“Annie, I can’t do it anymore, this rough-and-tumble lifestyle of ours. I need some goddamned luxury. Maintenant!”
No cars came and the darkness was spooking us out. You never knew what maniacs were lurking. Though you had to wonder if maniacs wouldn’t want to be closer to amenities? We hoofed it up the black highway. I think it was almost eleven o’clock, and the last of the late summer light had faded for the night. I thought I could see a light on the horizon. A hotel where we could splash out and spend the night. The neon gave me hope.
“I’m ashamed I don’t know how to change a tire. We’re grown women. It’s the 1990s. How can this be, we’re so backwards? I don’t even want to tell them at the hotel,” I said.
“Look, relax, dammit. We’re urban people, not mechanics. We’ll just pretend we didn’t have a flashlight, and it was too dark to do it. I’ll sweet-talk the front-desk guy,” she said.
I was hungering for some scapegoating, I was bloodthirsty, given our current state of lameness and my unresolved anger about Finn and probably even some angst over seeing that two-colour-eyed hussy woman. “For some reason, I’ve been thinking about Hubert,” I said.
She looked at me, wide-eyed. “That’s odd that you should mention him.”
“Why?”
“I do not want to talk about it now. How far is this Wawa town?” She was blowing air up to her fringe to keep her hair out of her eyes, a sure sign of exasperation.
“On the map it looked pretty near, I don’t know . . .” If I strained my eyes it almost looked like the neon blob in the distance was a castle.
We kept walking. I thought about the Bistro, glad that we were now in a new era of our lives. Before Sullivan and pre-Isobel-mankilling, just after graduating from high school, she and I used to go to Bistro Praha after going to the Princess to see foreign films where women with pouty lips smoked long cigarettes and men listened to opera in the bathtub. Stranded in our rodeo-riding, big-trucking, mullet-wearing northern wasteland, we lusted for the cultural orgy of Europe. Luckily there were some real live Europeans in our midst.
Hubert, the thirty-six-year-old waiter at the Bistro, had the same name as the cheap pink champagne that we liked to drink. They both had travelled all the way from Czechoslovakia. He was suave in that brooding Eastern European way. Maybe if we hadn’t seen The Unbearable Lightness of Being over fifteen times, he wouldn’t have seemed so sexy and appealing to Isobel. He had thick black hair with swirls of silver. He wore a stiffly starched designer white shirt with French cuffs and silver cuff links. He had a flashy watch and Italian shoes. Immaculate, he was more movie star than waiter, and at thirty-six he was way too grown up for eighteen-year-old Isobel—or so I thought.
Bistro Praha was famous in Edmonton. Through the restaurant grapevine, I had heard that Wilhelm, the owner, paid his waiters a real salary instead of the normal minimum wage that most waiters earn. It meant that the staff weren’t overly concerned about tips, which made them complacent and even picky about who they felt like serving. Anyone who looked too vulgar, or like a hockey fan rather than a theatre patron, was told at the door: “Dis place is not for you.” Young women, though, were pretty much always welcome. When difficult customers aggravated his waiters, Wilhelm was famous for confronting them: “Are you being rude to my waiter?” He was well liked around town for his gregariousness and for his notorious belching. His trademark party piece was to guzzle champagne straight from the bottle; all those bubbles speeding down his throat caused some historic burping. On special nights I had seen him sabre the neck of the champagne bottle with his special blade that he said he’d robbed from a Soviet soldier in Prague, circa 1967.
People also went to the Bistro to hear the wisdoms offered by Shahi, the Hindu dishwasher who boasted he was one hundred and two years old. He claimed he stopped eating long ago and sustained himself on Holy Brown Cows (kahlua and milk). He liked to come out from the kitchen on slower nights and pronounce a few mantras. One night he walked by our table and said, “Girls, you must approach all matters slowly, calmly, and peacefully.” I wish to this day, I’d properly absorbed that maxim. Mindfulness was not one of my fortes. Nor Isobel’s. I never saw how she managed to think Hubert was charming.
