Lucy's Launderette (7 page)

I downed it. I told myself, what the hell, Paul Bleeker the famous artist wants you to model for him and you stand there like a moron.

He held up both hands. “Okay, okay, just a minute.” He disappeared through a door in the bed area and came back with a black bathrobe. “You can put this on until you're warmed up. Another drink?”

“Yesh, pleashe.”

I was warming up nicely. After a few more minutes, my clothes seemed to have taken themselves off and I lounged on the shrink's couch wondering what all the fuss had been about. With the vodka firing through my veins, it became clear that I was born to pose nude, a natural artist's model, my creamy-skinned gorgeous body poised for immortality…

“Bloody hell, your knees and elbows are blushing. Too sloppy, that pose. Straighten up. Tits front, girl. Arse we'll do later.”

It was a very long night. Paul Bleeker sketched for hours. He went through reams of paper. I held walking, running and dancing poses. I sat. I stood tall. I bent to the left, willowed to the right. Crouched. Sprawled. Rolled myself into a ball. Stretched out like a corpse. It was exhausting.

Sometime around daybreak, Paul put down his stub of charcoal and came over to me. I was kneeling on the floor. It wasn't by chance that I was on my knees. I was praying the modelling part of the session would be over soon.

He took me by the elbows and pulled me to my feet, then started kissing me. It was hungry-aggressive kissing. One of his hands gripped me around the waist while he unbuckled and unzipped himself with the other. We stagger-hobbled in the direction of the bed and somewhere just short of it, he pulled me down to the floor. There were a few books lying around and one of the thicker tomes got me in the center of my back. My head was to one side and I could see dust-balls the size of tumbleweeds scudding around underneath the bed. Paul had the condom on in three of the deftest sec
onds I've ever witnessed, and within another twenty seconds, it was all over and he was flopped to one side puffing on a Sobranie and flicking ash onto the floor. I extracted a complete anthology of Henry Miller from between my shoulder blades.

Let's face it. First times never live up to their promise. It would improve. It would have to. We just needed time to get used to each other.

He fell asleep like that, with the burning cigarette dangling between his fingers. I removed it and stubbed it out. Paul was comatose. I could barely see his breathing.

I grabbed the black robe, pulled it tight around me and stretched out on his bed. I sank into sleep and dreamt I was in a field of wildflowers: poppies, daisies, dandelions, blue cornflowers, borage and lavender, dog roses, nasturtium and burning bush, crocuses, tansy, marigolds. Every season of flower had been rolled into one and dazzled my eyes with their brilliance.

I was aware that there were women standing in the field, each one with a different petal's color and fragility. A bird like a crow or raven flew overhead, blocking the sun, and in its wake a huge black cloud stopped over the field. It began to rain soot. The petal women melted into the mucky dark ground. I started to run, trying to escape the black rain, but it was like moving in molasses. The rain was coming harder and faster and now there was such loud thunder that I started awake and wondered where the storm was.

It was my stomach rumbling.

Paul was still asleep on the floor and I was famished. I got up, dressed myself and went over to his fridges. There were five of them, and somewhere inside one of them, there had to be a tiny little snack. I grabbed the handle and was about to open the door when a voice barked, “Get away from there.” Paul was sitting up and looking mean.

“Sorry, I didn't realize you kept your victims' bodies in the fridge.”

He didn't look amused. “You are never, ever to open any of those. Do you understand?”

“I didn't realize…”

“Do? You? Understand?” he enunciated, as if I were a child.

“I said I was sorry.”

“Just as long as you understand.”

My lower lip trembled and my eyes began to water.

I know they say crying is healthy, cathartic, that it's a bad idea to bottle it all up. But tell that to someone like me, a natural crier, whose tear ducts open up and produce whitewater rapids over the slightest provocation. Just once in my life, I longed to be less transparent.

His evil expression softened. He came over and gave me a hug. “Lucy, Christ, I'm a wretched sod. No tears now. It's where I keep the tools of my trade. Top secret. If you knew what was in there, you'd be susceptible. Some clever bugger of a journalist would find out you've been up here and make you spill the surprise. Surprise is a lot in my kind of art. So the less you know the better.”

This was different from the other artists I'd known. The others were usually clubbing journalists over the head with their work, rough or finished.

