“But Henry, Dots black like me, man!” Boysie was still laughing. He couldn’t read more; but between the mirth of film and laughter in his eyes, he saw: … and I love the way you make love to me, and … “Man, it must be a hell of an experience to be married to a white woman, eh?”
“You better believe it, you black beast!”
“Hah-hah-hah! black beast!”
“Boysie, you’s a goddamn black beast!”
“Man, Henry, you was one first! Grrrrrrrr! you black beast! You is a black beast too!”
“How Brigitte, boy? You still lashing it?”
“Do you think you is the only beautiful black beast in this kiss-me-arse place, eh? I am throwing lashes left and right. In Estelle, too — but on the sly! Grrrrrrrrrr!”
Henry went to him, and embraced him, and applauded him, and patted him on the back. “Let we go to the Paramount, for some chicken wings and draught beer, man. We have to celebrate. We are the same fucking beasts, anyhow!” He took up a twenty-dollar bill which Agatha kept in a jar on which was marked, on a piece of adhesive tape, in her firm clear printing: ENTERTAINMENT, LUXURIES, THE PARAMOUNT AND HENRY. Boysie noticed it, and laughed, but he also made a mental note to have Dots put a jar similar to this one, with the exact wording, on the top shelf of his built-in bookcase. The idea appealed to him as a good one. “I am going to spend twenty dollars on you.”
“And I have a twenty to spend on you, too.”
They left the station wagon parked in front of Henry’s roominghouse, on Baldwin Street; and they walked, arms round each other, close as friends, close as rotten peas in rotten pod, clear and honestly friends. Henry even tipped his hat to the old man who came round begging for empty bottles. And Boysie gave him a quarter, and called him, “Friend.”
They had not only become drunk together often, but more importantly, they had opened the most personal secrets and actions of their lives to each other. This was the kind of relationship there was between Henry and Boysie. Now, away from the influence of Agatha, as represented by her decoration of the room, they sat down with a few glasses of draught beer before them, and talked with candour as men sometimes found it necessary to do. Freely. There were many things bothering Henry, and it was some of these that he was telling Boysie about. Boysie, on his part, confessed some more about seeing Estelle, when she came over, in Dots’s absence, to help with the housework. Dots had not yet smelled a rat, he told Henry, but he was sure she would, as she always did. And Boysie admitted that he was not as careful as he ought to be. He admitted still seeing Brigitte; although that close, belly-rubbing friendship had now withered into something like an occasional orgasm.
Henry, who could no longer pretend that he did not know Brigitte, either literally or biblically, confessed that since he was married he had “known her three times,” on Marina Boulevard, where she still worked for the Gassteins. And it was from Henry that Boysie first learned that Brigitte had booked her passage home to West Germany: she was going to run out on the Gassteins. With all their past, certain aspects of which were identical, and which had often moved on a head-on collision path, they still remained friends. It was to this friendship that Henry was now addressing himself, his thoughts, his confessions of thoughts which were like monologues spoken to himself, within the privacy of his bathroom, as he sat on the closet seat.
“I been meaning to tell you all this a long long time, man,” he was saying now. They had drunk about four glasses each of draught beer. “But I was catching my arse royally, as the Trinidadians say. It was pressure in my arse, man. And I couldn’t breathe, man. First thing, was the police coming and breaking up the reception. Well, Agatha ain’t forget that yet. And I don’t blame her. I don’t expect she ever would. ’Cause, look at it as it is, man, and you would have to agree with her, although I nearly killed her dead that night, for saying the same things as I saying now — but you have to agree with Agatha, that if the reception was held in another district, like Forest Hill, no fucking cop would be so stupid as to break up a wedding party. But that is life, and we have to see it and know it, and move on, boy! But after that quarrel, came the hunting for an apartment in this fucking place. Hunting for an apartment in this rass-hole city, boy, for a black man, and with a white wife, Jesus Christ! well, I don’t have to tell you. Sometimes, I was angry as arse. Sometimes, I was embarrass. Sometimes, I just laughed. But I was thinking of my wife, my goddamn rich white woman, and she can’t find a decent place to live, merely because she happened to be walking beside a man with the wrong brand o’ colour, according to the landladies and landlords in this fucking Toronto. Just before you dropped in, I had just come back from walking up along Lowther Avenue, and I see some nice places in private homes up there, with good apartments. I would enter a door, or knock on a door and the first thing I see is this big change on the woman’s face, or the man’s face, and then there is this big explaining and excuses, and I can’t get inside that fucking drawing room to sit down with a drink or a cup of tea or coffee, and discuss the terms o’ renting and rent that
