Strip (10 page)

This next part did happen:

“My name is Kent. Daniel gave me your number.”

“How is he? Is he there? Did he get my message?”

“Message? Here? No. I'm in Quebec.”

“Is he all right? Is there some problem?”

“I think he's fine. He called and gave me your number.”

“Is he still in New York?”

“He never mentioned New York.”

My head roared, my heart was beating so fast. Daniel knew where I was. He'd gotten my message. Was this his way of telling me he wanted to get together again? Was he testing the water? Was the next move up to me?

“What did he say?”

“Nothing, he just gave me your number. I barely know the guy.”

Barely know
the guy
? So not only did Daniel dump me, but he dumped me on someone he barely knew. Did he see me as some kind of pathetic charity case? Was I to be a consolation prize? Was this guy another version of me? “So?”

“Well let me give you my number,” said the voice named Kent.

“I don't have a pen.” Was Kent some gesture to absolve Daniel of any guilt (which I doubt he felt)?

“What's your address?” Kent persisted.

“I'm in the Old Town.”

“There are lots of streets in the Old Town.”

“Sainte-Ursule.”

“Above a café?”

“Café Latin.”

“The apartment that was for rent?”

“Yes.”

“I live next door. Hey, I bet you're the one I saw on the street. You're blond right?”

“Dirty blond. I moved in yesterday.”

“Nice butt.”

“Pardon?”

“And legs. But you're a dancer, so it figures.”

How did they know each other, Kent and Daniel—and how did they know each other
not that well
? I had wondered this with everyone I'd met who was connected in any way to him, until it burned me deep down. How could they know him casually, without falling for him, like I had? How dare they not fall for him? Who could know Daniel like I did? Love him like I had? Did Daniel have a network of guys across
entière monde
? I was just
plat du jour
in Montreal. One long audition, to Daniel, and I didn't make the final cut. So much for gut-rotting bitterness. Jealousy.

Daniel had reintroduced me to jealousy. It was something I had lived with every day since I had taken my dance career seriously, and then almost boiled over, in my last year, before being invited to dance with the Company. They played us off until we practically devoured each other with hatred—our saving grace was our collective hatred of nasty faculty head-trips. It was ass-kissing to get whomever I wanted—Miss Friesen—to do whatever I wanted: give me a private meeting with Kharkov to let him know how devoted I was to the Company, and that I would do whatever it took to get in (except sleep with his wife). It was what brought out the best and worst in dancers.

“What are the chances of two
wasp
s living side by side in Old Quebec?” Kent said.

I forced my disheartened self to sound interested. “Where are you from?”

“Toronto, mostly. Hey, I'll be right over. We can do this in person.” He didn't give me a chance to reply. A moment later I heard a door slam out on the street. His door. Then another slam. Mine. Then I heard him on the stairs.

When I opened the door, I saw a smallish figure in a white
t
-shirt and jeans, Levis, with an obvious bulge in his button crotch.
Hopeful
is the only word I can use to describe my first impression of him. He looked like he had been in the no-one-to-talk-to desert way too long. His eyes were sunken and searching. He wasn't like Daniel at all. Daniel had hair. Daniel had perfect teeth. Daniel was taller. But this guy, Kent, was making up for it by his openness and his crooked, hopeful smile. His young old-man's face. I imagined his better days had seen lots of sun, cigarettes and drinks. But now his deep eyes drooped, just a little, with a sparkle. Come to think of it, Daniel probably wouldn't have liked that. Dancers live in fear of aging; it's all they talk about. They live their lives in dog years. Yet they do everything to bring it on: chain smoke, starve themselves, dwell on their short-lived careers and say things like “I'm old.”

Kent had a small hard body. Daniel
would
have liked that. Kent definitely wasn't a dancer. Daniel might have liked that. He stood at the door in nothing more than that worn white
t
-shirt and faded-in-the-right-spots blue jeans. “Come on in, you're shivering.”

