by Grant Buday
The Astoria feels like a basement, dark and bare-walled except for a mutilated dart board at the rear. It’s noon and the pub is nearly empty. Horst sits with his back to the wall and watches the TV above the bar. An old Muslim lady in black bewails a corpse. The waiter hoists his eyebrows, asking Horst: “Two?”
Horst nods. A transvestite passes. A tall Native guy. He’s handsome. Beautiful even. Little ass in tight yellow shorts. The only flaws in his look are the cave-painting tattoos on his shoulders. He spikes by on high heels smelling of gardenia, makes with an elegant flourish of the wrist, as if finishing a figure-skating dance, then enters the ladies room. The waiter sets down two. On the TV a close-up of a putt. Robin’s-egg-blue golf shoes and lemon trousers, then the ball travelling toward the cup.
“Got a smoke?” A woman sits down at Horst’s table.
“Sorry.”
“I got this habit called smoking.”
“I got one called drinking,” says Horst.
She likes that, and touches his hair. “Eleanor.” She extends her hand.
“Horst.”
Eleanor’s maybe forty, two teeth missing on one side, boobs sagging to her belt under her VanCity Credit Union T-shirt.
“Kiss you for a quarter,” she says.
Horst pushes a quarter across the terry-cloth.
She plucks it up, grinning, and goes looking for a cigarette.
On the TV a banner reads HAPPY BIRTHDAY BC, reminding everyone next Monday’s BC Day, so stock up. The transvestite sits down at a table with two tall women. Horst can’t tell if they’re all trannies or what, but a guy with a black leather vest and shaved head looks to be their keeper. Eleanor’s discovered the old dough-eared guy with the two packs of Export Plain. She’s stroking his sideburn as he lights her cigarette. Horst feels jealous, and wonders if she’s gonna come back and sit with him. After all, he’s the one who gave her the quarter. But then hell if Eleanor doesn’t have her hand all over the guy’s thigh. Horst feels betrayed. He looks away, and sees the pig-shaved couple going at it in a chair. And if that’s not enough, Horst sees that the bald guy in the leather vest has his tongue down that Indian tranny’s throat. Jesus!
Horst makes a peace sign for two more beer.
People drift in escaping the afternoon heat. Young Native guys aware of their shoulders and chests. Young Native women aware of their price. Old Native women with cow-udder abdomens. A scrawny white guy shuffles in wearing bedroom slippers.
The Muslim woman is bewailing that corpse again when Eleanor sits back down with Horst.
“You hungry?” she asks.
Horst and Eleanor eat a huge platter of chicken wings with Cajun sauce and drink beer while the old guy looks over like Horst’s taken his woman. Horst thinks — Fuck you, fat man.
Eleanor leans close, breathing Cajun sauce. “I got a canary named Ed that kisses me.”
“I kiss better’n a canary.”
She winks and says: “I bet you do.”
On the TV those robin’s-egg-blue golf shoes and lemon trousers get ready to putt. Eleanor heads to the ladies room as the ball travels toward the cup. The old guy watches her ass, and Horst, drunk and possessive, thinks — Hey, fuck you! Feeling the ballast of that beer in his belly, Horst cruises across to the cigarette machine. When Eleanor returns, she finds a pack of Virginia Slims leaning against a fresh beer. Her leg finds his. Horst’s hand finds her knee.
Eleanor leans close. “You should see Henry’s tits.” Her eyes flicker toward the Native tranny. “He’s got implants. They’re out to here.”
“So’re yours.”
She wraps her ankles around his and coyly fits her tongue into the space where those two teeth used to be. “I got a cousin who smoked so much dope he grew a tail,” says Eleanor.
“What?”
“A tail. His tailbone started growing and he had to have an operation.”
“Pot doesn’t give people tails. If it did I’d have a tail like a goddamn lemur.”
Eleanor’s eyes go black. “Piss up a rope.” She stands, takes two beers and her Virginia Slims, and goes and sits with the dough-eared guy who looks over and gives Horst the finger.
Nine O’clock. The entertainment starts and the bar is full. White trash, Natives, a few young Chinese, as well as Korean and Russian sailors up from the Ballantyne Pier. An East Indian guy in a shiny cowboy shirt and ten-gallon hat gets on stage with an acoustic guitar and a rhythm ace. He taps the mike: “Y’all ready to rock?”
The tranny hoots.
“Freddy Fender!” yells Eleanor.
