Monday Night Man (6 page)

Horst feels guilty, but he's not saying no.

Skinny's ice water is pink with blood from his chapped lips. He watches Mrs Livver's thighs where her slip shows under her flowered dress. Her feet dangle toes-down an inch above the tile floor, and her canes lean one against each armrest of the chair. Skinny used to be a saw-filer in a mill up north. He liked being up north. He liked the bush, all green and cool in the early morning. Sitting in the Empress, three days into the desert of no beer, he recalls those mornings.

“Skinny!” Mrs Livver shouts like a stern schoolteacher. “Visit your mother lately?”

Skinny's glass of water slops over a little.

“Bring her flowers do you?”

Skinny stammers. “Don't say that.”

“Say what?” Mrs Livver's eyebrows arch in all the evil innocence of a six-year-old.

Skinny stands. He stands like a child at his desk. His chapped lips bleed, grouting his teeth in blood. He cries: “I d-d-didn't d-do anything!”

Mrs Livver sniffs soberly. “You're right there.” She pours the dregs of her glass into a fresh one, bringing the level to overflowing. “Still smell it,” she says. “Walk by that room still smell it, can't you Lawrence?”

“Eh?”

“Sure you can. Ammonia. Stinks like ammonia.”

Tears run into the blood on Skinny's chin. Joy comes over to calm him, but he stares straight past her as if watching the dead walk.

Mrs Livver lights a fresh du Maurier. “Horst, how you doin' son?”

“Living,” says Horst, coldly. Horst hates himself for not telling her off.

“Living.” Mrs Livver chuckles like that's a good one.

Skinny stares straight ahead. His mother had been dead for eight days in that room before Mrs Livver had complained about the smell. Skinny had been on a drunk.

Now Mrs Livver says, “Hey Jules.” She winks. Jules leans to watch. Joy glances over from where she's wiping a table. “Ok, Skinny,” says Mrs Livver. “I'll buy you a beer. But you got to do a chore.” Mrs Livver takes her keys from her purse. “Go up and clean the toilet at the end of the hall. Clean it good. I'll buy you a beer and a pickled egg. Don't want you drinkin' on a empty stomach.” She lays the washroom key on the terrycloth.

Skinny presses his lips tight, sealing them in a glue of blood.

Horst watches.

Skinny steps out from behind his table. But as he reaches for the key Mrs Livver snatches it up, holding it against herself, and says, ‘“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.' That's Solomon, Skinny, Solomon.”

Skinny reaches for the key again and this time gets it.

After Skinny leaves to clean the toilet, everyone settles into watching the TV above the bar. The Oprah show.

“Male violence,” cries Oprah. “Fathers and sons and uncles!” She goes into the audience and points the microphone at a blond man in a pink jump suit. He stands and takes the mike like it's a gift of flowers, yet he's in tears. He shuts his eyes and holds the microphone in both hands as if he's going to sing a love song, but then he opens his eyes, points to the camera, and accuses his father of crimes against humanity.

“Fella looks like a fluff,” says Mrs Livver. “Don't he look like a fluff, Lawrence?”

“Eh?”

“Sure he does. Man's a fluff. Joy. Where'd all the real men go?”

Joy scratches the scar on her arm and shrugs.

WHAT HORST LIKED
about the Empress was that everything in it was old. Remnants of the original ceramic floor tiles lay like Byzantine mosaic alongside cement and lino. Horst liked the terry-cloth covered tables, the taps in the can that said hot and cold, the wide marble stairs leading to the rooms above. What he like most, though, was being the youngest drinker there. He felt relaxed, like a child reassured by the sounds of nearby adults.

For the regulars, the Empress was the only living room they had. They tormented each other like family. They displayed their scars and stats with grim pride. Fifty-two years at the wheel of a flatbed; thirty-nine filing saws. Horst listened. A service he offered. He liked to feel useful.

At the Empress, Horst saw wedding bands pinching age-thickened fingers. He saw cigarette packages: Matinee, Export Plain, Players Navy Cut, Drum. He saw Joy moving among the tables, emptying the ashtrays into an Edwards coffee can. He saw Skinny Osberg drinking the dregs of abandoned beers. And, in the centre of it all, Mrs Livver, like some mad queen, her canes leaning one on each side of her throne, the fat on the back of her arm swaying like the belly of a pregnant bitch as she reached for her glass.

