Chump Change (6 page)

“Nice to see you, too, Les,” I say.

“You smell like a brewery,” she says, though not in an unkindly way, I think. “A brewery on the second floor above a distillery.”

“Let’s go inside,” Max says.

Inside, changed, washed, drinks in hand, we’re sitting around a popping, hissing fire, chatting.

I like to think I retain some of my anti-materialist values, however, I have to admit at this moment I’m experiencing an intense bourgeois covetousness for the room I’m sitting in, old man Lawson’s study, his
sanctum sanctorum
, a.k.a “the library.” Wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling books, a huge French window leading to a wrought-iron balcony, giant stone fireplace, antique rolltop upon which perches the latest in laptop technology. What couldn’t a man accomplish, I think, in a room like this? And it’s not only a library/study, it’s also a bar. In fact, it’s one of the most comprehensive private bars I’ve seen, with every conceivable kind of booze, including an excellent selection of single malts, plus all the fixins and mixins: ice bucket, tongs, fridge, tonic, soda, lime, ice, Angostura bitters, Worcestershire sauce, horseradish, etc. According to Max, we can drink as much as we want. Supposedly, old man Lawson doesn’t care, there’s tubs more of the stuff in the basement, along with a shitload of canned food, in case, you know, some bad shit goes down, like a nuclear war.

Which is sheer genius, in my estimation. I mean, lots of people stockpile food in case of the unthinkable, but how many have the foresight to load up on booze? And yet, trapped in your basement for years on end with your friends, family, and neighbours, what else would you want more than as much booze as you could possibly drink?

And unlimited smokes, for God’s sake, and books, and paper and some pens. That’s what I’d want, anyway.

I’m fielding questions about my sojourn in New York. At first, I try to downplay the seamier, more sordid and/or embarrassing aspects of my adventures in the city. However I notice as the
conversation continues Les gets the biggest kick out of stories where I “come a cropper,” as they used to say: where I get double-crossed, outfoxed, beaten, cheated, chumped, conned, and flat-out fucked over. So, what can I say (I’d do anything to provoke that savage, childish laugh of hers), I play it up to the hilt, adding plenty of embellishments, ladling on lots of lumpy gravy. The conversation turns to my various New York street-dealings. In New York, I bought nearly everything off the street: shirts, shoes, socks, batteries. Mostly in search of bargains (you can never shake what’s bred in the bone), and I scored a lot of those. However, on the other hand, I was also burned frequently. Once, I bought what I thought was a VCR but turned out to be a shrinkwrapped VCR box with a rock taped inside, to give it weight. Max, Les, and Sam all get a big kick out of that one.

“Who knew?” I asked. “Who would guess that a shady street-dude would have a shrink-wrapping machine in his basement?”

“HAR-HAR-HAR!” Les says. The way she laughs, it’s like she can’t believe anything so funny could ever happen to someone else, and that she’s alive to hear about it.

“I even bought a tree on the street once,” I said. “A huge ten-foot-tall tree.”

“What? At a stand?” Les asks, trying to compose herself.

“No, I was going out for some milk, down 26th Street, and I walked by this guy dragging this big tree along the street, in a planter. He drags it five feet, then stops, drags it five feet, then stops. As I pass by, he says, ‘Yo. Plant. Twenty-five bucks.’ No thanks, I tell him. But on the way back from the store, I pass by him again, and he’s still dragging it along. He looks up at me and says, ‘Twenty bucks. Check it out. It’s healthy, man. Feel the leaves. Just like plastic.’ I touch the leaves, and I have to admit that they are just like plastic. Very impressive. We
haggle, I get him down to ten bucks, and he’s got to help me get it up to the apartment.”

“It’s almost too big for the freight elevator, we have to stuff it in there kitty-corner. Finally, we manage to get it in the apartment. I’m getting out my wallet when it suddenly occurs to me that I don’t know this guy. He’s a tough guy from the streets, he could tie me up, saw my head off with a butter-knife,
grate
my face off with a cheese-grater—”

“Dave!” Samantha says, laughing.

“The next thing he could be selling on the streets might be my kidneys, or my liver.”

“I don’t think he’d get much for those items, Dave,” Max interrupts. “Maybe as a scientific curiosity. The pre-pickled liver. No need for formaldehyde, it will stay preserved in its own brine for centuries.”

