Loddy-Dah Page 5
“She’s right, Dewey. Those who went to Vietnam believing it was wrong and still went are the cowards. You stood up for your beliefs and maybe one day, like, you’ll be able to go back home.”
“Doubt it. Not with that bastard Johnson at the helm. Guy’s nuts.” Dewey shook his head. “Don’t want to talk about it anymore, okay? We all do what we have to do.”
“I’m glad you told me. Means a lot to me.”
Dewey forced a grin. “Shall we go then?”
“Do you mind if I get the waiter really mad and, like, order a tiny bowl of fries to go?”
“What happened to the boiled egg and tomato diet?”
“Made me sick. Bad stomach cramps. I’m, like, starting this new Stillman diet on Monday ...”
“Oh, Loddy-Dah. Loddy-Dah.”
“Told you not to call me that Dewey. You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I didn’t say that. It’s just that you keep talking about going on a diet and you never do.”
“I want to but like, life gets in the way.”
She began to snivel, inaudible first, her mouth grimacing, teeth displayed. One couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying, and then shoulders trembling, Mount Vesuvius about to erupt. Dewey grabbed her hands as though that would cap the lava of tears.
“You okay, hon?”
She burst into a full force of moans and groans while the exasperated couple at the next table removed themselves and their plates to another section of the restaurant. Loddy couldn’t help herself, hid her face behind a napkin then blew her nose.
“Is everything all right here?” Ruddy-face sprinted back to investigate the commotion.
“We’re just emotional tonight,” Dewey winked. “Hormonal, you know.”
Now everyone was watching.
Dewey grabbed Loddy’s elbow, paid the bill and was already on the sidewalk waiting when Loddy slipped and careened into the revolving door, wedging herself on one knee between the two glass partitions.
“Oy veh, a broch, (oh, hell) not again! Tomorrow we get a regular door,” Kravitz, the deli owner, shouted to no one in particular as a trio of waiters and a customer ran by to her aid. “She is a klutz, that fat one,” Kravitz continued, pointing towards the failed door and Loddy caught inside like a lobster in a trap.
They attempted to pry the door open by rocking the partition back and forth like a car stuck in a snow rut, but it wouldn’t budge. An audience of passersby grew around Dewey as he synchronized his movements with the waiters inside the deli. A fire truck pulled up with sirens blaring and Loddy endured twenty humiliating minutes as the fire brigade finally liberated the door. One of the rescuers, with a twisted sense of humour, let the door spin, full speed ahead like one of those playground merry-go-rounds, Loddy at the helm, on her toes, shouting — “Stop! Stop! I want to get out” — until the door’s velocity expelled her onto the sidewalk and into Dewey’s arms.
“My God, hon, you could have suffocated in there.”
“I’m never, ever, like ever going to show my face at Ben’s again.”
The fire brigade loaded up their trucks, turned on their blinking lights, and drove off with another tale to add to their repertoire of quirky firefighting stories.
“What was all that crying about?”
“I was just sad, Dewey, for you, for me, for the world. Can’t I just be sad without it turning into a three-act play?”
“Not with you, hon. I think you have this little black cloud dangling over your head.
“I’m such a failure, Dewey. Like maybe I should just hire my own personal rescue team to be on call.”
Dewey smiled sympathetically as they headed for The Garage Theatre.
xxx
The place was overrun with bubbly human rabbits in every shape, size and form — reclining on the stage, smooching in the alley, leaning against the wall in the lobby, curled up in the seats or on the spiral staircase, smoking on the mezzanine, and lounging in the dressing rooms. Samuel directed this chaotic scene as though he were Cecile B. de Mille presiding over The Greatest Show on Earth. The cast from The Resurrection of Robbie Rabbit almost outnumbered the seating capacity of The Garage Theatre, which on a good night accommodated an audience of a hundred.
