Loddy-Dah Read online

  “You sure?” Fury said.

  “I shouldn’t have asked you in. Don’t know what made me do it, but, like, I think it was a mistake.”

  “Well, then, if you feel that way, I guess I better go.”

  “Yeah. Thanks for the lift and that includes your bike.”

  He collected his belongings and advanced towards her. She braced herself.

  “Is that all I am to you? A lift? I thought there was something happening between us.”

  “Well, like, your creative imagination obviously steered you the wrong way.”

  “I guess. I’ll see you around then.”

  “I guess.”

  She lost him.

  But undefeated, he loomed over her for one last sprint of affection. His hand pressed down the back of the recliner, a final seduction, when the chair swivelled, tilted backwards, and both landed on the floor, with Fury, his helmets and jacket heavy on top of her. She screamed as though she had just seen a couple of cockroaches scamper by.

  “Sorry. Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you. You okay?”

  They regarded each other for a second; combusted into a simultaneous laugh. And then the phone rang.

  “I’m okay. Like I didn’t know the thing was broken. Let me get that ... but don’t go.”

  “I don’t give up easy,” Fury said.

  “I can see that.”

  They unravelled themselves and Loddy picked up the receiver. Bettina.

  “She’s out on Wellington Street now asking strangers for help. She thinks the separatists are following her. Loddy, I can’t get her to come home. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At a pay phone outside Rosaire’s Bakery. I can see her from here. She’s across the street.”

  “Tell her she has to make some Kugeli because I’m coming over. That’ll get her home.”

  “Oh, my God, Loddy. I gotta go. She’s talking to a cop.”

  “Bettina!”

  Loddy could hear the steady drone of the dial tone, like a failing heart, on a monitor.

  “What’s the matter? Can I help?”

  “It’s my crazy mother. She’s pulling another one of her stunts. I better go see what’s happening. Bettina’s not the most stable person herself.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “Fury, you don’t want to meet my nutty family.”

  “Yeah, well, you should meet mine.”

  xxx

  They cruised along Wellington Street but no sign of Alma or Bettina. March skies darkened with menacing storm clouds as they reached Alma’s flat.

  “Ever been to Verdun?” Loddy asked.

  “No, had no reason to come here.”

  “I call this place a blue collar monopoly board. Lots of multicultural families live here, looking to hit pay dirt, and run out of here as soon as they can.”

  “That could be any place.”

  “Yeah, I hate it. Too many bad memories.”

  Alma was sitting in her usual armchair speed-knitting while Bettina huddled in her quiet zone, vacant eyes attached to a TV screen with no picture. Both Loddy and Fury went unnoticed.

  “Like, everything okay here?”

  “What you say?” Alma seemed to be emerging from a trance-like state as though she had been hypnotized.

  “You okay, Maw?” Maybe it was a game they were playing, Loddy thought. Maybe they had both been sitting in the living room all along.

  “Ah Loddy. Yah, yah. What you do here? It not Sunday.”

  “Bettina said you weren’t feeling well.”

  “Who this?”

  “This is Fury.”

  “He boyfriend?”

  “No Maw, a friend.”

  “For now,” Fury said with a polite wink.

  Alma inspected him as though he were in a police line-up.

  “What kind of man he is. Feh. A real man no wear jeans.” This was followed by an offhand remark on his denim jacket, and then back to the knitting at hand.

  “Just ignore her, Fury. Like, she has weird ideas.”

  “I don’t take things personally.”

  “Fury. What name Fury? That name for horse I see on the television.”

  “Ma’am, it’s Furio. I’m Italian. Everyone just calls me Fury.”

  “Aw, Italian, they good people.”

  He had her approval for now. Loddy was relieved.

  “So, Maw, you were outside talking to police?”

  “I do nothing.”

  “The doctor gave her something,” Bettina said, her eyes not leaving the TV. “She should be okay as long as she takes her meds.”

  “So, what happened now?” Loddy said.

  “I do nothing.”

