Featherless Bipeds

by Richard Scarsbrook

  “Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm” she purrs.

  When I am sure she is sleeping, I kiss her forehead. I can’t help myself. She pulls herself snugly against me, her soft, warm breasts pressed against my chest, my leg now firmly wedged between her thighs. I close my eyes and breath in deeply, only half aware of my legs muscles flexing gently, rhythmically, against her pubis. She lets out a little moan, and I exhale, very, very slowly. She begins to grind herself against the flexing of my leg. I shudder when I feel the warm, damp contact.

  She exhales slowly, her breath condensing on my earlobe.

  Then she springs upright, eyes wide open.

  “No!” She cries. “No no no no no! We can’t do this!”

  “Sorry! Sorry!”

  I get out from under the covers and lie down on the cold floor. Zoe curls up at the farthest edge of the bed, with her back to me, the blankets pulled over her head.

  I spend the rest of the night watching the neon light flicker against the water-stained ceiling, trying to understand what just happened.

  By early morning the storm has passed.

  “Sorry about last night,” I say, not quite able to look her in the eyes.

  “Not your fault,” she mutters. “Half of me wanted to . . . aw, forget about it. An agreement is an agreement. We both signed the contract.”

  “Nobody would have ever known,” I say.

  “We would know, Dak,” she says. “I don’t think it’s the sort of thing that either one of us would be able to hide.”

  “What do we do now?” I ask her.

  “We wait it out, I guess.”

  I guess waiting is something I’ve become pretty good at.

  What else is there to say? We both signed the deal. Rule Number One. It’s all about the music.

  Zoe drives the car the rest of the way to Regina, while I squint into the glare of the snow-covered landscape. We eventually find Jimmy T, Tristan, and Akim eating breakfast in the hotel restaurant.

  “Thank God!” Akim cries out when he sees us, “We thought you guys were frozen dead in a ditch somewhere.”

  “I told you they were okay,” Jimmy T says. “So, where’d you kids sleep last night? Some romantic hideaway?”

  “Hardly,” I say. “We lost you guys. Had to find a motel to escape the storm.”

  Jimmy T says, grinning, “Ooh, a motel. How deliciously seedy!”

  “Nothing happened,” I say evenly.

  “If you say so.”

  “Nothing happened, you pig,” Zoe snaps.

  “Sure, sure,” Jimmy T says.

  “Shut up, Jimmy T,” Tristan says quietly. “Remember you work for us.”

  Tristan seldom says anything like this, so his words weigh heavy whenever he does. Jimmy T shuts up momentarily, but continues to grin like a man who has just won a bet. Then he jumps up from the table and says, “Well, up and at ’em, troops! We’ve got a sound check on the other side of town in half an hour.”

  Everyone rises except for Akim, who remains seated in front of his half-eaten plate of bacon and eggs. His eyes are watery and bloodshot, and he sniffles and sneezes repeatedly.

  “You okay, Akim?” Zoe asks.

  “I ran out of my allergy medicine,” he says, “and nothing in this old hotel has seen a dust rag since World War Two. Good choice, Jimmy T.”

  “I’ll give you a ride to a drug store,” Zoe says, glancing around at everyone but me. “We’ll meet the rest of you guys at the hall.”

  Is she making this offer to avoid riding with me? Is this the way it’s going to be between us from now on?

  Jimmy T drives the van. Tristan rides shotgun, and I sit behind them. Ten minutes into the ride, Jimmy T can no longer restrain himself. He glances at me in the rearview mirror and says, “So, come on Dak, it’s just us guys now. How was she?”

  “What do you mean?” I say, knowing exactly what he means.

  “You expect us to believe that you spent a night in a hotel with Zoe and nothing happened? Gimme a break.”

  “Rule Number One, remember?”

  “Oh, whatever!” Jimmy T laughs, “that sure as hell wouldn’t have stopped me!”

  “I guess I’m not you.”

  Jimmy T rolls his eyes. “You mean to tell me that you didn’t sleep with a woman you’re nuts over because Billy VandenHammer told you not to?”

  “We all signed the contract,” I say.

