Babylon and Other Stories (11 page)

Marie-Claire was calmer; she had her own imagination games to play. When Luz looked back over the grass, Marie-Claire was sitting on a rock, a small black figure (Marie-Claire wore black every day) resting her chin on her knees. They waved at each other and went back to their own business. It was early Wednesday afternoon and not many other people were around. Beyond Marie-Claire, cars went by on Lakeshore Drive, taking the curves too fast. A mom with two babies in a stroller crossed the street toward the lake. Seagulls circled and squawked. Luz turned around and concentrated on watching a couple of boats on the water, sails dipping lazy and graceful and white. She believed that to a certain, impossible-to-prove extent her watching kept the boats and the people in them safe from overturning, and she
took the responsibility seriously. She didn't want the people to land in the slippery, gunky water or to have to touch any of the green slime that hovered on the rocks under the surface. You could see how polluted the water was down at the shore: by Luz's feet, scattered over the rocks, were Coke cans and beer bottles and other pieces of disintegrating trash she tried to identify by poking them with a stick. She saw a shoe. A worn-out bicycle tire. She saw Popsicle wrappers and plastic bags and lots of cigarette butts.

Later, when she thought about what she saw next, she would picture it as something small, something that could have come off one of her dolls, and she would think about putting it in her pocket and taking it home and keeping it for herself forever, secret and safe. But in reality it was much too big to fit in her pocket. It was bigger than Luz's whole arm, and it was a weird light brown, almost pink, and it was batting against the rocks like an animal trying to escape a cage: a plastic leg.

On the next block over from the park was the Edgewater Bar & Grill. Inside, there was only one window from which you could actually see the water, and only one table at that window. This was Kelly's table, and had been for ten years. She first started coming to the Edgewater when she was underage, heavily made up, treading carefully in high heels, flirting with older men before retreating to the safety of her friends at the table. By the time she was eighteen she knew the jukebox, such as it was, by heart. She celebrated her birthdays here and was tearfully consoled here after breakups, threw up in the bathroom a few times, tried cocaine in the bathroom once and then twice, came here after classes and instead of them. When she started university she also started waitressing at the Edge a few nights a week to make
extra money. She told Manny, the owner, that she spent so much time there, she might as well get paid for it. Then she stopped going to school, but she didn't stop working.

She met the first man she ever slept with here, as well as the last. The last one being almost a year ago, just before she took her chastity vow. Which she also did at the Edgewater. Quitting was easier than she thought, a hell of a lot easier than quitting smoking. It wasn't like she was giving up sex forever; she was just abstaining, taking a break, because she thought it would be good for her, the way some people who aren't even really Christians give things up for Lent. Her head was clearer and calmer than it was before the vow, when a space in the back of her head had always been devoted to the question of sex, of when and who and how and if, a churning little spot of energy that ran underneath and beside all her other mental activities. Now she'd freed up that energy and could just use it—well, what was she using it for?—to live.

What happened was this: on a Friday night—Friday nights at the Edgewater were an institution, and as usual the place was packed—Kelly looked around and counted nine men she'd slept or fooled around with. It wasn't the number that bothered her but that, looking at them, she couldn't stop picturing them all naked, and it was not an arousing picture. She was walking around trying to serve drinks and hear people's orders over the music and all the while seeing naked men, pale-skinned, dark-skinned, potbellied, muscled or flabby, hairy-chested or bare, hairy-backed or not, leaning against doors, sitting back in chairs, everywhere their freckled, spotted, rough or smooth skin. There was just too much skin. She took a deep breath and thought,
No more.

That was last July, and she hadn't been with a man since. The chastity thing drove Manny crazy and he was always trying to
set her up with somebody, most recently with his cousin from Kitchener who was coming to town for a visit. Manny's interest in her was by turns paternal, platonic, and sleazy. He often encouraged her to go back to school, patting her on the shoulder and telling her she was too smart for this dump, too young, too something; he'd also, every once in a while, look down her shirt or squeeze her butt. When he brought up his cousin, she was wiping down the bar while he flipped through catalogs of restaurant equipment. Manny dreamed about making the Edgewater more upscale, a thought that was wishful in the extreme. He wanted to put in stainless-steel chairs and sell microbrews. He also wanted to institute a no-jeans dress code, an idea that, when he floated it by a couple of regular customers, made them snort Miller Genuine Draft out their noses.

