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Authors: David Eddie

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BOOK: Chump Change
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“Maybe you’d like to write about my art group, Le Gab Productions?” she asks.

“Le Gab Productions?”

“Yes, it’s bagel spelled backwards,” she says.

That should have been my first clue, the first sign of imbalance, oddity, a straying from the golden mean laid down for us by the Greeks. But, as I say, my mind was on its goal.

“Here’s my card.”

She pulled a card from her purse. It said:

Kim W. Lee
LE
GAB PRODUCTIONS

Her group wasn’t set to display its stuff until next week, at the O’Keefe Centre. We set a day, Tuesday, I agreed to meet her there, and entered the details in my notebook.

She left. I approached the spec-clerk, who’d been lurking in the background this whole time.

“I’ve decided to take the gold ones,” I said, and handed him the cheque. Here you go — BOING, BOING, BOING — catch!

11
A Lousy Lover

Kim was waiting for me in the bar at the O’Keefe Centre, dressed to kill. It was only around noon, but she looked like she’d just come from a black-tie charity gala.

As I approached her, I suddenly realized in an intuitive flash why she dressed the way she did. It was a
movie
, an old one, starring Marilyn Monroe or maybe even Betty Grable, something she’d seen back in her homeland. This old flick made an indelible impression on her, and ever since she dressed in this cocktail-party style.

And I was Bogie or Jimmy Stewart or whatever, playing the handsome young American reporter who meets her, recognizes her talent, catapults her to fame and fortune as an artist, and marries her in the final frames.

I can handle that, I thought — up to a point. I sashayed up to the bar with my best Bogie stroll, flashed her a smile. Of all the gin-joints in all the world…

“Would you like a drink, Mr. Henry?” she asked, as I slid onto the stool next to her.

“Sure.”

I ordered a tequila and ginger ale, with three limes. The bartender raised his eyebrows at this — they always do (it tastes better than it sounds, but don’t forget the limes, they’re crucial) —then brought it over. I clinked glasses with Kim. Here’s looking at you, kid.

We chatted. I asked how she made money — from her art?

“Oh, no, my parents are rich. They live in Korea, they send me money every month.”

“You’re lucky.”

“Yes, except they try to have too much control over my life.”

“How can they control your life from Korea?”

“Well, for example, they want to arrange my marriage.”

“People still do that?”

“Yes, they already picked the man they want me to marry. An old, fat businessman.” She made a face. “But I don’t want to marry a Korean man. I want to marry a Canadian boy. Artsy type!”

In response to this frank, candid declaration, I stared into my drink, stirred the cubes around with the swizzle-stick, then brought it to my lips and downed it in a single gulp. She didn’t seem to notice my embarrassment, just kept me fixed with a dewy-eyed stare.

“Shall we go look at the art?” I asked her.

“You want another drink first?”

“Sure.”

Le Gab’s art was fairly typical student-y stuff, I felt, “multimedia,” i.e., bits of pipe cleaner, newspaper clippings, and other three-dimensional objects were glued to the canvas. I paused in front of each “piece” for what I felt was an appropriate length of time, sipped my drink, and made what I felt were appropriate comments. There were about 25 pieces and it took about ten minutes to check them all out. After the last one, I swished the cubes around in my empty glass, and turned to Kim.

“They’re all very interesting.”

“Thank you, Mr. Henry. I’m glad you enjoy them. Would you like another drink?”

“Thank you.”

We sat at the bar.

“Maybe you’re interested in knowing more about Le Gab?” she asked me.

“Uh, sure.”

They were a collective, all-female, non-hierarchical, funded by the Ministry of Blah Blah Blah. I stopped listening after the first couple of seconds, and allowed my eyes to wander appreciatively over her body. She was a bit on the plump side, but I like them that way. Her cocktail dress was fairly bursting at the seams, her body seemed to be straining to be free of its bonds, its corsetry and gartering. I had a vision of the dress suddenly ripping open and Kim stepping out of it, in complicated underwear, snap-on garters, push-up bra, the whole works, and wiggling into my arms.