  “Bettina?”

  “Shhhh!” Alma crossed her lips with two fingers like a child with a deep secret.

  “Christ, Maw! I’ll find out anyhow.”

  Bettina, with the vapid look of a ghost, turned away from the TV as Alma ducked her head and waited for the blow of words. She began to knit faster.

  “At church yesterday, Maw found out from Sukey that our father married that Polish widow last week. The one, you know, who wanted Maw to sign those annulment papers.”

  “She never signed them, right?”

  “I never sign. Never. Nothing.” Alma became agitated, not so much for the mention of her husband and his new bride, but for the dropped stitches in her knitting.

  “How this happen to me? How?” she sniffled and dried her nose across the sleeve of her quilted housecoat.

  “It’s okay, Maw. So we can add bigamist to the list of his titles, right up there after scum.”

  Fury tried to console Alma, but she shrugged off his hand from her shoulder.

  “No good. No good. I cannot fix. I start over.”

  She began to unravel her knitting, the entire front of the sweater almost complete, save for a couple of dropped stitches and now everything had to be redone.

  “You go now,” Alma sang as she rolled up the yarn into a ball. “Everything good, yah. You come Sunday.”

  “All right, Maw.” Loddy sighed, went to the window and drew open the drapes for a weather check.

  “Fury, I can’t believe it’s starting to snow. Are we going to be okay on the motorcycle?”

  “Oh, sure. It’s wet snow so it won’t stay. I’ve rode in worse.”

  “You have a motorcycle?” Bettina exclaimed, coming out of her stupor. “Let me see! What kind?”

  Loddy was pointing out the Harley to Bettina when Alma threw a fit. “Leave it! Leave it! The separatists will shoot. Go away from window. Leave drape close. The separatists see you and shoot.”

  “Oh, Maw.”

  “She’ll be okay, Loddy.”

  “I know. And you, Bettina? Do you want me to stay?”

  “Nah. You better get going before the snow really comes down.”

  xxx

  Loddy gave Fury a snap tour of her childhood. They stopped at Kostas’ restaurant, a greasy-spoon located at Bannantyne and Allard Streets across from Riverview School and within walking distance to Loddy’s alma mater, Verdun Catholic High. Kostas’ boasted a pizza with a dough ball in its centre, and the greasiest brown fries and gravy this side of the Main. The owner was always around, kept his restaurant as clean as possible considering the splatter of grease from the fries, and he never accepted any obnoxious behaviour from his young customers, or they would find themselves on the asphalt sidewalk. As a teenager, Loddy never dated, never went to dances and, now, sitting with Fury at Kostas, she felt she was making up for all those dateless years.

  She vacillated between divulging the thorns of her childhood — her father, Mr. Legault — and saying nothing. Fury would surely drop her this time, but somewhere be
tween the order of fries and the club sandwich, she blurted out her wounds and he absorbed them.

  “One day I was to meet a friend at the corner of Verdun and Hickson, take the bus to the school’s skating rink. I was dressed and raring to go, my skates already over one shoulder when he asked where I was going. I know you’re going to a club to meet men, he said. No, Paw, I said I’m meeting Gayle and she’s waiting for me at the bus stop and I’ll be late and I have to go.” She paused here as though she needed to catch her breath in a windstorm. “He took a brown paper bag, sliced it flat with a knife and ordered me to draw a map of where I was going. So I like marked the paper with lines for the bus route and X’s for the bus stops and the skating rink. St. Willibrord School. The creep sadistically rolled the paper in a tight ball and pitched it like a baseball against the wall, and said you’re not going anywhere.” She gasped for air again, but continued. “I pleaded with him to, like, at least let me meet Gayle and tell her I couldn’t go. She’ll be freezing at the bus stop, I said. The creep didn’t say a word. The waiting seemed forever and then without even looking at me, he told me to go quick and then come back even quicker or I’d get pumped. I never ran so fast in my entire life and didn’t realize how cold it was because I didn’t feel a thing. I could see Gayle at the bus stop looking angry with frost on her ski hat and her face red like a radish, and when the street light changed, I raced and fell into her arms, burst into tears, I can’t go, I can’t go, I can’t go. When I got home, I put the skates away and he called me back into the kitchen. Whore, tramp, scum, like your mother he shouted, and then he threw me against the fridge and pummelled me with his body like it was a battering ram. I couldn’t stop crying, tried to get away, but then Alma walked in and all she said was Jesus Jesus Jesus like she always did.”

