Kicking Tomorrow (13 page)

“Oh, you’re just saying that ’cause of what happened with you and him and Little Miss Sunshine,” Rosie said, and linked her arm with his. She swept the hair back from his face and kissed him on the end of his nose, called him her seeing-eye dog, and left him with a smudge of black-and-blue lipstick there.

The plaza was packed. The noise level had soared to obliterate the Muzak. The air was charged. On a regular day a kid could get cautioned by a pig just for loitering here, but an hour or two before a concert, forget it. Kids ruled,
OK?
They perched in rows on the staircases so that shoppers loaded down with bags had to step over them; they took up all the stools around the Pogo and Orange Julep counters so you had nowhere to sit if you had been on your feet all day; they scoured the aisles of the supermarkets and department stores like locusts, making the cashiers and floor managers wild with suspicion; they crammed into the automatic photo-booths, piling six laps high, so there was no point in even
waiting for your turn; they leaned and slouched and loitered as much as they pleased along the balustrades, like crows on telephone wires, like ragged jackdaws with an eye for shiny things, until it was time.

Robbie and Rosie had met on Sub-Level 2, by the Prairie Buffalo T-Shirt Emporium and Head Shoppe. They checked out the posters and the pins and the bandannas and the toker accessories in the window. They were just standing there at the window, not being a menace to society or nothing, when Officer Gaunt loomed up smiling, with another, bigger pig behind him, dressed in plainclothes. As conspicuous as Norbert the Nark.

“Hey, quit hassling me, man,” Robbie said in a hushed, urgent voice. “You’re making people paranoid.”

It was true. People were speaking out of the corners of their mouths and watching beadily. Robbie knew exactly how they felt; he had often seen kids get hauled off in a half-nelson, wearing the only expression you can in the face of such obvious social injustice: stunned disbelief that it’s happened to you and not someone else equally guilty. Robbie knew they were watching now with a mixture of raw dislike for the pigs and amused condescension for him for being so dumb as to get caught.

Gaunt crooked a finger at Rosie. “Would you mind terribly if we just had a private word,” he said, ushering her away by the elbow. She tugged her arm out of his grasp, and stood there blinking ten paces off, out of earshot.

Gaunt returned, crossed his eyes at Robbie and grinned. “My mother always said they’d stick if I persisted in doing that,” he said, “but sometimes I think it’s the only way to see eye to eye with little pricks like you.”

“Wassat supposed to mean.”

“It means you lied to me when we last had our little chat.”

“Oh?”

“Mother of Jesus,” Gaunt sighed, and then winked salaciously. “Lead-pencil drawings on piled-up sheets of paper do leave lovely clear evidence after a fire. We reconstituted some of the carbon remains. I have to say, you’re quite the artist.”

“Gee, thanks,” Robbie said, genuinely proud, but regretting that he had been so proud to actually sign them.

“So you did spend time in the attic. And you must know how the fire got started.”

“Fucked’f I do.”

“Were you or were you not there?”

“No, man, I told you – I was definitely in class when the alarm went.” Robbie leaning with one hand against the window of the Head Shoppe. The sales clerk looked pointedly at him through the glass, and when Robbie peeled his vermin fingers off, there was a row of oily fingerprints left behind, like a nervous run of eighth notes on a staff.

“You see,” Gaunt said, “it’s quite strange, really. After the fire the key was still in the attic lock, welded fast.”

Robbie pulled a face, as if to think. “So?”

“So, you’re a flip little bastard. You don’t care at all, do you?”

Robbie had to think about that one. Care about what? He hesitated, looked above him. Up there at the balcony rail was a gang of Bones fans, replete with studded wristbands and top hats, feathers and coloured hair. They were leaning and watching and waiting like glittering vultures now, and Robbie wondered if any of them would have the courage to drop a pearl of spit, or, like the naked cherubs of Renaissance ceilings, pee a golden shower. He pulled a tight smile, trying to be nonchalant for their benefit:
yep, no sweat, just rappin’ with the fuzz
. Finally he said, “Why should I? Wasn’t my insurance policy.”

“A person
died
in that fire.”

“Right, I knew that.”

“Oh you did, did you? How did you know?”

“Someone told me, I forget exactly.”

“Well, doesn’t it make your skin crawl to think of it? A – person – dying – in – a – fire.”

