ivy did nothing to help him out. And Keef’s drawn, grey face just flinched with amusement.

Up close, he was amazingly tall, much taller than he looked in his pictures. Besides his mother, Robbie had never met a celebrity in the flesh. In 3-D. Only inches from Robbie, his body appeared to possess a denser mass than most people’s bodies. It was as if air had been unnaturally displaced to accommodate this man’s bulk, after he had leapt from the two-dimensional world of album covers and
TV
screens. He was incredible. And to Robbie, it was like time had been displaced as well, for he was staring and unable to stop.

“I’m Robbie Bookbinder,” he managed. “I’m in Hell’s Yells.”

When Keef smiled, the skin of his whole face crept and gathered reluctantly into farrows to achieve the expression, which eroded with equal indifference. He said, “Mmm?” and that was all. His voice had a flatness, smooth as raked ash.

Robbie heard himself blather on. “Well, you know, my group. Didn’t Ivy tell you?” He could see his own image reflected convexly in Keef’s mirrored glasses – tiny chin, pointed head,
Punch
nose, a constellation of pinpoint candleflames – in stereovision like a satanic View Master. And Keef still said zilch. His lips crawled around, like he was about to make words, but stopped dead. All he did was twist his nose, the infamous silver-lined nose, the bone in which had been eroded right through from snorting too much cocaine.

“Um,” Robbie said, last ditch now. “I always wanted to ask you – in the song ‘Hush-A-Bye-Baby,’ when you sing,
the cradle will rock
, right, are you really talking about, well, underage girls?” Good question, he thought, Keef was surely impressed now. But Keef just drew on his cigarette, drawing hard, as if he needed the very smoke to breathe, and said,

“Read into it what you like, man.” Then he turned to Ivy and said, “So baby, mmm.…”

A voice called out, “
TWO MINUTES!
”

Keef kissed Ivy’s forehead and slipped off, without so much as a nod for Robbie.

Back in the arena, sitting there on his cold seat, Robbie relived his Big Encounter, word for word, stupidity for stupidity. And sitting beside the world’s biggest Bones’ fan, in a crowd of twenty thousand fans, turned out to be the loneliest experience he had ever had; for Ivy was just about drooling. Robbie watched her more than the show: standing on her seat she mouthed along to every song and struck her fist at the air to emphasize the lyrics she believed in the most; she swayed like an Arabian belly dancer; she shrieked with her eyes squeezed shut and her hands clamped to her ears; she smoked joint after joint, passing them generously around, as much to strangers as to Robbie; and never once, not even once, looked at him to share the moment. When everyone else was standing on their seats for the spectacular finale, he was sitting in a sulk. Around him the twenty thousand metal-headed rivet rats ate it up, indiscriminately, as far as he was concerned, as indiscriminately as garburetors. All he could see was the backs of
their legs. Ivy’s legs were snapping and stamping away beside him and he hated them. He hated the very fabric of the pants that were on them, and those sexy snakeskin boots she wore, the boots themselves, were hateful to him, too. They reeked of frivolity and faithlessness.

At the very final peak of the performance, the house lights went up. People screamed and jumped on each other’s shoulders. Ivy kicked Robbie in the hip. He looked up at her. She jerked her head as if to say,
Stand up, you baby
. So he did. The stage looked naked and vulnerable without the magic of lasers and strobes and dry ice, and the Bones looked unexpectedly small; the same size, really, as any of the members of the audience. Keef had thrown himself head-first into the crowd, and now it was tossing him about on its bed of upstretched hands. And swallowed him up. What was happening? Everyone on tiptoes to see. Then he was on the stage again, with a fan cradled in his arms. He was hugging her, dancing with her slow, rocking her, and then very deliberately, as the house lights went out again and a single white spot focused on him, magnifying the movement for all to see, he slid his hand under her skirt. He looked at the crowd and grinned that crawling grin of his, and the lights went out completely. The music screeched to a halt, and all of a sudden it was over. The crowd erupted. They lit lighters and yowled. Ivy wrapped her arms around Robbie, holding herself up by his neck. She was hot and fragrantly damp and breathing hard. But Robbie stood with his arms hanging limply by his sides.

When he gets home, his family’s preparing to ring in the New Year. He kicks off his boots down the basement stairs, slush flying, and spits after them. He’s in a foul temper, he knows it, because he was stupid to have taken all five points of that star blotter he was saving for the so-called celebration with Ivy. Not that he’s hallucinating overtime or anything – this stuff has turned out to be little more
than a hefty dose of methamphetamine. The days of serious
LSD
, he concludes, are over; none of his friends tell stories any more of plucking gas-flame flowers, no one sees faces in the walls, no one surfs on lawns turning into great green tidal waves, no one ever feels like a banana and wants to peel himself. No, seventies acid is a rip-off, pure and simple. All you get is trails at best, and now the air in this house is buzzing like the inside of a
TV
set. He goes scowling into the living room, socks wet on the warm carpet. The room looks flat; one dimension has been sucked right out of it. And here’s his paper-cutout family. They come with a variety of outfits for all occasions and their underwear is printed permanently on their bodies for modesty’s sake. They come
FREE!
with every box of Sugar Krunchies. And they’re all facing him.