“He's a very interesting person, Kel,” Manny said. “You guys would have interesting conversations, I bet.”

“Okay, so I'll talk to him when he comes in. But that's it, talking.”

“Well, okay, but really talk to him. Get to know him.”

“Manny.”

“What?”

“You know I'm off men.”

“Off men? What does that even mean?” He looked around as if he had an audience for this question, but it was Tuesday night at seven-thirty and the place was almost deserted. “It's not normal, a girl your age. Hey, do you like these stools?”

She looked at the catalog. The stools were four feet high and upholstered in a black-and-white cow print. “Looks comfy.”

“You know what else?”

“What else, Manny?”

“My cousin? He's only got one leg.”

“Poor guy,” Kelly said. “How'd he lose it?”

Manny looked at her over the catalog. “Motorcycle accident.”

“Oh.”

“It's not the whole leg that's gone, it's actually cut off at the knee. The left one.”

“Poor guy.”

“Well, it's not the whole leg.”

When she came back from taking the order of the only occupied table, Manny still hadn't gone back to the catalog.

“So, that doesn't interest you at all?”

“What doesn't?”

“The leg.”

“What do you mean, interest me?”

Manny shrugged and studied a page of light fixtures, chrome and colored plastic descending from some invisible ceiling. “He says girls love the leg, that's all.”

“Great,” said Kelly. “Then he doesn't need me to talk to, does he?”

Manny's cousin's name was Lone. At first she thought she'd misheard, and that his name was Lorne, like Lorne Green, but no, it was Lone. A nickname, Manny explained, that referred to his one intact leg. He came into the bar around nine-thirty, while Manny was in the back. By now there were a few more customers, including a guy who'd never been in before and who therefore thought the name Edgewater Bar & Grill implied that food was being served. Which it kind of did. But Manny had just added the “& Grill” to the sign a couple of years ago because he thought it sounded better.

“You can't even make me a sandwich?” the guy said. “Some fries?”

“I think we have some chips by the register,” Kelly told him. “Do you want regular or barbecue?”

“If I wanted some goddamn chips I'd go to a goddamn store.”

“Feel free,” Kelly said.

“Hey, why don't you just leave her alone,” said a voice behind her.

Turning around she saw a man walk up close, very close, to the guy's table and jab a finger at his face. He was thick-armed and barrel-chested, definitely a weight lifter, wearing a black Metallica T-shirt. Below, his body turned slim at the hips, and then there were his legs. He was wearing jeans, and the leg that wasn't whole was wearing jeans too, with only a hollowness below the knee, an airy, smooth sort of quality in the fabric, to signal what was missing.

“You must be Lone.”

“And you must be Manny,” he said, and smiled. “Just kidding.”

“What's this, a reunion?” said the guy who wanted food.

“Shut up,” Lone said.

“I'm handling this,” Kelly told him.

“Not very well,” the other guy said.

“That's enough,” Lone said, turning to hit him, hard, in the face.

The guy howled, clutched his cheekbone, swore, promised to call the police, swore again, and left. Conversation at the other tables resumed.

“That really wasn't necessary,” Kelly said, wiping down the table.

“He was a jerk.”

“A jerk who hadn't paid yet.”

“Lone, my man!” Manny shouted, coming out from the back, and they exchanged an elaborate handclasp. Kelly could see a
family resemblance: both were stout and thick-chested, although Lone's chest had a lot more definition than Manny's, and both had bushy dark eyebrows and stubble-shadowed chins.

“Lone, Kelly, Kelly, Lone.”

“We just met,” Kelly said.

“Great,” Manny said, clasping his hands together as if he couldn't stand that the handshaking was now over. “Let's sit down. Kelly, could you get Lone a beer?”

“Sure.”

When she came back, they were sitting at her old table by the window, looking at the lights of the neighborhood reflected over the water, red from a traffic light punctuating the paler yellows.

“So, how's Aunt Linda?” said Manny. “Thanks, Kel. Come, sit down and join us.”

