Lucy's Launderette (10 page)

“Sorry, Dadine, I bust have dropped off. I'b sure dobody cabe id. They would have woken be.”

She huffed and handed me a hundred-dollar bill. “Go out and get some food. A large mixed tray from Schultz's, all the
different savories, and some spinach pies, some cream horns and Napoleon bars from Irene's and some cakes from Mozart's.”

“Bozart's? Bozart's biles away,” I protested.

“All the more reason to get going. Paul's going to be here soon, so hustle it.”

Once, I had thought it was wonderful the way she always feted the artists, but now I understood it for the subterfuge that it was.

I made the rounds in a taxi using up some of Nadine's cash, so in Schultz's Deli, I talked them into opening an account and letting me charge it. I'd deny knowing anything about it when the bill arrived.

When I got back to the gallery, Paul was there. He was standing a little too close to Nadine, who was sitting on top of my desk and about to knock Jeremy's ashes onto the floor. I could barely hear what Paul was saying and just caught the words “…essential that the cooling systems keep it under five degrees.”

What was he talking about?

He saw me and flashed a smile. It lasted approximately as long as a hummingbird's wingbeat. I smiled back, unable to rid my face of the idiot grin once it was in place.

The superstrength cold formula was doing a marvelous job, but, despite the drugs, I could feel a huge sneeze coming on. I ran for the washroom. One sneeze stretched out into a sneezing fit that nearly broke a rib. When it finally subsided, I stood in front of the mirror, staring at my shiny red nose and the little patch of chapped skin that was developing just below it on my upper lip.

Paul appeared behind me. He whirled me around and began to grope my backside. “I enjoyed our little outing. I wanna get close to you,” he crooned.

Was it my imagination or the cold formula? I stared at him. He was swimming blurrily before my eyes and turning into that gorgeous ex-Wet, Marti Pellow. I felt all warm and drowsy at the thought of having Marti all to myself.

“Will you sing ‘Love is Everywhere' for be, Barti? Or ‘Angel Eyes'?”

“Love is what? Sorry? What are you going on about?” But it was too late. He'd already turned back into Paul Bleeker.

“I…dever bind.”

“Sorry, didn't catch what you just said. You all right, Lucy? Your eyes look a little odd.”

“I'b fide, just fide. What were you saying?”

“I had a nice time out in the wild night.”

“Be too.”

“We must do it again soon.”

“Yes, we bust.”

He planted a long kiss on my mouth and started to grope some more. I wasn't in the mood for sex on a damp bathroom countertop. And what was worse, I couldn't breathe through my nose. I had to push him away before I either suffocated or dripped onto his leather jacket.

“Dadine's cubbing,” I lied, and ran into a cubicle to grab more scratchy toilet paper and hide for a while. As much as I wanted Paul to know more about me, I wanted to spare him intimate knowledge of my mucus. I pulled another packet of cold formula from my jeans pocket, ripped it open and licked the dry powder off a wetted finger.

I don't know how long I was in the cubicle. I must have dozed off again. It was clear that I wasn't missed or I would have heard Nadine barking for me. I came out and stared at myself in the mirror. It was only then that I realized my blouse was buttoned two buttons off-center. I thought about fixing it but that would have required a major effort and my fin
gers didn't work too well. And in my antihistamine stupor, it struck me as very chic to be mis-buttoned. So I left it the way it was and went back to my desk. Nadine was in her office with Paul. The door was closed and there were low murmurings then short silences.

I tried not to let it bother me. There were often such silences when Nadine talked money with the artists.

I surfed the Net for a while, looking for more information on Paul. One magazine article, with a rather shady sexy picture of him, talked about his role in the avant-garde anti-art movement. Another article, in a backhanded complimentary way, called him a trash artist. Another art review carried the title: Paul Bleeker, The Edible Man. If only it were true, I thought. I never seemed to get more than just a nibble.

Bangings and shufflings came from the office and then there was a crescendo of voices. I quickly flicked up the document I always kept handy for such occasions—a very boring inventory. It was a false alarm. The door stayed shut.

I got really self-indulgent and did a Net search on Marti Pellow. I read all about how he had been addicted to heroin for years and no one had known. I didn't care if he wanted to smoke kitchen tile sweepings or mainline peanut butter, just as long as he was okay again, as long as he was still alive and healthy and singing. But it did make me think hard about Connie.

