"Shmuck," said the woman.
Joel tries not to let it get to him: he's got his credentials ready. You want murdered relatives? he'll tell them. I've got.
Then how can you betray them? they'll say. Spitting on the dead.
You think they'd agree with what's happening? he'll say. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Then there's a silence in him, because that's a thing no one will ever know.
Joel's head hurts. He gets up from his desk, sits down in the chair he thinks in, which is like the one at home that his father used to lie in to read the paper, a Lay-Zee-Boy recliner, covered in black naugahyde. Joel bought his at least third-hand from the Goodwill, out of nostalgia and a wish for comfort; though Becka said he did it to affront her. She could never stand any of his furniture, especially the Ping-Pong table; she was always lobbying for a real dining-room table, though, as Joel would point out with great reasonableness, it wouldn't have a double function.
"You're always talking about bourgeoise," she'd say, which wasn't true. "But that chair is the essence. Eau de bourgeoise." She pronounced it in three syllables: boor-joo-ice. Maybe she did this on purpose, to get at him by mutilating the word, though the only time he'd corrected her (the only time, he's sure of that), she'd said, "Well, excuse me for living." Could he help it if he'd spent a year in Montreal? And she hadn't. He couldn't help any of the things that he had and she hadn't.
Early on, he thought they'd been engaging in a dialogue, out of which, sooner or later, a consensus would emerge. He thought they'd been involved in a process of mutual adjustment and counter-adjustment. But viewed from here and now, it was never a dialogue. It was merely a degrading squabble.
Joel decides not to brood any more about boring personal shit. There are more important things in the world. He picks up this morning's paper, from where it lies in segments on the floor, in which he knows he will read distorted and censored versions of some of them; but just as he's settling down to the purblind and moronic "Letters to the Editor" section, the phone rings. Joel hesitates before answering it: maybe it will be Becka, and he never knows which angle she'll be coming at him from. But curiosity wins, as it often does where Becka is concerned.
It isn't Becka though. "I'm going to cut your nuts off," says a male voice, almost sensuously, into his ear.
"To whom do you wish to speak?" says Joel, doing his best imitation of an English butler from a thirties film. Joel watches a lot of late movies.
This isn't the first phone call like this he's had. Sometimes they're anti-Semites, wanting to cut his Jewish nuts off; sometimes they're Jews, wanting to cut his nuts off because they don't think he's Jewish enough. In either case the message is the same: his nuts must go. Maybe he should introduce the two sides and they could cut each other's nuts off; that seems to be their shtick. He likes his where they are.
Joel's elocution throws the guy and he mumbles something about dirty Commie bastards. Joel tells him that Mr. Murgatroyd is not home at the moment; would he care to leave his name and number? The coward hangs up, and so does Joel. He's sweating all over. He didn't when this first started happening, but the ones at two A.M. have been getting to him.
Joel doesn't want to turn into one of those paranoids who dive under the sofa every time there's a knock at the door. No Gestapo here, he tells himself. What he needs is some food. He goes out to the kitchen and rummages through the refrigerator, finding not much. Of the two of them, it was Becka who'd done most of the shopping. Without her, he's reverted to his old habits: pizza, Kentucky Fried, doughnuts from the Dunkin' Donuts. He knows it's unhealthy, but he indulges in unhealth as a kind of perverse rebellion against her. He used to justify his tastes by saying that this was what the average worker eats, but he knew even at the time that he was using ideology to cover for addiction. He must be getting middle-aged though, because he's still taking the vitamin pills Becka used to foist on him, threatening him with beri-beri, constipation, and scurvy if he dodged. He recalls with some pain her roughage phase.