“Where’s Ivy, darling?” Mom asks. “Why didn’t you invite her home for champagne?”

“Well, she had to be with her family, so.”

“Mom’s a greedy guts for joy juice,” Miriam says. “She runs on it.”

At midnight, he phones Ivy’s house. He has to dial ten times before he gets through. He sits down by the phone, his champagne bubbling joylessly. Mrs. Mills says,
“Allô?”
He thrusts the phone at Miriam.

“Hi,” she says. “Can I speak to Ivy.” Miriam listens, then covers the receiver with her palm. “Some cow says she’s out,” she says to Robbie.

But that’s impossible. They parted an hour and a half ago. He flushes hot. His heart yawns up blood. And the thought of the long speeding sleepless night ahead, with only his wriggling nerves for company…

Back in the living room Mom says, “Are you all right? Did you get through?”

“Yes, no,” Robbie hears himself say. “S’OK.” Pulling as nice a smile as possible. He’s not going to start to explain.

“No, really, Robbie. You seem upset.”

“I told you I’m perfectly fine,” Robbie snaps.

“Are you – have you been taking pot?” Dad now. “It’s all right – you don’t have to – aum.”

And Robbie thinking, if you didn’t ask so many fucken probing questions, I wouldn’t have to lie so much. “I am fine,” he enunciates as precisely as can be. “I am fine. Thank you.” Doing his utmost to appear super-normal now, performing complex mental and physical exercises to discipline his hyper impulses at the same time as he jolts awake the dormant ones. Don’t stand funny, he’s telling himself, keep your eyes open, you are not messed up, you are in perfect control, just look alert, don’t act crazy, smile, but not too much, don’t mumble, don’t laugh too hard, keep your hands in your pockets so you don’t fidget but not for too long, don’t overly concentrate on little things like the binding of that book or the lipstick on the butt of that cigarette, please them with whatever but don’t get too eager, don’t get weird, weird? what’s weird, relatively speaking, fuck, I’m losing track.

To the family, who are watching him with no small measure of concern, he is not handling it well: swivelling on the ball of one hip, dragging shapes through the carpet with a toe, making that heavy-metal devil salute with both hands, tossing the hair on his head like a female film star, inspecting the ceiling when there’s clearly nothing there, and chattering like a baboon.

“I may as well get real with you,” he’s saying. “I’ve done one or two drugs in my time. I admit it. But I’m not the kind of son who’s gonna get busted, you know, ’cause I’m smart. I mean, whaddo I mean? I mean, I smoked my first joint,
K
, in like Grade 6, which I believe is too young for most people. They can’t handle it, eh. They don’t know their limit. I never do nothin I can’t handle. You don’t hafta worry,
K
, ’cause like I don’t see drugs as making me have a good time. Uh-uhn, no way, I wouldn’t want you to think that I relied on them. I see it as having a good time
while I’m doing the drug. Catch the diff? Which is what most of my friends think, too. Why are you all looking at me funny?”

“No, no, Robbie, go ahead.…”

“Uh, well. Sometimes it’s really hard to talk to you, ’cause, like, there’s certain types of way I’m s’posed to speak.”

“What do you mean, Robbie?” Mom looks like she’s about to cry, which he cannot understand. Why’s everyone so quiet? “First of all, it’s like you always call me Robbie. I mean, I know that’s my name, but you always say,
What is it, Robbie?
and
Are you all right, Robbie?
and
Now look here, Robbie
. Do you dig what I’m trying– ?”

“Aumm –”

“
K
, what I really wanna say is, there’s certain types of way I’m s’posed to speak, like, if you ask me if I’m
OK
, whaddo you want me to say, exactly. I can’t just
say yes
or I get the third degree. It’s like, I gotta say it just right all the time. It’s like there was a special secret way, like:

RIGHT

WRONG

“Now do you dig what I’m –”

After the family goes to bed, he creeps down to the dungeon to listen to music on the headphones, and try to survive the night. His heart’s churning like an egg-beater, his flesh feels saturated with sadness and uncertainty. His bones are aching, the muscles stretched taut along them. Where’s Ivy? He pictures all the dark and frozen streets of the city, all the doorways and steps, all the
clubs and homes and her empty bed. He gnashes his teeth and the tears stream hotly down.