Monday Night Man

by Grant Buday

  IN 1965, TWO DAYS BEFOREChristmas, Horst’s father, Conrad Nunn, died of a heart attack from laughing too hard. Janko Palek, drunk, had come onto graveyard shift at the door plant and tried masturbating in the toilet with a fistful of industrial-strength glue. Janko ran out onto the shop floor with his working greens hobbling his ankles and his hand sealed solid to his dink. It took a doctor two hours to separate Janko’s palm from his penis. By that time, Conrad Nunn was dead, three doctors in the same hospital unable to bring his laughter-cracked heart back to life.

  Laughter had always been dangerous for Horst’s father. When the Lions won the Grey Cup in 1964, Conrad Nunn laughed himself into a hernia. Later that year, watching American football, he saw Jim Marshall of the Minnesota Vikings run a fumble in for a touchdown. Except he ran the wrong way and scored on his own team. Horst’s father cracked two ribs laughing.

  Horst’s mother was philosophical over her husband’s death. There were worse ways to go than too much laughter.

  Horst was fourteen. Christmas that year slid past like a train departing without them. From then on, Christmas always brought back thoughts of his father laughing himself to death.

  SONNET TO

  MELISSA

  They’re driving down Hastings past the hookers. Six o’clock in the evening, Christmas Day.

  “That tall one’s too business-like,” says Bunce. “Treats you like meat. Some people don’t belong in the service industry.” He points to a chubby blonde in front of the Sub Stop. “She’s Four-Star. Takes a craftsman’s pride in her work. Told me her father’s a Presbyterian minister. Solid values. It shows.” Bunce taps the window indicating an East Indian at the corner. “Jesus! Hairiest female I’ve ever seen. Thought I’d gone and picked up a tranny. She could be in a sideshow.”

  Bunce lurches forward slapping the dashboard of Rupp’s Bug. “That one! That’s her! Ripped me off for forty bucks!”

  Rupp swings right at the Astoria and cuts back along the alley, passing cars and vans with women clustered at their doors. But when they get back onto Hastings she’s gone.

  “Shit!”

  “How’d she rip you off?” asks Horst, brooding in the darkness of the back seat.

  “We were in the doorway of a poultry plant,” says Bunce. “She was giving me a blow job. But I couldn’t come. The stink of the dead chickens threw me off. After ten minutes she stopped and said that’s it. I demanded my money back. She said no. I shook her. She kneed me in the balls then ran.” Bunce takes a swig from the bottle of Captain Morgan’s. “And whores wonder why they get abused. Ripping off Johns is standard practice. But you never hear about that. Everyone thinks that’s funny.” Bunce passes the bottle.

  Horst drinks, lets the rum burn, then chases it with a gulp of Safeway egg nog. Rum and egg nog was his idea. Bunce and Rupp wanted rye.

  “No white Christmas, again,” says Horst. He wipes grime from the window and stares at the rain.

  “Use your imagination,” says Rupp.

  “Hey, thanks. I’ll just sit back here and concentrate real hard.”

  “Saint Nicholas of Myra,” observes Bunce. “He gave dowry money to poor girls so they could get married.”

  “I gotta get married again,” says Rupp.

  Bunce laughs. “Whataya mean — again?”

  “I been married!”

  “You lived with some woman for two weeks back in the sixties.”

  “Boyle Rupp — lover,” says Horst.

  “Gimme a drink.”

  Horst passes Rupp the egg nog.

  “Not this shit! The rum!”

  “You’re designated driver.”

  “Hey. Fuck you.”

  Horst passes the bottle to Bunce, then stares out at the street, which is black and shiny with rain. Street lights and hotel signs throw ripples of red and yellow. Not much is open. Another Christmas with Rupp and Bunce, Horst can’t bear it.

  “How about pizza?” says Rupp.

  Horst watches a drunk on his hands and knees in front of the Balmoral. “Pizza on Christmas Day?”

  “How about wonton then?”

  “Jesus. I’m not having wonton soup for Christmas dinner. Look at those fuckers.” Horst stares at the bottom-feeders in front of the Sunrise Hotel. Seaweed-haired sluts with eel-green faces, guarded by squid-eyed men. “They should round those bastards up and put them on an island. I want turkey, with cranberry sauce and dressing. The whole shot.” Horst also wants one of those little paper hats you get in the noisemaker, but is embarrassed to admit it. Ever since he and Corinne got divorced, Christmases have been hell. He’s regressed. He’s become one of the boys again. He reaches through the seats for the rum. “Bunce. What’re your kids doing?”

