Loddy-Dah Read online

  “Remember, you’re a Rubens’ model.”

  Before she could reply, Fury was extending a welcoming hand. “I’m so glad you agreed to do this, Loddy.”

  Flustered, she reciprocated, and in that momentary distraction, her robe fell open, revealing her nakedness. Fury’s eyes moved down to her chest. In a spontaneous gesture of embarrassment, her hands flew to her breasts.

  “You can disrobe when you’re ready, and we can start,” he said with the nonchalance of an undertaker before returning to his desk on the other side of the room.

  She whirled around and confronted Dewey. “You didn’t tell me HE was the instructor.”

  “Small detail I didn’t think mattered.”

  Fury gestured for her to come forward, and she felt herself floating as though she were on the cusp of a dream.

  “Can I pose with my back to the class? Like, you know. What’s her name, Venus and her toilet?” There was a childlike lilt of naïveté to her voice.

  “Sure, you find your first pose. I want you to feel comfortable. But it won’t make much difference because some of the class will see your front and some your back.”

  His smile displayed dimples and she noticed how his eyes crinkled.

  “Well, I want them to all change their places so they only get my back, okay, or I won’t do it.”

  So Fury accommodated her and she let go her robe, positioning herself as the model in Rubens’ The Toilet of Venus.

  She pinched her eyes shut and absorbed the scratch of charcoal and graphite on newsprint, the tear of paper from sketch pads and the smell of oil and turpentine on canvas. Just for this instant, she blotted out her body and all its flaws and pretended she was Venus.

  It was the second pose that unnerved her — a full frontal view. Fury directed her to recline on her right side facing the class. She fumbled her way, keeping her head down, hair swooping forward, hiding her face, the left arm over her belly, hand concealing her pelvis while the other arm partially obscured her chest as though she had just lost her bikini top at the beach and was searching for it.

  “Lift your head up, Loddy, so we can see your pretty face” — and Fury arranged it as though he was straightening a wall hanging, combing the hair behind her ears with his fingers.

  “I want you to raise your body and stretch out on your side. Rest your left arm along your hip.”

  Fury stepped back and studied her, and then he approached her again, removing the arm obscuring her chest. With a feathery touch, his hand re-positioned her right breast, lifted it slightly then stroked the underside with his fingertips. A linking of eyes in a tender recognition of mutual sensuality, she was now aroused by this art teacher who had accompanied her home one evening and tried to seduce her. Or was it the chill in the air that made her shudder? In the monastic silence of the studio with only the breathing of dabbling pens and brushes, she became part of the artistic process, caught in the class’s energy. She realized this scene was a collaborative effort and she was one of its players — Rubens’ model.

  When it was over, she grabbed her robe and, out of a natural sense of curiosity, she strolled about the room examining the work as though she was the Queen inspecting her guard.

  “Wasn’t so bad, was it?” Fury, beside her now, asked as she focused on the canvas in front of her.

  “Funny how they all are so, like, different. I don’t look like half the stuff here.”

  “It wasn’t a class in realism, Loddy; it was about interpreting the robust form. Everyone’s perception of beauty is different.”

  Fury placed his hand on the middle of her back and let his fingers settle somewhere near the tailbone. “Do you think you could be my model again?”

  If she looked at him, she would surrender to his crinkly eyes. Instead, she stood steadfast, transfixed by the painting before her — Loddy, reclining, full frontal view. The student used a smear of red and sepia, the colour of orange pekoe tea, blood and flesh, painted in the manner of Rubens. There was a beauty there in the blurred roundness and imperfections, in the folds and wrinkles of the skin that she never recognized as her own. Until now.

  SCENE 10:

  The Limelite-A-Go-Go

  Summer 1968

  Loddy rushed through the lunch hour crowd on St. Catherine Street with the speed of a snail in training for a marathon. Everyone overtook her. Suit-clad businessmen and modish secretaries dived into Dunn’s for a smoked meat sandwich, or into Mr. Steer for a platter of Suzie Q fries before returning to their air-conditioned lives. On the corner of Peel, she collided with a group of Hare Krishna devotees, dressed in their saffron-coloured robes, three male bhaktas, eyes averted in their tambourine version of peace and happiness, the only woman with them lured bystanders with grapes and chants of the Krishna mantra. Loddy grabbed a handful before anyone could say Hare, Hare!

