Featherless Bipeds (22 page)

She draws a breath, takes a step closer.

“Dak . . . you know, maybe we . . . ”

She stops, glances away for a second.

“Never mind,” she says, forcing a smile. “Have fun. I'll see you in a few days. Be good.”

“I'm always good,” I tell her.

“Hi there,” Janice Starr says as she opens the door to her apartment.

Candles flicker in every corner, causing the curves of her body to sparkle like the spirals arms of a galaxy. I am drawn to her gravity like a stray asteroid toward the sun.

She holds a glass of red wine in each hand, and raises one to my lips.

“Drink,” she says.

I drink.

Reaching around me with both arms, she sets the glasses on a small table behind me. My whole body stiffens as she draws herself against me. She gyrates on the outside, and I pulse from within.

“You're kind of uptight for a rock star,” she says. “Shouldn't you have me naked on the floor by now?”

“I guess I'm not really a rock star.”

She slithers down my chest, her fingers pulling apart my clothing as she descends.

“Are these elephants on your underwear?” she giggles.

I can neither swallow or breathe.

“If I become a famous singing star,” she says, “will you write some lyrics for me?”

Janice spends more and more time at my house, hanging around during the band's recording sessions, and digging through the books full of unused lyrics I've written, tearing out the ones that suit her best. Jimmy T gets over the fact that she is sleeping with me instead of him, and he hooks Janice up with a decent bar band he's discovered and books them some studio time. Janice can sing in key, but her voice is thin compared to Zoe's, and she doesn't have much range.

“They can fix that in the studio,” Jimmy T cheers, “it's her look that's gonna sell albums — she'll be the next Shania Twain!”

And Jimmy T is right. In less time than it took the Featherless Bipeds to get our first gig at Harlock's, Jimmy T has introduced Janice to Billy VandenHammer, and she is headlining shows at the same venues our band plays. Her first album, called
Janice!,
is climbing the charts. On the CD cover, in the magazines, on TV, and onstage, she looks incredible. Jimmy T is on top of the world; he has created his first overnight sensation.

It is after a show at the Molson Amphitheatre, and Janice's band has opened for ours. Janice has me pinned to the bed. “Marry me!” she says. “Say yes!”

“Okay,” I say.

“It will be the event of the year,” she says, after dismounting and rolling onto her side, “and it won't hurt either of our sales, either. We could do a duet or something — it'll be so romantic. People will eat it up.”

When I tell her that a low-key, media-free wedding would be my preference, she convinces me with her body that her idea is better.

So now I'm rifling through my underwear drawer, trying to find my lucky boxer shorts. Janice, as a way of telling me that she thinks my underwear collection has become too threadbare, has bought a bunch of new pairs and crammed them into the drawer. The new boxers are nice — crisply folded plaids in tasteful complimentary colours — but a day like today requires my lucky boxer shorts.

Normally I am not superstitious. I play shows on Friday the thirteenth, I enter concert halls and arenas through stage doors in back alleys frequented by black cats, and I shave in front of cracked hotel mirrors without thinking twice about it. But this evening is the rehearsal for our wedding, and my bride-to-be has insisted that nothing can be anything less than absolutely perfect. So, despite her distaste for my worn-out undergarments, I'm hedging my bets and wearing my lucky underwear.

I find them, scrunched up in the back corner of the drawer. The once glaring shade of stoplight red has faded to a dull pink, and the cartoon elephants playing drums are now nothing more than translucent, greyish spots. I've happened to be wearing these boxers on several occasions that have had a significant impact on my life, and I'm afraid that if I don't wear them today, I might screw up the finely tuned machinery of Synchronicity. I know I'm being illogical — call it Crazy Groom Syndrome.

