Gabrielle Taylor's "Cockluck"
Part 1 | Someone We Can Dream On
Thursday, it was, Thursday September 6, and the year 2001, about eleven in the morning, when I read on kenlayne.com that the Reverend Tony Pierce had writ Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf's obituary. So it was Thursday September 6 when I drove -- the Mercedes, older than myself, that I inherited from uncle Caulk -- to the Elgin street courthouse -- when normally I would walk. The courthouse -- in case you ever must park in downtown Ottawa -- is extremely ugly, and has the cheapest indoor parking between the canal and Bank street.
The sky was half bright blue and half messy black clouds so I took my umbrella out of the trunk. I crossed Elgin at Laurier and walked up to where Laurier intersects the Sparks Street pedestrian mall, where my friend Bertram Brooker has the best view of Parliament Hill in the downtown -- you can barely see the new American Embassy with its ten foot thick walls and missile silos.
Bertram hadn't turned the neon sign on yet, but the front door, glass with a greeny bronze handle, was propped open to show another door of scuffed reddish hardwood with a brass handle set with a large oblong of frosted glass engraved with the name of the bar, which is 'COCKLUCK'. When all one's front walls are glass one's doors might as well be too. Through those doors were black tables on worn wooden floors, green padded chairs and grey plush couches, two pool tables, some pinball machines, a table-style Galaga arcade game, assorted teevees, and a small stage where the Jazz Butcher Conspiracy had played not once but twice.
Bertram was behind the bar taking apart his cash register with a screwdriver. He stood -- when he stood, he was sitting just then -- about six feet tall in his shoes, which were paper-bottomed sneakers -- had short straight dark brown hair, choppy and angular features like an underdone James Bond prototype, and eyes, well, his eyes. His eyes are very blue.
He wore a black t-shirt with 'COCKLUCK' printed in crisp 72 point white, and very black jeans.
"New pants?"
"Birthday present."
"They match the socks I got you. They from Judith?" His multifariously divorced sister.
"Sort of. Rideau Centre gift certificate good for pants or two pounds of Second Cup coffee."
"What's the cockluck?"
"Whiskey sour, three bucks."
"Give me three in one glass."
"Three whiskey sours would fill a thermos. Should I leave the bottle?"
"Actually, what I want, I need you to hire, I mean I need to hire you, to find somebody. I have her picture."
I took my wallet from my jacket -- wallet, worn olive green leather; jacket, silk navy blue pinstripe blazer, lightweight and comfortable -- and flipped through to the very back. I showed him her picture. "Do you need it, or can I keep it?"
"Give it to me and I'll scan it, and give it back to you. What's her name?"
"When and where did you see her last?"
"Here in Ottawa, two... two and a half years ago. I got a letter from her last year but I didn't answer."
"Did you notice the postmark?"
"It didn't have one, or a return address."
"What is Hecuba to you, or you to Hecuba?"
"I need a drink before I can parse Shakespeare in the morning."
"It's nearly noon." He poured a whiskey sour. "What happened?"
"She..." I jerked my hands around. "I... Anyhow. She was seeing somebody, Mr. OneBallLessThanHitlerDemon, and I, we all thought, wasn't good enough for her, so at first she wasn't very interested, and the more we thought it was a bad idea the more she wanted to try it anyhow. The more she got in the more he clamped up and by the end he was a perfectly banal little thug, but instead of being, you know, supportive, when it was finally over with, I clamped up myself. After a while of that she went away."
"So you felt she'd gotten what was coming to her."
She was too much a witch for Demon, I thought then and I still think. Clothes always the same and she was always cool, a sharp little frosty cool at odds with the heat haze that hung around nearly everyone else. Too cold for comfort when what everyone seemed to want was air conditioning, not a meat locker -- even with white lacy meat hookers.
There's a mythological idea a powerful woman can't know real love without trading her power for a soul. When she cashes in her strength, she voids her amorality, which would otherwise destroy the relationship -- and vice versa. The Wicked Queen gives up her beauty for the chance to choke her rival; even Elaine of Astolat had to kill herself to get Lancelot's attention once he was done accidentally getting her pregnant. There's a real adrenaline kick when somebody pays too much for something, probably dating to the caveman days when everything had to be measured carefully to ensure survival through the winter, or when an overextension by a rival could mean one could grab him by his hair and slam him into the nearest river. Adrenaline propels like fuel shoots a rocket; it shot me straight away from Auntie. I couldn't deal with the price she was paying for what I perceived as inferior merchandise. She wanted him to play Sartre or Henry Miller -- even Robert Benchley -- not Dudley. She forgot that she beat men at their own game by learning their methods and combining them with her natural strengths. She regards herself as their equal where she is probably their superior; she has forgotten her Aristotle, that excellence is not a virtue but a habit...
"I want you to find her so I can at least apologize."
"Did you look for her yourself?"
"At first. A bit. I asked around. She left town. She left the country I think. I don't know if she stayed away. Nobody's mentioned her being at their place. People mostly ask me if I've seen her."
"Could take a while then."
"That's okay," I said. "You know where I live."
He said he would start as soon as he found someone to manage the bar, in case he had to go out of town or further. He thought he would start by Monday at latest. We talked a bit about money and expenses and I wrote him a cheque, dated today, Thursday, September 6, 2001.