The truth is that even Becka's normal cooking, good though it was, made him nervous. He always felt he was in the wrong house, not his, since he'd never associated home with edible food. His mother had been such a terrible cook that he'd left the dinner table hungry more evenings than not. At midnight he would prowl through his mother's apartment, stomach growling so loud you'd have thought it would wake her up, on bare criminal feet into the kitchen. Then followed the hunt for the only remotely digestible objects in the place, which were always baked goods from stores like Hunt's or Woman's Bakery, apple turnovers, muffins, cupcakes, cookies. She used to hide them on him; they'd never be in the refrigerator or the breadbox, not once she'd figured out that it was him who'd been eating them at night. Carefully, like a safe-cracker turning a sensitive combination lock, he'd dismantle the kitchen, moving one pot at a time, one stack of dishes. Sometimes she'd go so far as to stash them in the living room; once, even in the bathroom, under the sink. That was stooping pretty low. He remembers the sense of challenge, the mounting excitement, the triumph when he would finally uncover those familiar sweet oily brown-paper bags with their tightly screwed tops and their odour, faintly stale. He has an image of himself, in his pyjamas, crouching beside the cache he's just dragged out from under the easy chair, cramming in the Chelsea buns, gloating. Next day she'd never mention it. Once or twice he failed, but only once or twice. She never mentioned that, either.
Now, prodding the shambles in his own refrigerator, Joel can't find anything to eat. There's half a pint of yoghurt, but it's left over from Becka and, by now, questionable. He decides to go out. He locates his jacket finally, which is in the nest of clothing at the bottom of the hall closet. Things somehow don't stay hung up when he hangs them. The jacket has Bluejays across the back and is ravelling at the cuffs; it has grease on it from where he crawled under the car, years ago, trying to prove to someone or other that he knew why it was leaking; a futile exercise. The car had been completely irrational; there was never a plausible explanation for any of the things it did, any of the parts that fell off it. Joel felt that driving it was like thumbing your nose at the car establishment, at car snobbery, at the Platonic idea of cars; he refused to trade it in. This was the car that finally got stolen. "They were doing us all a favour," said Becka.
Becka once threatened to burn his Bluejays jacket. She said if he had to wear a stupid macho label, at least he could pick a winner; which goes to show how much she knows about it. Expos she could live with. By that time he'd started ignoring her; the text anyway, not the subtext. In so far as that was possible.
As he's doing up the zipper the phone rings. Joel thinks it may be another nut-cutter; he should get a telephone-answering machine, the kind you can listen in on. But this time it really is Becka. The small sad voice tonight, the one he never trusts. She's more believable when she's being loud.
"Hi, Becka," he says, carefully neutral. "How are things going?" She was the one who walked out, though "walked" is too mild a description of it, so if there's conciliation to be done she can do it. "You want something?" he adds.
"Don't be like that," she says, after a short evaluating pause.
"Like what?" he says. "What am I being like that's so terrible?"
She sighs. He's familiar with these sighs of hers: she sighs over the phone better than any woman he's ever known. If he hadn't been sighed at by her so often, if he didn't know the hidden costs, he'd fall for it. She dodges his question, though; once she'd have met it head-on. "I thought maybe I could come over," she says. "So we could talk about it."
"Sure," says Joel, sliding into an old habit: he's never refused an offer to talk about it. But also he knows where talking about it leads. He pictures Becka's body, which she always holds back as the clincher; which is what he calls lush and she calls fat. Some of their first arguments were over this difference of opinion. "I'll be here," he says. If it's an offer, why turn it down?
But after he puts down the phone he regrets his easy
acquiescence. So they go to bed. So what? What's it expected to prove? Is she working up to another move, back in? He's not sure he feels like going through the whole wash and spin cycle once again. Anyway, he's hungry. He types out a note - writing would be too intimate - saying he's been called out suddenly, to an important meeting, and he'll talk to her later. He doesn't say see. He opens the back door, which is the one she'll use, and tapes the note to it, noticing as he does so that someone has thrown an egg at his door: the remains are oozing down the paintwork, partly solidified, the broken shell is on the sidewalk.
Joel goes back in, closes the door. It's dark out there. Someone has taken a lot of trouble, going around to the back like that; someone who knows exactly who lives behind his door. It wasn't just a random shot, someone who happened to be passing by with an egg in his hand and got a sudden urge to hurl it. He has choices: maybe it's one of the nut-slicers, an idea he doesn't relish. Maybe it's the landlord: that's what he thought last week, when he found a nail hammered through the back tire of his bicycle. He doesn't think it's anyone official. He's suspected the RCMP of bugging his phone, more than once, he knows that squeaky-clean sound on the line, and no doubt he's on their list, most people who do anything at all in this country are. But eggs they wouldn't bother with.
