Lucy's Launderette (2 page)

It would probably all go to Connie, whatever Jeremy had left. The big ramshackle Victorian house near Commercial Drive, his other bikes and the launderette. The building the launderette was in had five apartments. The rents from four of them would go to Connie. But there'd be no rent from the ground-floor apartment. And if Jeremy had arranged things the way he'd intended, she wouldn't be able to sell the launderette. Not in Bob's lifetime.

Bob was the tenant in the ground-floor apartment. He'd lost the use of his legs in a motorcycle accident and Jeremy had given him a lifelong rent-free lease. Bob managed the launderette and overhauled the washers and dryers when
they needed it. I'd heard Jeremy promise Bob that the launderette would always be there for him.

When the funeral was over, the gang invited me to join them for a farewell brew to Jeremy at the Eldorado Hotel, a charming place where the cockroaches have running tabs. But I declined. I had to get back to work. Snake, the gang's leader, gave me a bear hug that nearly crushed my ribs and said, “Luce, he wanted you to have this.” He thrust a paper bag into my hand. The thing inside was about the size and shape of a soup tin.

I thanked Snake and walked toward the cemetery gates. There were a few cabs idling nearby. I waved brightly to my parents and got into one, clutching the paper bag tightly. Once we were moving, I opened the bag. Inside, there was a small brass container with tape sealing the lid. I knew what it contained, but to be sure, I peeked, then closed the top quickly. Jeremy's ashes. I put the urn back in the bag.

When I got to the gallery, nobody was around but there were men's and women's voices coming from Nadine's office. A man was saying something and the women were laughing uproariously. I hung up my coat, took the urn out of the bag and set it on my desk, then entered Nadine's office. I couldn't believe it. My mother was right about princes showing up. There he was.

I
t was my idol from university days. The man who was making them all laugh. Paul Bleeker, THE Paul Bleeker, the British-born artist who worked in all sorts of different mediums. I'd read about the clamorous success of his show at New York's Hard Edge Gallery. It was called The Breadwinners and featured figures in business suits, the bodies sculpted in shellacked loaves of bread; rye, whole-wheat, raisin, seven-grain, sourdough. In another show, he'd used the wax from votive candles stolen from churches all over North America and Europe to sculpt figures of famous martyrs, each martyr with huge chemically-treated wicks sticking out of all their orifices. On the last night of the show the wicks were lit and the sculptures went off like fireworks, eventually melting to the floor. Nothing remained but waxy puddles and the photos documenting the event. He'd also done some very interesting things with other foodstuffs: nuts, dried pasta, legumes, squashes.

A few years back, he'd come to the art department as a guest lecturer for the 400 seminar and everybody fought for his attention, and I mean
everybody,
including the large contingent of girls with steel-toed boots and buzz cuts. I have a particularly glowing memory of Paul Bleeker cornering me at a party and asking me all about myself in a tone that suggested delicious things for later. I started to tell him, concentrating on the exciting and rebellious moments of my life, and banishing the Cedar Narrows parts to amnesiac oblivion. But then he was whisked away by the hostess (married, but canoodling him just the same) and I was spared having to embellish any further. Since then I've spent years imagining the end to that evening in all its lascivious detail.

And here he was—white teeth and black leather jacket, satanic beard and tousled hair, fitted jeans displaying his endowments. And there were Nadine and her cronies. Nadine's best friend was Felicity, a hefty blonde who filled her days getting manicures, pedicures, facials, massages, electrolysis and meeting others for lunch. I'd nicknamed her Mae West. She toted pounds of jewelry and wore suede and silk under her chinchilla coat even for minor occasions. The man who accompanied her was not her husband but an expensive ornament who looked frequently at his platinum Rolex with an air of smug boredom. Among the others in this odd social circle, there was a man I called Onassis, a short fat Greek fast-food tycoon who wore heavy gold knuckle-dusting rings and always had a wet nub of unlit cigar in his mouth. Then there was the critic for one of the local newspapers—a tall, soap-white cadaverous type always ready to pronounce a DOA verdict for any exhibition. I called him the Mortician. The other women were limp clones of Nadine and Felicity.

Usually, the gallery was deserted during the day except for
a few tourists. Normal people showed up for evening openings when they could scarf free food and drink.

Here was this little crowd of society men and women with nothing better to do on a winter's afternoon than coo and fawn over Paul Bleeker. Somebody had brought a case of champagne and they were all drinking it out of plastic cups. Nadine pretended not to notice me for a while and then, when she decided to, she sidled over and hissed, “Lucy, where the hell have you been?”

