Читать книгу The Footstop Cafe - Paulette Crosse - Страница 12

Moey favours modern belly-dance music from Algeria and Morocco as opposed to traditional Pharaonic compositions. As he searches through his CDs for a suitable piece for his premiere performance at the Footstop tomorrow, he puts aside “Ya Raya” (an uplifting little tune) and, as a possible alternative, “Nahawad” (a dramatic, mysterious song). At the same time, in his mannishly cramped script, he writes his monthly Vitality Sermon.

On the last training day of every month, Master Zahbar asks his instructors to deliver unto his students a rousing speech filled with martial-arts wisdom. He has provided his instructors with a self-published manual of Key Elements to be included in these speeches. This evening Moey has chosen Key Element No. 7 (Train Without Music) and No. 17 (Never Feel Relief). He picked both at random.

To say Moey is writing without thought is completely wrong; he is doing a great deal of thinking as his left hand flips through his CD rack and his right hand places inky chicken scratches upon paper. Only he isn’t thinking about martial arts; no, he’s thinking about double-veil routines versus sword acts. Improvisation versus choreography. Taped music versus a live band.

Moey doesn’t feel guilty about this discrepancy in mental acuity, because many years ago he learned that Master Zahbar grows agitated when his instructors embellish on the wisdom inscribed in his manual; therefore, other than the occasional use of a synonym, Moey copies the Master’s Vitality Sermons verbatim from the guidebook. More than once he chafed at this restriction, questioned the correctness of it, because some of the Master’s philosophies seem rooted not so much in fact but opinion. Yet who is Moey, a prairie-town trophy holder, to question the beliefs of a world kickboxing champion?

So as Moey sweats and frets over the petrifying, exhilarating prospect of doing his first public belly-dancing performance on the morrow, this is what he writes:

A dedicated martial artist does not train to music. Music is an addictive drug, supplying the martial artist with a false and temporary energy. It creates an unharmonious barrier between the mind and the body, so that the body becomes unable to function adequately without the stimulation of music. What does a martial artist do when in a Real Street Situation? Does he turn up the volume on his walkman? Look for the closest radio? Start singing the lyrics of the latest top-ten song?

No! He must draw on all his resources, focus all his energy, to deal with the threat at hand. He is a warrior! No warrior relies on outside stimuli to perform. If you are training to music, stop now, or I guarantee that when a Real Street Situation crops up, you will be unable to adequately defend yourself!

And he also copies this down verbatim from Element No. 17:

The path to excellence in martial arts can only be found when the martial artist stops feeling relief. Relief is an indication of both a pre-existing fear and complacency.

In the first place, the martial artist should never feel fear. If you eliminate all your fears, you will never again feel the relief that follows when that fear is removed. Break down your fears — analyze them, then desensitize yourself by facing them directly and repeatedly. A true martial artist feels neither fear nor relief — be a true martial artist!

As he pens these words, Moey feels uncomfortable, as if he’s wearing a wool sweater in a sauna; in fact, for the past six months or so, every time a Vitality Sermon rolls around, his scalp tingles unpleasantly. But as usual he ignores the sensation. Instead he chooses to mentally review another item of importance for his looming performance at the Footstop tomorrow — his costume.

Moey’s costume is self-assembled, not self-made. It consists of a red sateen scarf worn pirate-style on his head, a large gold earring, and a curling, fake moustache (all purchased, over a series of months, from Liquidation World). Next comes an enormous black cape of a flowing material that glitters with interwoven threads of gold (part of a Halloween Merlin the Warlock ensemble one of his brothers wore at age fifteen).

A woman’s sleeveless bolero, though extra large, fits him a little too snugly, but it is simply too authentic to replace; reflective plastic mirrors, red tassels, and gold braid decorate every inch of it. He purchased it from a Mexican stall during International Celebration Day two years ago. His pantaloons — a glossy lipstick red — come from Habib’s Quality Imports in a section of Vancouver known as Little India. The pantaloons (again, women’s apparel) are meant to be worn under a sari. Acquiring them knocked at least a year off Moey’s life; the slim, giggling East Indian cashier saw right through Moey’s stammered story about it being a present for his wife.