  Montreal now sported its summer wardrobe and, La Ronde, a holdover from the days of Expo 67, once again opened its floodgates and awaited this year’s follies. There was a comfort in familiarity as one season collapsed and another unfolded.

  Loddy was late. Decked out in her usual unfashionable sweat top and black tights, her stringy hair a sebaceous snarled mess, uncombed and unwashed from the late morning jolt of waking up, she gained speed as she neared Stanley Street. Loddy carried Ulu’s costume in one of those long plastic cleaning bags, which gathered between her legs with every static motion of her run. Her ear caught the summer music — someone adjusting the dial on a car radio and the Monkees singing I’m a Believer — and she suddenly missed her transistor, a luxury she could no longer afford. She darted in and out of the pedestrian traffic, a moving target, a mottled black and red bowling ball, striking anyone in her path. There went a spare as she knocked aside a group of men gawking at the go-go dancer in the upstairs window of Club Metropole.

  “S’cuse me.” Loddy, also distracted by this half-naked feline in her pen, couldn’t resist watching. The dancer, with her back to the street below, shimmied and shimmered in a gyration of twists and hops. Loddy became aware she wasn’t winded. Not a pant within earshot. Look at me, she wanted to announce, I’m getting myself into shape. I’m looking better, see! Marvel’s classes were indeed paying off, and modelling for Fury’s students gave her a confidence she never thought she would find. Someone actually deemed her body worthy to be called beautiful, and she thought of that someone every minute of the day. Fury.

  “Hey, maudit cochon, ote-toi de mon chemin, get out of my way.”

  “Fu’k off!” Loddy now planted herself squarely in the centre of busy St. Catherine Street and couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth. Sweet and innocent, Loddy, so unlike her. Where once she would have crumbled under the weight of every insult, she now broke down into fits of hysterics. Vehicles honked and decelerated around her as she caused a traffic jam. It was Loddy versus the cars.

  “Fu’k off! Fu’k off! Fu’k off!” Something was unleashed inside of her. She loved the musicality of the two syllables in this forbidden word and blamed her foot-in-sand for the outrageous outburst.

  “You okay, miss?” A traffic cop led her to the other side of Stanley Street.

  “Sorry, sir.” Her giddiness was now subsiding, and she burst out into another side-splitting convulsion, eyes tearing from the hilarity of nothing.

  “You been drinking? Let me smell your breath.”

  “Sorry, officer. I’m fine. Just happy. Like, no law against happiness” — and she opened her mouth wide, stuck out her tongue and said ‘AH” as though she were being examined by a doctor for a sore throat.

  “All right, then. Just watch where you’re going, Miss.” He tipped his cap and walked away muttering: “Hippies.”

  It was the music, loud and raunchy, flowing from the open doorway that caught her attention first and, when she looked up, Loddy spotted The Blonde in the upstairs bay window of the Limelite Club
. Her silver mini-dress, with its layers of long fringes, like garlands of icicles on a Christmas tree, flipped and flopped as she twisted her skinny ass to the sounds of Steppenwolf’s Born to be Wild.

  Loddy tore through the club’s double doors, adjusted her eyes to the anthracitic lighting in search of The Blonde. The non-descript room stank like an unwashed armpit — too many stale cigarettes and spilt beer — and it was only noon.

  Two middle-aged men in business suits slouched at opposite ends of the counter, smoking up a cloud, nobody in between, just the two drunken human bookends propping up the space in between. Every now and then, one of them would lift his head with a weariness bordering on collapse, take a long hard drag on his cigarette stub, and squint through the twisted coils of smoke as he watched the wrestling match on the soundless portable TV above the bar.

  A balding, brawny, bulk of a man sat at the front table near the stage, loosened his tie, ordered another beer, and settled back into his chair. A gang of rambunctious student-types had laid siege to the pool table in the backroom; otherwise, the club was empty of customers.

