Man Descending

he might get it in his head to do. Come on, take me upstairs.” Meanwhile this Doreen, who is as strong as your average sensitive ox, is sort of dragging my brother in the direction of the stairs. Him pretending he don’t really want to go and have a fuss made over him, because he’s got this strong urge to murder me or cripple me or something.

“You wait,” is all he says to me.

“Ah, quit it or I’ll die of shock,” I tell him.

“Please, Gene. That Zipper person is weird.”

At last he goes with her. I hear Gene on the stairs. “Zipper ain’t much,” he says, “I know lots of guys crazier than him.”

I look over to Nancy sitting quietly on that grungy chesterfield, feet together, hands turned palms up on her lap. Her dress kind of sticks out from under the hem of her coat all stiff and shiny and funny-looking.

“I shouldn’t have let her make me this dress,” she says, angry. “We ought to have gone downtown and bought a proper one. But she had this material.” She stops, pulls at the buttons of her coat and opens it. “Look at this thing. No wonder Gene doesn’t like it, I bet.”

At first I don’t know what to say when she looks at me like that, her face all white except for two hot spots on her cheekbones. Zipper is going nuts upstairs. He’s hot tonight. It almost sounds like something recognizable. “Don’t pay Gene any attention,” I say, “he’s a goof.”

“It’s awful, this dress.”

She isn’t that dumb. But a person needs a reason for why things go wrong. I’m not telling her she’s just a way to win ten dollars and prove a point.

“Maybe it’s because I wouldn’t drink that whiskey? Is that it?”

“Well, kind of. That’s part of it. He’s just a jerk. Take it from me, I know. Forget it.”

“I never even thought he knew I was alive. Never guessed. And here I was, crazy about him. Just crazy. I’d watch him in the hallway, you know? I traded lockers with Susan Braithwaite just to get closer to his. I went to all the hockey games to see him play. I worshipped him.”

The way she says that, well, it was too personal. Somebody oughtn’t to say that kind of a thing to a practical stranger. It was worse than if she’d climbed out of her clothes. It made me embarrassed.

“And funny thing is, all that time he really did think I was cute. He told me on the phone. But he never once thought to ask me out because I’m a Baptist. He was sure I couldn’t go. Because I’m a Baptist he thought I couldn’t go. But he thought I was cute all along.”

“Well, yeah.”

“And now,” she says, “look at this. I begged and begged Dad to let me come. I practically got down on my hands and knees. And all those dancing lessons and everything and the band doesn’t show. Imagine.”

“Gene wouldn’t have danced with you anyway. He doesn’t dance.”

Nancy smiled at me. As if I was mental. She didn’t half believe me.

“Hey,” I says, just like that, you never know what’s going to get into you, “Nancy, you want to dance?”

“Now?”

“Now. Sure. Come on. We got the one-man band, Zipper, upstairs. Why not?”

“What’ll Gene say?”

“To hell with Gene. Make him jealous.”

She was human at least. She liked the idea of Gene jealous. “Okay.”

And here I got a confession to make. I go on all the time about Gene not being able to dance. Well, me neither. But I figured what the fuck. You just hop around and hope to hell you don’t look too much like you’re having a convulsion.

Neither of us knew how to get started. We just stood gawking at one another. Upstairs Zipper was going out of his tree. It sounded like there was four of him. As musical as a bag of hammers he is.

“The natives are restless tonight, Giles,” I says. I was not uncomfortable. Let me tell you another one.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. It was just dumb.”

Nancy starts to sway from side to side, shuffling her feet. I figure that’s the signal. I hop or whatever. So does she. We’re out of the gates, off and running.

To be perfectly honest, Nancy Williams can’t dance for shit. She gets this intense look on her face like she’s counting off in her head, and starts to jerk. Which gets some pretty interesting action out of the notorious matched set but otherwise is pretty shoddy. And me? Well, I’m none too coordinated myself, so don’t go getting no mental picture of Fred Astaire or whoever.

In the end what you had was two people who can’t dance, dancing to the beat of a guy who can’t drum. Still, Zipper didn’t know no better and at the time neither did we. We were just what you’d call mad dancing fools. We danced and danced and Zipper drummed and drummed and we were all together and didn’t know it. Son of a bitch, the harder we danced the hotter and happier Nancy Williams’ face got. It just smoothed the unhappiness right out of it. Mine too, I guess.

That is, until all of a sudden it hit her. She stops dead in her tracks and asks, “Where’s Doreen and Gene?”

Good question. They’d buggered off in my old man’s car. Zipper didn’t know where.

The rest of the evening was kind of a horror story. It took me a fair while to convince Nancy they hadn’t gone for Cokes or something and would be right back. In the end she took it like a trooper. The only thing she’d say was, “That Doreen. That Doreen,” and shake her head. Of course she said it about a thousand times. I was wishing she’d shut up or maybe give us a little variety like “That Gene.” No way.

I had a problem. How to get Cinderella home before twelve-thirty, seeing as Gene had the family chariot. I tried Harvey’s Taxi but no luck. Harvey’s Taxi is one car and Harvey, and both were out driving lunches to a crew doing overtime at the mine.

Finally, at exactly twelve-thirty, we struck out on foot in this blizzard. Jesus, was it snowing. There was slush and ice water and every kind of shit and corruption all over the road. Every time some hunyak roared by us we got splattered by a sheet of cold slop. The snow melted in our hair and run down our necks and faces. By the time we went six blocks we were soaked. Nancy was the worst off because she wasn’t dressed too good with nylons and the famous dress and such. I seen I had to be a gentleman so I stopped and give her my gloves, and my scarf to tie around her head. The two of us looked like those German soldiers I seen on TV making this death march out of Russia, on that series Canada at War. That was a very educational series. It made you think of man’s inhumanity to man quite often.

“I could just die,” she kept saying. “Dad is going to kill me. This is my last dance ever. I could just die. I could just die. That Doreen. Honestly!”

When we stumbled up her street, all black because of the lack of street-lights, I could see that her house was all lit up. Bad news. I stopped her on the corner. Just then it quits snowing. That’s typical.

She stares at the house. “Dad’s waiting.”

“I guess I better go no further.”

Nancy Williams bends down and feels her dress where it sticks out from under her coat. “It’s soaked. I don’t know how much it cost a yard. I could just die.”

“Well,” I says, repeating myself like an idiot, “I guess I better go no further.” Then I try and kiss her. She sort of straight-arms me. I get the palm of my own glove in the face.

“What’re you doing?” She sounds mad.

“Well, you know -”

“I’m not your date,” she says, real offended. “I’m your brother’s date.”

“Maybe we could go out some time?”

“I won’t be going anywhere for a long time. Look at me. He’s going to kill me.”

“Well, when you do? I’m in no hurry.”

“Don’t you understand? Don’t you understand? Daddy will never let me go out with anybody named Simpson again. Ever. Not after tonight.”

“Ever?”

“I can’t imagine what you’d have to do to redeem yourself after this mess. That’s how Daddy puts it – you’ve