He coughed and looked at his watch. “You better hurry or you'll be late for work.” As he hustled me out the door all I could think was, What, no breakfast? No white linen tablecloth? No croissants? No caffe latte?

Chivalry was dead and buried.

Before I started down the stairs, he pulled me back and gave me a proper kiss. “I'm only four blocks away from Rogues' Gallery. Keep that in mind for your lunch break,
won't you? I'm usually here at that hour. Run along now.” He grinned and shut the door.

 

I hurried down the street. It was a rotten windy day, candy wrappers, scrap paper and leaves gusting around me. I stopped at La Tazza and had Nelly the Grape make me my usual double caffe latte. I bought a huge fattening pastry as well. I deserved two pastries but I held back, thinking of all the nakedness that might still take place.

The door to the gallery was unlocked which meant that Nadine was already there. Her office door was closed and I could hear her voice but not make out the words. I took off my coat, put my bag on my desk and sat down. The little brass urn full of Jeremy's ashes was still sitting on my desk. It was comforting to have it there in front of me during my long boring gallery days.

“Hi, Jeremy,” I said to it. “I had quite a night. I'll tell you about it sometime when I figure it all out. I hope you're okay, wherever you are. I hope you're watching. I hope you're going to find a way to help me from the other world, you know, look after me a little, put in a good word with the powers that be. I wish you would. I don't need to tell you how much I miss you. I went to see Connie. I just don't get you, Jeremy. I'm sorry but I just can't see what you saw in her. She looks like a real mess. And I just don't know how much help I can be in all of this…”

A loud “Heh-hem” interrupted my murmuring. Nadine was standing in her office doorway looking superior. “If you're finished communing with the dead, Lucy.”

“Isn't it in my contract that you have to respect my religious beliefs?”

Nadine shook her head. “It's in your contract that if you
screw up, you're out the door. In fine-print legalese.” She peered at me more closely. “Whatever have you been doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your face is all smutty. Go and look at yourself.”

I went into the bathroom and stared into the mirror. I looked like a chimney sweep. Paul Bleeker's charcoaly fingerprints were on my face. I probably had smudges all over the rest of my body as well. I scrubbed myself with wet paper towels, brushed my hair and put on a little lipstick. A nice dark shade.

When I'd finished cleaning up and was back at my desk, Nadine said, “I've got an IT expert here. Jacques needs to examine your computer. He's going to be putting in some new software.”

“Jacques? Jacques who?” My heart skipped a beat. A computer whizz would be able to see where I'd been on the Net, see all the hours I'd frittered away checking out eBay, Big Brother sites and Lonely Hearts Web pages.

“I'm upgrading,” said Nadine. “Jacques, this is my assistant, Lucy Madison.”

Jacques came into view and I laughed.

“Hey, Luce, how're ya doing?”

“Jacques. What are you doing here?”

Jacques came over, picked me up and whirled me around. I only came up to his chest. Next to him I was a sylph.

He put me down and glanced over at Nadine's raised eyebrows. He said, “Miss Thorpe wants to buy the farm, add a few more gigabytes. And some fancy stuff for showing off artists' work to full advantage. That right, Miss Thorpe?” I could tell by the way Nadine was looking at him that she wanted a few of Jacques's private bits and bytes as well. It was understandable. Jacques was six feet four inches of broad-shouldered barrel-chested male sweetness. Because he
didn't have to impress anyone, he always wore the same uniform: jeans, lumberjack shirts and long straight black hair that went past his shoulders. He had a hint of local native blood and an easy smiling expression. Like Geronimo on tranquilizers.

He was a computer genius. He'd been finishing his studies when I first met him. In university days, he'd been lost in love with Madeline from the art department. Madeline was his only defect. He would come looking for her, his dark eyes puppy-dogging along all the routes Madeline might have taken, checking out all the places where Madeline might be. We made friends during his long waits for her. What Jacques didn't know back then was that Madeline was a very busy girl, very popular, with a lot of extra-curricular men, and she loved having Jacques as a personal six-foot-four doormat.

“So what are you doing these days, Jacques?” I asked.

“Working at the university, rescuing departmental techno-dummies all over the campus whenever they melt down. Hey, you still painting, Luce?”