I did another search on heroin addiction and found out that there had been a suit filed in the Province of British Columbia against doctors and nurses who carried on in their jobs thanks to maintenance doses of the drug. Whew! Connie was starting to look like Miss Average Reformed Smack Head. At least I hoped she was reformed.

I checked the e-mails. There was one from Sky, sent just
five minutes earlier. It read: “Lucy, very urgent. You absolutely have to get the afternoon off. Meet me at Retro at one. Don't be late. Very, very interesting dynamite mission.”

I
banged on Nadine's door, holding a sneeze at bay until she opened. Then I let it fly. She grimaced and checked her Armani jacket.

“Really, Dadine,” I rasped, “I'b sick. Let be go hobe.”

She waved me away and smoothed her jacket, carefully checking it once more. “Go, go, leave. Get out of my sight. You've done more than enough damage for one day.”

Paul winked and blew me a kiss over Nadine's shoulder.

 

I raced down to the Retro Metro. It was on Pender not far from the gallery. When I opened the door to the boutique, Sky was hanging up a man's tuxedo. The garment was circa 1920. She caressed the fabric as if there were a man inside the suit. Sky has a passion for fabrics and textures, indeed, for all beautiful things. Her world is entirely about the
prickly heat of a good wool blend, the heady silence of velvet, the brittle rustle of silk along the skin.

She hadn't seen me. She moved on to an ivory crepe de chine dinner dress, bringing it for a second to her cheek, and letting its odor, probably ancient Chanel N°5 and mothballs, transport her to that imaginary time and place.

She turned around and saw me, then banged her hands together. “You got my message. Yay. Great. We're going out. I'm so glad you could get away. I figured there was no way The Mummy would let you out to play.”

Sky always referred to Nadine as The Mummy. She had said after meeting her the first time, “That woman was embalmed a few centuries ago and then passed off on an un-suspecting public as a living being. She doesn't fool me though.”

Squashing another sneeze, I said, “Dadine doesn't know I'b playing. Besides, I had a good excuse. But you have to supply the tiszues on this expedition. I've rud out.”

“You're sick.” Sky looked dismayed.

“Paul Bleeker's fault.”

She shook her head in puzzlement.

“Something is happening. Has fidally happened. This is a souvedir.”

“Oh.” Her face brightened. “Oh, I get it. I think. Good. I think it's good, isn't it?”

“Yeah, I think so. I hope so. Of course, there's always roob for improvement.”

“Tell me about it,” agreed Sky.

“We'll talk about this over a drink. Whed I'b better.”

“Okay. Listen. We've got to hurry. Max is here from Seattle. He's collecting us outside in two minutes. I've got to lock up.”

I was disappointed to hear our adventure would involve
Max. It was something I would just have to learn to accept if I wanted Sky's company.

Mr. Punctuality incarnate, Max pulled up in his van a minute later. We drove toward Southwest Marine Drive where it was considered shabby form to own a house with fewer than twenty-five rooms. Max and Sky held hands in the front whenever he wasn't playing with the gearshift. His paw slid occasionally onto her thigh where he would have stroked off all her skin if she hadn't been wearing pants.

Sky turned to me and asked, “Does the name Bella Montgomery mean anything to you?”

Sky was surprised to know that it did. I could recall
The Rage of Venus
and
Frostbite.
Amazing silent films. Bella Montgomery had been a silent movie star, very famous during the early part of the twentieth century.

“Bingo,” said Sky. “Well, guess whose house we're going to now? Or more to the point, guess who kicked the bucket?”

“Sky,” Max feigned shock. “Respect for the dead. Pulleeeease.”

“Really?” I said. “I didn't dow she lived id Vadcouver.”

“Nobody knew,” said Sky.

“She bust have been…how old?”

“It's more complicated than that. She died a while ago, but because she left it all to her parrot…”

I groaned. “I think I've heard this story before.”

“I know. I know. Anyway, there were all these solicitors sitting around waiting for the bloody bird to pop off, and the house sitting there rotting,” said Sky. “So one of these solicitors happens to be a friend of Max's….”

Max turned and grinned at me and continued, “Bella Montgomery was another Louise Brooks, the Hollywood version, because Brooks defected to Europe. She was cute and
sexy like Brooks. They were all a bit chubby in those days. It was the look, like Marlene Dietrich in
The Blue Angel.