  “If you two let a friggin’ recording contract stop you from having some fun together, then maybe there isn’t as much going on with you and Zoe as I thought there was.”

  “There’s enough going on,” I say, wondering why I’m telling him any of this, “that I’m willing to wait for her until the contract expires.”

  “Then you’re an idiot,” Jimmy T says. “If nothing has happened by now, nothing ever will.”

  Tristan turns around in his seat and says to me, “Don’t listen to him, Dak. It took a long time before things finally happened between Veronica and I. It’ll be worth the wait.”

  “Bullshit!” Jimmy T says, punching the steering wheel. “Don’t waste the rest of your life waiting for one woman to maybe come around to you. Screw that! There are millions of women out there, Dak, and you’re a friggin’ rock star! Step up to the buffet, buddy!”

  Maybe there is some truth in what Jimmy T says. If nothing has happened between Zoe and I by now, maybe nothing ever will. As much as it hurts to admit it, perhaps the time has come for me to move on.

  LOVE SONG

  The past year has flown by; it’s been like watching my life summarized between commercials on one of those TV biography shows. Socrates Kicks Ass is Big Plastic Records’ second-best selling disc of the year, and we’ve been nominated for the Best New Band at nearly all of the music award shows. One day drunks are yelling “you suck” at us, the next we’re all dressed up in tuxedos and evening gowns, signing autographs and waving at TV cameras.

  We’ve crisscrossed the continent several times — first as the opening band for better-known performers, then as the headline act at clubs and theatres, and finally, after the award nominations, filling hockey rinks and amphitheatres in every major city in the country. Sometimes I see myself playing the drums on TV, hear one of our songs playing in the background of a soft drink or beer commercial, and it all seems so unreal. We just finished the recording sessions for our second album, Deaf Man’s Garage, and it already feels like something we’ve done a hundred times before.

  We’ve just finished playing our second encore to a packed house at Massey Hall. Jimmy T, our full-time manager, is schmoozing a young woman as the band arrives backstage. Ever since our first CD started getting airplay, and the interview and gig requests began rolling in, nobody has been allowed to talk to us without going through Jimmy first. This really gets on Billy VandenHammer’s nerves, but Jimmy T has refused to be pushed aside. As he sees it, he has invested in this band, and now he is going to enjoy the profits, including scooping up as many groupies as he can. The woman he’s sizing up at the moment definitely qualifies as Jimmy’s type, which means that she has a breast-to-waist-to-ass size ratio that meets his exacting specifications.

  “A good manager can make a star out of anybody, especially a gorgeous woman like you,” he tells her. “Celine Dion had Rene Angelil, Shania Twain had Mutt Lang, Mariah Carey had Tommy Mottola . . . and you could have me, J.P. Tanner!”

  Jimmy T has been going by the name J.P. Tanner for a while now. His middle name doesn’t start with ‘P’, but he claims that ‘J.P.’ sounds “more businesslike”. Just to annoy him, Akim calls him “the manager formerly known as Jimmy T”. I can’t seem to bring myself to call him J.P. Tanner, either.

  “Each of those singers was sleeping with her manager when she got famous,” Jimmy T’s conquest says to him. “Are you telling me that I’ll become a famous singer if I share your bed with you?”

  “It isn’t inconceivable,” Jimmy T says.

  As the band members arrive backstage, the woman immediate
ly turns away from our smooth-talking manager, and calls out, “Dak! Dak Sifter!”

  Before the Featherless Bipeds started getting played regularly on the radio, before the producer and multi-album deal, before the Much Music interviews and the expensive, nonsensical videos, fashion-model types like this one never gave me the time of day.

  “Dak Sifter!” she calls out again. “My God, is it really you?”

  “It’s really me, I think,” I say to her. I’m still holding my drumsticks. I need a sweat-towel and a bottle of water.

  “You’re the songwriter, right?” she says, turning her back on Jimmy T and striding over to meet me. “God, I love your songs!”

  “Well, thanks, but I can’t take all the credit. Sometimes I co-write the lyrics with Zoe here, and Akim and Tristan write most of the music. It’s a team effort, really.”