“You knew. I told you. A funeral.”

She huffed impatiently and jingled an armful of eighteen-karat gold bracelets at me. “You have to go to the deli and get something for people to nibble on. And don't stint.” Nadine liked to nibble. Her tastes sometimes extended to the human species. By the way she was eyeballing Paul Bleeker, I figured he was going to be dinner.

“What are we celebrating?” I asked.

“Paul's upcoming show.”

“Where?”

“Well, here of course, you little idiot.”

I didn't let it get to me.

Nadine was another of those towering women, but then I'm only five foot two, so a lot of women tower over me. And she was disgustingly thin, with Cleopatra hair and black almond-shaped eyes. And an attitude. And that terrible accent. A recent infusion of royal blood in a Swiss clinic? As far as Nadine was concerned, there was no one smarter, more beautiful or as important as she. I was almost certain she'd shelled out a fortune for face-lifts and tummy tucks. Too bad they can't invent the ego tuck. I did the only thing I could in that moment and whispered, “You've got something black stuck between your front teeth.”

As I headed out into the cold to buy lox, she was furtively
trying to catch her reflection in the glass of one of the exhibits.

When I got back to the gallery, everyone was getting a little sloppy. They'd finished four bottles of champagne and were starting in on another. I set the food trays down on a table in the main part of the gallery. They moved toward the trays with all the grace of a pack of jackals. Paul Bleeker looked over at me several times between mouthfuls of cream cheese and caviar, a queasy expression on his face, as though he had an ulcer that had just started acting up. No light of recognition dawned though, and he turned back to his little claque, munching canapés and beaming hundred-watt smiles. He didn't remember me.

I poured myself a large glass of bubbly. Nadine would never notice. She had just draped herself all over Paul, as close to being a human overcoat as anyone ever got. I watched him extract himself delicately from her grip, reach into his pocket and pull out a small square black box. He was still smoking those silly Sobranies. But I forgave him when he lit up. I wanted to
be
that cigarette, stroked by those eloquent fingers, moistened by those sensuous lips, thrust in and out of his mouth…and then he looked around, spied Jeremy's urn, removed the lid and flicked his ashes into it.

I was there in a second to snatch it away. “That's not an ashtray,” I splurted.

“Hey…it's full of ashes.” He must have realized what it was because he banged his hand against his forehead.

“A friend of yours?”

I nodded, hugging the urn.

“Really sorry. And you are?” He squashed the
R
like a true North American. His accent had temporarily lost all its Britishness.

“Lucy Madison. Assistant manager here.”

“How're ya doing. Sorry about your friend.”

“Me, too.”

And then I did the unthinkable. I gave in to grief in front of my idol. Tears rollicked down my face. Paul Bleeker took my elbow and guided me into the washrooms. He parked me near the ladies' mirror then went into a cubicle and came back with a huge wad of toilet paper. It was cheap, scratchy toilet paper. Nadine liked to cut corners with those little things.

He handed it to me and I mopped my face. Kindness always makes it worse for me and my tears turned to those jerky hiccuppy sobs.

I felt an arm pull me into a leather-clad shoulder and a hand stroked my hair.

When I'd calmed down a little, I said, “Actually, it was my grandfather.” I stared at the urn.

Paul Bleeker just nodded as if he understood absolutely everything, everything from my feelings of loss to super-strings theory…and then a strange light came into his eyes. You have to be careful when famous artists get strange lights in their eyes and you happen to be holding a dead person's ashes in your hands. For one thing, the famous person usually has enough money to finance his eerier inspirations.

I pulled back a little. Paul had already changed tack though. He took my chin in his hands and began turning my head from side to side. “Have you ever modeled?” he asked.

“For an artist?”

“No, for a mechanic. Well? Have you?”

“Informally.” I recalled an old boyfriend from university days who had once used me as a model. His basement suite had been glacial, its decor, early dirty gym sock, late pizza box and cigarette butt in beer bottle. He fancied himself to be the next Francis Bacon. When he finally let me glimpse
his work, I looked like a fat mutant baby after a nuclear meltdown.

“Only head modeling,” I said primly. The world was not going to get the chance to laugh at any of my naked body parts even if the artist was as famous as Paul Bleeker.

“Pity,” he said. “You have a somewhat classical look.”

