Blasted (5 page)

“Coming, jeeze, I'm coming fast as… who is it?” I heard a sort of wet-flour-sack noise as she slumped against the inside of the door.

“It's Ruby. I've locked myself out.”

“Ruby, Ruby…” she mumbled.

“I need the key to my apartment!”

“I don't got no keys. Landlord took ‘em.”

“Open your door, Izzie, let me talk to you.”

“I tell you, I got no keys!”

“I don't care. Open up!”

“Frank took ‘em away.” She was fumbling with the doorknob. I watched, agonized, as it turned first one way, then the other. Finally the latch clicked and the door opened toward me. Izzie's white potato face peered out, frizzed orange hair above bulbous mascara-ed eyes, her lips pale and slack and wet. The apartment smelled of wet newspaper, old food and stale beer. Izzie herself just smelled like stale beer. I tried to look her in the eye, but the watery orb kept sliding away.

“Izzie, I know you've got the masters in there somewhere.”

She raised her voice. “I tell you Frank took ‘em, said he was making copies.”

“You just don't want to go to the trouble of looking.” She started to close the door. I jammed my foot into it, but she took the knob in both hands and threw her weight into it. My foot pinched. I reached into the opening and placed my hand on hers where they knotted over the knob, patting her knuckles in what I hoped was a comforting way. “There, there. It has to be done. It's the only way I can get back into my apartment.”

She sagged forward, panting, then struggled back again with something between a groan and a sob. My foot pinched again. “For fuck's sake, woman!”

She let go the doorknob at once, and the door swung out and open. The apartment was dimly visible in the light filtering through the sheets she had hung over every window. The sheets sported children's illustrations of fairies, all flowers for caps and dancing with mushrooms. The front room was crammed: piles of newspapers, empty beer bottles, cardboard boxes spilling more paper, a couch and a mattress on the floor. It was the first time I'd seen the inside of her place. She led the way to the kitchen at the back of the apartment, mumbling as she always did. “This way… keys might be in the cupboards… might have moved them there… working on the place, you know… that's all I do, work, work, paint, paint, it'll never be finished at all, at all…” We passed some open paint cans and a half-rollered wall, but the roller had long since become one with the tray and the paint congealed in the cans. “Wanna beer?”

We reached the kitchen fridge. There was something touching about her short, stubby arm extended to me, beer can already sprouting perspiration in the heat. I accepted it, opened it and took a swig. “Hair of the dog!” She opened one as well and sat down on a milk crate.

“You drink, I drink,” she toasted me.

The beer hit my empty stomach, which seized, then resigned itself to fate. Izzie smiled vaguely in my direction, tilting her head. We drank for a while in silence. Afternoon sun streamed through her kitchen window, making the china figurines on her windowsill sparkle. They were little people, I saw, with the fat faces of fake children, dresses tacky yellow and pink and pale blue. Their silvery wings winked in the sunlight.

“Um, did you say the
keys
might be in a
cupboard
?”

She focused her eyes somewhere over my left shoulder. “Keys?”

What a rotten day this had been.

I pulled deeply on the skunky beer, then turned to the kitchen cabinets and started opening them at random. Old Corningware piled inside one; canned food in another. Cutlery spilled out of a third, clattering on the countertop and onto the floor. Okay, fuck the cupboards; I scanned the wall for a nail or hook where she'd hang keys. Coloured postcards of the Seven Dwarves were stuck up with masking tape here and there, and a lurid painting of an angel or something, torn out of a magazine. No keys.

“Gulliver phoned me the other day,” came Izzie suddenly.

“Your son, right?” Who in hell would name their son Gulliver?

“Says he's gonna come in an' visit me soon.”

“That's nice.” I began rooting through the drawers. This was more promising – hardware bits, old elastic bands, piles of old bills.

“He's a nice boy.”

“Gulliver?”

“You'd like him. He's coming in real soon, in a few days, to visit me.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“He's a nice boy. You're a sweet girl.” She rose and shuffled towards me, draping an arm around me. “I prayed for you to come, you know. I prayed. You are the answer to my prayers.” She aimed a wet kiss at me. My throat got tight, and I disentangled myself from her embrace.

“Uh, Izzie, where are the keys?”

A crafty gleam came into her eyes. “You go out with Gulliver when he comes in. He needs a nice girlfriend. You make yourself up pretty. He likes pretty women.”

I laughed. “What is this, a deal? I promise to screw your son, you give me a key to my apartment?”

“A bit of blush. You're too pale. And brush your hair.” She fingered one of her own ruined orange strands. “You'd be pretty, with a bit of makeup.”

It must be my karma to have older women constantly try to get makeup on my face. As soon as I hit puberty – no, before, my tits hadn't even begun to think about growing – my mother'd been on about the makeup.

“Just a bit of blusher, dearie.”

“No.” She'd turned from her dressing table in our bathroom and advanced upon me, the brush laden with pink powder. “No!” I squirmed out of the way.

“Oh, for God's sake, Ruby, it won't even look like you're wearing makeup! You're so stubborn.”

“I don't want to, okay? Jeez!” Sullen, I perched on the edge of our high, claw-foot bathtub. Whenever I took a bath in that thing, lying in water up to my neck, I imagined those feet could scuttle like a lobster on the ocean floor, only faster, really fast, taking me places no one else could come.

“Listen, Ruby. You're thirteen.”

“Oh,
really
?”

“You're thirteen,” she continued, raising her voice over my interjection, “and, whether you like it or not, you are becoming a woman.”

I glared down at my flat chest and back at her.

“And sooner or later, you will start seeing men in a different way.”

“Oh, shit, Mom, I already know about all
that
,” I interrupted, terrified she was going to give me an impromptu sex lesson.

“Don't swear.”

“Sorry.”