THE
BIRTHDAY
PARTY

M
y girls're coming. Did I tell you my girls're coming? Flo, Maggie, and Kate.”

“Telling us every day for a goddamn month,” says Skinny Osberg. He sits with his back to the mustard-coloured wall.

Mrs Livver sits at the table in the centre of the beer parlour. “Her” table. She smiles and shakes her head and doesn't even glance at Skinny. “You got no kids, Osberg. You got nothing. And you know why? Because you are nothin'.”

“Got a daughter'n you know it.”

“Daughter? You call that a daughter? You ain't got no daughter.”

“I goddamn do, too. Marie!”

Mrs Livver picks up her du Maurier Light, taps it, then puffs. “A daughter visits her father, Skinny. She don't call you, she don't write you, she don't nothin' you.” Mrs Livver raises her empty glass. “Two more here, Joy.”

Skinny stares. He has no eyelashes and his hair is the colour of nicotine. “Whata you know about it?”

“Know lot more'n I'm sayin'.”

“You must know a lot 'cause you never shut up.”

“You come to my birthday tomorrow'n you'll learn more yet.”

“Like what?”

“Like what proper daughters're like. Ain't that right, Lawrence?”

“Eh?” Lawrence sits slumped in the seat opposite Mrs Livver in his permanent hunch, watching the bubbles in his beer.

“My grandchildren'll be there. I got six. Four boys, two girls.”

Joy sets down the beer.

“You see your father, Joy?”

Joy holds her tray on her hip. “Only when I go to the cemetery.”

“How 'bout your mother?”

“Phone every morning.”

“Every morning. Hear that Skinny?”

“My daughter phones me,” says Skinny.

Mrs Livver shakes her head again. “God you lie.”

“Goddamn ain't lyin'!”

“How come I never seen her?”

Skinny stretches his chapped lips, splitting them. “Only comes round on special occasions.”

“Well, tomorrow's a special occasion. My big six-five. We all'd like to get a boo at this daughter of yours.”

Skinny tastes the blood on his split lips. “I just might bring her.”

“And a hundred says you won't.”

“You got a deal.”

Everybody sits forward. Horst, Joy, Shack in his wheelchair. Shack calls, “God help her if she looks like you, Ozzo!”

Skinny's eyes cut left, then right. His face burns. He gulps his beer. “I'll call her now.”

Mrs Livver points. “Phone's right there.”

Skinny stands, breathing hard. He walks through the cool gloom of the beer parlour, passes on by the phone to jeers and hoots, pushes open the door, and steps into the sheet-metal glare of the August afternoon.

When Skinny leaves Van City Pawnbrokers, it's six o'clock. He did well. He has a hundred and seventeen dollars on him. He heads up Hastings to Princess, where the whores stand. Skinny hasn't been this far from the Empress in a year, since that time Shack chased him for saying paraplegics couldn't do it. Skinny has a plan.

“Hey daddy, I'll make you young again.”

Skinny looks her over. She's wearing a black cowboy hat, black leather bra and panties, and is barefoot. “I want someone who looks like me,” he says.

She loses her smile. “Go on over to boy's town, you old fag.”

“No. A girl looks like me.”

“Trannies're that way.”

Skinny studies his reflection in a car window to keep in mind exactly what he's looking for. He walks two hours, until the sun's behind the buildings and whole blocks are in shadow. He figures a redhead, or rusty blonde, with freckles. Skinny had freckles once. But he can't find any whore with freckles. He goes into the Sub Stop for a coffee. Marie would be thirty-one. Born two days after JFK got shot. Six or seven years back, Skinny had called Louise to find out how Marie was doing, but Louise'd said it was none of his bees wax.

“My daughter, she's my bees wax.”

“Lorne, you should've made us both your business thirty years ago.”

“Better late than never.”

He heard her drag on her cigarette. “Not in this case.”

“She married?”

“No.”

“How come?”

“She's a stewardess.”

“Stewardesses don't get married?”

“She lives with someone.”

“How're your feet?”

“Just fine.”