He plays “La Bamba.”
Eleanor snaps her fingers about her ears. Then she’s pulling at the old guy’s hand trying to haul him up to dance, but he’s too drunk and too fat. So she looks around and rediscovers Horst. “Hey!” She circles her shoulder and winks. Horst’s drunk has flattened out into a wolfish belligerence. For a minute he thinks, To hell with you. Then he gives in.
Horst and Eleanor go crotch-to-crotch on the dance floor. Horst is laughing. Yes indeed. It’s him and Eleanor tonight. He likes the cute way she puts her tongue in that hole between her teeth and wrinkles up her eyes. They dance until they sweat, her tits muscling about beneath her shirt. Finally Horst slips his arm around her waist, cups the roll of her flab, and steers her back to his table. He peace signs for more beer. Eleanor’s flushed and happy, and says, “Wanna see my canary?”
“Yeah.” Horst reaches under the table and pulls her closer, chair and all. He slides his hand between her thighs. Eleanor reaches under and gives him a good squeeze. Horst likes that. She grins. He lights her cigarette.
“Thanks.” She blows a kiss of smoke to the ceiling.
“Where’s your place?” says Horst.
“Two blocks, buy a six pack.”
The old guy watches them leave; Horst gives him a jaunty wave. The ball travels toward the cup. Eleanor takes Horst’s hand. They head down to the corner and wait for the light. Horst hugs her and she responds. He leans to kiss her, but she puts her hand up and pushes his face away.
“Fifty bucks and no kissing.”
Horst’s face burns where she touched him, like she’s ripped away a Band-Aid. The air stinks of exhaust and Horst, unable to face her, squints up at the scab-black sky above the buildings. He wonders where that pig-shaved couple got to, and if they’re making love.
“I only got twenty-five,” he says.
Eleanor gives him a look.
“I bought you supper and smokes and beer.”
She relents and takes his hand. They wait side-by-side until that chirp, chirp starts up, signalling the blind it’s safe to cross.
DURING THE SUMMERnights, Horst shifted constantly in his bed seeking the cool corners of his sheets. Yet it wasn’t just the heat that kept him awake, but boredom at sleeping in the same positions, and, worst of all, the desert of empty bed to his right.
Boyle, in the rotting swamp of his apartment, dreamed of man-eating flowers and banana-beaked birds.
Bunce did not dream at all. “I don’t bother,” he said.
Horst got up and watered his plants at night The soil soaking up the moisture sounded like whispered conversation.
Horst was sitting against the wall in the Empress Hotel beer parlour, counting his teeth with his tongue, when Skinny Osberg sat down.
“You drinking that beer?”
“As soon as I finish this one.”
Skinny stretched his chapped lips, splitting them.
Horst looked away. Then, unable to bear the tortoise-necked old man watching him like that, he pushed the other glass across the terry-cloth.
“You’re an officer.” Skinny drank down half, closing his eyes to savour the taste of sour, generic draft. He sighed with the relief of one who’d made a narrow escape, then looked at Horst.
“Know what day it is?”
“Wednesday.”
“It’s Father’s Day.”
“You a father?”
“You godda
mned right I am.”
“Then Happy Father’s Day.” Horst clinked Skinny’s glass and they both drank.
Skinny plunked his empty down on Horst’s side.
Horst ordered four more.
A fat woman at another table warned, “Watch him, son.”
“Don’t listen to that old bitch,” said Skinny.
“She your wife?”
Skinny sat back, shocked. When the beer arrived, he took two and, very dignified, went to another table.
THE
EMPRESS
Mrs Livver sips her beer like it’s hot tea. Then she picks up her du Maurier Light, ignoring Skinny Osberg. She stares straight ahead, giving Skinny her bird-beak profile. Last month she caught him shaking coins out of the Save The Children Fund tin on the bar. Skinny’d drunk up his welfare cheque and was desperate for a beer, and Mrs Livver, with the maliciousness of a beer parlour hag, has been holding this crime like an axe over his neck ever since.
Skinny knows that if Jules the bartender finds out, he’ll ban Skinny for life. Then Skinny’ll have to drink somewhere else. Maybe even have to move out of the Empress Hotel altogether. But there is nowhere else. Bad debts wait like rat traps in every downtown Vancouver pub except right here.