He stood close. A nervous energy radiated off him and my nipples hardened and the hair on my arms stood up in some kind of response.

“Henri's at home, so I thought I'd come over.”

The smell of stale smoke was on his breath and his skin.

“Who's Henri?”

“My roommate. He's uptight about company.” Kent looked around the empty room. “Is this it? Where's your stuff?”

“This is it.”

“I guess it didn't take you long to move in. Luc take a liking to you?”

“Maybe I was looking a little desperate. I've seen so many dumps.”

“Someone made a fortune in pea-soup shag.”

“Pea-soup toilets, yellow sinks, pink bathtubs. Ugh.”

“You're in
la belle province
. It's pea soup from here on in. You lucked out. I don't know, but if you want some furniture, some cathouse neighbours had to make a quick exit and left enough stuff to furnish this place. And it's all in our basement.”

Right away, just like that, he said it: “You want some company?”

 

The stairwell was silent
before, and will be silent again, after I leave, but right now it is crowded with the noise in my head, like a corps of swans running into place for the final curtain, pointe shoes tapping the stage. I just heard a door slam way below. The laundry room must be down there somewhere. But I'm paralyzed. I sit here with my hands shoved between my thighs, I can still flex them tight enough to crack nuts if need be.

 

There was that offer
of the hookers' furniture. Kent always stood so close. “I mean we're practically buddies, we both know Daniel—I could just sleep beside you— shit, is that where you sleep?” He laughed out loud when he saw a sleeping bag on the floor by the fireplace. “You dancers are gluttons for punishment. I hear Baryshnikov sleeps on the floor.”

“Baryshnikov is nothing but…”

“…bullshit stories about Baryshnikov. You dancers…”

“Well I'm saving myself,” I said. “Maybe that sounds old-fashioned to you.”

“For a mattress? I'll get you one.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“I'll get you one anyway.”

“A hooker's mattress? I'll pass.”

“No. Something new. I have a friend at Kresge's. He owes me a favour.” He looked me over. “So you're saving yourself? Does he live in the neighbourhood? Have we met?”

I'd be damned if I'd tell him it was Daniel. “Montreal.”

“Lucky guy. Can't believe your type still exists. You're pretty. You sure you don't want me to stay, anyway?”

 

I'll start walking. I
can keep my back against the cool concrete. For fuck's sake, I have a bedsheet on. How discrete is that? It's not like I'm naked. I'll start moving. I have to move. Down is easy. I'll say I'm doing a booze run for a toga party. My clothes are down there somewhere. What the hell has come between me and happiness?

 

Next morning Kent was
on the sidewalk in front of the door that led to the cellar, between his place and the café. He was hopping around still in that white
t
-shirt trying to keep warm, hands tucked under his arms, making his lean biceps taut, cigarette tucked in the side of his mouth. I'll never forget the damned cigarette. “Where's my cig'rets?” he'd say.
Cig'rets
.

He scraped open the door, and we stepped down centuries-old limestone block steps into a still life of recent bordello history, Quebec, circa God knows when. Dusty light flooded in behind us, as well as in from a narrow window in the back, which provided enough light to see things I didn't have any use for: torn red silken lamps with black fringe, fake tropical plants with big dusty leaves, French provincial end-tables, mauve rattan dressing tables and matching purple headboards.

Kent convinced me to drag a few buried items up to my place. We made a couple of trips, exchanging glances each time we passed. Smiling. Wondering. Searching. Counting my lucky stars. Suddenly I had a furnished apartment: cutlery for ten, a toaster, pots, foam mats for a bed and more foam padding in the corner to recline on, a glass-top, gold-framed ice cream parlour table and two matching chairs to put by the window where I could sit and look into the street. And I had a friend, Kent, my real live fairy godmother.

Kent's enthusiasm didn't waver. “I'll cash in on that Kresge's favour and get you a mattress.” And he was gone.