“No. I mean, yes! Pends on the person. I guess. I mean who it was that bit the biscuit. You see it on
TV
all the time, which these days numbs young people’s emotions. You can’t afford to get upset every time it happens. For your metal health. But you’re right, it is terrible in principle.”

Staring match. Robbie’s Man With No Name eyes vs. Gaunt’s watery red ones.

“Metal health,” Gaunt repeated. “Oh – by the way, may I introduce Detective Sergeant Husker.”

“Listen,” Husker said to Robbie confidentially, like they’d known one another for years. “We have a little investigation going on here, and we need your help.
OK
, my friend?” Up close, he had the bleeding complexion of steamed beef. Abattoir breath. Thick stringy vocal cords. Robbie nodded, and his Adam’s apple grated. “Now. Did you know the dead boy’s blood was full of heroin? When I say boy, I mean about your age. So again, for me, what were you doing up in that room?”

“Art
. Whaddo you want me to say, that we did smack? F
uckaff –
sorry. Sorry ’bout that, sir. I mean, I don’t chip, I’m clean. Look at my arms. No tracks, man. Chrissake, whaddo I have to say?”

“So you deal.”

His breath was really appalling. Robbie stepped back and said, “You kidding? Where’s my brand new Cadillac, then? I wouldn’t be hanging out with all these low-lifes if I was dealing
horse.
I’d be a celebrated dealer to the stars. And don’t say I’m a pusher, neither, ’cause I ain’t. Get away, why donchou.”

“All right, all right,” Husker said. “Go enjoy your concert, and stay
the fuck
out of trouble.”

“We are on your side, you know,” Gaunt said. “There was once a time when all I wanted to see was a policeman on his backside, too. You’re quite the artist. You should put your talent to work one of these days, make a decent living.”

“Yeah,” Robbie said. “I’m gonna forge money.”

The other in-place to be before a summer concert was outside Atwater Park, right across from the Forum; the brimming streets, the pigs swinging their sticks like beefy promenading ladies with parasols, and the seasoned potheads smirking behind their backs. The smells of incense and reefer, of patchouli and dirty denim, of fresh-mown grass and puke. The furtive dope deals and pepsis saying under their breath as they passed you by,
Ash, hacid, mesc
. Crowds were massing around the main doors, under the escalators shaped like crossed hockey sticks. Rosie clung to his arm.

“I
hate
it when pigs harass a young person for no good reason. What did they want from you?” She giggled. “Did they think you’re a
druggie?
Pigs are so dumb going by appearances. I’
m
the one holding, but they don’t hassle me cos I look so
sweet
and
innocent]”
Then she bit his earlobe and murmured hotly, “I get so aroused before a big show, Bob, I get premature elation.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry if I never made it clear,” he snapped, shrugging her off, “but I’m not going.”

Ticketless fans hung around outside in the blistering heat, trying to outwait the scalpers who were fanning themselves with handfuls of unsold whites and blues. Robbie thumbed the ticket Rosie had slipped in his pocket. He mingled, sized up one likely innocent knob with short schoolboy hair and mumbled, “Greatest rock ’n’ roll band ever. Absolutely Very Final That’s All Folks! Tour of Triumphant Return. Ever, truly. Last chance to see a legend. Fifteenth row, hundred clams.”

“Rip-off, man. Guy over there’s got fifth for eighty.”

Robbie took twenty.

Rosie looked at him, all forlorn. “Hey. I
bought
you that ticket.”

Robbie shrugged back at her sharply. “I never asked you to. You know I hate these guys with a passion. I’d kill Keef fucken Richards with my bare hands if I had the chance.”

“Aren’t you going a little overboard?” Rosie said with an indulgent smile, trying to take his hand. “Your anger’s way out of line. And you’re
scary
when you get like this. Please, Bob –
talk
to me.”

“If I have to explain, then you don’t deserve to know,” Robbie mumbled, unconvincingly.

“What
did you say?! If you
what?
Now, where have I heard
that
turn of phrase before?”

Robbie turned abruptly and lost himself in the crowd. He felt cheap and desperate, leaving Rosie like that, but he couldn’t help himself. For if he could find it in himself to turn back now, what would his anger have been worth in the first place?