Bare feet and finger cymbals complete Moey’s costume. He is aiming for the Gypsy look.

Moey puts aside his plagiarized speech and cracks the air bubbles from his thick knuckles. He closes his eyes and envisions the layout of the Footstop, trying to picture himself moving with grace and passion among its merchandise. Sweat pops out on his palms.

“I’ll never be able to sleep tonight,” he mutters, and the telephone shrills.

It’ll be Karen, he thinks. She’s changed her mind. She doesn’t want me to dance tomorrow.

He hurls himself from his chair in an adrenaline-fuelled trajectory, staggers across his gloomy basement suite (all twenty feet of it), and rips the receiver from its cradle.

“Hello?” he bellows. “Hello?”

“You don’t have to shout, Moey! These things work by electricity. It’s not a long hollow tube you have to scream down.”

“Mom?”

“What, are you joking? It’s me, Miranda.”

“Oh.” He licks his lips and shudders with relief. Not Karen, after all. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.”

“What, between me and your mom?”

“Uh ... well, all women sound the same on the —”

“Yeah, well, your mother doesn’t suck on your balls, does she?”

He winces. “Miranda...”

“Look, can I come over for the night? I went shopping today.” Her tone drops a little, roughens a titch. “Wait till you see what I bought this time.”

“Tonight’s not a good night.”

“Why not? We don’t have any competitions coming up.”

Miranda knows the rule: no sex for two weeks prior to a fight. Key Element No. 21: Intimacy Softens the Combative Spirit.

“I just want to conserve my energy for tomorrow,” he says.

“What’s so special about tomorrow?”

“Vitality Sermon,” he lies, his pulse starting to pound like a mallet against his larynx.

“You figure you need extra energy for that? You do them every month.”

“Yeah, well, I always like to have my wits about me, give a good performance.”

“Performance is right. Got to make it sound good in case Hitler’s listening.”

“Don’t call him that.”

“Why? You can be such a limp noodle sometimes. Look, do you want me to come over or not?”

He thinks about it for all of three seconds: if he says no, she’ll sulk for weeks. She’ll misplace his telephone messages at work and overbook his Introductory Lessons. Master Zahbar will notice and take Moey into the office for a Man to Man Talk.

He sighs in defeat. “Of course I want you to come over.”

But, of course, he doesn’t. Miranda fucks the way she fights — intently, ruthlessly, her sole purpose to conquer. In her twenty-six years of life, she’s taken twice as many lovers and won twice as many kickboxing trophies as Moey. The last thing he needs right now is to be conquered.

Oh, to be sure, Miranda won most of her trophies point sparring, not full-contact fighting. At five foot two and 115 pounds, she lacks the necessary mass to knock her opponents’ blocks off. Lightness of feet, accuracy of strikes, and unbridled energy can’t, in full-contact kickboxing, overwhelm thundering poundage. Not in the competition ring, anyway, where brute force is always combined with deadly skill. Miranda bears this knowledge pragmatically, and what she lacks for in the ring she makes up for in the bedroom.

Once, after an unusual round of celebratory tequila shooters (both of them rarely imbibed alcohol), Moey asked her why she hadn’t become a dominatrix.

“Because I don’t go for all that sadomasochistic crap,” she scornfully replied.

Since then he often wonders how she defines sadomasochism, given her fondness for whips, wrist shackles, and anal beads capable of delivering mild electrical shocks. Not that he ever, ever, lets her get anywhere near him with those beads. Or, for that matter, anything else that suggests a back-door entry. Miranda views this as his great flaw, his total abhorrence of even the idea of anything entering his rectum. At least once a month she says irritably, “For Christ’s sake, I’ll use plenty of lube. A couple of thrusts and you’ll be hooked. Come on, you’re wasting a perfect pair of balls.”

Not the slightest pleat, wrinkle, or crimp mars the taut surface of Moey’s testicles, but why this should endow him with the desire for derrière drama is completely beyond him. Miranda can suck on his testicles endlessly, sometimes gently, sometimes a trifle rough, her tongue flicking hummingbird-style to and fro or slinking wet and stealthily over their smooth terrain. She can — and on what she terms her lazy nights, frequently does — climax solely by curling catlike between his legs and sucking contentedly on his privy parts. Those are the nights he likes best.