  At that point, Loddy pulled out the photo of the homely-looking man with the bad teeth. “This is my real father,” she said, “and I want to find him.” Fury studied the creased yellow-tinged print. “I’m damaged goods as they say, so I’ll understand if you just drop me right here. Let’s not play games.”

  He cupped his hands around her fingers. “Oh, Loddy-Dah, that explains so many things.”

  “The thing is,” she said, “like I was a really good girl. I could have gone the other way and say the hell with everything and easily become what he accused me of being, but honestly, I don’t know. Like, I think I was just lucky to meet people along the way like Gayle and her parents who showed me that all families weren’t like mine, teachers who convinced me I was okay, and that I didn’t have to take that kind of crap from anyone especially my family. Still, I have my bad days, like right now.”

  “Loddy, my love, nothing you have told me changes my feelings for you.”

  “My love. You called me my love?”

  “That okay with you?”

  And then she told him about Mr. Legault.

  xxx

  They rode around Verdun and like a tourist guide she showed him the landmarks — the playground, the boardwalk, The Dougie, the pink stucco house on Evelyn Street.

  “Stop,” she said. “I just want to see.”

  They remained on the Harley, a barely perceptible skiff of snow covered the street and sidewalk where she once ran to meet Gayle.

  “There,” she said, “there is where we lived.”

  She was indicating the upstairs window to the old apartment with the shared bathroom in the hallway when Mr. Legault, an old man now with hair gone white, presented himself, as if on cue, on the veranda, and lit a cigarette. Loddy scrunched her head behind Fury’s back.

  They were parked across the street, invisible in the dark, obscured from any street lights. Still, Loddy felt her heart spike as she looked over her shoulder and shouted: “Monsieur Legault. Maudit cochon! Pervert!” She could see his head turning in their direction, stepping down the stairs, walking towards them.

  “Hé, hé,” he waved. “Qui c’est qui est là?”

  “Go! Go! Go!” Loddy screamed. The sudden acceleration of the motorcycle startled Mr. Legault, and she didn’t know if what she felt was snow falling or tears.

  xxx

  By the time they reached Loddy’s, a heavy wind-blown mantle of snow coated roadways and sidewalks. A few days before, spring had broken through the soil, tulips titivating lawns and gardens. But like everything else in the city, the weather was becoming more and more erratic.

  Fury cradled her chin in his gloved hands, his fingers skimming her face. He brushed aside the wet strands of hair plastered to her cheeks, kissed her with such tenderness, his lips playfully circled hers and then he slipped his tongue into her mouth. She submitted without rebelling, snowflakes tracking down her eyelashes, and curving over the outline of her lips. The trees, punched by the elements, bowed their branches horizontally but Fury and Loddy didn’t notice. The street lights flickered, then died, the entire block blind without light, a total blackout.

  “Did we do that?” Fury said, laughing over the din of the storm.

  “I think you better stay the night.”

  “Really? You sure!”

  “Yes. I can’t let you go home in this weather. You better move your bike under the stairway. It’ll be safe and dry there.”

  Loddy raced up the steps as though the boogie man was chasing her, and waited for Fury inside the lobby. The wind gained momentum, hurled debris, split trees and downed more power lines.

  “It’s bloody wild out there,” Fury said, forcing open the door and tumbling into Loddy’s arms.

  She grasped his elbow as they fumbled their way to her apartment, his lighter a beacon in the dark. Once inside, she located candles while he pulled out the divan and plumped the pillows and blankets.