“Vat do you vant?” was his standard opener. He had a boxer’s puffy lips. He didn’t smile. He stared at you with an I-am-so-sophisticated-and-European-and-you-are-clearly-uncultured-Albertan-hicks look. Isobel, as usual, was less intimidated than I. She liked his bossiness and gave it right back at him. “Pink champagne, two glasses—and quickly!”
“Could I please have some ice water?” I would ask while Isobel pouted provocatively like femmes do particularly well in French movies. I knew that Hubert had a personal policy of not serving water. I always asked, though, as a matter of principle.
“Oo, I feel a frisson in the air, I think he’s starting to notice me!” Isobel whispered one night when he walked away from our table. I think this was the fourth time he’d served us.
I leaned forward to reply, “That’s not a frisson, that’s a goddamn draft from the front door being open.”
The Bistro was downtown on a quasi-European boulevard in a row of terraced cafés. It had mahogany furniture and antique lamps. One wall was covered in a wallpapered-mural, a pastoral scene. I thought it was kind of cheesy and so, trying to make light conversation the first time I met Hubert, I blurted, “You know, I think this wallpaper has gotta go!” Then I smiled at him.
“This is a scene from a very special place in the countryside of Czechoslovakia, outside of Praha. It means a lot to Czechs who come here, people who have been exiled from their homeland.”
“Oh . . . I . . .”
He turned away, to focus on Isobel. “Zo, tell me again, vat you think about Milan Kundera?”
“Well he’s a pretty smart guy, obviously, but, what do you think?”
“You do realize he is Czech?”
“Of course,” Isobel said, flaring her nostrils.
“I think, you couldn’t possibly have an understanding of such things at your age. He is a genius, light, heavy, light and heavy, you understand?”
“Well, I . . .”
“More champagne?”
“Yes, please.”
He snapped his fingers, and his brother Josef came over; they spoke in Czech. Josef smirked and went to get another bottle and a flute for Hubert to join in. He opened the bottle expertly, easing the cork out slowly so it let out an elegant quiet pop, the bubbles frothing like a diamond waterfall.
My toes were now aching from this long Ontario highway walk, and my backpack was making permanent indentations in my shoulder. Isobel somehow walked elegantly, her high-heel sandals clickety-clacking, sashaying up the road.
Eventually I had stopped going with Isobel to the Bistro. Hubert got on my nerves too much, and I had developed a bad habit of snorting over his pomposity. The snorting got so regular, Isobel finally had said to me, “Frankly, Annie, you sound like a farm animal, and it’s cramping my style.” So she started going in to the Bistro by herself with Milan Kundera novels tucked under her arm. Usually she described these evenings in detail on the phone when she got home. She said she normally read and drank until he was finished serving tables and then he sat down with her and taught her what he felt she needed to know. Once he took her for dinner on the north side of town. He stared at her aggressive way of clutching the knife and fork in her fists and plunging into the food. He looked her in the eyes. “Don’t.”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t.” He gestured to her iron-fisted cutlery grip. “Look at me, look at my hands. You see der is no need to use your whole hand to hold dem. Just use your thumb and dis finger here,” he said, pointing to his index finger.
“What an asshole! Unbeelievable. Who does he think he is, trying to dampen your gusto?” I said when she told me the story. I still remember the feeling of my blood boiling.
But Isobel kept going back. His lessons included outfit consultations
: “Vear red, very good for your complexion. Vear short black skirts, very good for your legs. Vear less eye makeup and less perfume.” He edited her with almost free rein. He got her some fake glasses, gave her a silk scarf. He told her to cut her hair in a Juliette Binoche blunt. He said it was unattractive to snort when she laughed. She started to look thirty instead of twenty. It was like she’d gone to Ye Olde Hubert’s Boot Camp for Nymphs.
Bored by the walking, Isobel finally piped up.
“Look, I know you disapproved of Hubert, but it was an invaluable education. And he wasn’t so bad, you never saw his nice side, and you’re hung up on that whole water thing. You know in Europe, nobody drinks tap water. It’s just not done.”
“Whatever. The guy was a major ass.” I said, annoyed by vestiges of his pretentious imprint still on her psyche. But that was nothing compared to his disturbing sex ed curriculum. She had never told me the full details of the Table 12 night, but she had alluded to it in passing. Cryptic mumblings during our sad song sessions.
