The Luck Of Ginger Coffey (18 page)

About twenty yards from the locker room, he ran out of cover. He was crouched behind a truck, trying to plan his next move, when a footstep from behind made him turn.

"Hello, Ginger. Thought I saw you."

His face hot with rage and humiliation, Coffey went through the useless pretense of fixing his boot buckle. Then, unable to look Grosvenor in the face, he straightened up and turned towards the locker room. "I'm in a hurry," he said. "I have to change."

"I'll come with you, if I may?" Without waiting for permission, Grosvenor followed Coffey across the yard and into the locker room where several other drivers were changing into street clothes. "I came here because I wasn't

sure how I could catch you," Grosvenor said. "You're a hard man to sec, these days."

Coffey, unable to think of a reply, stripped off his uniform and stood in his shirt, his legs oddly conspicuous in the heavy red underdrawers issued to drivers. "I came to talk about the divorce," Grosvenor said. "Veronica says you're willing to go through with it. I think that's wise of you."

The other drivers were listening. "Would you mind shutting your face about my private affairs until we get out of here?" Coffey said in an angry whisper.

«/-vl 99

On — sorry.

In awkward fury Coffey unbuttoned the underwear and stood naked before his enemy; remembered that naked was how he imagined Grosvenor each night. Hurriedly, he began to dress in his own clothes.

"Maybe when you're through, Ginger, we can go and have a drink someplace?"

"You can drive me down to the Tribune" Coffey said. "But I'll not drink with you."

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Ginger."

Coffey did not answer. He finished dressing and set off across the yard to check out his day's receipts. When he had finished, Grosvenor was waiting in the little red car, its door open to receive him as passenger. He got in, his knees rising uncomfortably to meet his chest, thinking of her show of legs as she got into this car that awful day. It had not been deliberate. In this car, she could not help showing her legs. He had been wrong.

Wrong. Grosvenor started the car with a loud throttling roar. They shot through the TINY ONES gate and into the street.

"The thing to settle is who's going to act as guilty party," Grosvenor said. "Now, of course, you'll think it should be her. But, if Veronica's the guilty party, the di-

voice will be far from a rubber-stamp affair. You see, our Canadian divorce laws —"

"For crying out loud, will you stop lecturing?" Coffey said. "Just tell me the quickest way."

"The easiest way is to set up a false adultery scene/' Grosvenor said. "I know a lawyer who can arrange it. They provide everything. A girl, a detective, the works. You check in to a hotel with the girl, and half an hour later the detective shows up. Case is heard by the Senate divorce committee in Ottawa. It's a cinch."

"And Vera gets custody of Paulie," Coffey said. "No thanks."

"No, no/' Grosvenor said. "Vera and I intend to get married and have children of our own, if possible. I know I don't want a fourteen-year-old daughter."

Involuntarily, Coffey fingered the part in his mustache. Was that why she was marrying Grosvenor? To get the kids they'd never had?

"Another thing we talked about," Grosvenor said, "was the expense of a divorce. Veronica thinks that because you're going to have the burden of supporting Paulie, it's only fair that we pay for the divorce thing. I agree. After all, you're pretty hard up at the moment. It wouldn't be fair to saddle you with an additional financial burden at this time."

Coffey, his face hot, stared at the dashboard of the car. The ampere needle flicked, wig wag, one side to the other. She went wig wag from him to Grosvenor, Grosvenor to him, telling each what she knew. Poor Ginger's too hard up to pay, you see. Now, Gerry, if you pop down and talk to him. Then tell me.

Last night he had not slept until dawn. Last night he had watched her in bed with Grosvenor as she laughed and made a story of Poor Ginger's attempt to rape her. And Grosvenor had laughed too. Grosvenor, sitting here

beside him, probably knew every secret thought or action he'd confided to Veronica in fifteen years of marriage. Bitch!

"All right/' Coffey said, in a hoarse voice. "I want rid of her. You pay the divorce and 111 be the target. When can we get it over with?"

"What about next Saturday night?" Grosvenor said. "You don't work on Saturday nights, Vera says."

Coffey nodded. "Where?" he said. "And how?"

"There's a hotel called the Clarence which isn't too particular. I'll try to set it up with the lawyer for Saturday night. You go there at ten. I'll have a girl waiting for you in the lobby. The detective will be along later."