I looked around the room. I was alone. There would be no forced-polite sharing that came with roommates: not like living at Rachelle's or Hugues' or Madame's. It was all mine, at least for the moment. For now it was my own quiet space that no one would walk through on their way to the bathroom or kitchen, with their hair up in a towel, or shout from another room that the phone is for you. No noise or babies or smokers or someone else's dirty dishes or anyone bitching about mine not being done.

There was a cobblestone street under my nose and a café terrace beneath the back windows, and lots of room to dance. Under me, four-hundred-year-old stone and timber, and I was surrounded by feet-thick walls. There is something about space, creating it and owning it—in a ballet class, onstage, sitting quietly in a corner on the floor of your room. I didn't want to move. I wanted to sit on the floor for maybe a day or more, and not think. I had been desperate for this. I remembered security in the past: the smell of my mother's cologne—Calèche, coincidentally—saturating her mink coat, Christmas lights, knowing that Benjamin Weinstein's mother would always break the rules and give us cola on a school day, a warm theatre seat, my own apartment, payday, a full fridge and finally an offer to dance with the Company—one paycheque and only one job to do—and finally, thinking for a moment that Daniel was all mine.

Late in the afternoon, a cab with a mattress sticking out of the trunk pulled up, and out stepped Kent. In a minute we had it upstairs and into my room. “Happy housewarming. We'll try this out sometime. Take it for a test run around your place. Put it into high gear, burn some rubber, when you aren't saving yourself.”

“You're optimistic.”

“No. You are.”

I made tea and we sat by the front windows on my Marie Antoinette dining set.

He broke the silence. “Would you like to come for dinner?”

“I can't remember the last time someone asked me for dinner. I'm sure it's happened. I guess we ate…”

“Who?”

“Nothing. No one.”

“Mister No One.”

“Yes. I suppose.”

“Well, I am asking you for dinner. One of us will pretend it's a date. Most likely, me. Now get some rest. You look pooped.” He rose and kissed my cheeks, first one, then the other—“Hey we're in Quebec now”—then he quickly left. I lay on the new mattress, stared at the ceiling and wondered what favour he had called in to get it.

I dozed and when I woke it took a moment to remember where I was—the room was dark and the streetlight fell across the floor. My body ached from finally relaxing into a quiet place. As I got dressed I got caught up in the occasion of it. I made a point of wearing my party
t
-shirt—tight on the biceps, worn silky thin. I'd worn it to the disco in Montreal. No underwear: when you spend as many hours as I have in a dance belt, you relish the pleasures of not being confined.

Something about being physically close to Kent made me feel sexy—a natural physical response that was new to me, and not just a hard-on. It turned me on to know I turned Kent on, knowing that he was watching me with one thing on his mind. He had become my “mirror mirror on the wall,” making me believe I was sexy. It wasn't like my attraction to Daniel, who excited me because of his own sexiness. It occurred to me that I needed to be desired.

His apartment was old mixed with new: a pine loft furnished with French Canadian antiques, settled, mature, not like this dancer's make-do of hooker hand-me-downs on the other side of the wall. Kent kissed me like he had been on a desert island for a spell—long and big and juicy. I sat on the instinct to pull away.

Kent was whipping up an honest-to-God grown-up meal that would scare any ballerina. It included spaghetti with homemade sauce, bread and real-France French red wine most likely out of my price range: Chateau something-sur-something. He plunked it on the counter and twisted the corkscrew showing off the working tendons and ligaments beneath his fine this skin. “That
mis en bouteille au chateau
phrase on the label means it should be good. I mean it better be good.”

“Because of what you paid?”

“No, because tonight is special. It's kind of an anniversary I guess, a celebration of our first dinner together. The wine should be special. If it isn't I'll go get something else. Although I'm warning you I bought a few.”

“So what about the
mis en bouteille
thing?”

“It just means they squeezed the grapes…” Here, he paused.

“Isn't that how you make wine?” I wondered if it had been just plain stupid to dress like this. I mean what the hell was I trying to show here? At this rate we wouldn't make it to dinner. “Go on.”

“…on their own property, and then bottled it there.”