Loddy submerged herself like a submarine in the back row among the stored props and sets, and absorbed the pandemonium: Aretha posed in various dance movements for the photographer who seduced her with his camera. “Give me more, doll. I want to feel you one with the floor, and more boobs,” he instructed; Stanley curled up like a Buddha statue in a garden of meditation; Samuel deep in an animated conversation with the playwright; Rita sitting on the stage apron reading her script; Marvel and Ulu warming their hip flexors, using each other’s arms for dance bars; Danny making love to a compact mirror until one of the rabbits hopped by and mucked up his hair; and Dewey, on the mezzanine, fiddling with the lighting board. Marcel and Percy were absent but no one noticed. The rest of the players were complete strangers to Loddy, friends of the playwright, a thespian professor who had promised each of his drama students a part in his avant-garde musical — the survival of hippie rabbits in the carrot patch called life. Samuel explained that the play was very existentialist. Loddy had to look up its meaning.
Existentialism: a philosophical theory emphasizing the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining his or her own development through acts of the will.
She surmised that, with a cast of thousands, it meant the performances would involve a great deal of improvisations.
Today Jacob, the pianist, a friend of Samuel’s, was downstage auditioning individual voices. Aretha, Percy and Stanley were lead solos. The other rabbits would serve as a Greek chorus line of noise moving the narrative along.
Jacob called her name and Loddy sunk further into her seat, lower and lower, until her knees smacked the floor, and she was nowhere in sight.
“Loddy. Where are you? Hello.” Jacob rose from the piano bench.
Hide-and-go-seek, a familiar childhood game, played out now in the magical world of theatre.
“Loddy, get your fat ass here! Jacob is being paid by the hour so let’s move it,” Samuel’s voice boomed.
She emerged. First the top of her head, then her eyes peered over the seat in front, a Beluga surfacing for air, spouting water, flapping fins, she struggled to liberate herself from the net of spectators.
Samuel rolled his eyes skyward. “We don’t have all day. Shit!”
The room plunged from a party-like atmosphere to the silence of a crypt where beatified popes laid buried. Loddy, aware of everyone’s scrutiny, approached the stand-up piano on stage with the timidity of a two-year-old.
“So what do you want to sing?” Jacob asked, already bored after a long day of auditions.
“I don’t know.”
“Didn’t you bring any music?”
“Like, I didn’t know I was supposed to.” Beads of sweat formed on her forehead, dampening her bangs.
“All right. Know any songs you like?”
“No.” Memory cells vanished in the anxiety of the audition.
“How about a Beatles’ song? Everyone knows a Beatles’ song. She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Easy.”
Loddy had forgotten to swallow and choked on her saliva. “I like the Mamas and the Papas.”
“Okay, Mamas and the Papas, it is. Which song?”
She cleared her throat in two sharp notes and said, “California Dreamin”?
Jacob tinkled the melody but some intangible force paralyzed her to the spot, rendered her motionless like a wax figure in Madame Tussaud’s museum.
“Well?” He repeated the melody. “All the leaves are brown ... Come on Loddy, on the downbeat, follow me. All the leaves are brown and the sky is ...”
Jacob stopped playing. Loddy again cleare
d her throat, this time with determination, if not with assurance.
“Twinkle, twinkle little star ...”
Bewildered, Jacob chased her on the piano, twinkle, twinkle little star, while Loddy carried on, “how I wonder where you are. Up above the sky so high. Like a diamond in the sky ...”
Smothered guffaws, giggles overheard from the back of the house.
“Oh, my God!” Samuel’s voice in the front row. “She’s not even on pitch.”
Loddy persisted, ignoring the buffoonish audience of rabbits until she mercifully touched down with the finish line — “How. I. wonder. Who. You. are” — and took her bow.
Dead silence.
“Thank you, Loddy. Next.”
She bolted up the spiral staircase to Marvel’s Pad, the beaded curtain swinging, whipping her face. She hunkered down. Her boulder of a body slid along the wall like a slow avalanche until touchdown to the floor.