"Not much later," Coffey said. "I want to be home at midnight. I have my daughter to think of."

"Of course. Shouldn't take more than an hour. I'll phone you and let you know the details, okay?"

Again, Coffey nodded. They drove the rest of the way in silence. When they arrived at the Tribune, Grosvenor reached over and put his hand on Coffey's knee. Coffey stared at that hand. It was very white, backed with very black hairs. He saw the hairy flanks she kissed in those nightly scenarios. Quickly, he moved his knee away.

"I just wanted to say thanks," Grosvenor said, sounding hurt.

For the first time since he had got into the car, Coffey looked Grosvenor full in the face. It was an ordinary face. A year ago he had not even known it existed, yet now it was joined to his in a resemblance stronger than brotherhood, in an intimacy he and his true brother would never share.

What chemistry of desire made Grosvenor willing to face a surly husband to discuss the settlement of Veronica's divorce? What made him willing to pay for that divorce, to marry another man's woman, a woman older

than he? Coffey did not know. He knew only that it was the same violent illness which, after fifteen years of marriage, had suddenly revived his own desire, leaving him prepared to commit any equal folly. He could not hate Grosvenor, for Grosvenor in turn would suffer the same feminine ritual of confidence and betrayal. He felt compassion for Grosvenor. He was cured of this sickness: Grosvenor had inherited it.

"Good-by," he said, and held out his hand.

Surprised, Grosvenor shook hands. "Till Saturday then?" Grosvenor said.

"Saturday it is."

His decision made, Coffey went to bed that night, confident that all his fevers had passed. He went to sleep and slept. He did not dream. In the morning Paulie heard him singing in the kitchen.

"Somebody's in good form," she said, coming in, her hair in curlers, her toothbrush in her hand.

Coffey turned an egg in the pan, still singing. "Why not?" he said. "Less than two weeks to go, Pet. I wonder what sort of a journalist I'll make? I wonder now, will they send me off to faraway places? That's a great thing about the journalistic profession, you never know where you'll end up. You see, you're very much your own boss in that field. Ah, it just shows you now, doesn't it?"

"Shows you what?" Paulie said.

"That the old saying is true. The darkest hour is just before the dawn. You have to remember that. Hope, now that's what you need. While there's hope, there's life."

"Somebody's in a philosophical mood this morning."

"And why not? Do you know another thing I was thinking this morning, Pet? The old saying, Man wasn't born to live alone ... Do you know, that's a lot of malarkey?

For Man was, and the sooner he faces up to it, the better/'

"Does that mean you want to get rid of me?" Paulie asked.

"Never!" He kissed her on her brow, cold cream and all. "By the way," he said. "That reminds me. I have to go out on Saturday night. I won't be back till nearly midnight/'

"But, that's perfect," Paulie said. "I was going to ask some of the kids over, anyway. Maybe you could go out early and leave us the place to ourselves?"

Well, he could go to a film, he supposed. Ah, he wasn't like some people: he knew that children hated grownups around when they were having a party. "Good idea," he said cheerfully. "I'll do that. Go to a film, or something, and leave you a clear field."

On Friday, when he returned from his TINY ONES round, Mr. Mountain handed him a message which had come in during the day. It was to call Mr. Grosvenor before seven. So when Coffey arrived at the Tribune, he rang Grosvenor at home.

"Ginger? Good, I've been trying to get you. It's all set for tomorrow night. You're to go to the Clarence Hotel at nine forty-five. Go to the bar and there'll be a girl there wearing a green overcoat and a black fur hat. Her name is Melody Ward. Got that? Melody Ward. Have a drink with her, then take her upstairs. There'll be a visitor at ten forty. Okay? And Ginger — you won't even have to pay the hotel bill. I'll reimburse you later."

"Fair enough," Coffey said. He hung up, feeling like a man in a thriller. It wasn't sordid at all, it was an adventure. Melody Ward. He even found himself wondering would she be pretty? He did not think of Veronica. Because he was finished with all that, you see. He was cured.

Saturday evening, he returned from his delivery round in good spirits. He finished his supper at seven and, determined to be agreeable, put on his coat and hat and went out, leaving the flat free for the children when they came. He told Paulie he would be home about twelve.