I was wearing these same boxers, fresh out of the plastic wrapper, when I first met Tristan on Orientation Day at university. I was also wearing my elephant boxers, broken-in but still unfrayed, on the day that Akim, Tristan, Jimmy T, Lola and I first played together at the Deaf Man's Garage. I was wearing them during our first gig at Harlock's, where, huddled around a wooden tabletop carved with the initials of drunks and lovers of years gone by, we named the band The Featherless Bipeds. I also had them on that night at the Twelve Tribes, when Zoe stepped in for Lola on vocals, and Billy VandenHammer offered us a recording deal right there on the spot.

These boxer shorts were been present at a lot of pivotal events, so I'm not taking any chances when it comes to my wedding. I put them on.

And now here we are, rehearsing our wedding vows in front of a crowd of family and friends, concert promoters, record company executives, and selected members of the media. Janice and I are front and centre, holding hands. Everyone stands and applauds. It's almost like an awards show.

To my left stand Tristan and Akim, my Best Men. Jimmy T and the guys from Janice's band are the ushers. Beside Janice are several photogenic sorority sister friends from her college days, some of whom I met for the first time today. And at the end of the female chain stands Zoe, the only concession I won in the wedding party negotiations. Janice insisted on having her own band mates and even Jimmy T stand up with me, but she balked when I asked to have Zoe included.

“She's jealous of my success,” Janice claimed, “and I think she's got a secret thing for you. I don't like her.”

Zoe doesn't like Janice much, either. Every time Janice interrupted one of our band rehearsals with elaborate new plans for the wedding, Zoe raised her eyebrows and said, “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

Tristan, jittering around in his tuxedo, leans over and asks me the same thing now. As a sort of pre-wedding gift, Tristan has compiled a video presentation of our romance, beginning with the footage he shot at Massey Hall on the night Janice and I first met, followed by scenes of us hanging out at the studio, sharing the stage together, and other stuff like that. He even hid a couple of cameras in my house and in Janice's recently-upgraded apartment, hoping to get some candid shots of us being a cute, photogenic, media-ready couple.

“Are you sure you want me to do this?” Tristan asks again.

“Well,” I whisper, “she wants this all to be public.”

“Come on, Tristan!” Janice interrupts, “The audience is waiting!”

Tristan pops the videotape into the projector. The gathered crowd laughs and coos on cue as the scenes of Janice and me together roll past on the screen, and they clap along to the Janice's synth-assisted voice, singing a thumpy, computer-programmed radio-ready pop song, written by Billy VandenHammer and recorded just for this occasion: “
Love is nice, Love is fun, Baby, Love
is number one!”

The crowd applauds. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Zoe rolling her eyes.

Now I let the smile I have pasted on my face finally fall off, and I let go of Janice's hand. The next scene in the video is the one that has been causing Tristan all the anxiety. He retrieved it from the camera he hid in Janice's apartment and showed it to me this morning, just hours before we all got suited up for the wedding rehearsal.

On the screen, for all the guests to see, is Janice, naked on the floor of her apartment, with Jimmy T lying between her open legs, his big naked butt cheeks flexing coincidentally to the rhythm of the bass line thumping on the video soundtrack.

Air and sound are momentarily sucked from the room.

I turn to Janice.

“Consider our engagement off.”

Then to Jimmy T.

“You're fired.”

I turn on my heels and walk from the ballroom, while Janice's studio-enhanced voice continues playing from the video machine:

“Love is nice, Love is fun, Baby, Love is number one!”

I spend what is supposed to be my wedding day packing up the clothes and other stuff that Janice left scattered around my house, working in a detached and mechanical way, carrying the boxes up the street and depositing them one by one in the Goodwill donation box. I feel people's eyes burning holes in me from a distance. They know what has happened. It's news.

TV camera trucks have been parked outside my house all morning. Each time an interviewer sprints from a van to assault me with questions about the aborted wedding, I answer by extending my arm, raising my middle finger to the camera, turning my back and walking away. This is expected behavior. I'm a ‘rock star'.