Louise had had thirty-three plantars warts on the bottoms of her feet. Skinny's real name is Lorne. He sits in the Sub Stop, watching the hookers out front pretend to use the pay phones. Kids. The world keeps getting younger on him. He goes out again. The downtown air scrapes like asbestos in his throat. He looks up and down Hastings Street. Glenhaven Funeral Home, Pink Pearl Chinese Restaurant, and, farther up, the Astoria Hotel sign blinking in the summer night. He considers saying fuck it, but then he thinks of old lady Livver laughing at him.

Skinny finds a woman who looks right. She stands by a dumpster, though looks like she belongs in a bank.

“Birthday party?” She raises one eyebrow.

“All the food'n beer you can put back.”

“How long?”

Skinny hadn't thought about that. “Say, three hours.”

She considers it. “Two hundred.”

“Jesus! It'll be a holiday!”

“You know how much I make here in three hours?”

Skinny looks around. The alley stinks of meat, pee, and burnt plastic. “Darlin', you're on shit row as far as I can figure.”

“And you're an old asshole.”

“How 'bout one-fifty?” He decides he'll give her half of what old lady Livver will owe him.

She sniffs and looks away, thinking.

Skinny studies her. She's the right age and not too slutty. “Tomorrow. Six o'clock.”

“Six! I don't get out of bed until six!”

“One-fifty. All's you got to remember is to call me daddy.”

“Daddy!” She shuts her eyes and shakes her head, like it never ends.

“All the beer you want.”

“I don't drink beer.”

“Wine then. There'll be wine.”

When Skinny and “Marie” walk in, everyone looks. She's done a good job on herself, wearing a pleated grey skirt, plain white blouse, and only a touch of lipstick.

“Jesus Osberg!” says Shack. “How'd such an ugly bugger like you have such a good-lookin' daughter?”

Skinny grins. He inhales the respect in the air.

Joy introduces herself. Jules, the bartender, wipes his hand on the cloth slung over his shoulder and shakes her hand. Horst is there too, and he says hello. Mrs Livver is the only one who doesn't say a word. She just squints and stays where she is, surrounded by her flabby, sag-breasted daughters, lecturing them like they're deaf.

“You should've brought the little ones. I'm disappointed. I ain't seen 'em since Christmas. You'd think Surrey was Saint John's. How much you pay your babysitter? Get one of them Filipino women. They work cheap.”

“S'cuse me.” Maggie, the biggest, rises like a gas bag and heaves off toward the ladies room.

Mrs Livver watches her. “She still cry every day at four o'clock? If eyeballs could rust that one'd need a new pair every week.” Mrs Livver glances over at Skinny.

Skinny sees her looking.

So does “Marie.” “Why doesn't she come over and pay the fuck up?”

“She's sneaky.”

“She gonna ask me trick questions?”

“I don't know.” Skinny picks at his frayed lip. There's a buffet by the bar. “You want some potato salad?”

“Potato salad?” Marie looks at him like he farted. “I want a vodka.”

“Got wine and beer all you can drink.”

“A double vodka with a twist.”

“Have to pay for it.”

“Buy me one or I walk.” She speaks straight ahead, even though Skinny sits beside her.

Skinny buys her a double vodka and lime. Then a second one. Four and a quarter each.

Jimmy Shack rolls over to the bar and slots his empties into the automatic glass washer. He always does that, to prove paraplegics can take care of their own acts. Then he rolls on over to Skinny and Marie. “Looks like ya got a nose fer vodka there.”

Marie sucks ice and nods.

Shack buys a round of doubles.

Marie brightens up. “Where's the music? You said this was a party … Dad.”

“Want music?” With one shove, Shack sends himself whirring along the lino to the jukebox. He looks back.

“The Bee Gees.”

The music booms up big. Three double vodkas in her, Marie tries getting Skinny up to dance, but he says no. “It don't look right.” So Marie dances alone. Everybody in the bar watches. Then Shack comes along behind and scoops her up so she falls laughing into his lap.

“Fred Astaire of the wheelchair!” sings Shack.

Marie hoots and kicks her legs. She has her arm around Shack's shoulders.

Skinny is half-standing. Shack, the dirty cripple, has his hands all over her. Skinny glances at Mrs Livver, who's watching real close. Skinny stretches his chapped lips, splitting them.

When the music ends, Marie's loud laughter groans out. “Hey! How 'bout some quarters, Dad!” Sitting in Shack's lap, she crosses her legs and bounces her foot impatiently.