As Miranda walks into his basement suite a scant fifteen minutes after their phone conversation, her wet Rastafarian braids and delicate Negro features framed by the halogen streetlight a mere five feet from Moey’s door, he can tell by the gleam in her eyes that this isn’t going to be one of her lazy nights.

Alas.

At least the rainstorm will muffle her screams of pleasure from his landlords above.

As cramped as Moey’s writing is, Morris’s script is neat and fastidious. Every evening his letters march from his Bic pen with the precision of soldiers on parade.

Morris keeps these obedient alphabetical symbols in a journal. For the most part, his entries describe his unusual podiatric cases, all lovingly and lavishly described. This evening he briefly touches on a case scheduled for surgery tomorrow morning: Mr. P. Chapman, a thirty-eight-year-old man suffering from Madura foot, a fungus infection characterized by chronicity, tumefaction, and multiple sinus formation.

But occasionally the River appears among his meticulous recordings. Morris mistrusts the River, fears it even. Tonight, while his wife lies sleeping on their Sears king-size bed, he writes these words beneath his medical notes:

Another person drowned in the River today. A fisherman, according to the six o’clock news. He waded in too deep while trying to unsnag his line. I fail to understand why he was fishing during a torrential downpour in the first place.

This is not the only casualty this fall. Five weeks and two days ago, a sixty-four-year-old woman was walking her Chihuahua in Lynn Canyon and failed to realize the danger of trying to cross that River without benefit of a bridge. One wonders if it was a suicide, though apparently this has been discounted. She was wearing heels, too. Outrageous footwear for such an activity. They cause no end of damage to the metatarsus.

What is wrong with people, I’d like to know, that they feel a need to approach that River as if it were immovable concrete. It is a force of nature, unpredictable and therefore dangerous.

I would call it a menace, but that seems inappropriate, as it was here long before we were.

Thirty-three lives have been lost since we’ve moved into this house. I have kept track. Today was the thirty-third. I don’t know how many more must die before our Council members do something about it. Can’t people exercise at a recreational centre? A complete waste of taxpayers’ money to erect such centres if people insist on exercising in that canyon instead.

Karen walks along that River. I don’t understand it, don’t understand it at all. I would talk to her about it — have talked to her many times — but she doesn’t listen. So I’ve stopped. I suppose I could order her to refrain from walking there, but there’s no point in issuing a command that will never be obeyed. That only undermines the authority of the one issuing the order. Besides, she’s my wife; one mustn’t be reduced to believing one’s wife is something one can command.

But good God, you’d think she’d show some common sense, some responsibility to her children, and stop entering that bloody canyon! What would I ... [Morris pauses, frowns, crosses out “I,” and replaces it with “we.”] What would we do with out her?

Perhaps we should move.

The fisherman was only thirty-eight.

Two doors away Andy, too, is confessing his fears, only not in written form and not to a journal. He is sharing them with his Buddha.

The Buddha was given to him as a Christmas present two years earlier by Nanny Woodruff. (Lately, Candice has refused to call her that, saying it sounds babyish; she now calls her “Grandmother” instead.) Nanny Woodruff is Andy’s favourite grandparent. Grampy Woodruff simply overwhelms him, the way he heaves his massive bulk to and fro like an active volcano, constantly erupting with deafening bellows of laughter or biblical quotes, and Nanny Morton scares him a little with her embarrassing belches and drool and perpetually gummed-up eyes. Andy has no memory of Grampy Morton, long since buried at the local cemetery behind Capilano College; for some reason this fills him with great relief.

Yes, Nanny Woodruff is his favourite grandparent by a long mile, and the Buddha is his most prized possession. It stands no higher than Andy’s index finger, its protruding bare belly glossy and cool. The beaming, bald-headed face carved into the ivory appears merry and compassionate. The hugely swollen earlobes (a sign of great wisdom, Nanny W. says) lend the squat figure nobility.

Most wondrous of all, the Buddha has, casually slung over his back and knotted to a knobby stick, a bag containing all his worldly possessions. To Andy, this hobo’s bag represents more freedom, confidence, and wisdom than every Christian symbol contained in Grampy’s church.