“Mmmm-hmmm.” It was neither a yes nor a no. I hate lying to friends. “How's Madeline? She still making…”

“Heart art. Yeah. She's doing some really great stuff.” He sounded slightly panicky, the way the less-loved partner in a relationship sounds when they are afraid of losing the other. “She's selling quite well in New York.” He sighed. “She's there right now. Gonna be there for a couple more weeks.” He sighed again.

These words crushed me like a ten-ton block. Back then, Madeline had been into this mock-sixties pop art stuff using a lot of pink and hearts and doe-eyed Twiggy-like female figures. The worst part was that there were professors who thought she was the great promise of the art department.

Hearts.

She still had Jacques's heart after all these years, and it looked like she was still reducing it to pulp.

I reached for my caffe latte and knocked my bag off the desk. Its contents, including my virgin peach lace underwear, spilled all over the floor.

Jacques smiled and raised his eyebrows quizzically. Nadine looked peeved. I would like to have told them that it had been a great night, a masterpiece of lovemaking, but the fact was, the Maestro had barely dipped his brush.

J
acques was there all morning fiddling with the computers. Nadine sent me out on errands three times. First it was to the post office to mail some packages, then the department store to buy cleaning supplies and finally to the bakery for cinnamon buns because she was feeling a little peckish. Around one o'clock she said, “I have a yen for some Dim Sum today. Shall we all go to lunch? My treat?” She smiled her porcelain smile at both of us. I rarely refuse a free lunch and I was happy to have the chance to hang out with Jacques again after such a long time. We drove to Chinatown in his Porsche. Nadine raced to get into the front seat next to him. I had to sit in the back.

In the restaurant, Nadine gleefully chose something off every trolley that came around: shrimp dumplings, steam buns with sweet bean filling, sausage wrapped in grape leaf, ducks' feet, spring rolls, it all just kept coming. Nadine had a
sneaky way of eating that made it look as though she were just picking at her food, but she was really putting it away. During the hour and a half lunch, she got up three times to go to the bathroom.

“Miss Thorpe must have an awfully weak bladder,” said Jacques.

“Acute observation.”

The thought of elaborating on Nadine's bladder depressed me, so I didn't bother.

 

Jacques spent the rest of the afternoon working on the computers. Around six o'clock Nadine tried her “me and a few friends are meeting for drinks. Would you care to join us?” routine on Jacques.

“Sorry, Miss Thorpe, I'm going for beers with Lucy,” he said. His voice was blunt. It seemed to say, “Shame on you for asking.”

I was flattered. I pulled on my coat, grabbed my bag and left the gallery with Jacques. He took me to the Four Seasons. They let him in, dressed in blue jeans. When we had our beers in front of us he said, “It's great to see you again, Lucy Madison.”

I knew what was coming.

He launched into his favorite subject: Madeline.

Madeline and her affair with her New York gallery manager, Madeline and the wealthy businessman she met on a plane and oh it was just one of those things that happened—it doesn't mean anything. I kept wanting to pipe up, Madeline and the postman, Madeline and the plumber, Madeline and the paperboy, Madeline and anything in pants that breathes.

Poor Jacques. He needed to talk to someone and I let him talk. He was finally growing up a little. But knowing about all her betrayals didn't seem to help him. If anything, they
made her more desirable in his eyes. I couldn't understand it. I resisted saying what I'd always wanted to say, that he should dump her cold, forget about her forever because she was bad news.

He would never leave her, and even if he did, she would always stay with him, metaphorically, occasionally popping out of a huge, messy emotional scar to say “Cuckoo.” Any smart woman would sense Madeline's ghost.

It was about nine when we left the Four Seasons. Jacques abandoned his car in town and we both took a taxi. In the back seat, he held my hand and I thought for a minute things might get interesting. But he just went on holding my hand, the way an old friend or a brother might. The decent brother I wished I had. Then I said, “Hey, Jacques, what are you doing for Easter?”

“Nothing, I guess. Madeline will still be in New York.”

“Come with me to my parents' for the big meal.”

He brightened a little. “Sure.” He wrote his phone number on my hand, and we promised to be in touch to organize Easter Sunday.

When I got home, there was a number scrawled on a piece of paper with the word
irget
next to it. Anna's handwriting.

“Anna? Are you home?”

“In bathroom,” came her voice.

“This message. Who's Irget?”

“It is very very important…uh…you know…irget.”

“Urgent?”

“Ya.”