  Akim pats me on the back as he wanders past, while Zoe just rolls her eyes and disappears into a dressing room — she doesn’t have much patience for groupies, especially those as keen on displaying their cleavage as this woman is.

  Tristan, still the Official Documentary Filmmaker of our group, slides past with a hand-held video camera pressed against his face. Sometimes he’s so quiet you hardly notice him filming, and he’s amassed a lot of great candid footage as a result. They even used some of it in “The Featherless Bipeds Backstage Pass”, which aired on the CBC a month ago.

  The woman, conscious of the camera floating past, leans forward so I can see the floor under her skirt between her breasts. She raises her voice for the camera microphone, saying, “The way your voice and the other singer’s harmonize on that last song you played sends shivers down my spine.”

  Mine too. The song goes like this:

  They’ve got words for this kind of failure

  You’ll only hear them whispered behind your back

  “That fool, he wrecked a golden moment”

  Grey words can’t touch a heart turned black

  You told yourselves you could resist it

  But you learned the word from different books

  You spent the next summer seeing double

  Now you won’t get a second look

  Til nothing is everything again

  Til nothing is everything

  Til nothing is everything again

  Til nothing is everything

  There she laid in a wash of neon

  The bomb put the button in your hands

  You stood by the window, fingers twitching

  What could you do, you’re just a man

  You could not justify your treason

  Each torrid second scorched a year

  She will not purge your guilt with anger

  She will not cleanse you with her tears

  Til nothing is everything again

  Til nothing is everything

  Til nothing is everything again

  Til nothing is everything

  Despite its dark tone, it’s quickly becoming one of our most popular songs. It’s already on the heavy-rotation play lists of radio stations across North America, and the new album hasn’t even been released yet. It isn’t just the words, though — it’s the way Zoe sings them. She knows exactly where the words came from. We both know.

  Things are good between Zoe and I, though. Now that the potential for a romantic relationship has disappeared, we’ve grown even closer as friends. We collaborate on lyrics. Our voices harmonize perfectly. We make a unique kind of music together, music so compelling, apparently, that fashion-model types now feel the need to approach me backstage.

  “My name is Janice,” the woman says to me, “Janice Starr. I would love to get to know you better. Would you like to continue our conversation in a more, well, intimate environment?”

  She looks me in the eyes and slips a card into my hand. Her fingertips linger on mine for a moment.

  “See you later,” she says, then turns and slowly walks toward the backstage exit. I have to admit that she looks just as good walking away as she did on the approach.

  “Goodnight, Mr. Tanner,” she says crisply as she walks past Jimmy T. “Thanks for letting me come backstage.”

  Jimmy T does not reply. He leans against the wall, arms folded, glaring in my direction. In his mind, I have intercepted a pass that was intended for him.

  “Nice work, Dak,” he grunts as the door snaps shut behind Janice, “she’s friggin’ hot.”

  “Indeed,” I reply, sliding the card with her address into my front pocket. Should I? I wonder. It’s sure been a while.

  Jimmy T stomps out onto the stage to take out his frustration on our roadies.

  Zoe reappears from the dressing room.

  “Hey, Dak,” she says. “Managed to get rid of the stalker, eh? Want to split a cab fare?”

  We both live in Riverdale, so we usually share a ride home when we play a hometown gig.

  “Thanks, Zoe, but I don’t think I’m going straight home tonight.”

  “Oh?” she says, then her expression changes. “Oh.”

  She draws a breath, takes a step closer.

  “Dak . . . you know, maybe we . . . ”

  She stops, glances away for a second.

  “Never mind,” she says, forcing a smile. “Have fun. I’ll see you in a few days. Be good.”

  “I’m always good,” I tell her.

  “Hi there,” Janice Starr says as she opens the door to her apartment.

  Candles flicker in every corner, causing the curves of her body to sparkle like the spirals arms of a galaxy. I am drawn to her gravity like a stray asteroid toward the sun.

  She holds a glass of red wine in each hand, and raises one to my lips.

  “Drink,” she says.

  I drink.