Everyone heard what happened the last time Skinny Osberg went to another bar. It was the Pacific, over on Main. Gordy LeGrand hit him on the head with a janitor bucket, a steel one with wheels. Skinny had peed on LeGrand’s hip-length cast. All over the autographs and down to his toes. They’d been next to each other at the urinals, and Skinny’s stream had squirted out to one side like it occasionally does depending on how you’ve been wearing your dick. Mrs Livver heard all the details. She told Horst, she told everyone.
So the old woman just sits there at her usual table in the Empress, smiling thin-lipped as a lizard. Skinny’s trying to get back into her good books, so maybe she’ll relent and buy him a beer. It means she’ll own his soul, but Skinny doesn’t care. Three days now he’s been dry. He’s ready to crawl. Mrs Livver’s looking forward to it. All day yesterday she warned people on their way to the toilet to take their beers in with them, or else Skinny’d sneak over and drink them up. And he would’ve.
“Goddamn hot,” says Skinny. “My room’s on the west side here. The brick sucks that heat like a whore. Feels like I’m sleepin’ in a oven. How’s your fan? You fix that fan, Lawrence?”
Mrs Livver keeps smiling like a lizard, and says to her boyfriend, Lawrence: “He wants to know did you fix the fan.”
Lawrence says, “Eh?” like a hiccup, then keeps staring at his beer. Lawrence never says much. He got whipped across the back by a choker chain fourteen years ago, and is on permanent disability with fused vertebrae and arthritis. They met in the VGH, where Mrs Livver was a practical nurse. She took him in and they’ve been together ever since.
“ ’Course he fixed the fan,” says Mrs Livver.
“Ever need help don’t hesitate,” says Skinny.
“I know who needs the help around here,” says Mrs Livver. “Joy, give us two more. And one for Horst down at the end there.”
When Joy sets down the free beer, Horst raises the glass in salute.
“I’m takin’ care of you, Horst,” calls Mrs Livver.
Horst smiles. He knows Mrs Livver doesn’t like him any more than she does Skinny. But today’s Skinny’s turn on the rack.
Skinny stares like a starved dog. He opens and closes his mouth, stretching his chapped lips.
“Here you go, Skinny.” Joy sets a beer glass full of ice water in front of him.
Skinny gazes sorrowfully at the water. “That’s true,” he says, as if agreeing to a pronouncement. “Cool glass of beer’s the only thing’ll cut a thirst. Thirty-three years in Vancouver, eleven here in the Empress, I never seen heat like this. You, Jules?”
Jules doesn’t look up from the crossword. “Montreal’s hotter.”
“Yeah, well, you’re by the cooler there.” Then Skinny rubs his nose and talks fast. “I get my paycheque tomorrow. I’ll pay you back with interest. Ten percent. How ’bout it?”
Jules shakes his head.
Mrs Livver starts jiggling, her fat shaking as if a train’s passing. She shakes her head like now she’s heard it all. “Paycheque! You weasel. You don’t get no paycheque. Welfare’s not no paycheque!” She twists against her fat to stare Skinny down.
Skinny stretches his chapped lips, splitting them. They bleed and he licks the blood. Then he looks around, mournfully. “Nobody buy a man a glass of beer hottest goddamn day of the century?”
Horst keeps his head down. He feels bad. But he’s broke too.
And there’s nobody else in the Empress on this Monday afternoon in August.
“You checked all your coin slots in this town.” Mrs Livver picks up her du Maurier Light and asks Joy how Marlene is.
Joy scratches the scar on her arm where the name Albert had been tattooed, and says: “Grade four now.”
Mrs Livver shakes her head, meaning — it sure goes fast. “Bring her in. I got just the thing for her. A nurse’s hat. I’ll give her my old nurse’s hat.”
“She’d like that.”
“Sure she would.” Then Mrs Livver grins. In a loud voice, she asks, “Where’s your daughter, Osberg?” She waits for the answer she knows won’t come. Skinny hasn’t heard from his daughter in eighteen years. Demonstrating her superiority as a human being, Mrs Livver announces, “I got three daughters. They call me every week. Don’t they, Lawrence?”
“Eh?”
“Sure they do.” Then Mrs Livver says: “Why don’t you get a job, Skinny?”
“Aren’t none.”
“You look?”
“All the time.”
“All the time. Skinny’s idea of looking for a job is taking the back alley down to Welfare and looking in the dumpsters. Horst! You about ready for another cool one?”
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 pu
rse. “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 LIKEDabout 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.