I picked up the phone and called the number. A man's voice answered.

“This is Lucy Madison,” I said.

“Oh, hi, Lucy. I've been trying to reach you for a while. It's Sam. Sam Trelawny.”

“Hi, Sam. Sorry to get back to you so late.”

“That's okay.”

“You said it was urgent?”

“Yeah. It seems there've been a few more sightings of our slippery guy in the Superman costume.”

“Oh God.”

Sam laughed. “We haven't been able to grab him yet, but he's really getting around. According to the reports, he's added a few more touches to his outfit.”

“Oh damn.”

Sam was still laughing. “…gold stars hand-painted on gumboots, a T-shirt with a crude rainbow hand-painted over the front, and an old suitcase, the kind women used as cosmetic cases in the fifties, painted with gold stars.”

“Double damn.”

“He's been stopping women in the streets and telling them he's a big producer and that if they don't star in his film, he'll have his men break their boyfriends' or husbands' legs. We're starting to wade into deeper water here with these threats, but we still don't have anything concrete. Whenever the police get to the scene of the complaint, he's gone and his victims think it's too silly to prosecute. It seems he also had one of those rubber chickens and was threatening some guy with that, too. But I don't know. A rubber chicken. It doesn't really constitute a significant threat.”

I was silent.

“Lucy, are you there?”

“I'm here. You're laughing.”

“Believe me if I tell you, you're not the only one.”

I was slightly shocked. “You don't have relatives like this, do you, Sam?”

“Ask me about it. A lot of people have relatives like this.”

“Really? Not as bad as Dirk, though?”

“Depends. Depends on how you look at it.”

“Go on.”

“It's all on the female side in my family. I've got one chubby cousin who's always trying to diet but whenever she does, she goes off the rails, ends up ripping off all her clothes and riding her bicycle around town. We call her Lady Godiva.”

It was my turn to laugh. “Nudity's okay.”

“Glad you think so.”

“No, really, it is.”

“I also had a great-aunt who was a WREN driver during the war. Whenever she flipped, she went out and stole the vehicle of her choice. Rang the fire bell so that she could steal the fire truck. I don't know. That's just my family. I could tell you about some other folks I know.”

“I feel better. Thanks, Sam.”

“Good. I'm glad I could serve up the family nuts for some purpose.”

I said, “And I'm sorry for phoning you so late. You're probably going out.”

“You, too.”

“I've just come in.”

“So early on a Saturday night?” There was a sweet twist in Sam's voice.

“Well, you're working on a Saturday night.”

“Hazards of the profession. My…clients…keep losing their copy of my work schedule. I'm not actually on call. I just wanted to keep you up to date, let you know the latest.” His voice became serious. “I know it's hard for you at times, having a brother like Dirk. These folks take a toll on their families.”

“Thank you for saying that. People don't realize. You're the first person I've ever met…well, I haven't actually met you, have I… It feels as though I have,” I said.

“Yeah, it does. You were saying?”

“You're the first in that profession to tell me about your family skeletons. A lot of the other people who have worked on Dirk's case haven't had a clue. Okay, they may have come from slightly messed-up families and were working to put the universe right, but they couldn't make the leap. What made you choose social work, if you don't mind my asking?”

Sam laughed, “Social work kind of happened to me by accident. You could say I rebounded into it. It's a long story. Maybe I'll tell it to you sometime.”

“I'd like to hear it.” Anna was poking my shoulder and looming over me. “Oh, sorry, I've gotta go. My roommate wants the phone.”

Anna was glaring and making gestures to let me know that she was waiting for an important phone call.

Sam said, “I'll let you know if we make any progress, and you let me know if Dirk shows up. And Lucy?”

“Yes?”

“Don't let the rubber chickens get you down.”

“Bye, Sam. Thanks.” I hung up.

Anna was wearing an ice-white evening dress, cut down to her coccyx at the back, cut to her navel at the front, slit to her hip at the side, and accented by a very heavy collar of what looked like real gold. Her pale blond hair fell sleekly down her back. She wore no makeup. She didn't need to. Nobody was going to be looking at her face for long.

I wanted to cry. Never in a million years could I wear a dress like that. A white dress. I'd look like Moby Dick on the high seas. With one difference. I'd have absolutely no danger of being harpooned.