All this was done with my highly trained peripheral vision because, as she talked, her seductive, almond-shaped eyes watched me closely. I nodded, furrowed my brow, said “mm-hm,” and “ah, yes, I see,” a lot.

Afterwards, as we stepped into the sunlight, she seemed to be struck by a thought.

“I have an idea! Why don’t we take in a show? I love the theatre!”

“O.K.” I said. “Let me treat this time.”

I was bluffing. At this point, I was down to about $75. Two theatre tickets would ruin me, bring my house-of-cards financial empire down in a clattering heap. I’d have to create some sort of distraction at the last moment, suddenly remember another appointment, something like that.

“There’s a matinée of
Les Miz in Concert
at Skydome. How would you like to see that? They sell tickets right here at the O’Keefe Centre.”

As we approached the ticket window, I started rehearsing my excuses. Oh, damn, Kim, I almost forgot, I have a meeting with a prominent editor at exactly —

“Don’t worry, it’s my treat,” she said, seeming to read my mind. “I’ll buy the tickets. After all, I invited you.”

Les Miz in Concert
turned out to be a medley of the songs from the musical extravaganza
Les Miserables
. Just the songs,
sans
the story in between. It was horrible, incomprehensible, an utterly empty cultural experience. This is what theatre has come to? I thought, watching it. What had the tickets cost for this travesty? We had fairly good seats, 20th row centre, but we wound up watching the whole thing on the Jumbotron, like everyone else. It was too hard to watch the tiny human beings onstage, strutting around with their microphones like little trained chihuahuas, when you could see them three stories high on the TV screen behind and above the stage.

It was a warm day, and the roof of Skydome was open. I looked up at the CN Tower, looming over us all like a giant pointy penis. Sorry to use such an obvious simile, but after Les’s torments that’s how it seemed to me: like a big dick and Skydome, at its base, was its single, swollen, herniated testicle. Yes, and all of us, everyone inside, the “fans,” we’re the sperm, waiting to be shot into the sky. Doomed, all of us, like sperm, (except maybe one or two) to lead short, fruitless lives.

Sorry, but I was bored, and when I’m bored my mind tends to wander, mostly down unpleasant alleys. I looked over at Kim. She was enraptured, gazing at the stage, her eyes moist with appreciation, lips slightly parted in amazement at the spectacle taking place before her. Once in a while, a pointy pink tongue peeked out of her mouth, brushed her lips. Her lips were full, red, her hair glossy, rich and oily, blackest of black. She sat erect, alert, her breasts thrust in front of her, heavy yet
light, defying gravity. Her clavicles, her cleavage, all coated in this soft-looking, yellowed-ivory skin.

Suddenly she became aware of my gaze, turned her head and looked over at me inquiringly.

“Kim,” I said, “I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

She smiled a Mona Lisa smile, then turned her attention back to the action onstage.

Afterwards, we went back to Palmerston together for a drink. Nothing much happened there, except I had sex with her.

Yes, I finally got laid, and it was a tremendous relief, I admit, after Les’s torments. However, the experience itself wasn’t anything to write home about.

We sat outside, in the backyard, sipping glasses of wine. It was a warm day, flies and bees buzzing around, and eventually Kim said:

“Oh, Mr. Henry, I’m sleepy. I’m not so used to drinking in the afternoon. Do you mind if I take a nap here?”

“O.K.” I said.

I took her up to my crazy tilted room with the cheesy wallpaper. There go any final illusions she may have about me as a successful writer, I thought.

But Kim hardly seemed to notice her surroundings. She crawled into bed fully clothed, shoes and all. I pulled the shade. I sat on the edge of the bed, and we talked for a while longer in the crepuscular gloom. Eventually, I got up.

“O.K., Kim. Have a good nap,” I said, with my hand on the doorknob.

There was a pause. Then her voice floated up from the semi-darkness.

“Mr. Henry?”

“Yes?”

“Aren’t you going to join me?”

