Monday Night Man Read online

  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

  My 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.

  Skinny feels like he’s on stage as he gives her his last quarters.

  She wipes sweat from her forehead. “Another vodka, Dad.”

  “I think you’ve had enough.”

  Her eyes hit Skinny like hammers. Skinny turns. The entire bar is watching. “Another vodka and lime.”

  “A double,” Marie corrects him.

  “A double.”

  Mrs Livver comes over. She leans on her canes, daughters Flo and Maggie at each elbow, and Kate behind, in case she tips over backward. “Haven’t innerduced us here, Skinny.”

  Skinny introduces them.

  Marie, still in Shack’s lap, extends her hand as if to be kissed.

  Mrs Livver looks her over. “Take after your mother, do you.”

  Marie looks down at herself, making a show of peeking inside the collar of her blouse at her breasts. “I guess I do, yeah.”

  “Never seen you here before.”

  “Never seen you here either.”

  “I’m here every day,” says Mrs Livver.

  “Well, I guess I got better things to do than sit in a rubby bar.”

  “Better’n seein’ your father?”

  Joy brings the double vodka.

  Marie drinks back half, then crunches up a piece of ice.

  “I see you and your old man got one thing in common.”

  Marie stops chewing, gulps back the rest of her double, then stands. Behind her, Shack makes cross-eyes at her bum. “Oh, we got a lot more in common than that.” She speaks in a mock high voice. “Don’t we, Daddy?” She wraps her arm around Skinny’s shoulders, and, with her free hand, gives his crotch a good firm squeeze right there in front of everyone.

  Skinny stands on the sidewalk in front of the Empress looking up. The nine o’clock gun has just gone off. Straight overhead the sky is black as a bruise. A plane passes, lights blinking.

  Horst joins Skinny. “Well, you won your bet.”

  “I showed her.”

  “You did.”

  Skinny says, “You ever been in an airplane?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My daughter’s a stewardess. Did I tell you that?”

  “No.”

  “Well she is.”

  IF HORST HADa choice, he’d have a daughter rather than a son. He wondered what a female version of himself would look like. It was a scary thought. Even more frightening though is that he’d love her so much he couldn’t bear it. What if she looked at him with those child eyes, what if she fell asleep on his chest, what if she cried, or called “Dad” in her sleep? It brought tears to his eyes even to think about it. He’d follow her around with a gun to protect her. And if something did happen, he’d have to kill himself. It would be the only way he could survive.

  Kids. Horst envied the absolute confidence of their inexperience. Knowledge isn’t power, just like talking things over never helps. Experience means fear. No. Give Horst the bliss of ignorance any day.

  THE YOUNG

  AND THE

  OLD

  Horst broods like an old cod in the weed-choked fish-bowl of Wally’s front window. The massive philoden-dron has overgrown the window and ceiling, the whole huge plant trailing back down to one withered stem root-bound in a gallon paint can. Horst stares at it.

  “Why don’t you repot this bugger?”

  Wally Wong swats a fly above Horst’s head with a rolled Racing Form. The fly joins the other black scabs on the wall. Wally spreads his form on Horst’s table and leans on his fists. “Go to the track?”

  “Went swimming.”

  “Swimming?” Wally snorts and shakes his head.

  “They swim in Hong Kong, Wally?”

  Wally sucks his teeth. “Only people swim in Hong Kong are fish.”

  Horst is too broke to go to the track. He went swimming at Britannia, because Saturday afternoon it’s free. Him and five thousand screaming kids. Horst is out of work again, and hasn’t slept a full night in weeks; some guy from Toronto moved in upstairs and he snores.

  Stewart Gull steps into the cafe and holds the door open for Ray Bunce, who announces that it’s time for rice.

  “Rice?” Wally stares. “Got no rice. Got veal cutlet. You win?”

  Bunce shakes his head. “Took a pounding.”

  “You bullshit. Just don’t wanna leave tip.”

  Gull grins at Bunce’s cleverness.

  Wally says, “Who win triactor?”

  “It was three-two-five,” says Gull.

  “Three? Who three?”

  Gull shrugs.

  Horst slaps the table. “Look at this guy. What the hell good is that? You don’t even know the names of the horses!”

  Gull stares in stung silence. He’s twenty-two, skinny as a bike, and wears a fedora and suit coat, playing like he’s some old-time gambler. Gull doesn’t even know how to read the Racing Form, but he’s always hanging around, talking closers and front speed.

  Gull bugs Horst. For one thing, Gull’s always telling Horst things he already knows. Worse, Gull seems to like Horst.

  Boyle Rupp has come in too, but is keeping strangely quiet. He’s trying to look dignified, wearing a brown corduroy coat with black patches on the elbows and a white shirt buttoned up to his beard.

  Wally fills their cups with coffee as flat-black and bitter as only he can make it. They all order veal cutlets except Rupp.

  “Ate at the track.”

  Horst knows he’s lying. Rupp’s blown his last buck, but is embarrassed to admit it. Here’s where Horst and Rupp differ. Horst would rather eat than bet; Rupp would rather bet than eat.

  Rupp changes the subject. “That guy upstairs still snoring?”

  Horst rolls his eyes.

  “I’ll give you a tip,” says Rupp. “Rob him. Then wipe shit on the walls. He’ll leave.”


  Horst stares. “Shit?”

  “Sure! Would you stay you come home and find shit on your walls?”

  “Rupp, where the hell you come up with this stuff?”

  “I read a lot.”

  “What about sleeping pills?” says Gull.

  Horst turns on him. “Christ kid! I get addicted to sleeping pills? I got a right to a decent night’s sleep.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  Rupp pours himself a handful of sugar, slaps it into his mouth, then chases it down with coffee. “So go read him your rights.”

  Wally grabs up the sugar dispenser. “This was full!”

  Horst says, “Hey Wally. You sleep all right?”

  “Sleep fuckin’ good. Whisky and three aspirin every night.” Wally heads for the kitchen.

  “I hate that fucker,” says Horst.

  “Wally?”

  “The guy upstairs.”

  “You said you never even talked to him.”

  “I don’t need to talk to him to hate him.”

  “You hate everything,” says Rupp, sneaking another mouthful of sugar.

  Horst frowns. Does he?

  When they finish eating, Wally asks if they want pie.

  “Got apple?”

  “Raisin.”

  They have raisin pie. The crust is pale, cold, and the filling sags out the sides. Rupp steals another mouthful of sugar.

  They head to the Alhambra, on Commercial Drive, the SoHo of Vancouver. It’s packed. As they wait for a table, Rupp locks his eyes onto a blonde in a black Spanish dress and gold hoop earrings. Rupp looks like a bird dog, staring with the hunger of the starved. If he had a tail, it’d be sticking straight out. The woman’s hand goes to her neck, as if something’s crawling there. She glances back, spots Rupp, then says something to the guy with her, who looks like he thinks he’s James Dean, wearing a singlet, black hair stroked straight back, and short sideburns. Horst nudges Rupp to stop staring, then gazes innocently at the walls. They’re done up with all sorts of Spanish artifacts, daggers, brass plates, pictures of sunbaked villages, plus a couple of yellowed restaurant reviews showing the owner, a big-bellied guy with oily hair and a handlebar moustache.