Steve Katz - Kissssss - A Miscellany

Gordon the bartender watches some young men come in from the parking lot. He recognizes that these puppies are from Port Hood, and that could mean trouble. Young beef from Port Hood sometimes look for a battle when they get a little too lubricated in Inverness. After all, Al MacGinnis is from Port Hood, and he is a hockey hero. What do the Invernessers have to recommend themselves at all? Gordon makes a mental note to keep an eye on this.

Alice squeezes her way through the crowd towards the bar. She glimpses the two American women who hang lewdly from the pillars as if they are working their libidos at a titty bar. They look middle-aged, she thinks. And the more they try not to look so, the more they do. They leap to the stage and with Molly holding and humping Wren from behind they start to sing Madonna's “Material Girl.” Way bad , Alice thinks. Madonna was bad enough. “She's my bitch. She's my bitch. She's my bitch,” Molly humps and chants below the song. She wears a red jersey, and a red baseball cap at an angle that might be called hip-hop. Wren wears a kilt, and that makes Alice uneasy. “Fuck ‘em.” The women charge the comfortable brown gloom of the club with a wicked energy that offends Alice in a way she can't define. Maybe it's the kilt. She stops Emily and orders the spicy wings, a vodka and cranberry, and a Keith's. She doesn't act very friendly to Emily, even though Emily used to babysit for her. Maybe, Emily thinks, it is because her father used to work with Alice's dad, on the highway maintenance crew, and Emily's father was found stealing diesel fuel from the county, for his own dozer and excavator, for his own stillborn construction company. That was one reason her family moved to Manitoba. She had come back this summer to be with her high school friends, but she might as well have worked in Halifax. It wasn't as friendly for her here as she had hoped.

Wren is pumped, and ready to sing all night. She's never worn her kilt in Cape Breton before. She bought it several years back at a yard sale near Albany. It is a clan MacDougall tartan, though she never knew that till recently. Her buddy, Molly, thinks she looks cute in the kilt, and enjoys humping her from behind as any man might. This is Molly's first summer in her new house on Broad Cove Banks and she is having a ball relaxing and partying in this beautiful spot. She shouts “Bitch bitch bitch. She's my bitch.” She enjoys mouthing the word, and explains into the mic that she is using that word because… because… She doesn't have the words to explain why, but she does think she is greasing the evening in this Cape Breton maritime town with some U.S. ghetto hip-hop attitude.

In its turn-of-the-century glory, Inverness was a tough coal-mining town. People from all over the world worked here. The town has seen all forms of human weirdness and courage and kindness, and tolerates almost anything.

On the verandah the young men are mingling with the young women now, speaking to each other in hushed tones, as they watch the sunset together. Layers of violet and green slowly darken over the water.

“Tonight I think it's the Perseid,” Andrew says.

“What's that, Perseid?” asks the slightly tipsy Lillian, who leans into Andrew, her hand on his shoulder.

“It's a meteor shower. Every year this time.”

“Good,” says Malcolm, sometimes called Mud because he's always at the bottom of the scrum when he plays rugby for St. Mary's. “Andy needs a shower, to clean up.” Mud has been trying to chat up Lillian all evening because he'd heard she was hot, but her attraction to Andrew becomes more pronounced as she drinks more.

“I don't think we'll be able to see much from here, though. Too much artificial light.”

“You can see me. I'm altogether here. All of me is here.” She presses closer, lips puckering.

“Shower. Meteor. Get it?” Mud mumbles, disheartened. He looks into the scrum of women for another candidate, and slides away.

Emily slips past Malcolm, her arms full of wing baskets. He grabs at her ass and misses. He remembers who she is, Harry K… whatever's daughter, the daughter of a thief. That makes her kind of sexy. And she looks better than she did in high school. A little plump, and hot. Dark. Sultry.

“She's wearin' a fuckin' kilt,” Alice says, setting the wings down. She slides the beer into Kevin's hand.

“It's a plaid skirt, that's all it is.” Kevin sucks a wing to the bone, then sticks the bone up a nostril and looks around for laughs.

“With the goddam sporran it's a goddam kilt. It's the MacDougall tartan, yours, and that pouch is probably worth more than your pickup.”

Kevin twists a bone into his other nostril and stands up. “MacInnis tartan. Show me where she is. I'll slap her with my pouch.”

“MacDougall, you nitwit. I don't like it one bit. Not even Scottish, I don't think.”

Kevin sneezes the bones back into the wing basket. “Keith's,” he says, lifting the bottle.

Emily scours the verandah for empties, which she throws into an Oland's carton.

“Isn't that Emily what's-her-name?” Stacey MacMaster whispers to Nancy Ross. “Her father… you know.”

“I think you're right,” Nancy whispers.

“I never could pronounce her name. Look at her.”

Emily tries to get past Mud, who won't let her pass. He stares at her. “I knew your father,” he says, which isn't true. She fakes right, and goes left around him. He stumbles and falls against a table. It bums her to be reminded of her father.

Alexander Goldfarb and his wife, Hilda, step cautiously through the pub door. Neither of them spends much time in bars at home in New York state. He is in his mid-fifties, has taken an early retirement from a state college where he taught in departments of Communication and Education. He sports a trimmed, graying beard, and a bushy moustache carefully shaped to cover a slight harelip.

“It looks like Jewish food in here,” Hilda whispers to her husband. A big ‘fro of curly brown hair surrounds her bemused, mousy face, twitching above a stooped body that seems to shrink as you watch.

“What do you mean?”

“It's brown in here, like stuffed derma, or pot roast and kasha. Jewish food is always brown.”

“Hmmm.” Her husband nods, narrowing his eyes to look around. The couple is on a quest. They have been coming to Cape Breton every summer for several years, looking for a special piece of land to enjoy in their retirement, preferably near the shore, preferably with a beach, and not too expensive. They know the bargain days are over. They have to live within the limitations of their resources, but they are willing to pay something. The deep cocoa atmosphere of the pub feels odd, and the activity, the karaoke, intimidates them. Hilda disappears to look for the bathroom, leaving Alexander to fend for himself. A young woman in a mini squeezes in next to him at the bar and places her heavily ringed hand on his cheek.

“Ya look like Colonel Sanders.” She waves at the bartender. “I need another drink, but Gordon, he doesn't like me.” Her wild blonde hair unnerves Alexander, and the pressure of her thigh against his crotch. “Ya do look like Colonel Sanders, ya know.”

“Thank you,” Alexander says, and then boldly, “I am Colonel Sanders.”

On the stage a paunchy man about Alexander's age dressed in an ill-fitting tweed jacket, with a clip-on bowtie dangling from his open collar, struggles through Johnny Cash's “I Walk the Line.” He looks to be in pain.

“Thank you, kind sir, that's right. I knew it, soon as I seen ya. I'm not drunk. Thank you,” repeats the young blonde. “So now ya have to divorce yer wife and marry me, and then ya have to die and leave me all yer money.”

Alexander looks around to see if Hilda is back yet. “So what do I get out of it?” He is proud to have the courage to say anything at all.