  Loddy jumped at a distinctive tap on her shoulder.

  “Hey, how’d you get in here?” The doorman, a human hoverfly, frightened her with his bulk and agitation. His feet and hands in a continual motion.

  “I’m looking for Ulu. I’ve got her costume. See.” She showed him the plastic cleaning bag with the gold lamé bra and chiffon skirt poking through the open bottom.

  “She works upstairs at The Limelite. You gotta take the other entrance outside. This here is The Cheetah.”

  “The Cheetah?”

  “Peeler club. You know, strip joint.”

  “Oh. Oh yeah.” She knew about these places from the movies but had never stepped in one, and here she was about to leave, when the music fired up, and a dancer strutted on the miniature stage. Wearing leather mini-shorts, the colour of midnight, and a sparkling ruby tank top, the girl’s Barbie-doll legs were squeezed like sausages into thigh-high plastic white boots.

  Loddy appraised the girl’s performance. She strolled to centre-stage with a supercilious attitude, grinding her hips, taking a firm stance, casing the room, then with a solicitous arrogance, whirled around, her back to the audience. She bent from her waist until her buttocks flared, swayed them side to side, left to right, left to right, to the tune of Mustang Sally and with great deliberation removed her boots with one zing of the side zippers. She rolled her hips and, with an awkward pirouette, faced the audience again.

  Mustang Sally ... think you better slow your Mustang down ...

  Loddy gave her a nine for attitude and a ten for the dancing. Somewhere between the flared buttocks and rolling hips, the balding man removed his jacket and folded it neatly over his lap. With a flutter of eyelids, he threw back his head and opened his slight, guppy-like mouth into a soundless wail, like the frenzy of an electric guitar, a Jimi Hendrix minute of ecstasy with the volume button on mute.

  The dancer focused on the back of the wall. The back of the wall. Loddy knew that place. Samuel would bawl her out. “Loddy, bounce your voice off the back of the wall.” She would try several times, and he would stomp around, grind his cigarette on the floor and scream even louder: “Bounce your fuckin’ voice off the back of the wall! PROJECT! PROJECT! I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

  The more he had yelled, the more intimidated she became, and Samuel would return her to the front of the house and box office duties with Rita. The back of the wall. When she modelled for Fury’s class, that’s where her mind travelled to become Rubens’ model. The back of the wall. When Mr. Legault touched her as a child, that’s where she would go. It was a safety net. A sanctuary that said, it’s not happening.

  When the music stopped, the dancer, now braless, remained on stage, legs planted in a wide inverted V, under cover of a g-string. The balding man leaned over the stage, whispered something in her face, and they both wandered towards a room off to the side of the bar. Loddy followed with her eyes as the dancer entered first, and the bald man closed the curtain behind them.

  xxx

  She climbed the narrow flight of stairs, a tight fit should she meet anyone descending, and, when she reached the entrance to the Limelite-A-Go-Go, Loddy was assaulted by the lack of noise. The room, a canyon of echoes, stood empty.

  “Hello! Hello!”

  A balcony wound along one side where light beams caught particles of dust through the only window, the bay window, where she had seen The Blonde. Two glass-mounted booths hung directly above the stage — one for the DJ to spin records and the other for a go-go dancer. She had seen the photos and had read stories about the Whiskey-A-Go-Go on Sunset Boulevard where it all began and she shuddered at the notion of someone dancing suspended in mid-air. With her size and luck, she imagined the entire booth would come crashing down.

  Loddy was drawn to the dance floor, an eclectic pattern of black and white tiles, an eighth the size of the Forum hockey rink, and felt compelled to race towards it. Chairs were turned upside down on the tables as though a party had just ended, or perhaps another had yet to begin. Voluptuous faux velvet drapes, the colour of new grass on a sunny summer morning, concealed the windows along one wall.

  She discarded Ulu’s costume over a chair and stood in the middle of the floor, legs in first position with a jazz hand — palm out, facing forward with fingers extended.