“I don't know. She's okay, I guess.”

“Yeah? How's Mark?”

“He's on drugs.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, it's too bad,” said Lone, scratching his neck and looking around the bar. “So, Kelly, tell me about yourself.”

“Not much to tell, I don't think.”

“Manny tells me you're, what, studying commerce?”

“I was. I'm not in school right now, though.”

Lone shook his head and looked concerned. “Shouldn't quit school, Kelly. You miss a lot of opportunities. For example. I'm looking, maybe, for like a business partner? I'm thinking of opening a bar just like this one right here.”

“Really,” Kelly said.

“Yes, really,” he said with exaggerated seriousness. His eyes were dark and small and bright. “I really am. And I'm going to need someone to, you know, keep my books.”

“I bet you'd like her to keep your books,” said Manny. “Since when are you opening up a bar?”

“It's an idea I have.”

“I can't believe it. You never mentioned that till just now.”

“I appreciate the suggestion,” Kelly said, “but I don't think I want to move to Kitchener.”

“Smart girl. See, Lone, I told you she had a good head on her shoulders.”

“Is that what you told him?” Kelly said.

Marie-Claire said, “Cool.”

She turned it over in her hands, the foot in one hand, the open, fluted top of the leg in the other. She'd come over as soon as she saw Luz sticking her own foot into the plastic leg, as if it were a boot. Luz had discovered it wasn't hollow all the way down when she looked up and saw Marie-Claire towering over her. That was the thing about Marie-Claire. She might be a stoner but she wasn't out of it. She grabbed the leg right away.

Luz put her shoe back on. “Is it from a store?”

“A store?”

“Like the models that wear the clothes in the windows.”

“What? Oh, a mannequin? No way, Luz, this is, like, a prosthetic.” She ran her fingers down the leg's shin, gently, as if it were a real leg and might be tender. She touched the foot, which had no individual toes or anything, just one big curve, more shoe than foot. There was a strap at the top of the leg, with a little buckle.

“What's that?”

“It's for people that are missing a leg. They can strap this one on.”

“And walk on it?”

“I guess so,” Marie-Claire said. “Maybe.” She stood up and rested one knee on top of the plastic leg, then tied the strap around the back of her knee and stretched her arms out, balancing. Her hands flashed in the sun. Marie-Claire wore a lot of rings.

“How do I look?” she said. Her hair was dyed black and stuck up above her head, and she was wearing three or four necklaces. She looked exotic and strange, like someone whose costume had tribal meanings, a picture on the front of
National Geographic.

“It's backwards,” Luz said. The foot on the plastic leg was sticking out behind Marie-Claire, in a ballerina's pose.

“Shit.” She undid the leg and bent down to rearrange the strap, her face close to Luz's. She smelled like pot and sunblock. Marie-Claire was beautiful, a fact that seemed to horrify her, and she did everything she could to camouflage the situation. The rings around her eyes were thick and black, as if drawn with a Magic Marker, and her ears were pierced with safety pins. Her clothes were ragged and baggy and everything that wasn't black was olive green. She was regimented, like her own personal army. But whenever she got close Luz could see her smooth, light skin, the freckles on her small, upturned nose, the rosiness on her cheeks, her green eyes and her long eyelashes. All that was there, no matter what Marie-Claire put on top of it.

Marie-Claire stood up again. The foot was straight now, poking out next to her black running shoe like a faceless animal. She took a step with it and lost her balance right away, hopping around and coming back to face Luz, laughing.

“I want to try it,” Luz said.

“It's going to be way too big,” Marie-Claire said, but she took it off and buckled the strap around Luz's knee. Because she was too short to stand up straight with the leg on, she stuck it out in
front of her, at an angle, like a tent pole. When that didn't work she picked up the leg and moved it to the back and started hopping along, dragging the leg behind her as if it were broken. Marie-Claire burst out laughing.

Luz tilted her head, raised her shoulders, and did a monster voice. “I am your servant, master,” she croaked, dragging a little circle around Marie-Claire. “I will follow your orders.”

“Oh my God, that's so funny,” said Marie-Claire. She was wheezing. Luz was laughing, too, and they both had tears in their eyes. The mom with the stroller was looking over in their direction.