Cadillac Couches (14 page)

“Uhh . . . uh . . . uhh . . . I . . .” My mind was stuck in a frozen panic, what did
RED
mean? My eyes scrambled through the directions.

“If you see a reddish cross
YOU ARE NOT PREGNANT. YOU ARE NOT PREGNANT
!” I read out loud.

“Wooooooooooooooooooooooo-hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.”

She was delirious, inventing a new kind of celebration dance. She threw her head around and shook her whole body like a woman taken by the power with an invisible hula hoop. I leaped out of the bath and joined in and danced my way over to the mini-bar. Normally a good idea to avoid the mini-bar's up-the-ass prices, but I took out the cheapest bottle. We chugged it back: syrupy Grand Marnier. All the muscles in my neck, my hands, my jaw, even my knees, unclenched. Isobel pretended the bed was a trampoline, leaping up and down in a liberation frenzy.

“I feel like making calls! Spreading the good news. Do you have any credit left on your calling card?” Isobel asked.

“Who were you thinking of calling?”

“I don't know. I guess it'd be rude leaving a message for Finn or Hubert like, ‘Hey, pal, congratulations: you're not going to be the father of my child?'”

“Isobel. No. Let's just dance.”

Sweaty and elated we resumed jumping and hollering in our newly invented Not-Preggers Waltz to the Tragically Hip singing “The Hundredth Meridian.” Finally, we headed downstairs to the hotel lounge. It was a sad sight, but nothing out of the usual for karaoke lounges. We were so relieved and wanting to celebrate it didn't matter where we were. The bar was decorated in faux-ranch style with fake wood panelling, with the requisite deer head mounted above the bar. Business people sat around drinking Labatt Blues and rye-and-Cokes, smoking aimlessly; a few plaid-wearing underaged-looking kids from the suburbs were shooting stick. Like all karaoke bars it had the men, the men with the desperation, mired in nostalgia and yearning. Fifty-year-olds with plenty of passion who, once they get the mike in their hands, belt it out for Canada and for all their thwarted loves and hopes. Like the one on stage that night, Elvis hair with lambchop sideburns and a belly full of pathos and passion. The next up wore an orange Hawaiian shirt, and he keened away to the Beach Boys' “California Girls.”

We sat down as far away from the singing as possible. I said to the bartender, thinking of
Withnail and I
: “We want the loveliest wines available to all of humanity and we'd like them now please!” He smiled but didn't move. After scanning the cocktail list, Isobel ordered us two screwdrivers. He poured us generous shots, apologizing for the lack of grand crus and pink champagne.

Shame and tackiness were thick in the smoky air of this nowhere karaoke bar in a town with a bad reputation for stranding hitchhikers. The vibe was familiar, like the one you get at a bingo parlour, or bowling—subcultures are full of weirdoes unless you're one of them. But who cared after what we'd been through, at least there was an atmosphere. Some hotel lounges have nothing going on, no aesthetic effort expended other than beer posters with football-breasted women in bathing suits.

“Wow, I feel so light. No more guilt and fear and loathing!”

“Ya, let's toast to no little Huberts! Thank Christ . . . Why
did
you have another fling with him anyway? I thought you were through with him years ago.”

“It was a pride thing. I wanted to show him how I'd grown up and become such a femme fatale since we split. I was hoping he would grovel, so I could laugh at him. I thought I could wow him with my nonchalance, but he managed to out-aloof me. No more, I tell you, jamais!”

“Tchin tchin,” we clanged our glasses together.

“Could we have two more, doubles, pease, we're celebating!” I slurred to the moustachioed bartender.

Round four convinced me that the deer on the wall was our new guardian angel. “No really, look Isobel, look at its eyes, it's watching us!”

