Part 7 (1/2)
”No, don't even bother, thanks.” Jonas sat up straight in his chair and lifted his chin like a new member of the royal family. ”Mrs. Door Handle Toucher, Mrs. Didn't Wash Her Hands Before She Started Eating has already contaminated the whole bit.”
”Um,” said the server.
On the way home, Jonas stopped at A&W to purchase a bag of Chubby Chicken and fries. They didn't talk much as they walked, and Madison hoped the Ethiopian cuisine debacle had weakened his interest in dancing at the Roost. Jonas finished his dinner-in-a-bag as they reached the parking lot behind the Garneau Theatre. He rubbed his now-greasy hands together and began to cackle.
”What?”
”I have a scheme.”
”What sort?”
Jonas remained silent and menacing, so Madison took him by the arms and shook him. ”What? What?”
”Before we change into our club clothes and embark on an emotional and possibly romantic journey, I'm going to invite the young Indian man from across the street to come out with us.”
”Oh, no, you're not.”
”How long have we lived across the street from the young Indian man from across the street?”
”Just no. Please.”
”You owe me, after the Ethiopian food thing.”
Madison pushed him as they entered the Garneau Block. ”No, you owe me. You acted like an a.s.s in there, and embarra.s.sed everyone.”
”It almost sounds like you don't want to go dancing tonight.”
”I never did want to go dancing, Jonas.”
Madison hated the silent treatment but it was preferable to a night of thumping disco. So she decided not to apologize or allow herself to be manipulated by any wounded expressions. But instead of marching through his front door and slamming it behind him, Jonas started across the street to 13 Garneau.
”What are you doing?”
Jonas sauntered up the walkway, past a small rock garden with two choke cherry trees, a small paper birch, and a spruce. The house was a white wooden two-storey with red trim and a small terrace. From time to time Madison would watch the young Indian man from across the street through his front picture window, sipping a gla.s.s of wine or a single bottle of Dutch beer in the evening while reading a novel. She wondered if he was lonesome or if he just preferred things this way. No one had ever seen another being enter or exit 13 Garneau, but that didn't mean he wasn't caring for sick parents or grandparents inside.
Every morning the young Indian man from across the street left at the same time, 7:15, in one of his fine suits, carrying a black leather briefcase. He walked toward the university, presumably to take the LRT across the river. No one at the university, even in the business faculty, dressed as well as the young Indian man from across the street. Madison guessed he was a lawyer.
Jonas stood on the young Indian man from across the street's front terrace. Already he had rung the doorbell twice. He pressed the b.u.t.ton a third time, knocked, and waited thirty seconds. Jonas turned and addressed Madison. ”You are so lucky.”
The young Indian man from across the street appeared in the picture window. He watched Jonas walking away from his house, and looked up at Madison. The young Indian man from across the street shrugged. It was a ”should I bother with this?” sort of shrug.
Madison shook her head. No.
Jonas had not stopped talking. ”And you were going to be a freak because I know how you are about new people.”
The young Indian man from across the street smiled and waved goodnight. At that moment, to her surprise, Madison was stricken by the desire to dance.
20.
dancing with herself Madison hoped they could stand in line on the concrete steps of the Roost for a while, with the people. The two men in front of her were talking about the cleverness of Conservative politics. One, who looked like an accountant, said, ”It's the only way to get poor people in rural Alberta to vote against the welfare state. They make it seem like you and me and the Canadian figure skating team are on our way out there, in our pink Smart Cars, to get married in the Baptist Church and have a.n.a.l s.e.x in the town hall bathroom.”
His partner fas.h.i.+oned his cardigan into a veil, and they walked along the step as though down an aisle.
Madison wanted to hear more but Jonas was already at the top of the stairs, and the front of the line, with one hand on the doorman's arm and the other waving her up. In certain Edmonton communities, Jonas was famous. The gay community was one of them.
There were two dance floors at the Roost. That night, the main floor featured thumping college rock anthems from the 1980s. Madison checked her coat and by the time she was finished, Jonas was already under the flas.h.i.+ng lights with a gin and soda in his hand. It was wrong to drink and dance at the same time, and Jonas knew how she felt about this. But Madison joined him anyway, to the tired old sissy laser rock of ”Tainted Love.”
Why couldn't Madison be like Jonas and everyone else on the dance floor? Why couldn't she stop worrying about everything? She knew there were probably pills she could take; she knew the secret to gaining pleasure from an overplayed song was to shut off her critical faculties, to stop being herself, to stop feeling that someone just like her might see her on the dance floor and think, ”Guh. Loser.”