It was a clear cold night, electric and anticipant. When Coffey alighted from a bus in the center of the city, he was at once caught up in the hurry of a Saturday-night spree. Neon lights promised, spelled pleasures, performed tricks. A neon Highlander danced a jig over a clothier's, a comic chicken popped its head in and out of the Q in a BAR-B-Q sign, a neon hockey player jiggled his stick over a tavern doorway. In movie house entrances, bathed in the fairground brightness of million-watt ceilings, diminished and humbled by enormous posters proclaiming current attractions, anticipant girls fidgeted, waiting for their dates; solitary boys consulted wrist watches and dragged on cigarettes, nervously checking their brilliantined pompadours in reflections from the glass-walled cashier's shrine. And as Coffey strolled, slow, slower than the crowd, not sure what to do, he was swept up in a change of shows and eddied into one of these entrances. He stood undecided under the myriad lights, watching the anticipant girls smile and wave in sudden recognition, the boys drop their cigarettes and hurry forward; the pairing, the claiming, the world going two by two.

Watching, he absently stroked the part in his mustache: felt a sadness. All these thousands, hurrying to meet; yet he was alone. Saturday night and they came down in their thousands to laugh, to dance, to sit in the dark watching colored screens, holding hands, sharing joys. While he waited to meet some unknown woman in a strange bar, to go upstairs with that stranger to an unknown room, perhaps to lie down on a bed with her, in

make-believe of an intimacy he now shared with no one. And when it was over, he would have no one: not even Paulie. For Paulie had put him out tonight so that she, with other youngsters, could laugh and dance, listening to shared music.

He had no one. He was three thousand miles from home, across half a frozen continent and the whole Atlantic Ocean. Only one person in this city, only one person in the world, really knew him now: knew the man he once was, the man he now was. One person in the whole world, who fifteen years ago in Saint Pat's in Dalkey had stood beside him in a white veil for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health until death. One person had known him — or known most of him. Would anyone ever know him again?

Well now, enough of that. Do something.

He went up to the cashier's little glass shrine; put a dollar in the opening. The cashier pressed a button and an aluminum machine spat a ticket at him. The cashier made change by manipulating another machine. A nickel dropped into its little metal change bowl. He picked it up. That was the way of this world. You saw someone in a glass cage, stepped up, exchanged things, but never touched. Oh, come on now! Enough of that, I said.

At the back of the theater, penned two by two behind a velvet rope, a line of people waited. The usherette, a girl not much older than Paulie, came up to him. "Single, sir? We have seats in the first six rows."

There was something about her: her accent was not Canadian. He smiled at her, drawn by that immigrant bond, and followed her from the lighted area into the darkness of the theater. Poor kid. Her scapula bone stuck out at right angles against the maroon stuff of her uniform. New Canadians: thousands like her came here each year; thousands started all over again in humble circs.

You heard such stories: lawyers forced to take work as checkers, doctors as lab assistants, professors driving trucks. And still they came, from every country in Europe, riding in old railroad colonist cars to the remote provinces of this cold, faraway land. Why did they do it? For their children's sake, it was said. Well, and wasn't he driving a truck now for his daughter's sake? Wasn't he one of them? Wasn't he, too, a man who would always be a stranger here, never at home in this land where he had not grown up. Yes: he too.

The girl's flashlight showed him an almost empty row, lowering its beam as she waited for him to enter his seat. He wanted to stop, take her by the arm, lead her back up the aisle into the light again. To say: "I too am an immigrant," to compare impressions, reminisce, to tell the things that immigrants tell. But the flashlight beam snapped off. He could no longer see her. He sat down, purblinded by the colored images on the huge screen above. He looked around. Here were the solitaries. Some slept, some slumped in morose contemplation of the film giantess kicking yard-long legs, while some, like him, ignored her and peered about them in the shadows, hoping for a glance, a promise of company.

How long was it since he'd sat down here? Years, years. But he remembered: mitching away long school afternoons in the picture houses off O'Connell Street, huddled down in his seat for fear someone might see him and tell his parents. And later, as a university student, the lonely Saturday nights in cheap front seats, hoping that some American daydream would banish the private misery of having no girl, no place to go. Well, and was he going back to all that? For if he lost Veronica now, who would have him, a man nearly forty with a grown-up daughter on his hands? Wouldn't he end his days here among the solitaries?