Cease to Blush

by Billie Livingston

  “Yeah. Didn’t I say that on the phone? I signed last week.”

  “Real sellers’ market now.” His chin bobbed and bobbed. “You going to buy yourself an apartment?”

  “Not yet. Maybe next year.”

  He reached into his pocket and took out an envelope. “Ah, from the site and stuff. There’s sixteen hundred here. I split it fifty-fifty between us. After Brian’s cut. He took 30 percent.”

  “No wonder he’s living so well.” I fanned through Mum’s copy of the Marquis de Sade a moment before I set it in a box on top of Andrea Dworkin, with a quiver of pleasure.

  “Sorta cut ties, me and Brian. And you don’t have to worry about that footage or anything. I got rid of it. I’m really … I’m sorry I …”

  “Mmm-hmm, you told me.”

  “I just … wanted you to know for sure. He got pretty weird last night, talked about how he could sue us and shit like that. Guy’s crazy … whatever.” He leaned and picked out a Rosselli book from one of the boxes. “I want to say too, that I’m sorry I never, ah … I thought you wanted to work through your own stuff and you’d talk when you were ready.”

  “You were probably right,” I said lightly.

  “Maybe I even kind of exploited you, getting you to do that Internet stuff when you were going through a fragile point in your life.” He tossed Johnny back.

  “It was my idea. Maybe I exploited you.”

  He winced as though I was taxing his brain, bruising his compassion.

  “There’s no point blaming and all the rest now,” I said. “We should make our lives the way we need them to be.”

  He gave me a couple rapid blinks then looked back in the box and plucked Judy Campbell out. “Was your mum really a stripper?”

  “Yep. She’s finally going to get her wish though.” I got off my knees and went to the desk, tossed a couple of school calendars in Frank’s lap. “I haven’t decided which one yet.”

  “What made you decide to do this?” He fanned pages of the Tsing Tao School of Journalism at UBC.

  “I don’t know … Malcolm X, Billy Graham, Marcella.”

  “Who’s Marcella?”

  “The artist formerly known as Erin. I never got to do the school thing. Maybe I’ll like it. And if I don’t I’ll quit.”

  “I guess you can afford it now.” He squinted down, swallowing. “Great,” he said, forcing energy into it. “Probably be good at that, journalism. You like asking questions and arguing and—” he shook Judy Campbell and tossed her “—reading. Do you think things would’ve been different if we’d gotten married?”

  “Not particularly,” I said, as though he’d asked if I regretted never having had the shingles. It seemed like eons ago now and I didn’t much want to discuss the dead baby of our relationship.

  “Have you got a beer?” he asked suddenly.

  “There’s a couple in the cupboard. I was going to chuck ’em. I’m on a booze fast for a little while.”

  “Excuse me?” This, he apparently found most incredible of all.

  “I wasn’t exactly liquor hound of the year.”

  “Runner-up.” He looked smug. “Len go to the monastery?”

  “Nope. He’s in love. She’s nice, I met her. Quite beautiful and … worldly.”

  “Worldly?” He laced his fingers back together. “Wow. That’s sudden.”

  “It’s a-a-all so sudden … end of an era.”

  I could feel his glance and decided I’d better meet it and let him get whatever he needed to say off his chest.

  “I love you,” he said in a low blurt. His lips quivered as if they couldn’t get a grip on any further sound. I didn’t say anything. “I would marry you if you wanted me to.”

  “That’s very chivalrous of you.”

  “No, I mean, I’d like to. Is that what you … would … have liked?”

  My no clanged on the floor like a cast-iron pan. He was terribly serious all of a sudden. It took some work on my part to maintain eye contact. “I need to be alone. I’ve never done that. Maybe if I took all my pissed-off energy and actually did something with it instead of flailing around, I’d be marriage material. I need to get a bigger self right now.”

  “The self I am isn’t big enough for you?”

  “The self I am is not big enough for me.”

  “Oh.” He looked out the window. “I guess Sienna will be relieved. We’ve kind of been seeing each other.”

  “I see,” I said. “Well, there you go.” The phone interrupted.

  “Hey,” I answered. “Speak of the devil … Oh … Can I call you back, I’ve got company … all right.” I set the receiver down. “Marcella. She’s getting remarried. Wants me to be a bridesmaid.” My fingertips pattered my thighs a second. I was in shorts and a T-shirt but the sweat glued everything to my skin. “I don’t want to deal with her right now.”

  He stared into my eyes, mute.

  A quick check of my watch and I said, “Your things are in those bags. Videos, clothes. You liked that Sinatra … I hate to give you the rush but I promised Sally I’d come sort through some stuff before the movers show up.” Heading to the kitchen cupboard, I pulled out two warm bottles of beer.

  I handed them to him as he nosed through his stuff. “Everything there?”

  “I can just come back if something’s missing.”

  I didn’t respond. He took a long breath, stuffed the beers in and picked up his shopping bags. I went ahead to get the door. Holding it open, I tried to think of what to say. “Well, take care. I hope great things happen for you,” I told him. And I meant it.

  He nodded. “You look so virginal without makeup.” I forced the corners of my mouth up. He leaned and kissed my cheek before he moved into the hallway, schlepped a little ways and turned back.