I was right about one thing. Kim’s underwear was complicated, but not in a good way. Sweating and grunting in the semi-darkness, I wrestled with her underthings, tugging and pulling. Something was wrong, things were attached to places they shouldn’t have been. Kim lay silent, like a sack of potatoes, waiting for me to figure it out. Finally, I got to the source of it: she not only wore her panties over her stockings, but they were pinned together, for some reason. Finally, with a heroic effort, I got it all off.

My eyes were getting used to the darkness. I looked at her body, naked now. Her breasts were beautiful, as I imagined; big, pointy, low and heavy on the ribcage, tipped with beautiful brown nipples. But a couple of wiry hairs made their way to the area around her nipples, and she also had a furrow of hair from her bellybutton down to her quite hirsute merkin. She couldn’t help these details, of course, but neither could I help it if they turned me off a bit.

Still, I soldiered on in the usual fashion, kneading her breasts, nibbling on her neck. I tried to stick my tongue down her throat, but she would have none of that.

“No, Mr. Henry, let me show you,” she said. She pressed her tightly closed lips against mine, lightly, several times. “Like a butterfly, see?”

We kissed like that for a while. It wasn’t very erotic, true, but it was sort of an O.K. sensation. What the hell, when in Rome. She seemed to like it. I tried to slip my hand between her legs but she wasn’t going for that. She kept them tightly closed, like a vice, and stared at me with frightened eyes every time I tried.

Finally, I managed to work my hand in there. To my
surprise, she had a burning Krakatoa between her thighs. Is that what she was trying to hide, I wondered, and, if so, why?

Suddenly, I just wanted to get it over with. I was getting tired of looking at her face, the actressy surprise, so I nudged her a bit, then flipped her over, stuck it in from behind.

Gripping her butt, I thought: Lord, this is dull. I moved it back and forth. Kim seemed to go into a sort of frenzy, tossing her head from side to side, clutching and clawing at the pillow, all in dead silence. It seemed phony, rehearsed, learned from a movie, but that didn’t stop me from finally becoming turned on. I gave her a few strokes and felt myself about to come. Not inside her! a voice commanded, so I pulled it out and shot it on her back and hair; a few pearly drops even glistened on the wall above her head. As I say, it had been a while.

“I’d better get some toilet paper,” I said, getting up. I went to the bathroom, came back with the toilet paper, wiped her — and the wall — off. Just at that moment, a key turned in the lock downstairs.

Kim sat up, startled.

“Who’s that?”

“Oh, it’s my roommate, Max. He’s just getting home from work.”

In a flash, Kim was out of the sack, pulling on her things.

“What’s the matter?”

“I must go, Mr. Henry.”

“Why?”

“I must, I must.”

She seemed on the verge of tears.

“Anybody home?” Max called from downstairs. Kim threw open the window and stuck a leg through it.

“Where are you going?”

“I must leave, Mr. Henry.”

I watched in amazement as Kim, in her cocktail-party get-up, scurried down the fire escape and scuttled into the alley and was off.

“Anyone home?” Max asked again.

“Upstairs,” I said.

Max strode up the stairs, two at a time, and poked his head in. He sniffed the air, suspicious.

“What’s going on?”

“Just taking a bit of a nap,” I said.

His eyes narrowed. He looked around. Finally, he withdrew.

And in the end, the lie became a truth. Anyway, I took a nap.

I knew from the start it was wrong, foolish, perhaps even bad karma to continue seeing Kim. We had nothing in common. I wasn’t really attracted to her; in fact, she got on my nerves. At first, I tried to do it the cowardly way, I screened her calls, then didn’t call her back, assuming she’d get the hint. But Kim was not a hint-getter. She took to dropping by unannounced at lunch-time, with a bag from McDonald’s in her hands. I’d be sitting at my desk, writing, and there would be a tap-tap-tap at the window, there she’d be, in full cocktail gear, staring up at me crazily.

“What are you doing? Are you writing? Can I come in, Mr. Henry?”

We’d eat lunch, outside or in the kitchen, then repair to the living room. She’d make a grab for my zipper, then fish out my dick.

BOOK: Chump Change
3.92Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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