“What was that all about? I’ve heard you sing at parties and that wasn’t you.” Samuel had followed her, his arms folded like a teacher scolding a pupil.
Loddy, dirty blond hair veiling her face, raised her red-rimmed eyes, and blinked against a cataract of spots. Or were they just drops of tears? The black light caught Samuel from behind and illuminated his white t-shirt and teeth. Jesus Christ. Loddy thought she was hallucinating.
“All right. Listen up. Here’s what we’ll do. Can you keep time to a tambourine?”
She jerked her head into an ambiguous yes.
“Ok. So maybe you’re not ready for prime time. Get back in there and let’s try the tambourine.”
xxx
The Resurrection of Robbie Rabbit played to full houses for the first two weeks with family and friends once again filling the seats; however, towards the end of the run, they performed to an almost empty house.
“One person or one thousand, give them your all, kiddies.” Merde!
The reviews were merciless:
The show has its moments ... flawed ... shoddy performances ... The Garage is overrun by an amateur cast of bunnies who make up in enthusiasm what they lack in talent. The production reflects the revolution of the Sixties with a mind-blowing experience in group sex and youth culture. Not for your Aunt Mabel or maybe not for you either ...
— The Montreal Star
Or:
Not very impressive in spite of the excellent abstract sets, lighting and imaginative direction ... Rabbits frolic in the aisles and the audience is encouraged to join in their onstage antics. An eager cast tries with sincere efforts but some scenes are just beyond their skills in this badly-written play. If you miss the production this time, you can catch Robbie Rabbit in next year’s Dominion Drama Festival, and we can only hope the playwright has come out of rehab by then.
— The Messenger
“Beyond their skills? Beyond their skills? What a bunch of horseradish! I better get a proper role in a proper play soon, or I’m gone.” Percy plugged his mouth with an unlit cigar and suckled it like a baby with a pacifier.
“Oh, don’t tell me you’re still crying over that. You know they were right, so drop it. Here, this will make you feel better.” Before he could respond, Stanley told him to “open wide” and blew puffs of magic marijuana into Percy’s mouth.
xxx
Closing night cast party, and the bunnies were intoxicated with ever-ready energy after their final performance. Smoke from too many cigarettes and reefers hovered long and low over the mezzanine like early morning mist on a river. The building trembled like a minor earthquake with the boom boom boom from the overheated amplifiers. The crush of partygoers, inebriated, liberated, bopped and hopped, cavorted and frolicked hip-to-hip. A trio of female bunnies, stripped naked to their cottontail underwear, paraded on stage, and, in a tribute to narcissism, challenged everyone to non-stop pelvic rolls. Bodies slammed into bodies, grinded, undulated, skin rubbing skin, a marinade of sensuality. Even Loddy whirled around the room, feet hugging the floor in increasingly faster and faster dervishes. Everyone cleared the floor as she wound down with a final glissade to the floor. Marvel would have been proud. A Fellini movie, La Dolce Vita, the good life, the sweet life, here and ever after, Loddy thought. Only the voluptuous blond Anita Ekberg wading through a pool of water in a Roman fountain was missing from the scene.
Aretha invited everyone to sample her famous brownies smothered in chocolate icing. Loddy had a hunger she hadn’t felt since Alma’s last Kukeli dinner. She wolfed down two substantial brownies, each the size of her palm, and justified this indulgence to anyone within earshot that she had lost fifteen pounds on the Stillman diet so a reward was in order. Just this one time, and tomorrow back to cottage cheese and tuna.
Marcel tossed her a tambourine. “Loddy, you know what is that you just eat?”
“Like, Aretha’s home-made brownies.”
“No, mon cherie, space cake or as they say, hash brownies.”
“Hash browns? Oh, don’t be silly, Marcel.”
“Stupide!” Marcel removed a joint from his shirt pocket and walked away, thrusting himself in the company of bunnies nearby.