  It was a bit like an old Disney movie where the kid has to throw rocks, send the coyote back to the woods for his own good. I waved. “Bye.”

  He turned and trudged on. Once he rounded the corner, I heard the building door open and clank shut.

  At my front window, I watched him load his belongings into the trunk of his old black Mustang. He slammed it shut, paused and took out a pack of smokes, lit one. He rarely smoked when sober. He looked up and down the street. Leaning against the car, his head drooped and I could vaguely see his thinning patch in the sunlight, like the soft spot on a baby’s head. He took a long drag. When he exhaled, the smoke plumed in a cloud around him and seemed to cling to the hot still air.

  Eventually, about halfway down the cigarette, he opened the car door.

  I picked at my T-shirt, plucked a sticky bit from my chest as I watched him pull away.

  People kept yammering about the heat that summer, the melting tar in the streets, the forest fires; it was all on account of global warming. But I didn’t much buy that. I think these things go in cycles and we happened to be in a hot one. The earth was burning what it didn’t need or want, I reasoned, like a dog shaking off fleas. We’ve all got to do this now and then.

  Thanks and Acknowledgements

  I WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE FOLLOWING INDIVIDUALS AND organizations for their invaluable help in creating Cease to Blush: Jackie Barnard and Allen Ingram at M Squared Productions for their openhanded tour of the online adult entertainment industry; generous financial support from the BC Arts Council; Hank Benson for handing me bits of his life on a fodder platter, hunting down potential resources and, of course, for his very large pompoms; generous financial support from Canada Council for the Arts; Michael Carmen at Mac Station for his selfless acts as my computer’s physician; Anne Collins for her razor-sharp editorial insight coupled with a preternatural ability to divine a writer’s intent; Dixie “The Marilyn Monroe of Burlesque” Evans at Exotic World in Helendale, California, for walking me through her Burlesque Hall of Fame, and leaving a lasting impression about the people those dancers were and are; Helen Heller for guidance and for smoothing my feathers when the frantics had the better of me; Roger Holden for pointing ou
t that my title had been pinned to my bulletin board for months; Timothy Kelleher for providing a Los Angeles bed, breakfast and steady soothing belief; Nancy Kress and Aaron Daulby for graciously taking me to Pentecostal congregations and answering my likely ungracious questions; Ledig House for their idyllic sanctuary; Dave Pelletier for employing me on his set in a way that both paid my rent and let me get some reading done; the Pedrero Family for their warmth, sustenance and software; Robert Priest and Clare O’Callaghan for helping me with the esoteric angles of jazz vocals; Marilyn Robert and Karen deVito for their notes on palliative care, the Rockefeller Center, and for knowing the importance for a four-year-old to have a Kitsilano Showboat experience; Becki Ross for her sleek self and informational generosity; and Don Winkelbaur for weaselling me inside the infamous pantry of the now-closed Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

  This novel could not have come together were it not for a multitude of books that came before it. Of particular help were: Judith Campbell Exner’s My Story; Max Décharné’s Straight From the Fridge, Dad: A Dictionary of Hipster Slang; Barbara Fuca’s Mafia Wife as told to Robin Moore; Sam and Chuck Giancana’s Double Cross; C. David Heymann’s RFK: A Candid Biography of Robert F. Kennedy; Robert F. Kennedy’s The Enemy Within; William Klaber and Philip H. Melanson’s Shadow Play: The Untold Story of the Robert F. Kennedy Assassination; Shawn Levy’s Rat Pack Confidential; Shirley Maclaine’s My Lucky Stars: A Hollywood Memoir; Charles Rappleye and Ed Becker’s All American Mafioso: The Johnny Rosselli Story; James Spada’s Peter Lawford: The Man Who Kept Secrets; A.W. Stencell’s Girl Show—with extra thanks for his willingness to speak with me in more detail about “the canvas world of bump and grind” and Tempest Storm’s The Lady is a Vamp.

  Video and audio reportage were also enormous aids. My thanks to the producers of Assassinated: The Last Days of Kennedy and King, Turner Original Productions; The Century: America’s Time, ABC New Productions and the History Channel; Fabulous Sixties, produced by Document Associates in association with CTV Network Ltd.; History of the 20th Century, an MPI Home Video Presentation of an ABC Video Enterprises Inc. Production; The LBJ Tapes, Barraclough Carey Productions for Channel Four; The Plot to Kill Robert Kennedy, American Films, Ltd.; The Rat Pack, A&E Biographies; The Rat Pack Live at the Sands, Capital Records (audio recording); and Louis Prima, the Wildest, Image Entertainment Inc.

  BILLIE LIVINGSTON published her critically acclaimed first novel, Going Down Swinging, in 2000. Her first book of poetry, The Chick at the Back of the Church, was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award. Her award-winning short fiction has been published in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, and her short story collection, You Sound Tiny, is forthcoming from Random House Canada. Born in Toronto, Livingston now lives in Vancouver.

  COPYRIGHT © 2006 BILLIE LIVINGSTON

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2007. Originally published in hardcover in Canada by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2006.

  Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House of Canada Limited.

  www.randomhouse.ca

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Livingston, Billie, 1965–

  Cease to blush : a novel / by Billie Livingston.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-37547-6

  I. Title.

  PS8573.1916C42 2007 C813′.54 C2006-904712-X

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