“Anyway, nothing happens,” I continue. “We complete the transaction, then as an afterthought I ask him where he got the tree. A shifty look crosses his face and he says, ‘Well, I do some work for this guy, right? And sometimes he pays me in cash, sometimes he pays me in, like, plants and stuff.’”

Max, Sam, and Les all get a good laugh out of this line. Max grabs the bottle of scotch and holds it over my glass.

“Say when.”

“Thanks. The next day I open the paper and there’s a story under the headline, THREE TREES STOLEN FROM HOTEL LOBBY. With the exact description of my new tree.”

“Where’s the tree now?” Les asks.

“It’s still in our apartment. I mean, Ruth’s apartment.”

This clumsy reference to my current romantic difficulties has the effect of casting a pall over our little party. I catch Max and Sam exchanging a “significant” glance. Max slaps his thighs, and stands up.

“Can you imagine staying up this late?” he asks. “I have to go to bed.”

“Me, too,” Sam says, getting up. Everyone looks over at Les.

“I’m going to stay up for a while, listen to a few more of Dave’s stories,” she says.

We sat up drinking and talking, watching the fire slowly dying. Inspired by Les, fuelled by the drinks, and warmed and soothed by the fire, I feel I’ve never been wittier, more charming and engaging. But there’s nothing in the air, no chemistry between us. Her body language says it all, really: she’s way down at the other end of the couch, wrapped in a quilt, cocooned, mummified, self-contained. We chat for a while, eventually she gets up, yawns, stretches — her breasts jutting (forgive me, ladies) like the proud prow of an intercontinental cruise-liner — and, with a chaste peck on the cheek for yours truly, trots off to bed, alone.

Well, what did you expect? I ask myself, after she’s gone, crossing to the bar to pour myself another hefty drink. That Les would jump your bones your first night back? Oh, Dave, I’m so happy to see you, and now I give you the gift of my body.

True, there was Max’s testimonial about the lost weekend with a fridge full of food, but — as Max had also taken great pleasure in pointing out — I was not all that attractive a package, physically, at the moment. Perhaps Les expected something more along the lines of my former self, a little more collegiate, more Ivy League-ish, than the fat, pale monster who climbed out of Max’s parents’ station wagon.

However, I’ve found over the years, boys, that with women physical appearance isn’t as big a deal as it is with us. Fat, short, thin, handsome, ugly: for the most part, women don’t seem to give a damn. Patrick Stewart is a case in point. Patrick Stewart
is the fiftysomething Brit who plays Jean-Luc Picard on
Star Trek: The Next Generation
. He was declared “Sexiest Man on Television” in a
TV Guide
readers’ poll. Now, Stewart isn’t exactly ugly, but with his pugilist’s nose, Mongolian features, gleaming chrome-dome, he isn’t exactly what you’d call “classically handsome,” either. For the sake of argument, let’s call him “old, bald, and homely.” I’ve asked around about this, and women all agree with the poll. He “exudes an aura of authority,” they’ll say; “he has inner strength.” They also like the fact he’s the captain of his own starship.

Note, gentlemen, all the qualities attracting women to Picard are intangibles. Except, perhaps, the starship. Let’s say, they’re all
non-physical
features of the man. Any physical features women are attracted to are usually emblematic of some inner quality: “strong” hands, “sensitive” eyes, that kind of thing. Only one woman I asked talked about a physical quality when it came to Picard, she said (and I quote): “His zygotal system sends shivers up and down my spine.” What’s that? I asked her. His cheekbone/temple area, apparently. But, again, that symbolizes self-discipline, passion held in check.

By the way, in the same poll, the guys overwhelmingly voted Cindy Crawford “Sexiest Woman on Television.” And if that isn’t as succinct a summary of the difference between male and female sexuality as you’re going to get, I don’t know what is.

But let’s face it, Dave: you’re no Jean-Luc Picard, or even a Telly Savalas or Karl Malden, at the moment. You’re more like a young Don Knotts, or Don Adams (in a crazy caper movie, starring “the three Dons”: Don Knotts, Don Adams, and Dom DeLuise! O.K., so one of them’s not really a Don! Still, check your brains at the door, and prepare for a non-stop rollercoaster ride of laugh-a-minute hijinks with the three Dons!).

The only way you can hope to score with Les, I told myself, sipping my drink and staring into the fire, is in the “handy-woman’s special” category.