“Toi aussi, like, what’s your problem? I was just pulling your leg.”
She licked her brownie fingers clean, picked up the tambourine and hit the hoop in a halfhearted jingle of discs, her voice meandering in a stream of notes until she was harmonizing to the Mamas and the Papas, all the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey ...
Jacob yelled across the room: “Hey, Loddy, how come you never sing for me like that?”
“Brownies.” She hoisted her paper plate high above her head. “Give me brownies.” Pause. “And booze.”
She stood up and smashed the tambourine hard against her hips; once, twice and then a steady drumming as though the repetitive pounding would cause a loss of inches. Bang! Bang! Faster and faster until she fell back on the bench, snorting with giggles. She slid onto the floor in a fetal position, stoned out of her mind, and there she lay counting her fingers.
“You might need this.”
She rolled over on her back and a tower of jeans with a distorted face floated over her. He set a cup of coffee by her side.
“Like, you are?”
“Friend of Dewey’s,” he said, helping her up. “He had to leave and asked me to make sure you got home okay. Name’s Fury.”
“Fury? Like in the Sound and the Fury?” She became hysterical again. Who could be serious when meeting the Eiffel Tower in jeans with part of a book title for a name?
“Furio in Italian, or furioso in music meaning wildly and furiously.”
“Oh! Bet you’re from St. Leonard.”
“Ville Emard.”
“Hey, like, we’re practically neighbours. I live in Verdun. Well, used to. Like, just over the aqueduct.”
xxx
Even in her paralytic state of mind, she would always remember the walk home: unhurried, wordless, surreal; he, grasping her callused elbow to cross streets; she, breaking into howls of unstoppable laughter; he, catching her when she lost her balance; she, avoiding his eyes in case he was an illusion. They made their way along McGill College Avenue, through the campus, and onto Milton Street until they reached her apartment. Loddy rested the back of her head against the door when his fingers traced her lips as though he was about to sketch them. He moved in for a close-up and kissed her with a prolonged tenderness she had never known.
“Let me come in.”
She spoke through a spirant of words, knees trembling, “No, like, it’s not a good idea.”
“I mean inside your place. I promise not to do anything. Just talk.”
“I don’t even know you, and it’s a real mess in there.”
“I know Dewey so it’s not like we’re strangers, and besides I like messes. Trust me.”
“Just a minute.” She slipped inside the door and swi
tched on the lights. A platoon of cockroaches scampered to their usual hiding places. All clear.
“Okay, we can talk.”
Fury said nothing, but took in her environment — a clutter of clothes piled high on the red card table; a pile of unread magazines and newspapers on the divan; a scatter of albums on the floor; a tumble of books on an overloaded brick and wood bookshelf; and a line-up of several unopened cans of tuna displayed on the kitchen counter waiting to be put away.
“Sorry about the disaster scene but I’m never home. It’s, like, just a crash pad.”
“Wow! What does the landlord say about that red semi-circle on the wall?”
“He’s cool with it as long as I paint everything back to the original boring white when I leave or else, like, I lose my deposit.”
“I see you like red.” All her garments, the bean bag in the corner, and the cotton handmade drapes reflected various shades of red.
Loddy’s monologue: “Well, like, I thought the place needed some character. Being a basement and all, it doesn’t get much light.” They stared at each other. “I call it the Rising Sun.” They stared at each other. “Like, in the House of the Rising Sun?” They stared at each other. “Or, like, in the Rising House Blues.”
“I like that!” Fury advanced for the kill.
“How do you know Dewey, anyway? You never said.” Loddy distracted herself by storing the cans of tuna into the cupboard when she spotted a cockroach staggering around the bottom of the sink.
“I met him at a youth hostel in Quebec City. He was hitching around the province and so was I, and we just connected. I’m an industrial designer and painter.”
She turned on the tap and let the water pressure drive the cockroach down the drain, then spun around and said: “Oh, you do houses?”