Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [116]
“Speaking frankly,” she said, shooting me her Weltschmerz look, “what do all men want?”
As we worked through the champagne, mine laced with cognac, I dipped into my grab-bag of self-serving anecdotes and began to shamelessly drop names. But she had never heard of Christopher Plummer or Jean Beliveau; and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, whom I had been introduced to once, lit the wrong fire.
“Oh, you like tell him for me that I just love Doonesbury.” Suppressing a yawn, she added, “Like why don’t we drink up now and go to your room? But you do understand, you know, like I’m a professional escort, don’t you?”
“Ah.”
“Don’t look so glum, baby,” she said, even as she unclicked the clasp of her immense handbag and allowed me a peek at her credit-card machine. “My agency accepts all credit cards, except for American Express.”
“As a matter of interest, what do you charge?”
“It’s not a charge, it’s like an honorarium, and that depends on the menu, you know, and the time factor involved.” Then she reached into her handbag again and retrieved a card, encased in plastic, that testified that she was AIDS-free.
“Petula, this has been a very long day for me. Why don’t we just finish our drinks and say good night here. No harm done.”
“Well, thanks for wasting my time, gramps,” she said, sweeping up her glass and heading right for the table where her pimp with the earring sat alone. I signed the bill and rose unsteadily, doubting that I managed to look dignified as I tottered out of the bar. Back in my room, I was too angry with Miriam to sleep. Look at me now, I thought, flirting mindlessly with a hooker at my age, all because you abandoned me. I got into bed with Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson, the book I always travel with because I want them to find it at my bedside should I expire during the night, and I read: “I’m afraid, however, that by associating with Savage, who was habituated to the dissipation and licentiousness of the town, Johnson, though his good principles remained steady, did not entirely preserve that conduct, for which, in days of greater simplicity, he was remarked by his friend Mr. Hector; but was imperceptibly led into some indulgences which occasioned much distress to his virtuous mind.” Then the print began to leap on the page, and I had to set the book aside.
I could now compound my humiliation, but find a modicum of relief, I thought, by flicking on whatever adult movie was available on TV, but I decided against it. Instead, my heart pounding, I called upon good old reliable Mrs. Ogilvy in my mind’s eye. Mrs. Ogilvy, who had come to us from Kent, where her father owned a draper’s shop, or what we colonials, corrupted by Americanisms, as she put it, called a dry-goods store. Once more I blundered into her bedroom, surprising her, catching her in a posture to die for: Mrs. Ogilvy, stalwart of the St. James United Church choir, in panties and garter belt, bending forward, pensive, to trap her breasts and fasten her bra. No, no. Too soon for that. I willed my personal soft-core memory video into fast-track reverse, starting with my arrival at her apartment that morning.
The luscious Mrs. Ogilvy, who took our French and literature classes, often reading aloud to us from John O’London’s Weekly, was all of twenty-nine, impossibly inaccessible, I thought. Then there was that Saturday she had recruited me to help paint her one-bedroom apartment. “Providing you prove to be a good worker,” she said, “I’ll treat you to dinner. En français, s’il vous plaît?”
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Ogilvy.”
“Worker?”
“Ouvrier.”
“Très bien.”
We started in the tiny kitchen, and that morning, excruciating beyond belief, we inevitably bumped into each other several times in that provocatively constricted space. Twice the backs of my hands accidentally brushed against her breasts, and I feared they would catch fire. Then she climbed the ladder, taking her turn at the ceiling. Wow. “Help me down