  Reaching around me with both arms, she sets the glasses on a small table behind me. My whole body stiffens as she draws herself against me. She gyrates on the outside, and I pulse from within.

  “You’re kind of uptight for a rock star,” she says. “Shouldn’t you have me naked on the floor by now?”

  “I guess I’m not really a rock star.”

  She slithers down my chest, her fingers pulling apart my clothing as she descends.

  “Are these elephants on your underwear?” she giggles.

  I can neither swallow or breathe.

  “If I become a famous singing star,” she says, “will you write some lyrics for me?”

  Janice spends more and more time at my house, hanging around during the band’s recording sessions, and digging through the books full of unused lyrics I’ve written, tearing out the ones that suit her best. Jimmy T gets over the fact that she is sleeping with me instead of him, and he hooks Janice up with a decent bar band he’s discovered and books them some studio time. Janice can sing in key, but her voice is thin compared to Zoe’s, and she doesn’t have much range.

  “They can fix that in the studio,” Jimmy T cheers, “it’s her look that’s gonna sell albums — she’ll be the next Shania Twain!”

  And Jimmy T is right. In less time than it took the Featherless Bipeds to get our first gig at Harlock’s, Jimmy T has introduced Janice to Billy VandenHammer, and she is headlining shows at the same venues our band plays. Her first album, called Janice!, is climbing the charts. On the CD cover, in the magazines, on TV, and onstage, she looks incredible. Jimmy T is on top of the world; he has created his first overnight sensation.

  It is after a show at the Molson Amphitheatre, and Janice’s band has opened for ours. Janice has me pinned to the bed. “Marry me!” she says. “Say yes!”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “It will be the event of the year,” she says, after dismounting and rolling onto her side, “and it won’t hurt either of our sales, either. We could do a duet or something — it’ll be so romantic. People will eat it up.”

  When I tell her that a low-key, media-free wedding would be my preference, she convinces me with her body that her idea is better.

  So now I’m rifling through my
underwear drawer, trying to find my lucky boxer shorts. Janice, as a way of telling me that she thinks my underwear collection has become too threadbare, has bought a bunch of new pairs and crammed them into the drawer. The new boxers are nice — crisply folded plaids in tasteful complimentary colours — but a day like today requires my lucky boxer shorts.

  Normally I am not superstitious. I play shows on Friday the thirteenth, I enter concert halls and arenas through stage doors in back alleys frequented by black cats, and I shave in front of cracked hotel mirrors without thinking twice about it. But this evening is the rehearsal for our wedding, and my bride-to-be has insisted that nothing can be anything less than absolutely perfect. So, despite her distaste for my worn-out undergarments, I’m hedging my bets and wearing my lucky underwear.

  I find them, scrunched up in the back corner of the drawer. The once glaring shade of stoplight red has faded to a dull pink, and the cartoon elephants playing drums are now nothing more than translucent, greyish spots. I’ve happened to be wearing these boxers on several occasions that have had a significant impact on my life, and I’m afraid that if I don’t wear them today, I might screw up the finely tuned machinery of Synchronicity. I know I’m being illogical — call it Crazy Groom Syndrome.

  I was wearing these same boxers, fresh out of the plastic wrapper, when I first met Tristan on Orientation Day at university. I was also wearing my elephant boxers, broken-in but still unfrayed, on the day that Akim, Tristan, Jimmy T, Lola and I first played together at the Deaf Man’s Garage. I was wearing them during our first gig at Harlock’s, where, huddled around a wooden tabletop carved with the initials of drunks and lovers of years gone by, we named the band The Featherless Bipeds. I also had them on that night at the Twelve Tribes, when Zoe stepped in for Lola on vocals, and Billy VandenHammer offered us a recording deal right there on the spot.

  These boxer shorts were been present at a lot of pivotal events, so I’m not taking any chances when it comes to my wedding. I put them on.

  And now here we are, rehearsing our wedding vows in front of a crowd of family and friends, concert promoters, record company executives, and selected members of the media. Janice and I are front and centre, holding hands. Everyone stands and applauds. It’s almost like an awards show.