“What happened with him, Isobel, really?”
“You want the minute-by-minute account of how it finally happened?” Isobel asked as we slogged our way to the neon that was looking more like a constellation from eons ago than somewhere we could stay for the night.
“Yes,” I said, rolling my shoulders and trying to readjust my heaving backpack.
“Okay then . . . If you’re sure . . .”
“Yes.”
“I met him on a Sunday night, after closing time, around nine o’clock. It was strange, going into the empty restaurant with only one lamp lit. He made a point of locking the door behind me. Something that sounded like ‘Napoleon’s March’ was playing. Remember Table 12, the one by the back of the Bistro, near the wallpaper? He had an ice bucket with an open bottle of bubbly with a white scarf around its neck, two champagne flutes, and a plate of chocolate-dipped strawberries. I sat down. He looked at me meaningfully and coughed. It was my signal to stop slouching, so I did. He offered me a strawberry. I had one. It was ripe.
“So then he goes, ‘You like that? Den you can have another one, but first . . .’ and he unzipped his fly and said . . . you’re not going to believe this . . . he said one word: ‘Strip!’”
“Oh God no, tell me he wasn’t re-enacting the scene when Tomas seduces Teresa?”
“Ya, so I played dumb. ‘What?’ I said.
“‘Strip.’
“‘Uh, okay.’ I started pulling off my clothes.
“‘Slowly. And look at me.’
“‘You want everything off?’
“‘Of course. Here, have another strawberry.’
“I chewed the strawberry and pulled off my skirt. I was wearing a garter belt like Sabine. I undid the two snaps on each leg. The stockings rolled to my ankles. When I was done, he said: ‘Take me in your hand. Your right hand.’
“‘Take you? Take you where?’ But then I clued in as he looked down at me knowingly. I was sitting, he was standing. I went for a swig of champagne and thought, What the hell. I reached into his fly and grabbed his cock, trying to pull it out of the flap of his silk boxers. I wrestled it out, bending it and twisting it at an angle.
“‘Be careful. Iz not an ee-lastic band.’
“I got it out, scraping it a bit against the metal of his zipper. Once it was out, I went to pull down his trousers.
“‘No.’
“‘But—’
“‘Much sexier like this. Take me again.’
“So I picked it up, right, and started to try to whack him off. I started out like a freight train kinda, you know what I mean? Chug a chugga chug . . . a chug.
“He put his hand on mine and guided me. ‘Think three-quarter time,’ he said.
“I had to suppress a giggle attack over the oom pah pah thing. After a couple of bars, he put another strawberry in my mouth. I was a little freaked out, but focused, you know. I wanted to get this right. This was way better training than Cosmopolitan magazine. Let’s face it, it’s not like that guy I lost my virginity to was illuminating, with his two minutes.”
I could tell by the look of glee on Isobel’s face that she was proud of her war story: it was when she got her stripes.
“‘Now stand up. Turn around,’ he told me. He grabbed my hips, bent me over at the waist on Table 12. I was eye level with the salt and pepper shakers. He put himself in to me. I wasn’t quite ready.
“He thrust.
“He waited.
“He thrust.
“He paused.
“He thrust.
“My lower back was cramping up a bit. He was breathing heavily. Every time he withdrew, I exhaled. And then he thrust again and this time the salt and pepper fell over!
“‘Don’t vorry, I had a vasectomy. Have another strawberry.’
“He walked away. I heard running water and the sound of him washing his hands as I stood up and straightened myself. I was sore and sticky.
“‘Vee have to go, the cleaners will be coming soon. Come see me this week, ve’ll talk about your performance. You did well.’
“I got dressed and left. He didn’t call me a taxi. I walked up Jasper Avenue. It was 10:00 PM and Edmonton looked like a ghost town. It hurt a bit to walk, and I felt foolish in my high heels. I imagined I knew what it felt like to be a hooker. A glamorous movie hooker, though. On 105th Street, some rednecks driving one of those cheese-ball Trans-Ams with customized monster-sized tires rolled down a window to yell, ‘Hey, wanna fuck?’
“I went home and drew a bath. I finally felt like une vraie femme.”