  “Disneyland.” Bunce shudders and shakes his head at the honor of the thought. He asks if Horst ever hears from Corinne.

  Horst stares harder out the window. “No.”

  “Hey. Where’s that bottle?” Rupp tries catching Horst’s eye in the rearview mirror, but Horst watches their reflection rippling past in the store windows. The Bug sends up a spray of puddle water as they pass the vacant shell of the old Woodward’s department store. The entire block is gutted. Businesses closed down and boarded up.

  “Pathetic,” states Bunce. “Imagine telling someone from Rome or Montreal that people in Vancouver are fighting to save the neon W on top of a department store as part of the city’s precious heritage. No. I say knock it down.”

  “You don’t care about nothin’,” says Rupp.

  “I don’t care about a neon W.”

  “Gimme that bottle!” says Rupp. “I hardly had one drink!”

  Horst takes another shot, then studies the label in the half-darkness. “You realize Captain Morgan wore a skirt?”

  “Henry Morgan,” says Bunce, “Governor of Jamaica.”

  “Lemme see,” says Rupp.

  “You’re driving.”

  But Rupp intercepts the bottle as Horst passes it up to Bunce. “Hah!” Rupp swigs rum from the bottle in his left hand, then egg nog from the carton in his right, while Bunce holds the steering wheel. “That’s good stuff!” Rupp takes another knock of egg nog. “Fuck you. I loved Woodward’s. Woodward’s cafeteria cupcakes were a tradition!”

  “Cupcakes …”

  “Yeah! Not these cranberry wheatgerm oatbran muffin things. Can’t get a good cupcake anywhere. That’s what’s wrong!”

  Bunce grips Rupp’s shoulder in brotherly concern. “Rupp. You need to get laid. That’s what’s wrong.”

  Rupp hunches hard over the steering wheel and chews his moustache as he drives. Rupp hasn’t had a girlfriend in years. “I get laid every night!”

  Bunce glances back at Horst and winks.

  “He’s been reading that Creative Visualization book,” says Horst. “Make Your Fantasy Reality.”

  They stop at a red light opposite Victory Square. Horst squints through the rainy window at the granite monument to the dead of World War One. Two guys are pissing on it, one from either side.

  “Look at that!” says Horst. “They should put those fuckers on that island, too.”

  Bunce laughs. Horst’s Island. It’s his answer for everything. “Your island has about half a million people on it now.”

  Rupp jerks the Bug into gear.

  Bunce tries to get serious. “So, Rupp, what’s this fantasy woman’s name?”

  Rupp hesitates. “Melissa.”

  Bunce, covers a hoot of laughter with a cough. “Oh, yeah, well, Melissa.” Bunce winks again at Horst, who just shakes his head and stares into the darkness thinking about Melissa, Rupp’s fantasy woman. They all know her.

  Melissa’s is the name of a restaurant that draws lonely men from all over the East End. Melissa, the twenty-two-year-old Sicilian bombshell whose mother owns the place, is the woman of Boyle Rupp’s dreams. She’s also the dream woman of fifty others.

  They’re easy to spot. They sit alone at their tables all evening, watching her, living for the scra
ps of attention she tosses their way. She carries on long-running conversations that go back weeks, even months, to forklift accidents, sharp stock investments, good bets at the track. She says things like: “I been thinking about you all week …” At the news that Melissa has actually thought about him, the guy will fall all over himself to order up a banquet to celebrate: wine by the bottle, appetizers, soup, main course, a second main course, all for the pleasure of watching Melissa glide toward him with her milk-maid’s grace. Two things disappoint Melissa: cheapness, and the failure to worship at the altar of her Mediterranean beauty. Rupp once wrote her a poem on a napkin, titled: “Sonnet to Melissa.” She blew her nose on it. Every Saturday night, as closing time approaches, each man will tip with wallet-crushing extravagance, ready to endure weeks of macaroni and cheese to demonstrate his devotion.

  Yet, as Horst and Bunce and Rupp know only too well, Melissa eludes them all. It’s part of her allure. She’s never left with anyone but her mother, that dour, sweating, moustachioed woman who occasionally stands frowning in the doorway that leads to the kitchen.