“Montgomery used to call up the most exclusive clothing stores in any town she happened to be passing through, have them kick everyone else out of the store, put a heater in the dressing room, then she'd buy the place out. Most of the stuff she never wore more than once, if that. The auctioneers know doodly squat about what they're dealing with here. They were going to throw a lot of the things away, the clothes anyway, so John called me. If she had been a forties or fifties star it might have been different, but silent films got a bit of a bad rap. Nobody remembers them, and most that still do are gaga by now.”

“Max does his homework,” said Sky.

As I was listening to Max speak, there was something about him—his mannerisms, his tone of voice—that bothered me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I bore him out. The Bella Montgomery business had my curiosity piqued.

I'd been forced to sit through days and days of a silent film festival with Frank. He was there for the big serious ones,
Metropolis, Intolerance, Potemkin, Napoleon.
Secretly, I had been there for Chaplin and Lloyd but the Bella Montgomery films had been a discovery.

Max stopped the car in front of some very imposing stone gates. He reached into the glove compartment and took out a cluster of old metal. “I have the keys,” he announced, preening. He climbed out, unlocked the gate, got back in and drove us through, got out again and locked the gate, then drove the rest of the way along a driveway of cracked asphalt to the porte-cochere of the five-story mansion. The surrounding garden was a tangle of monkey-puzzle trees, palms, rhododendrons, lilacs, yews and topiary box hedges run amok.

“Come and see the grounds,” said Max. He started toward the other side of the house, which faced the river. We followed him.

“It's like the Great Gatsby's house,” I said.

“Gone to seed,” added Sky.

“They ran rum here during prohibition,” said Max. “Anybody running rum had to have waterfront property.”

We passed a huge glassed-in conservatory overrun with ivy. At the front of the house was an empty swimming pool and a rolling lawn that extended down to the waterfront. Max stared at the mounds of dead leaves at the bottom of the pool. “Let's go inside,” he said.

We went back around to the front door and Max sorted through keys until he found the right one, inserted it, and pushed open the door. There was a whiff of dust and unused rooms, furniture polish and stale air. White sheets covered everything in each of the vast rooms. Max started up the wide staircase and we followed him for two flights. He took us through the master bedroom. Sky and I peeked under the dust sheets. It was a dream of Art Deco modern, mahogany and cream leather upholstery in smooth unadorned lines.

Max went through another door and held up his hands. “The dressing room.”

It was more than a room. It was a small warehouse. Rows of dress racks and garment bags occupied the walls, while shelves, going up to the ceiling, were crowded with shoe-boxes, hat boxes and glove boxes. Lingerie and boxes of silk stockings, ten pairs to the box, all as if bought yesterday, filled numerous drawers.

Sky's eyes were as wide as saucers as she carefully opened each drawer and box and gently touched the contents. “Look at the workmanship in these,” she said, examining a pair of gray kid gloves. “This wash-'n'-wear society has a lot to answer for.”

Max was unzipping garment bags systematically. I could almost see him toting up the figures in his head. Sky did the same. I watched her. There were crepe day dresses, satin, velvet and lace evening dresses in a rainbow of colors. There were suits with skirts, with trousers, riding jodhpurs, costumes for fancy dress balls. It was a staggering haul.

Sky went up to Max and whispered something in his ear. They both looked inside a garment bag then glanced over at me. Max unhooked the bag and brought it over. He looked me up and down until I was blushing then held up the garment. It was a cocktail dress, scarlet water silk, late fifties or early sixties, scoop neck at the front, back cut in a low V, drop waist and gently flaring skirt to below the knee, tight three-quarter sleeves. A large bow decorated the back like a discreet bustle. It was gorgeous.

“Try it on,” said Max. Sky was nodding like crazy behind him.

“What? Here?”

“I won't look,” said Max.

“You go away. Get out of here,” said Sky, pushing him out of the room. Sky had a midnight-blue lace creation in her hand. “It's just a damn good thing that Bella Montgomery was so short.”

Sky and I ripped off our clothes and gingerly pulled on the dresses. There was no doubt about it. Bella Montgomery was the woman for us. Sky swam a little in hers but it was nothing that a simple alteration couldn't fix.

But the red dress!

The red dress fitted me like a second skin.