  They discarded wet clothes and dried each other with towels, every nook and cranny in a slow, deliberate pace until they shuddered from the frigid temperature. They slid under covers, and she traced his Adam’s apple with her tongue, slithered kisses along his well-muscled torso. And he let her. They spent the night exploring each other’s bodies and fell asleep listening to the wind inhaling and exhaling.

  In the morning, when they woke up, the sun was shining, the snow was melting, and the power was back. Loddy made coffee and they returned to bed and explored each other again. They continued that way, arms and legs entwined, all day, sleeping and loving, until it was dark again and the streetlights came on.

  SCENE 18:

  Masquerade

  “Like, Percy, what are we doing here and why do all these places have narrow stairways? It’s very Limelite. Don’t know if I like this.”

  “Would it make you feel better, babe, if I told you the place has several emergency exits and they all work?”

  “I don’t know. I’m feeling a bit claustrophobic. If I drop dead, don’t ignore me, okay?”

  “I wouldn’t do this, Loddy, if I didn’t think it was important. I really want you to meet the actor for the third play.

  “I can meet her in rehearsals.”

  “I think you should experience her in her environment.”

  Percy had asked Loddy to assist him in the production of Adult Games along with her acting debut in Evil Ed. She accepted without hesitation. Being a Director’s Assistant would enhance her resumé, and the extra money would ease some of her financial worries.

  She obsessed over the number of steps leading to the interior of the club, counting a dozen. A masquerade of eccentric characters elbowed her, ascending and descending, adrift in an overflow of talcum powder, makeup and cheap perfume — a déjà vu moment. Percy had broken away, left her stranded by the cloakroom, and now she searched the congested room as though she were in a boutique and needed to zero in on the plus-size rack. Groupings of all kinds — men and women, men as women, men with men, women as men, women with women — confronted her. Somewhere on the other side of this rowdy setting, she could hear a piano and a familiar voice s
inging I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair. Percy grabbed her by the cuff of her sleeve.

  “Follow me.”

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “Never mind, just don’t get lost again.”

  “Me?”

  Percy crashed his way through the waves of beautiful men and ostentatious women wearing too much of everything except clothing. A boyish-looking waiter rolled by on skates precariously balancing a tray of drinks high above his head. A tiny butt of a woman, wrinkled and emaciated, threw her legs around a young girl’s waist in an unexpected jive that sent them both flying backwards over the low-lying tables. Glasses shattered; someone came to their aid. Percy pointed at the blood carpeting the floor and said: “Let’s keep moving.”

  As he wrenched Loddy away from the crash site, she caught sight of the piano man in back.

  “Oh my God, Percy! Look, Jacob!”

  But Jacob was oblivious to his surroundings, eyes shut as though each note stabbed his chest. He was on some enchanted island in the South Pacific singing Mary Martin.

  “Yep. You play wherever you get the gigs,” Percy said.

  “I think like I want to go home.”

  “Come on, Loddy, don’t do this to me now. Rita’s reserved us all a table in front and booze is on her. How often does that happen? It’ll be fun.”

  Rita was already holding court in what appeared to be an animated conversation with a woman dressed like a cheap version of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland. An enormous red wig nested precariously on top of her head, and her crinoline dress sparkled with cut-out red hearts which glittered and shimmered with every movement of her portly body. A tail of peacock feathers hung around her neck on a gold chain.

  “Ah, there you are my darlinks.” Rita said, swaying to Jacob’s piano.

  Loddy, stuck to Percy at the hip, nudged him and asked: “Is our actor gay?”

  The woman with the towering hairdo and Queen of Hearts costume giggled and almost gagged on her gin. “Miss-Ile is a drag queen. Nothing like the hags on the Main, I assure you. This is a class-act joint.” She whipped off the peacock feathers from her neck to accentuate her words. “She does Marilyn Monroe like no one else in the city. You’d swear she was Marilyn back from the dead. Fabulous, fabulous our Miss-Ile.”