She wondered if anyone in the club actually liked ”Tainted Love.” Surely, it was just a memory trigger. Jonas and everyone else screaming the lyrics, raising their arms and lowering their heads triumphantly, b.u.mping into each other with their eyes closed, were twenty-one again. Young and clever and beautiful again.
Like marijuana, h.o.m.os.e.xuality had lost its outlaw reputation. When Madison first danced at the Roost, in the wake of another notorious Edmonton gay club, Flashback, the room still hummed with the naughty energy of the 1980s. No one could be gay at a day job, so everyone had to be extra gay at night. Men dressed up as women, or at least wore makeup and black nail polish. Women took their s.h.i.+rts off and danced until they were s.h.i.+ny with sweat. They kissed with tongue, and more. There were those guys who wore nothing but chaps, and girls in bicycle shorts and pasties.
Now the Roost was just an older and smarter version of kiddy clubs, without the fistfights. Madison and Jonas were dressed like everyone else, in jeans and the most flattering T-s.h.i.+rts in their closets. As ”Tainted Love” ended and ”Love Song” by The Cure began with a howl of nostalgic joy, Madison spotted the only real wildcat in the club: a cowboy who looked like he'd just walked off the ranch. Jonas saw him at the same time, and said, ”Giddy-up.” He handed his drink to Madison, and approached the cowboy.
And that was the last Madison would see of Jonas in the Roost.
She put his drink on the bar and walked upstairs, where there was more room on the dance floor. Up here, the DJ played somewhat dated techno music. Madison found a corner, away from the small hordes of curious straight boys in Molson s.h.i.+rts and baseball caps, and watched herself dance in the mirror. She felt this would be her last night on a nightclub dance floor, ever. She wanted to remember what she looked like before she turned thirty and had a child, before her youth ended officially. The ba.s.s went straight to her stomach, and she imagined her baby swimming to the beat.
Several songs later, with a layer of sweat forming on the back of her neck, Madison left the dance floor to splash some water on her face and buy a gla.s.s of cranberry and club soda. Before she hit the washroom door, she saw Jeanne Perlitz pa.s.s on the other side of a pillar.
Madison turned and slammed into a man in an airline pilot's suit who had apparently taken a bath in Issey Miyake for Men. He spilled some beer on himself and said, ”Excuse me!” If she had not been pursuing Jeanne Perlitz, Madison would have helped him sop the beer out of his sleeve. But there was no time.
”Sorry,” she said, and ran to the top of the stairs. Madison looked down, and saw the top of Jeanne Perlitz's head in the crowd at the bottom. She pushed her way through heavy streams of people going up and down the stairs.
Madison weaved around the pool tables, toward the coat check. She ran past the lineup and out on to the street. Two women were hugging and crying, and some people were on the sidewalk across the street, smoking, but there was no Jeanne Perlitz.
Back inside, she retrieved her jacket and described Jeanne Perlitz to the coat check man.
”Blonde and pretty and sort of forty? That sounds like just about every woman to me.” The coat check man leaned on the counter between them. ”Just get back in there and find yourself another one, sweetie. Put a band-aid on that heart and get right back in the game.”
Madison waited for a cab and bounced to keep warm. A large white SUV rumbled slowly up the street. The rear pa.s.senger window opened and a young man in a baseball cap yelled, ”Lezout!” As his friends howled with laughter, he threw a McDonald's cup out the window and it exploded on the pavement in front of Madison. Strawberry milkshake covered her sneakers and the cuffs of her jeans. She looked down at the pink mess for a few minutes, until a cab appeared.
21.
louis chopin of armstrong crescent Toward the end of the Monday Introductory Philosophy cla.s.s, Raymond Terletsky questioned his motives. Earlier that morning, he had received an e-mail from Claudia Santino; the department had decided not to cancel his Death in Philosophy seminar. In a gus.h.i.+ng fit of animation and fellow-feeling, he sent a message to his five seminar students. If any of them was interested, he wanted to take a cla.s.s field trip to the World Waterpark at West Edmonton Mall tomorrow. They would meet in the lobby at ten in the morning.
An hour after sending the message, as his survey students debated whether or not a modified version of Plato's Republic would be better than Canada's const.i.tutional monarchy, he stared at the back wall of the cla.s.sroom and wondered: Did he truly see any philosophical value in sliding down the Sky Screamer? Or had his guilt over the unpleasant episode with Charlene the ma.s.sage therapist already faded, leaving only an impish desire to see his female seminar students in bikinis?
”But the guys we elect are c.r.a.p,” one of the survey students said, while chewing gum. ”At least a philosopher king would be smart.”