 

The next morning, Sunday, it rained, a biting spring rain that slapped the branches and pavement and bounced back
six inches. It made me feel that the world had always been wet, that the sun shining was a hallucination. Anna wasn't home so I drank my morning coffee without its usual lacing of envy. I listened to Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Pass on the stereo. But my world felt tilted, out of balance. No morning-after-the-day-after phone calls from Paul. And I had to go and see Connie again this morning. I'd promised Reebee and Jeremy's ashes that I'd make an effort.

I got out my big black umbrella and took the three bus rides down to the Commercial Drive area. It continued to pelt and I cursed Connie for making me come out in such weather and wasting part of my free day.

I stopped at a supermarket and bought a quart of milk, some lettuce and tomatoes, some oranges and bananas, and a small steak. In the middle of the aisle, I paused and said, “Connie, you bag,” out loud to the meat section. I never bought steak for myself so why should Connie get it? I had to keep reminding myself that the steak was not really going to Connie but to the child in her womb. Connie was just a nine-month underwater taxi ride for the baby, an obstacle to be gotten past.

When I arrived at the house, all the curtains were drawn. I rang the doorbell and waited. Five minutes must have passed so I rang it again, this time leaning on it. I tried the door but it was locked. I leaned on the bell some more. I didn't want to leave until I'd seen her. She had no friends in Vancouver. Jeremy had told me she had no friends, that she hadn't any from her past life in Las Vegas either. No one ever wrote or phoned from the States and she never talked about people she might miss. He'd told me she had no family. He'd said she had a general mistrust of the human race. All of which made me wonder over and over why he had bothered with her.

I leaned on the bell again. Then I walked back down the front steps and looked up at the house. A corner of curtain flickered in one of the upstairs windows. I went back to the front door and this time knocked hard.

“Connie, open up,” I said to the empty hallway beyond the glass door. “It's Lucy. Jeremy wanted it this way so it's going to be this way. I'm not leaving, so you better just come down and unlock the door.” Still nothing. It occurred to me that she might not be home, but for some reason, a prickling at the back of my neck, I was sure she was.

“Lookit, Connie, I don't like this any better than you do. It's wet out here and I'm freezing but it was Jeremy's idea so I'm going to stand right here until you come out of your cave.”

By this time I was yelling. A man's voice shouted from the house next door, “It's Sunday morning, goddammit, shut the hell up and let me sleep.” It was noon but I guess it still qualified as morning for some.

“Listen, Connie, open that door. That's my cousin…I mean my aunt or uncle you're carrying around inside you…or maybe it's my second cousin, or my second cousin once removed, or…well Jeremy's kid. Oh, hell. Just open up, will you?”

She appeared, a dark blob at the end of the hallway, lumbering toward the front door. She opened it, gave me her deadpan stare, and asked, “What do you want?”

“To see that you and the baby are okay.”

“Why don't you just go away and leave me alone. I just want to be left alone.”

“Jeremy told me to insist.”

“Well, Jeremy's dead. Doesn't have much say in the matter, does he?” Connie shuffled toward the living room and I followed her.

Inside the house, I felt faint. Under the cigarette smell, there was still the smell of Jeremy's life. I hadn't noticed it the last time. I held my breath and clenched my teeth, afraid I might start wailing like a Sicilian widow. Anything not to let the lingering odor in.

There was the animal smell of someone else's lair. That composite that makes up their private scent. The carpets they tread, the furniture they sprawl on, the air freshener they use to cover other smells, the food they cook, the parties they throw, the leathery, limey aftershave they wear, the damp musty wooden smell of the house that surrounds them. The scent of my adolescence.

Connie found a packet of cigarettes, shook one out and lit it. She was wearing a sloppy pink sweatsuit that really accentuated her green complexion nicely. Her cheekbones were high and looked even more pronounced now. She was losing weight, the little she had going to her bulging middle. Her strange blue eyes were more sunken than ever. And her hair fashion statement that day was black roots and greasy tangles. She smelled of smoke and biscuit-y sweat.

“What are you going to have for lunch?” I asked in my best Spanish Inquisition tone.

“Whadyou care?”

“I just told you. I'm here to see that you and the baby are doing all right. Okay, I'm lying. More the baby than you.”

She stared at me again with that hard, expressionless, unreadable face. It was impossible to tell if she hated me or just thought of me as insignificant dust.