Red Girl Rat Boy by Cynthia Flood Page A

Jeremy had been surprised.
    As Julie walked home from her little job in the weeks before their wedding, the pavement went all wavery rivery till she sped like a hydrofoil to the soaring elevator, the hall, her own door, and the engulfing heat of Jeremy’s body. She’d been the initiator. He, taken aback. Shocked? Julie, though her mother and all the books warned against premarital activity, knew no doubt.
    What was that view, anyway? The only one of her class to leave Victoria after secretarial school, she was just proud to have her own address.
    Perhaps the sex was why the ceremony didn’t change her?
    After their honeymoon at Expo 67, the Kitsilano place felt cramped, wrong. Not even a nook for Jeremy’s work.
    He found, first, the stately spacious 1 BR at a good address, a fine old Dunbar mansion chopped into suites. Tall graceful trees darkened the place. Leaking radiators, mice. Julie and Jeremy shivered till he located the distinctive building.
    â€œWhere we’d still be, if you hadn’t been careless.”
    She didn’t remember much about Expo either. The hotel room. Fireworks, sugar, glitter, crowds. French actually spoken.
    Now this high-rise.
    The developer had built three towers close together, so Jeremy and Julie’s living room in The Buckingham observed one in The Kensington where sofa, stereo, TV, and coffee table were similarly configured. The occupants were two men. Older, Julie thought, early forties.
    The man with curly hair sometimes waved at the baby. Julie would raise James’s tiny hand, smile. The overweight man didn’t wave. If he noticed her across the airy gap he snapped the Venetians shut, even in sunshine.
    Jeremy did the same. “I’m not paying rent to watch a couple of queers day in day out. We need our own house.”
    More things Julie hadn’t understood.
    James filled her hours. His certainty amazed her. Now! He cried with his mouth so wide his throat made a quivering red tunnel.
    The neighbours Julie encountered in the elevator and by the mailbox were mostly retirees with little dogs, or young singles. Once just heading out of the lobby was a bald man in crisp shirt and shorts who held a placard, Out of Vietnam Now! Wasn’t that an American war? He strode away. Was he old? Seeking other mums, she pushed James’s stroller along the concrete walkway by Sunset Beach.
    At the inadequate corner grocery she met the queers. Sam held back at first while Curly warned her never to buy the ground beef, but soon all three were picking through the faded vegetables together. Walking back, they smiled at the towers’ palatial names.
    One morning in The Buckingham’s laundry room, Julie was giving James his bottle while waiting for the dryer to finish.
    An old woman came in and smiled at the baby. “It is my lucky day! Mostly the people here have these foolish dogs. But you do not breast-feed? Is best.”
    Julie explained the theory of parents sharing equally in baby care. Under-thoughts about Jeremy rushed counter to her words.
    In her tailored maroon dress, Mrs. Schatz moved about briskly, high heels clicking. Her wrinkles broke into new webs when she looked at James.
    â€œSo, how you like it here?” she asked. “What floor?”
    The Schatzes lived on the view side of the eleventh.
    â€œWe will drink coffee. My husband will enjoy to see James. Also I invite Mr. Alexander, on the sixth. He appreciates art.”
    Before that happened, Julie met Sam and Curly again. This was at Sunset Beach, in the pause when the bridge’s lamps begin to reflect on the greying water yet daylight still hovers over False Creek, stippling the waves pink or apricot.
    Under a fine rain they ambled talking along the pebbled sands. James, held in his Snugli against Julie’s warmth, kept tilting his head back to get the drops on his face. He smiled. So did Curly and Sam and Julie.
    â€œHow did you meet?” she asked as they left the