Yes…sometimes a formidable/ attractive woman like Les will take on a broken-down loser like myself as a special project,
if she sees some potential
. She’ll buck him up, put some iron in his rubbery backbone, light a fire under his flabby ass, and (ideally) turn him into a success. Then, when he hits it big, she gets a mate who is not only successful, but also profoundly grateful, faithful, if not downright emotionally dependent on her.

In theory, anyway. In the real world, unfortunately, “handy-woman’s specials” have a way of backfiring. Sylvester Stallone comes to mind. His wife, Sasha, helped him go from Palookaville to superstardom. They were living in a coldwater basement apartment in Chicago when she typed his rambling thoughts into what later became
Rocky
. Then he hit the big time, and dumped her, as we all know, for a Scandinavian starlet/model who sent a fan letter with a naked picture of herself attached.

Still, you wind up with the alimony, ladies, which in the case of someone like Sly can be quite significant. I know it’s not adequate recompense for your time and efforts, but at least you can fume and stew in style.

I found I wasn’t tired, not in the least. Somehow, all the booze, lies, lack of sleep, drugs, lack of food, lust, fear, tears and beers of the last 36 hours combined to create a powerful adrenalinlike stimulant, some mysterious alchemy transmogrified the poisons and toxins in my system into an elixir that made me feel well-rested, clear-headed, alert, awake, even…fit. I must be in really bad shape, I think. I’m hallucinating health, I’m experiencing the DTs in the form of a simulacrum of sobriety.
Some people brush red ants off their sleeves; I feel like I just ran 30 laps, had a steam bath, rub-down, and cold shower.

I checked out old man Lawson’s bookshelves to see if there was anything to help lower me into sleep. He wanted to be a writer himself, once, Les has informed me. But he got married, had children, went into advertising, and — in part because of his facility for phraseology — quickly rose through the ranks. Wound up forming his own firm. It’s still there, at Bloor and Church, Winston Lawson, Ltd.

He became rich: did the right thing by his family, but he never wrote a thing. The only way his name will be remembered is through his children, and the corporation he founded. Not such a bad thing but that’s not the route I want to take.

His collection is fairly pedestrian. The canon, basically, heavy on the Brits — the Brontës, the Austens, Hardy, Joyce, Lawrence, etc., along with a sprinkling of Europeans and Americans, and a fairly heavy medicinal dose of Canadian writers. Also a disproportionate number of books by and about fighter pilots.

Finally, I spot
Hunger
by Knut Hamsun. I’ve heard about him, but never read him. Won the Nobel Prize, later threw in his lot with Hitler and his gang of thugs. The introduction is by I.B. Singer. Funny that a Jew should write the introduction to a book by a Nazi sympathizer, but Singer’s very forgiving, saying only that Hamsun “was guilty of a tragic mistake,” and that his role in modern literature is pre-eminent.

Well, I thought. I’ll bite. I slid into the big leather Barca-lounger, angled the lamp over my shoulder and began to read.

“All this happened while I was walking around starving in Christiania — that strange city no one escapes from until it has left its mark on him,” I read.

Soon I was transfixed.

I woke up the next morning on fire. What a book! More like an experience than a book, and a harrowing one at that. But funny, too — Hamsun’s hero trying to sell his blanket and his vest-buttons at the pawnshop, begging the butcher for a bone for his “dog,” checking into jail so he can get a decent night’s sleep, telling his jailers he’s a journalist out on a spree who lost his wallet.

If only I could write a book like that! All else would be forgiven, all my flaws, faults, and foibles would be looked upon as merely the eccentricities of a great writer.

The thing to do was get started right away. I leapt out of bed, pulled on my pants, came downstairs, grabbed my portable manual and went out onto the porch so I wouldn’t disturb anyone. Put a piece of paper in the platen. As usual, I was assailed with procastinatory thoughts: look at those nails! Shocking! Go get a clipper! And while you’re up, how about a cup of coffee? Aren’t you tired? Maybe you should take a shower first? Get dressed, have a little breakfast. But I did what I always do, made a deal with myself: self, I’ll do all those things later, just let me get started first, let me build up a head of steam. Works like a charm. I started typing, trying to tell myself the story of Ruth, how it all went wrong.

That’s how Max found me, typing away furiously, when he came down a couple of hours later in his bathrobe, with a newspaper under his arm. I heard the door slide open behind me.
Shhhhit!
But I had some momentum going, I was in the middle of a train of thought, I didn’t want to turn around. Max’s shadow fell across the page, he sipped his coffee noisily.