He was the only one going this way, wriggling up the thick stream of bodies to spawn his rage. He wove around back to the Forum’s stage door, and lurked by the Bones’ fleet of equipment trucks. Back in ’72 some wigged-out pepsi bozo had placed a bomb beneath one of them and blown it up. That had been political, that act, though Robbie couldn’t say why exactly. But he could think of other reasons to do it again, now. He read the sign in the window of the roadie tour bus where the destination is usually slotted:

He spat at the windscreen. His spittle flew low, into the dead insect-fur on the radiator grill. Then a long black limo, so long
it had a double set of wheels at the back, slid around the corner, silent as a shark in black water, and paused in the driveway, shitting a white cloud of exhaust behind it, while the aluminum stage door rolled clattering open. Robbie ran over and hammered his fist on the car roof. It bonged like an Indian drum. He pressed his nose to the window, but it was opaque. A security guard shouted and chased him away.

The sun had set a virulent blackened red, as if its rays had sliced the sky and soaked the cotton clouds with blood. He launched himself off for the comfort of the Roxy, stopping at a dépanneur for a six-pack along the way. What was playing tonight, he wondered. Farm out:
Woodstock
.

He slouched in the back row and got systematically ripped. Besides him, only five people were watching. By the time the scene with all the melancholy sixties garbage came on, he had peed three times and passed out on the sticky, gum-pimpled floor. The usher, shutting the place down for the night, didn’t see him there and left him alone in the darkness.

His stomach ached, and his gums still bore the tang of raw onions from the
maror
that morning. The saliva in his mouth was so thick and viscous he could run it between his teeth like sour Jello. He shivered vigorously in the dank air. Hey, he thought blobbily, this wouldn’t be such a bad place to live. And tumbled into a bitter foaming sleep, as if someone had stuck a straw in his brain and blown hard through it…

… he’s with the family, waiting for a flight to leave from Dorval airport. Quebec is seceding to become the fifty-first state of the U.S. Indignant, rather than becoming Franco-Americans, the Bookbinders are moving to Ontario.

A siren goes off that sounds a lot like an industrial vacuum cleaner. There’s an announcement over the
PA
that Ghadaffi has lost some weight, but not enough; now he’s feeling forlorn and
declaring war on everybody. The air is thick with grief. Robbie feels so profoundly sad it’s like a stone is lodged in his throat. He’s sitting on the floor beside the luggage and Mom’s ruffling his hair. Everyone in the departure lounge knows it’s the end of the world, and they’re very quiet. But Dad’s trying to pretend things aren’t all that bad. He’s yammering with all the forced gaiety of a hostess at a dreadful cocktail party.

“So, Robbie!” he says. “Ahh, do tell us about Hell’s Yells’ plans for their incredible World Domination Tour!”

THE MORNING AFTER IVY HAD POINTED OUT THE DEAD
Man’s Hand, and been so deadly serious about Gaston Goupil, he ignored his Sugar Krunchies and headed out early for Pendeli’s. There he sat, finger-painting the formica tabletop with grease, his stomach clenched sick from the acid coffee poured there. Ivy didn’t show until the last minute. She was red-cheeked and breathless, her white pancake visibly splotched onto her ear-lobes. By that time, in spite of himself, Robbie had whipped himself into a sweat picturing Gaston and her in bed making dirty love, this way, that way, this way again; he tortured himself as they smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, drank brandy for breakfast, and arrived late to school together. Yes, because come to think of it, she was almost always late. Her eyes were always puffy, too, like any serious toker. Obviously she and Gaston were a secret number. Why else would she refuse to explain a thing?

“If I have to explain,” she said when she saw his long face, “then you don’t deserve to know. The sneaky mother counted the tampons in my box in the bathroom. We had the fight of the century.”

“Really? So –”

“So she should know better. Ever since I was anorexic my periods haven’t come regularly. I get maybe eight a year, tops. You’d think she’d be relieved for me, but no, she had to say something. I bet she’s told all of her seven good Catholic sisters on the phone about it, too.” Ivy licked a rolling paper so angrily that Robbie feared she might cut her tongue.

“Uh, well, how long’s it been? It.”

“Three months, I guess. Big deal.”

“Well then,” Robbie said, tentatively. “There’s no chance of you being pregnant by me; ha ha. Is there.”

“Well, no-o. I mean there was only that once, at your house, and you didn’t even go inside. God, this is embarrassing. Look, it’s such a tiny hole. I sit in the bath and soap doesn’t go up, it’s against gravity.”