Jimmy T and Janice have already taped a statement that has been playing nonstop on every trashy tabloid show, wherein Janice wrings out just enough fake tears to keep her makeup from running, and sobs in a carefully-rehearsed way that she has discovered that I am really in love with the singer in my band, Zoe Perry. “I
so
wanted my marriage to Dak Sifter to work, but his heart was elsewhere!” she cries. “Distraught and confused, I sought comfort in the arms of my manager and best friend, J.P. Tanner. He was . . . wonderful!”

On cue, she collapses against Jimmy T, who bites his lip and tries to look concerned and supportive, when in reality he is probably looking down the front of her top. I picture drooling idiots all over North America shaking their heads and blaming me for Janice's infidelity. Whatever.

During what would have been our wedding reception, I thrash around on the drums in my basement, pounding and smashing, sweat and hair and limbs flying, for hours and hours until I am out of breath and my muscles simmer. I should still feel angry, or at least sad, but now I am just tired.

I drag myself upstairs to the living room, sit cross-legged in front of the fireplace, and pop open the bottle of Dom Perignon that I had planned on sharing with Janice in our wedding night suite at the top of the Royal York. I finish the bottle, and light a match.

There is a knock on the back door. Probably Janice. I'm surprised she didn't come to the front door, to try to get some more camera time out of this. I'm not letting her back in.

I hear the door creak as it opens. I guess I didn't remember to lock it. I start to get up to meet Janice, to tell her to get lost, to push her back through the door if I have to. But it isn't Janice. It's Zoe.

“Hey, buddy,” she says, “how you doing?”

“On top of the world,” I say. “The tabloid shows will get a kick out of showing you coming to my house, eh? Won't hurt Janice's story any.”

“Nobody saw me come,” Zoe says, “I snuck through your neighbour's back yard.” She places her hand lightly on my shoulder, sits down on the floor beside me.

“What are you doing with the matches?” she asks.

“I'm burning these so-called lucky boxers,” I say, holding the match to the faded shorts, then tossing them into the open fireplace. Within seconds, they are engulfed in flame.

Zoe slips her arm around my back and leans against me. I look at her, see the reflection of the flames in her almost-black eyes. There is nothing left but shriveled, smoking bits of burnt polyester before she says anything. She turns her face to mine, and now I can see reflections of myself in her eyes.

“I'm so sorry, Dak,” she says. “I wish I could have . . . ”

“I should have seen it coming,” I tell her.

“Tristan is sick about it,” she says. “Akim wants to kick Jimmy T's ass.”

“What about you? You never liked her.”

She sighs, pulls herself closer to me.

“This is probably the worst possible timing, Dak,” she says, “but I didn't realize how much I loved you until you promised yourself to her. I don't know why I didn't say something sooner.”

“Janice eased the pain of not being able to have you,” I whisper.

“Well,” she says quietly, “I'm rescinding Rule Number One. Billy VandenHammer can go to hell.”

I wrap both of my arms around her, and the rest of what was contained now spills out into the open. We hold each other, sobbing, gasping and shaking, crumbling onto the floor.

When it is all over, when all the clawing demons in our lungs have been released back into the darkness, we lie together on the floor, breathing in synch as if we're sharing a single pair of lungs.

Gently, only slightly louder than a thought, Zoe begins softly singing, no words, just a melody. I wrap my own voice around hers, the harmony more powerful than our embrace. The melody grows louder, reverberating through the room, filling the house, carrying us both through the air, into each other, becoming one.

It's all about the music.

Beautiful Lies

Lyrics — D. Sifter, Music — A. Ganges, T. Low, D. Sifter
(From the album
Harmony,
recorded by The Featherless Bipeds)

All of the flowers that you planted

keep coming up weeds

None of your moonlight promises

become daylight deeds

Just as I think I've found you

You change your disguise

And you re-invent yourself

With your beautiful lies

You're full of sunlight forecasts

During weeks of rainy days

You talk a closet full of rainbows

While you're wearing clothes of grey

Just when I think I know you

You change your disguise

And you re-invent yourself

With your beautiful lies

My poor mind becomes delirious

gets lost in promises of light

But then your shadow plays turn serious