“It's yours. Take it. Take advantage of Max while he's in a generous mood. It may not last.”

“Really?”

Sky called him back into the room.

He came back in and stared at me. “It's you. It's fabulous. You must take it.”

“Thank you, Bax.” I looked over at Sky who mimed relief, mopping her brow.

“All you need are the shoes,” he said.

“What kind of shoes, do you think?” I asked.

Sky said, “I think those cool sparkly shoes Dorothy had on her way back from Oz.”

“Red shoes?”

Max exclaimed, “High-heeled red shoes. With pointy toes. Preferably in the same satin as the dress.”

“Where will I ever wear this?”

“Well now, you'll just have to invent a life to go with the dress, won't you,” said Sky.

 

It wasn't that I had no life. I had a “sort of” life. Just like I had a “sort of” salary, a “sort of” family and a “sort of” lover.

On that last point, I decided to take the initiative the next day. Thanks to the cold formula and some mulled wine that same night, I was feeling a lot better. And there was something about being in contact with the possessions of Bella Montgomery (whose life, I learned from Max, had been a long string of scandalous affairs right to the end) that made me feel alive, dangerous and wild. The next day, I was perky at work. I even sold a couple of the horrid phalli, and when lunchtime came around, I was ready for action.

It was shortly after noon when I rang Paul Bleeker's buzzer. Ten seconds passed. He popped his head out of one of the upper windows, looked down and said, “Lucy, it's you. Marvelous. Come up.”

When I reached the door to his studio, tantalizing food smells and quite a lot of smoke were filling the hallway.

“You're cooking,” I said.

“Breakfast.” He did look quite tousled and scruffy, as if he'd just woken up.

“Bacon?” I was hopeful.

He nodded. “There was bacon but I finished it. I'm making bacon fat toast. Want a slice?”

We moved toward the row of stainless-steel fridges. One wasn't a fridge at all but a door that slid sideways to reveal a cooking unit. There was also a drop-leaf table and some folding chairs. He gallantly unfolded one for me.

In a large frying pan, a slab of white bread was sizzling and burning in smoking fat. Paul quickly rescued it and slapped it onto a plate.

I love bacon, but bread fried in bacon fat is taking the whole concept a bit too far. Okay. If I were a farmer and had to get up at four on a winter's morning in Saskatchewan to till the fields with oxen and a handheld plough, maybe I could justify eating that kind of pure cholesterol. It reminded me of university cafeteria meals—the heart attack specials.

I was polite. “No, you go ahead. I've already eaten.” My stomach growled in protest.

“You should have come sooner,” he said through mouthfuls.

“This is my lunch break.”

“So it is.” He put his plate down on the table and gave me a bacony kiss. “I'm so glad you've come.”

I wanted to say, well actually I haven't, not with you, but I'd really like to sometime, if it isn't too much trouble.

The kissing carried on, took us from the folding chair directly to the bread crumbs on top of the table. Paul yanked open the snaps of my denim shirt, undid my zipper and skillfully got my jeans down around my knees. There was a short pause, a rustle, the sound of foil tearing, another pause, and
he was in me. I could hear the plate clatter rhythmically somewhere too close to my head.

It was over even before the bacon fat had congealed. He pulled away, picked up his plate and finished off the toast with gusto. I shook crumbs off myself. There was nothing I could do about the greasy patch in my hair though.

He lit up his Sobranie, looked at his watch and said, “You still have some time left to your lunch hour, don't you, luv? Come sit over here. Without your clothes, mind. I'd like to do a few more sketches.”

I did what he asked, mostly some simple poses on the shrink's couch. I figured as long as a girl was being immortalized, a lot of shortcomings could be excused.

 

I had to take three buses to get to Riverview. The psychiatric hospital was set in rolling hills and green fields. Everywhere, things were beginning to take on color with the first negligible warmth of spring. Trees were in blossom. Black-and-white cows grazed and gazed around them with beautiful stupid eyes. It was surreal and it was all wrong. When you knew what was waiting for you, it made the landscape seem like a lie, like a cosmetic used to hide a raging black plague.

When the bus dropped me off at the institution, I sat on a bench and watched a woman wandering around in front of the building. She was across the road, wearing pajamas and a dressing gown, batting imaginary parasites off her body, and giving God a good talking to. She shook her fist at the sky whenever her hands weren't employed in hitting herself.