  “Melissa’s a virgin, you know,” says Horst.

  “I know,” says Rupp.

  “But then so’s Rupp,” laughs Bunce.

  Bunce tips up the bottle finishing the last of the rum. “Melissa’s,” he says, reading the name on the restaurant window.

  “We were here last night,” says Horst.

  “And will be for many more nights to come,” intones Bunce, in a voice prophetic with booze.

  They swing open the restaurant door and step into hot, smokey air full of the clink and clatter of plates and cutlery.

  “Fuck. Full!”

  Melissa, however, glides toward them out of the red light and plastic plants, all black hair, big eyes, orange-blossom perfume, and mock-scolding voice. “Why didn’t you make a reservation? I held your table as long as I could!” Then she hides behind the menu so no one else can hear. “Don’t leave. Nothing but deadbeats tonight. I’ll get rid of someone.” She makes a noise of approval deep in her throat and nods at Bunce’s new haircut, then reaches to stroke Horst’s new shirt, confident that both of them made these efforts for her benefit and her benefit alone. Rupp she ignores. She turns and leaves them waiting by the coat rack.

  Gazing gratefully after her, they all three lean forward to inhale her scent of Sicilian oranges above the wet-dog stink of overcoats and their own feet. Melissa.

  “I’m in love,” says Rupp.

  “We’re all in love,” says Bunce.

  HORST AND RUPPsit in the window at Wally’s Cafe watching the snow. The cars moving slowly up Hastings press the snow to slush, while on the sidewalk and the window ledge the snow clings. It’s half an inch deep now.

  “I’ll tell you snow,” says Horst. “In the sixties Vancouver had lots of snow. In 1966 it was over my head. And it froze so solid I could walk on top of it. Me and Leonard Dubeau, that’s how we discovered looking in windows at night. We walked right up to second-storey windows and looked in. We saw Grace Beretti’s father cleaning his wooden leg. No one believes that. They think all it does here is rain. That’s because you hardly ever meet anyone who remembers Vancouver in the old days. Everyone seems to come from someplace else. Nobody was born here, except the people I grew up with. But they’ve all disappeared.”

  SERGIO

  SANTINI

  I’ll tell you what else Santini used to do,” says Horst. “Salt popcorn with Drano, then throw it to the seagulls.”

  “Drano?” says Rupp. “What’s that do?”

  “Explodes. They blow up in mid-air. Used to go down to Stanley Park and do the same thing. Dead geese all over!”.

  “That’s sick,” says Rupp.

  “He had this hamster,” says Horst.

  Rupp covers his ears. “I don’t wanna hear!”

  “Shit in the sink at school. Made it with Grace Beretti in a phone booth.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Thirteen. Failed three grades,” says Horst. “That’s why we were in the same class.”

  Boyle shakes his head in amazement. They’re sitting in Wally’s Cafe on East Hastings. It’s a Wednesday afternoon in January and nothing’s going on.

  “So what else?”

  “Poured chocolate milk down the back of Bobby Lobb’s ass because he was one of those fat guys who when he sat down you could see his crack. Stole Lobb’s underwear at the pool, stretched them over a garbage can then spit on them. You should’ve seen Santini spit. Could hit the ceiling of the can at Britannia. The spit’d stick and hang like stalactites. Ceiling was covered. We used to go in with newspaper over our heads. They knew it was Santini but couldn’t catch him. The janitor was this little guy named McNab, and man he wanted to catch Santini so bad he’d sit on the toilet with his feet up waiting. McNab got the crap kicked out of him by Grace Beretti’s old man for feeling her up. Twelve and they were out to here. She liked it though. Every guy in the school felt up Grace Beretti. Santini did it every day. Horniest guy. He’d go into the can and have to pee up because he had a bone.”

  “So you guys were friends”.

  “Friends! Santini didn’t have friends. Just guys he was torturing and guys he wasn’t torturing. I was terrified of him.”

  “What’d he do to you?”

  “You want to know what he did to me? Made me perform an unnatural act.”

  Rupp hoots.