On stage, a woman with a truly lovely voice was singing Patsy Cline's “Fall to Pieces.” Behind her there was a five-foot screen playing a cheesy video accompanying the song with lyrics written to follow along on the bottom of the screen. A white ball bounced over the words as the song went on and the audience joined in. The format hadn't altered since the 1980s. A real show-woman, she clenched her fists in the air and fell to the ground, pretending she was literally falling too pieces. A table of supporters sitting as near as possible to the stage cheered and hollered as she hit and held the notes. The woman deserved a record contract.

Isobel sang along to “I fall to pieeeeces” with the woman and the other drunks. We clicked glasses almost every few sips. The sweet, massive relief of not being pregnant was almost worth the pregnancy scare itself. I felt as if I had almost been pregnant too. The orange juice swirled with the ice cubes and vodka. People say you can't taste vodka, but if you just put in enough, you can. Once you get past its medicinal taste, you can learn to like the kick, the bite, the sting, the kerpow factor. Plus, you can feel good about the fact that you are replenishing the vitamin C deficiency you get from smoking.

“Two please,” I asked the bartender.

“Two what, eh?”

“Two, ugh, you know, dinks, drinks, I mean, drinks . . .  please . . .” I can't believe I just said dinks. Oh my God. Mortification seared through my tipsiness.

“What kind of drinks?”

What was this, rocket science? “Two cocktails!” God, did I just overemphasize the Cock syllable. Oh man. I tried to give him my best sober look as Isobel pretended she was Edith Piaf beside me. Was he being coy or was this a test?

“So, any kind of cocktails, eh? I'm sorry, pardon me, I suffer from short-term memory loss.” A fellow dope smoker maybe.

“Screwdrivers! Screwdrivers!” I yelled with glee, remembering what they were called.

“Coming right up,” he said as he poured doubles for us.

I smiled a bit too much at him in gratitude and general drunken goodwill, then worried I was careening us toward another pregnancy scare. I stirred my drink, took a big gulp, felt a rush to my head from the coldness of the ice, and took another big swig to distract me from the frozen-brain feeling. Now my mouth was entirely frozen. On further scrutiny, I saw that the bartender looked a bit like Tom Selleck, which brought back fond memories of
Magnum P.I.
and the outfit I used to wear especially for watching his show when I was thirteen and even goofier than now. I smiled at him and passed Iz her drink. She was busy singing along with an old guy to Stompin' Tom Connors's song about snowmobiles.

“Here's to singleness, no kids!” she said, clashing her drink into mine so enthusiastically
OJ
spilled onto my T-shirt. I went stumbling off to the bathroom to do damage control on the stain. I only had three T-shirts for the trip and this was my favourite one. Pale blue, it said,
VIRGINIA IS FOR LOVERS
on it. I don't know why I liked it so much, I'd never been to Virginia. I wobbled down two flights of stairs, careful to clutch the handrail the whole way down. The bathroom looked pretty clean. There was a lurid arrangement of fake flowers and some more squirrel art on the walls. I was conscious of swaying a bit on my feet, but being a successful drinker means being able to function like normal. It just takes focus.

I looked in the mirror and was amazed by how puffy my eyelids looked and how mussed up my hair was. I tried to straighten my part with my finger. It wouldn't go like I wanted it to, so I doused it with water and tried to slick it down. The water felt good on my forehead. I splashed my face and neck with it, then bent over to take a long gulp.

I moistened a paper towel, pumped lots of soap on it, and scrubbed away at the
OJ
stain. I quickly lost patience with the soap and paper; the soap wouldn't stop foaming and I had millions of tiny fragments of paper towel stuck to my T-shirt. It looked like the Milky Way. I got compulsive and wet more paper towels and tried to clean up all the paper debris. Yet the more I wiped and wet it, the worse it got. Pretty soon I was going to look like I was the winner of a wet T-shirt contest.

Stop it, Annie, stop it. I closed my eyes and counted to five and then left the bathroom.

I think it was two pear ciders later, I felt so happy I could barely see. The bar seemed less full of people and all the ones who remained looked friendly and beautiful. I loved them all. And I loved Isobel. And I loved the bartender. I felt very warm. Tom was beautiful. Hawaii was so nice.