I remember the key parts of the Isobel-Hubert saga that followed the big night because I was there. After the Salt and Pepper evening, later that week, Isobel and I were out for a late-night cheese fondue at Café Select. Inspired by its Parisian namesake, it had the best atmosphere of any Edmonton restaurant and was open until well into the wee hours of the morning. You could show up after a gig at two in the morning and still have a croque monsieur or crème caramel and a Kir Royale, our all-time favourite drink. We loved it there, especially the lighting—the main room was lit entirely by candles in little glasses on each table. So romantically dark. And they accepted our student-issue MasterCards!
We skewered little pieces of French bread and swirled them around in the Swiss cheese and kirsch fondue while Billie Holiday sang soulfully. All the good-looking waiters with their great hair and silver jewellery wore black and carried trays high on their fingertips as they manoeuvred like Latin dancers between the tightly packed tables and chairs.
That night I watched the hostess with the dog collar and nose-ring greeting two new customers at the door. They were an elegant couple; he was wearing a trench coat and she had cropped blond short hair and red lipstick. The hostess led them past us. Isobel looked up just in time to see Hubert with his hand cradling the woman’s back. He passed inches away from our table, looked right at us, right into Isobel’s eyes, and said nothing. Smirked a seedy smirk. They sat a few tables away. We could hear them speaking Czech.
Clutching a fondue skewer, Isobel looked like she wasn’t breathing. “Look at that,” she hissed.
“What?”
“He’s wearing a wedding ring! He never wore it at Bistro Praha, the slimy bastard, jerkoff asshole jackass fucker!”
Hubert sat there, out of earshot, looking blasé and unconcerned. He and the woman were drinking champagne, the real stuff, Veuve Clicquot with the orange label. After the waiter took their food order, his wife got up to go to the bathroom. He elegantly tossed his fork on the floor. When he got up to retrieve it, he walked over to Isobel: “Come see me on Tuesday.”
She was too stunned to respond. She looked down at the bill on the table, paid it, and rushed us out of the restaurant.
“Isobel, you’re not going to go see him, are you?” I asked.
“Vat did you expect? Don’t be so naive. How old are you, twelve?” Hubert said on Tuesday.
He made her feel so stupid she gave him
a blowjob to prove she was no child.
I felt raindrops on my forehead. Such a novelty added to our plight, almost making it an adventure. Isobel pulled out her pack of smokes and gave us each one. It kept raining. I loved it. So romantic to smoke in the rain, who could resist? Not me. We didn’t get so much of it back in Alberta. A lot of snow but not a lot of rain.
As the sky continued to spit lovingly down on us, we puffed away in silence, contemplating the past. For weeks she had kept going back to Bistro Praha. I tried to get her to give him up, but apparently he was addictive. He unwittingly gave her an arsenal of tricks to please a man; twenty ways to make a man follow you around town. It was mainly an attitude thing. From him, she learned the art of aloof. The more blasé he was, the more she craved him; like a good student she incorporated aloof into her makeup. Isobel was now, as a matter of ingrained habit, always elusive. It did seem to come rather naturally to her, though.
Since Hubert, she said she’d rather that boyfriends left her apartment immediately after sex. He had eroded her A Room with a View idealism into hard-hearted realism. She was now more La Femme Nikita than Lucy Honeychurch.
From what I could make out, her dismissal served to fuel men’s desire. Like Finn, for example—he seemed to want to keep running into the brick wall. I knew the lure of powerlessness. I had tried so hard to inspire Sullivan back, long after his feelings for me had atrophied, long after I knew it was hopeless and I was shaming myself. I deliberately stayed in a purgatory of yearning just for the sweet masochistic sake of it.
The hotel was in sight when Isobel let out a long sigh and said: “But you’re not going to believe the really, really, really, really, really messed up thing about this all, Annie. I’ve got to tell you something else: the sequel.
“We had a reunion for old time’s sake, about six weeks ago. It could be the worst, stupidest most con thing I ever did. Long-term repercussions . . .”
“What are you talking about?” Dark scenarios clouded my mind. I imagined his wife found out, her heart got broken. Divorce. Traumatized kids, the works. Or no, did she catch something from him? No condom usage, that was awful. “Fuuuuuck!” I said.
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