Or maybe it's Becka. Throwing an egg at his door, then phoning him to make up because she feels guilty about something she'll never confess to him she's done, that's her style. "What egg?" she'll say to him if he asks, making her innocent chipmunk eyes, and how will he ever know? Once, when they were at a party together, they heard a gossipy story about a woman who'd recently split up with a man they both knew. She'd gone to the post office and filled out a change-of-address card in his name, redirecting all his mail to a town somewhere in the middle of Africa. At the time, and because he didn't like the guy much, Joel had found this hilarious. Becka hadn't, though she'd listened to the story more carefully than he had, and had asked questions. It strikes him now that she'd been filing it away for future reference. Now he tries to remember the rest of the story, the other things the woman had done: intercepting the man's shirts on the way back from the laundry and cutting off all the buttons, sending funeral wreaths to his new girl friend. Joel is safe on both counts: no laundered shirts, no new girl friend. It's just the mail he'll have to watch.
Now he's wondering whether going out is such a good idea. Becka still has a key, which he'll have to do something about pretty soon. Maybe she'll be in his apartment, waiting for him, when he gets back. He decides to take his chances. When she finds he isn't there, she can stay or she can go, it's up to her. (Leaving it up to her has always been one of his best tactics. It drives her mad.) Either way, he's made his move. He's shown her he's not eager. Any effort put out this time around is going to be hers.
As he searches for his wallet in the jumble of paperbacks, papers, and socks beside the bed, Uglypuss brushes against his legs, purring. He scratches her between the ears and pulls her up slowly by the tail, which he's convinced cats like. ("Cut that out, you'll break its spine," Becka would protest. But Uglypuss was his goddamn cat, to begin with.)
"Uglypuss," he says. He's had her almost as long as he's had his Lay-Zee-Boy recliner and his Ping-Pong table: she's been through a lot with him. She turns her odd face up at him, half orange, half black, divided down the nose, a Yin and Yang cat, as Becka used to say during her organic-cereal and body-mind-energy phase.
She follows him to the door, the front one this time; he'll leave through the communal vestibule, walk down the steps, where there are street lights. She meows, but he doesn't want her going out, not at night. Even though she's spayed, she wanders, and sometimes gets into fights. Maybe the toms can't tell she's a girl; or maybe they think she is, but she disagrees. He used to make pointed analyses of Uglypuss's sexual hang-ups, to Becka, over breakfast. Whatever the reason, she gets herself messed up: her ears are nicked, and he's had it with the antibiotic ointment, which she licks off anyway. He thinks of distracting her with food, but he's out of cat kibble, which is one more reason for going out. He takes the container of dubious yoghurt out of the refrigerator and leaves it on the floor, opened for her.
Joel wipes his mouth, pushes the plate away. He's stuffed down everything: weiner schnitzel, home fries, the lot. Now he's full and lazy. The back room of the Blue Danube used to be one of his favourite places to eat, before he moved in with Becka, or rather, she moved in with him. It's inexpensive and you get a lot for your money, good quality too. It has another advantage: other people who want cheap food come here, art students, in pairs or singly, out-of-work actors or actresses, those on the prowl but not desperate or rich or impervious enough to go to singles bars. Joel wouldn't want to pick up the kind of girl who would go to singles bars.
Becka never liked this place, so he gradually eased out of the habit of coming here. The last time they ate together it was here, though: a sure sign, for both of them, that the tide had turned.
Becka had come back from the washroom and plunked herself down opposite him, as though she'd just made an earth-shattering discovery. "Guess what's written in the women's can?" she'd asked.
"I'll bite," said Joel.
"Women make love. Men make war," she said.
"So?" Joel said. "Is the lipstick pink or red?"
"So it's true."
"That's supposed to be an insight?" said Joel. "It's not men that make war. It's some men. You think those young working-class guys want to march off and be slaughtered? It's the generals, it's the...."