If he had gone on to say “Rubenesque” I would have been forced to deck him. But he said, “Give me your phone number anyway. You never know when I might need a head.” It was a ploy, of course, but I quickly rattled off my number and the gallery's e-mail address. I could hear the natives getting restless beyond the bathrooms, and the irritated staccato of Nadine's size ten Ferragamo heels clacking toward us. Paul Bleeker scribbled fast in his little black book and pocketed it as Nadine came through the doorway.

She just avoided snarling at me. “Lucy, you better get out there and start cleaning up. It's a hell of a mess.” She turned to Paul and said so sweetly it made my teeth hurt, “Umberto's all right for you?” He nodded, then shrugged at me, a poor helpless creature caught up in the tide of his adoring fans.

They were all gone by the time I came out of the bathroom. I put Billie Holiday on the CD player and cleaned up. It was nearly eleven when I trudged back out into the cold. I was freezing by the time I got on the bus. As it jostled through the slushy dark streets, I pictured the lucky group, stuffing themselves at Umberto's Ristorante, funghi porcini, risotto di mare, tiramisù. Nadine taking second and third helpings.

Then I thought about what I would do if Paul Bleeker actually phoned me. Would I dare to tell him that I was a sometimes painter?

Would we be able to talk about…art? It's a word I usually have to whisper because it's all become so tricky.

When I first started making big paintings, I figured that with people hanging animal carcasses in galleries or cutting off their own body parts, bleeding to death and calling it artistic expression, I had a lot of leeway. My work is ultra-conservative in comparison to just about everybody else's. I like decorative, and I like functional. I like something I can hang on my own wall. And for that I usually get into trouble. I was harassed at university for the “prettiness” of some of my paintings. But I couldn't help it. I had started depicting my night dreams, in a kind of quasi-naïf, colorful, surreal way. They were so much more vivid and promising than anything that was happening in my waking life. They were full of wild things and creatures: tigers, snakes, bluebirds; orchids, roses, turquoise oceans and murky-green ponds. Sky jokingly christened my work “Frida Kahlo without the mustache.” In my night dreams, I once wore a shawl of white silk embroidered with brightly colored vines, birds and flowers, over a gorgeous tight-fitting red silk dress with matching shoes. Of course, my nighttime body is beautiful. But I think that's good, don't you? It means that whatever I really look like in the daytime or consciously think of myself, my deepest, barest mind thinks I'm okay.

At class exhibitions, my work was always put in the out-of-the-way poorly lit back rooms. It didn't bother me. Somebody always found their way back there. And I don't know why, but when the exhibitions were dismounted, pieces of mine always went missing. I don't want to use the word
stolen.
I prefer to call it art appreciation.

If there's one thing you have to do in your art, it's be true to yourself. And you can take that further, into your life. It's the same. You're filling up your personal canvas, adding the daily strokes. You want it to be good and right, you don't want to have to take the white and cover it all up quickly before
anybody sees the amateur mess you've made. But messes
do
get made.

I stepped off the bus and gingerly walked the last frozen block. When I got home, I called out the Viking's name. There was no answer, so I relaxed. There was a letter for me on the hall table. I realized it wasn't a bill, and suddenly my heart was pounding. I tore it open and unfolded the one page. The signature at the bottom was such an unexpected surprise that my hands started to tremble.

The letter read:

The tears were rolling again but this time I just let them come. I went to the fridge looking for some wine to cry into, but there was none left. However, there was a half bottle of some strange Swedish liqueur that Anna called Glug. So I glugged and cried until I was too exhausted to think anymore.

 

The next morning I put on my power suit in an attempt to dress up for business and hide my hangover. Knee-length, gray wool, very stern. But with just a hint of lace peeping from under the jacket. Just in case Paul Bleeker happened to come in, he was going to see what a no-nonsense woman I was, and not the wet-faced ninny of the day before.

I had my own set of keys and was the first to open up the gallery each morning. This suited me fine. It meant that the dragon lady could simmer in her lair a little longer before fuming into action. She needed a lot of time to put on her makeup and, oh yes…consume a couple of breakfasts.

It was just after nine-thirty. I sat at my desk in the Rogues' Gallery and yawned. I took small sips from my caffe latte forcing myself to make it last. I checked my e-mail. The usual load of forwarded jokes were there from Sky. When the postman came, I tried flirting with him but he didn't even flinch. If he thought I was cute, he wasn't letting on. I was definitely out of practice.