  “It’s not funny.” Horst stares Rupp into silence. “I was down by the docks, by the canneries. There was this big crate of fish. So I stole a couple. Santini saw me. Makes me go over to where the weeds are real high at New Brighton Park and starts showing me these centrefolds. I’d never seen one before. He says to me: ‘How big’s your wang?’ I say: ‘I don’t know.’ He says then I must be a fag. I say no way. ‘Prove it then,’ he says. ‘Fuck one of these fish.’ And he shows me how to peel back the fish’s mouth, folding it out and down so the teeth are on the outside. And Jesus if Santini doesn’t pull down his pants and stick a fish over his dink. Made me do it too. Then he counts down — five, four, three, two, one — and we go at it.”

  Rupp bursts out laughing again.

  “Hey. Wasn’t funny. I was ten years old. I had nightmares. Thirteen years old and Santini killed a guy.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Horst slams the table. “Fuck man, I was there! Kid named Leonard Dubeau. It was August. First day of the PNE. We weren’t inside five minutes before Santini steps out and says: ‘Hey. Injun Joe.’ Leonard was Native. Santini grabs him by the ears, snorts, then gobs right on top of his head.”

  “Gobs on his head?”

  “Right on top.”

  Rupp winces and pushes aside his plate with the remains of his raisin pie on it.

  “Leonard finds a can and washes the spit out of his hair using that soap that looks like blue sand. I said: ‘Man, let’s get outta here. He’s gonna get us.’ But no way. Leonard wants to go to the ring toss. He wasn’t scared. Only kid I ever knew who wasn’t afraid of Santini. Wasn’t afraid of anything! So we duck down to the ring toss, you know, throw until you win! Best deal in the PNE. Watches, radios, binoculars. I got an ashtray. Leonard got a crucifix with a magnet on the back so you could stick it to your fridge. He was going for binoculars, but when he got the crucifix his face lit up like I’d never seen. Leonard never smiled. Ever. Hardly talked either. But when he got that fucking crucifix he smiled showing all these white teeth, and says: ‘I’ll give it to Auntie Tantoo.’ I remember that. ‘Auntie Tantoo.’ That was who he lived with. He also figured it’d protect him from Santini. Leonard was Catholic. Used to live up north and go to a school run by priests. So he puts the crucifix in the pocket of his jean jacket, right over his heart. Then we head over to the stockyard to watch the cows shit. And Leonard, he’s walking big, like he really believes this fridge-magnet crucifix is gonna repel Sergio Santini. Me, I’m looking around every second because I know, I mean I know the bastard’s after us. I’m saying
to Leonard — ‘Let’s go! We can come back tomorrow or next week!’ But he’s shaking his head real slow and solemn.

  “Well fuck. Santini hunts us down. Grabs me from behind and twists my arm up my back. ‘Hiya doin’ Hoor,’ he whispers to me. Always called me Hoor. He’s got me up against the horse stalls and starts in with these wrestling holds. Sergio loved wrestling. Used to come to school wearing one of those face masks. ‘Half nelson,’ he says, like this is some kind of demonstration. Then he changes holds. Hooks one arm around my throat and puts the other across the back of my neck then squeezes, choking me. ‘Sleeper!’ Then when I’m about to pass out he pins my arms to my sides and heaves me up. ‘Bearhug!’ Well. I’m staring straight into the eyeball of a Clydesdale that rears back and starts kicking. By this time Leonard’s found one of the stockmen who comes running. Sergio takes off and that stockman kicks me in the ass with those cowboy boots and then smacks me across the side of the head. Man, I go for that exit so fast. Except Sergio nabs me!”

  “Fuck!”

  “Shoves me into the nearest can and says: ‘Looks like I gotta give you a Nicotine Test.’”

  “A what?”

  “Nicotine Test. And like he’s got this tone of voice like he doesn’t want to do it, but duties are duties. So he shoves his hand down the back of my jeans, gets hold of my underpants, and hoists me up off the floor like a goddamned crane! I mean Sergio’s strong. And I’m just hanging there, getting my ass slit up the middle. He can’t find any brown stains so he says: ‘Looks pretty clean.’ And he just picks up where he left off with the wrestling holds. ‘Bearhug!’ And there I am again with Sergio’s arms locked around my ribcage and I can’t breathe. ‘Back breaker!’ Sergio drops to one knee and slams me down across his leg, then, as the finale, he stands with his arms straight up and lets himself topple like a redwood onto me. And I’m lying there flat on the floor. Which is how Leonard and the security guard find us. Sergio runs, but the guard traps him in one of the toilets and hauls him out. We follow and watch the guard shove him through the crowd and out the exit.”