"But it's not women, is it?" said Becka.
"That's got nothing to do with anything," Joel said, exasperated.
"That's what I mean about you," said Becka. "It's only your goddamned point of view that's valid, right?"
"Bullshit," he said. "We aren't talking about points of view. We're talking about history."
As he said this, the futility of what he was trying to do swept over him, as it sometimes does: what's the point of continuing, in a society like this one, where it's always two steps forward and two back? The frustration, the lack of money, the indifference, and on top of that the incessant puerile bickering on the left over who's more pure. If there was a real fight (he thinks "guns" but not "war"), if it was out in the open, things would be clearer; but this too can be seen as a temptation, the impulse to romanticize other people's struggles. It's hard to decide what form of action is valid. Do you have to be dead to be authentic, as the purists seem to believe? Though he hasn't noticed any of them actually lining up for the firing squads. Maybe he's chosen the wrong mode; maybe street theatre doesn't fit in up here, where the streets are so neat and clean and nobody lives on them, in shacks or storm sewers or laid out on mats along the sidewalks. Sometimes he thinks maybe they're all just play-acting, indulging in a game of adult dress-ups that accomplishes nothing in the end.
But these moods of his seldom last long. "Wars are fought so those in power can stay there," he said to Becka, trying to be patient.
"You don't think you're ever going to win, do you?" Becka said softly. She can read his mind, but only at bad times.
"It's not about winning," Joel said. "I know whose side I'd rather be on, that's all."
"How about being on mine?" Becka said. "For a change."
"What the shit are you talking about?" said Joel.
"I'm not hungry," said Becka. "Let's go home."
It's the word home that echoes in the air here for Joel now, plaintively, in a minor key. Home isn't a place, Becka said once, it's a feeling. Maybe that's what's the matter with it, Joel answered. For him, when he was growing up, home was the absence of a thing that should have been there. Going home was going into nothingness. He'd rather be out.
He looks around the room, which is smoke-filled, bare-walled, his gaze passing over couples, resting longer on women by themselves. Why not admit it? He's come out tonight because he's looking for it, as so many times before: someone to go home with, to her home, not his, in the
hope that this unknown place, yet another unknown place, will finally contain something he wants to have. It's Becka's phone call that's done it: she has that effect on him. Every move to encircle him, pin him down, force him into a corner, only makes him more desperate to escape. She never came right out and said so, but what she wanted was permanence, commitment, monogamy, the works. Forty years of the same thing night after night was a long time to contemplate.
He sees a girl he knows slightly, remembers from the summer, when they were doing the Cannibal Monster Tomato play down near Leamington, for the itinerant harvesters. (Cold-water shacks. Insecticides in the lungs. No medical protection. Intimidation. It was a good piece.) The girl was a minor player, someone who carried a sign. As he recalls, she was getting laid by one of the troupe; that was the only explanation he could think of at the time for her presence among them. He hopes he was right, he hopes she's not too political. Becka wasn't political when he first met her. In those days she was doing art therapy at one of the nuthouses, helping the loonies to express themselves with wet newspaper and glue. She'd had a calmness, a patience that he's since realized was only a professional veneer, but at the time he'd settled into it like a hammock. He'd enjoyed trying to educate her, and she'd gotten into it to parrot him or please him. What a mistake.
In recent years, he's come to realize that the kind of women that ought to turn him on - left-leaning intellectual women who can hold up their end of a debate, who believe in fifty-fifty, who can be good pals - aren't the kind that actually do. He's not ashamed of this discovery, as he would have been once. He prefers women who are soft-spoken and who don't live all the time in their heads, who don't take everything with deadly seriousness. What he needs is someone who won't argue about whether he's too macho, whether he should or shouldn't encourage the capitalists by using under-arm deodorant, whether the personal is political or the political is personal, whether he's anti-Semitic, anti-female, anti-anything. Someone who won't argue.
He pushes back his chair and walks over, ready for rejection. They can always tell him to go away. He doesn't mind that much, he never tries to force the issue. There's no sense in being obnoxious, and he doesn't want to be with anyone who doesn't want to be with him. He's never seen the point of rape.