“Sooner or later, they'll stop being friends. You'll start wanting them to see
you
in a different way. You'll want them to know you're a woman. And that won't happen as long as you keep up this one-of-the-boys routine.”

Mom certainly wasn't “one of the boys.” At this point in my life I'd taken to hanging around with Eddy and Donny and Wayne and the rest up at Candive, smoking and causing trouble. And whenever a primped, preening, made-up girl walked by us down the road, they all catcalled and whistled and left me out of it; I had conceived a violent hatred for femininity.

“I know how you feel,” Mom went on. I groaned. “I do,” she said. “You're confused.”

“Who isn't?”

“Maybe there's already one of your friends that you like. Now, I know you're not going to get up to any foolishness. We went through that years ago, and I'm not talking about that.” Mom's gaze went inward, and she smiled her slow, wonderful smile. “But believe me, there's nothing like knowing you've got them interested.” I loved it when her face looked like that, all soft and pretty.

I didn't have the heart to tell her that I'd already gotten up to foolishness. I'd lost my virginity two weeks before, to Eddy, under a dining-room table at a drunken party at some guy's house while his parents were away for May Two-four. Within five minutes everyone at the party knew, and Eddy turned into a stranger, all ego; I left the party by myself, and cried all the way home. I was just a girl, now. Ever since then, I hadn't hung out with the boys. But I'd seen Eddy a few times, and he did things with me, and I let him. I didn't even know if he enjoyed the sex. It just seemed like something he had to do. He wasn't nasty about it, but he wasn't nice, either.

I hadn't even had my first period. By the time that came along, Mom wasn't around any more. I realized with a slight shock that if she were still alive, she and Izzie would be about the same age. Izzie, Surrogate Mom. She tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear, smiled vaguely and patted my cheek. “Pretty girl.” Then her eyes changed, an immense sadness swept across her sagging face and, as if she could bear no more, she turned away and started out the back door. I gripped her arm and spoke into her ear.

“Where are the keys?”

“Frank took ‘em, I said…”

“You know where they are, don't you?” I took her other arm and started gently shaking her. “Come on, spill to your good friend Ruby.” Her orange hair waggled back and forth, and something in her pockets jingled.

“Aha!” I said.

“Wha…?”

“You're jingling. What's in your pocket?” I went for her pants pocket and she started giggling like a schoolgirl, bouncing and twisting ineffectually. My hands encountered the soft flesh of her belly, clammy in the heat; she began to pant from the unaccustomed exertion. She was a horrible specimen of humanity, my friend Izzie. But I got my hand in a pocket, and sure enough, there was a ring of keys. I held them before her face. “Now why in God's sacred name wouldn't you just give me the fucking keys when I asked for them?” She kept chuckling and wheezing and looking coy. I downed the rest of my beer, and left her there giggling and drinking.

When I opened the door to my stairwell, a whirl of grey fur leapt out and disappeared under the porch with a wild shriek; so much for Earl's cat.

On my way up the stairs I heard my cell, trapped in the apartment, ringing. I raced up the stairs.
Please, oh, please let it be him. Please, oh please let these be the right keys!

They were. I dove through the door, leaving it swinging open.

“Hello.”

“It's Clyde.”

Clyde! Clyde! Clyde!

“Hey, hi there.” I tried to sound cool.
Clyde!

“What's shaking, babe?”

“Uh – fine, things are fine.”

Amusement crept into his voice. “What's shaking, things are
fine
?”

Shit. “Well, Clyde, I don't really know what that means. Does it mean, What are you doing? Or, How are you feeling? Or, Whattaya at?”

He laughed. “You are one strange girl, Ruby Jones.” Strange. Is that good or bad? At least he remembered my name.

“I'm suffering from brain fever,” I said.

“Brain fever?”

“Yeah, like Victorian ladies used to get. They'd go all weak and take to their beds and wave little handkerchiefs until they felt better.”

“Ummmm,” he said all low in his throat. “That's what I thought when I first met you. There's a girl with hot brains.”

We laughed.

“What are you doing?” he asked abruptly.

“What, like, now?”

“Yes, now.”

I thought about the day so far. I opened my mouth. Shut it again, and took a breath. “Not much.”

“Ruby.”

“What?” My legs got wobbly.

“Come to me. Come to me now.” He used a voice of command, mockingly.

“What, like,
now
?”

“Yes, like now. Don't you want to?”

Stupid question. “Where are you?”

He gave me his address. I laughed again, and he joined me, a low, throaty ha-ha. The bastard was power tripping. “Hurry,” he said, and hung up.

I stood there by the phone, twisting my uniform skirt over and over in my hand. Then with a wild whoop, I leapt into the air like Earl's cat and ran out the door. The sight of my red shoes stopped me. Back inside to pull on a T-shirt and jeans, curse my stubbly legs, and grab my leather jacket and helmet. Then I ran down the steps to my girl.

CHAPTER 4

My motorcycle sparkled burgundy between my thighs, hot in the afternoon sun. She started up beautifully and I pulled into the street. My head was busy, thinking how I'd get to Clyde's place in the Market. I wanted to giggle from the sheer speed of it all; I'd first met him – God, only a week ago.

I'd been invited to a big party by one of the hip regulars at the restaurant. I'm a sort of celebrity waitress – everybody's favourite Newfie – that kind of thing.
Hey, it's Ruby – Whattaya at?
I'd taught the regulars to say the Newfoundland equivalent of “what's shaking.”
What a cute accent!
they'd sometimes say;
I'll give you cute
, I'd say back. But it had kept Jim from firing me so far.

So the hip regular, Blue (his real name – he's from out West, Cree, and a multi-media artist, whatever that means) invited me to his party last week. “Darling, you absolutely have to come. Everyone is dying to meet you. I've told them all about you.”