I adored the deer on the wall.

I loved coasters and peanuts and even smoke in my eye was only mildly annoying.

It seemed only right to grab the microphone and hand it to Isobel. She let me drag her to the stage. I couldn't get over how outrageous it was that there were no Hawksley songs on the machine. What kind of hick-ass place were we in? I looked around the swirling happy room and said to Iz, “Let's sing ‘Safe and Sound,' we can do it!” With no karaoke machine, no amplification, just the volume of our hearts we did. I was so enthusiastic, it felt almost holy, singing my heart out in that dingy bar. After we finished one song, two shots of tequila arrived. With Isobel at my side I felt I could do anything. We were a unit. And I was protected. I don't know how many Hawksley songs we sang and tequilas we shot before I vomited, stage left, and Isobel fell down laughing.

The next morning I had a serious pasty mouth, a dry throat, and an African drum version of “Safe and Sound” pounding through my head. But I remembered the thrill of performing and I had vague memories of
Magnum P.I.
carrying first me fireman-style over his shoulder to the room, then Isobel. I scanned the room just to make sure neither of us had accidentally seduced him. Isobel was weighing herself. Since when did hotels have scales in them, I wondered. Unless she'd brought it with her. I closed my eyes.

We left the hotel at noon. I slapped the whole bill on my card, including the bar tab. I was paranoid that everything about me smelled like vomit, but I felt oddly confident that changing the tire should be in the realm of our capabilities, math failures or not. We could ride the high of not being pregnant for a long time. Hawksley was only one province away.

side a, track 7

“. . . singing is about sexual confidence,

so sing out your guts if you feel good enough

to let the moment just hit you,

if the music befits you”

“Paper Shoes,” Hawksley Workman

By three o'clock I'd accepted that I was not getting the nuts on the tire to loosen. My hangover had overtaken my optimism. I was strong but annoyingly not tough enough to get them loose. Isobel gave it a try once or twice when it was obvious that I was getting exasperated. Every young woman should be able to do this—my mom could do it, I'd seen her do it. Smudges of grease on her face, she wasn't going to wait around for a man. I wish I hadn't been so busy rebelling against her and instead had learned this kind of valuable stuff. Like how to make her unbelievably delicious plum tart, sew buttons on leather jackets, and how in the heck to do an oil change and change a spare tire when the nuts were sealed too tight.
Bolts not nuts, Annie, don't be crude
, I could hear her saying.

Isobel flagged down a chortling old truck full of Mexicans. She didn't waste her time using her thumb, just some old-fashioned coquettish manoeuvre like Claudette Colbert in
It Happened One Night
. A little smile. A little thigh. A little thrusting of the lips and hips.

We could tell they were Mexicans because of the flag painted on the side of the rusty orange truck and the rosaries and plastic Virgin Marys swinging from the rear-view mirror. Three of them got out and cracked jokes while making quick work of the tire changing. Our replacement tire wasn't in great shape, the one named Pedro pointed out. Isobel smiled winningly and practised her self-taught French-style Spanish. Grande probleme, n'est-ce pas? No habla mucho Española. They were enchanted. They told us they were migrant workers on their way to pick Ontario tomatoes. Seemed like a helluva long way to come to pick tomatoes, but they were cheerful as all heck.

I smoked my last cigarette and by accident caught the eye of the guy still sitting in the truck, the anti-social one. He gave me a lazy, conspiratorial smile. I smiled back knowingly without exactly knowing what we were smiling about. Mexicanos are so beautiful with their golden brown skin, chocolate brown eyes, gleaming white teeth. Don Juanitos all of them, no matter if short or chubby, old or young, they've got twinkling eyes and are ready to flirt on the spot. Not to stereotype or anything.

No mucho Englese, they said, and it reminded me of our trip to Puerto Vallarta. Looking at these muchachos, I wanted to go back to Mexico, to travel with no sweetheart at home, free to roam. They are a kindred people, exceptionally romantic, like me. Always singing about love, talking about it hyperbolically.