“I’m not pacing.”
“Here—there. You’ll wear out the floor. You need to pee go pee.”
His mother had dyed black hair wound in a braid around her head. When Cyril was small he liked to touch it because it felt like thick silk rope. Sometimes she had a bun on top, sometimes at the back, and sometimes one at either side, but it always involved some kind of braid. She had high, broad cheekbones, a thin nose, a small mouth, and favoured heavy red lipstick and skirts of bright yellow or robin’s egg blue.
“If I needed to pee I’d pee.”
She responded with an elaborate shrug. It was two in the afternoon and she was still in her housecoat, faded yellow flowers on a faded blue background, and wore feathered slippers which made it look as though she had hens on her feet. She was on her third pot of Darjeeling. On the table sat a loaf of rye bread, a plate of sliced ham, some garlic sausage, some dill pickles. She pointed to the funeral procession with her thumb—one hearse, half a dozen people, no flowers—and nodded with grim satisfaction. “Only a man could have such a small funeral. A bachelor. Or—” And here she became worldly in a way Cyril did not want to consider. “If it’s a woman she was a slut.” She pursed her lips up under her nose and sniffed dismissively as if she’d seen it before and knew of what she spoke. “You must be shit on a shoe for such a small funeral.”
Cyril couldn’t bear another one of her “Lives of the Deceased,” based on the scale of the funeral, the quality of the coffin, and the number of bouquets, so escaped out the back door to the carport. The oil stain on the concrete used to be the shape of Ukraine; now it was nothing, smoke, a ghost, not of the land his parents and brother had escaped, but of the car they used to own, a Nash Rambler convertible with white-walled tires. Cyril’s dad had loved that car, loved its name and all that it implied, as if it was the very epitome of life in the new world, or, as his dad would have put it: noo vorld. When he died it sat dripping oil in the carport for a year and then, just when his mother decided to get her license, it was stolen.
Cyril leaned against the wall and watched the hearse beyond the hedge. It was a sunny May morning, swallows skimming the grass, bees in his mother’s roses. She had a grudging admiration for roses: feed them shit and they bloomed bright and radiant and smelling of perfume. He slid down the wall and sat with his knees up, the voice of the priest reaching him from the grave, and wondered how it was possible to look forward to something and dread it at the same time.
That evening he waited outside the theatre. Downtown Granville Street was all neon marquees: the Coronet, the Orpheum, the Plaza, the Caprice, the Lyric. The line-up for Psycho ran halfway down the block. Hands in his pockets he tried to appear casual, reminding himself that he wasn’t some schmuck alone on a Saturday night, he had a date. The evening was warm and the crowd eager. He’d shaved what little he had to shave, first with the grain and then against it, then looked at his clothes wondering what to wear. His church suit? He hadn’t been to church in two years, and discovered that the sleeves of the jacket ended mid-forearm and the pants mid-shin. He opted for clean jeans and a white T-shirt and his black Converse All Stars. Standing before the bathroom mirror he gauged his chances of passing for twenty-one. It didn’t look good. He toyed with the idea of sketching a moustache on his upper lip and a pair of sideburns. What if he was taller? He was five-foot-eight, so maybe another inch would do the trick. Taking a thick stack of pages from one of his sketch pads he traced his feet and cut them out making insoles which he fit into his runners. It felt different but he didn’t see much extra height, and by the time he’d walked all the way downtown to the theatre—too nervous to sit fidgeting on the bus—he’d packed the paper insoles flat.
“Hey.”
He stared.
Connie had painted her eyelids gold, put on thick red lipstick, a black and red Suzie Wong dress with a high collar, and spike heels that made her the same height as Cyril. She’d also suddenly sprouted breasts—nice ones. She slid her arm inside Cyril’s and they strolled to the end of the line. He felt terror, pride, and a painfully rigid erection. The line began to move.
“Someday I’m gonna be in movies,” she said as though stating her intention of going into dentistry.
Cyril didn’t doubt it for a minute. She was focused and she had talent. What was he going to do? His dad had been a welder, his brother Paul was studying to be an accountant, and his own sole talent was drawing, which left courtroom sketches, police profiles, or sitting in Stanley Park on Sundays doing two-dollar portraits.
At the ticket window Connie stepped ahead of him and in a tone of absolute confidence said, “One, please.”
The ticket seller was a pale and balding man in a white shirt and black bow tie. A cigarette smouldered in the ashtray by his elbow and the fumes filled the booth and seeped like fog through the hole where you slid your money. He studied her, hesitated, then like some gate keeper in a fairy tale succumbing to a spell, he smiled and pushed a ticket through the smoke.
“Thank you.”
“Enjoy the show.”
“If I don’t I will most certainly expect you to refund my money.”
The ticket seller seemed to enjoy that. Connie was through, she’d made it. Cyril’s gut sickened. When he stepped up the clerk exhaled and smoke blasted like dragon fire through the hole in the window. “Got ID?”
Cyril put one hand on his hip and managed a sarcastic smirk, all the while horribly aware of everyone behind him. He tried sounding amused. “What?”
The clerk tapped the black panther sticker on the window. “Gotta be twenty-one. You twenty-one?”
Connie already had her ticket torn in two and was waiting, arms crossed, eyebrows elevated, as if growing impatient. Only bold action could save him. “Twenty-one? I’m twenty-two.”
“Yeah?” The clerk considered that. “Wish I was still twenty-two. Can you prove it?”
Cyril’s face burned and he desperately needed a toilet.
The man was not unsympathetic. “Nice try, kid.” He motioned Cyril aside and the next person stepped up.
“Swiss Family Robinson’s down the street,” called some wag, earning a big laugh.
When Psycho let out the women in the crowd were clinging to the arms of their escorts. There was Connie. She rolled her shoulders provocatively causing her new breasts to rise and fall. Cyril tried not to stare, but one of those breasts was now riding distinctly lower than the other. She took his arm, leaned close and glanced fearfully around. “It was so freaky.” Cyril smelled the buttered popcorn on her breath and saw that her lips were shiny. “I think I clawed the padding off the arm of the seat.” Cyril’s own arm ached in envy of that seat. She must have seen the expression on his face. “You got to look the look, man. Play the part. Be the part. What did you get up to?”
He considered saying he went for a beer except the bs wasn’t working too well for him this evening. “Walked.”
“And what did you see as you walked?”
He traced the horizon with an open palm. “The city.”
“In all its magnificence?”
“Its heights and depths. Its dreams and despairs. While you sat, I voyaged.”
“I’m jealous.” She leaned against him and in spite of everything Cyril was suddenly happy walking along Granville with her, even if he was also a little indignant that she hadn’t cashed in her ticket. After all there would have still been time to catch The Apartment. They got on the bus and sat at the back. Connie unbuttoned her high-necked dress and reached inside her brassiere and pulled out an orange.