  Marvel had applauded her spins and turns. You are a natural, Loddy, she had told her after a particularly vigorous dance class.

  Baryshnikov in motion, her feet hugged the entire dance floor as she executed her whirling dervishes, and then she had a sudden sense of being lifted high into the air, flying like a kite.

  “Hey, hey! Put me down! Put me down!” Her combativeness unbalanced her and she keeled over, pulling down her intruder in the process, both collapsing like a house under demolition.

  “Dewey! What the heck are you doing here?”

  “Taking photos. And you?”

  “Delivering Ulu’s costume. Why did you do that?”

  “What? Lift you in the air? I don’t know. You were dancing so nice and I thought I’d pull a Nureyev.”

  “Good thing you didn’t pull a muscle! Did I hurt you? Never mind. Just don’t ever do that again.” She gathered Ulu’s costume. “I’m afraid of heights, you know.”

  “Loddy, have you looked at yourself lately?”

  “I’m still fat. All those dance classes are just firming me up, that’s all. I still weigh a ton.”

  “Well, you’re looking pretty good from my angle. Come on, I’ll bring you to Ulu.”

  Loddy straggled behind him, up some stairs, and then a series of corridors until they came to a door marked “Dressing Room.”

  He knocked and she could hear Ulu: “I thought you left, Dewey.”

  “Found a friend here.”

  “It’s Loddy. I have your costume.”

  The sound of slippers schlepping along the floor, the door unlocking, “Come on in. I need an interruption.” Ulu, surrounded by books, was biting into a sandwich. “So what do you think?” she said to Loddy as she swung her arms around the room.

  “Christ, like, what do you do here? Don’t tell me you’re a stripper.”

  Ulu was wearing a white terry cloth robe looking like someone out of a spa commercial.

  “No, that’s downstairs. We’re just a go-go club up here. Pays well and the tips are better. Anyhow, pays for school.” She nodded towards the pile of dictionary-size text books on her dresser next to the pancake makeup.

  “Like, are you here by yourself all the time?’

  “I come here before the club opens when I need to study. The owner is good about that. Quieter than a library.”

  “Cool. Well, anyhow, here’s your costume. I better get going. Rita’s, like, waiting for me and you know how that is. We’ve got a church choral group
tonight, and I’m working the box office and coffee bar. Lucky me.”

  “The costume looks divine. How much do I owe you?”

  “Nothing for friends. You know that.”

  “But that’s a lot of work and you could use the money.”

  “Nah, it’s okay.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Ulu tucked a twenty in the pocket of Loddy’s t-shirt.

  “You need it yourself. When you’re a rich bitch, okay” — and she removed the money and slipped it into one of the pages of Ulu’s text books like a bookmark.

  “Loddy, I’ll walk you to the theatre if you want. I’m heading that way anyhow.” Dewey turned to Ulu: “You sure you going to be okay, hon?”

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve been here alone. Just lock the door behind you,” Ulu said. “We feminists can take care of ourselves thank you very much. Oh, and Loddy, you still picking me up tonight after you finish at The Garage?”

  “Yep, not a problem.”

  They hit the pavement and Loddy squinted against the dazzle of afternoon glare, a stark contrast to the dingy darkness of the Limelite-A-Go-Go and, when her eyes adjusted to the light, she realized Dewey was taking snapshots of her.

  “Stop it. Stop it, will you. You know I hate having my picture taken.” She wheeled away from him, hands protecting her face as though she were being attacked by a flock of birds.

  “It’s just a practice session for me, okay? Besides you look good today.”

  “As opposed to other days?”

  Loddy obliged and playacted her best Mama Cass poses — her back against the red brick building, eyelids half-shut with an attitude of defiance, sitting on a step smoking a cigarette, clowning in the reddish glow of The Cheetah neon, puckering, kissing and giggling into the lens. When they crossed the street, Loddy on impulse glanced back and could have sworn she saw The Blonde dancing in the bay window.

  “Dewey?”

  “Yes, hon.”

  “Never mind. It’s just the sun blinded me for a second.”