“Oh my God!” gasps the old man, who has just come in her hands. “Oh, I don’t believe it. That was astounding, Nita. Thank you so much. . You’re a lovely, lovely girl.”
Awinita doesn’t answer. Engrossed in her vision, she lies on her side and stares out the window.
“Thank you, Nita,” the white-haired john says, picking up one of her limp hands and covering it with kisses. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” A while later he puts his clothes back on, adds an extra bill to the one that’s already on the Formica table, and leaves the room. .
(Don’t cry, Milo. Yeah, I know you never cry, but don’t cry anyway. Let’s try to think of a funny scene that might have happened as, curled up in your junkie mother’s womb, you evolved from junkie embryo to junkie fetus. .)
That extra bill came in handy — Awinita’s hair is blond again.
Neil Kerrigan walks into the bar and glances around. He catches sight of Awinita’s blondness. Magnetized by it, he comes to sit next to her at the bar.
You’re right, it wouldn’t be funny for Neil to be one of Awinita’s clients that summer. Not totally improbable — the erotic life of sixty-year-old widows in rural Quebec can’t have been terribly exciting, and on some of his day trips into the city to visit bookstores and stock up on rare editions, Neil might well have stopped off in the red-light district for a bit of pleasure. So, not impossible, but not funny, given that Awinita is currently pregnant with his grandson. Too kinky for our film.
“What can I get you?” the barman asks him.
“A Molson would be lovely, thanks. And if the young lady doesn’t mind, bring her another glass of whatever she’s drinking. I need help to celebrate.”
“Do you mind, miss?” Irwin asks Awinita, as if he hadn’t seen her several hundred times before.
When she turns to Neil, some part of Awinita’s brain probably registers the fact that his eyes are the same shade of green as Declan’s. But the heroin muddles her thinking, and besides, she’s had johns with eyes of every color in the rainbow, even a couple without eyes.
“Tank you, sir,” she says. “What you celebratin’?”
“The Virgin Mary just went hydroelectric!” Neil proclaims in a loud voice, raising his glass to all and sundry.
“Somebody turn her on?” Awinita asks.
Neil shouts with laughter. At sixty, having chosen, like Yeats, to spend the final years of his life as a Mad Old Man, he no longer cares what people think of him.
“Ladies and gentlemen, our dear premier, Maurice Duplessis, made a big speech today (I’m sure you all heard it on CBC) to inaugurate a new hydroelectric installation at Beauharnois. Isn’t that fantastic? Come on, sing along with Duplessis, everyone, and raise your glasses to Hydro-Québec!!”
“You got a problem with Duplessis, Irishman?” says one of the tipsier customers, lurching up to Neil.
“Not at all, except that he also made a big speech out at Notre-Dame-du-Cap the other day (I’m sure you all heard it on CBC) officially dedicating our Belle Province de Québec to the Virgin Mary. Everyone who was anyone was there! Le clergé, les grands journaux, tout le monde. And he made sure we found out that just a stone’s throw upriver, at Le Paradis des Sports hotel on Lac des Piles, his old pal Georges Cossette would be allowed to sell liquor without a license. . except during Sunday Mass, of course, ha-ha-ha!”
“I know dat place,” murmurs Awinita. “Not far from Grand-Mère, right? I got a friend who work up dere.”
“That’s right. Everybody hear that? The young lady has friends who work at Le Paradis des Sports. I’m certain they’re on excellent terms with Georges Cossette, Maurice Duplessis, and other gentlemen of the same circles. And I’m certain that with a little extra persuasion, they will also be on good terms with the American jazzmen who come to play in that prestigious establishment. Isn’t that fantastic?”
“Fuck off, you bloody Mick!” the drunken customer blares. “Go home and screw those druids of yours if you’re not happy here! Duplessis is a good man!”
“He’s a man of my bleedin’ age!” roars Neil, his green eyes ablaze, his salt-and-pepper beard abristle. “And having lived in the province of Quebec for thirty-three years now, I have the right to say what I think of Maurice Duplessis, for the luva Christ! I think Maurice Duplessis is one arsehole of an opportunist, who sings the praises of the Good Virgin when he needs to wangle votes from the populace, and of Hydro-Québec when he needs to attract investment from the Brits! That’s what I think! It’s a free country!”
“Free, my ass,” says Awinita.
But no one hears her because Neil and the drunken customer have come to blows and the others are shouting and taking sides and Irwin is busy shooing the whole testosterone-drenched free-for-all out of the bar and onto the sidewalk, and this scene will hopefully give our spectators some badly needed comic relief.
CUT to a Friday morning scene in the kitchen with Liz.
“It just doesn’t tally, Nita.”
“. .”
“Who do you think you’re fooling? Irwin’s at the bar every night, he keeps track of the number of guys each girl goes up with. His count for you this week is twenty-nine, yours is seventeen, so I wanna know what happened to the other twelve. What happened to the other twelve, Nita? You keep this up, sweetheart, and you’re out of here. Now tell me the truth. Where’s your money going?”
“Just. .”
“I wasn’t born yesterday, Nita. You supporting a boyfriend, a habit, or both?”
Awinita doesn’t avert her gaze. Her face is impassive.
“Been doin’ a bit o’ H.”
Liz’s expression alters.
“Oh, no. Oh, no. That’s a lousy idea, sweetheart. Poppers are one thing, okay. Long as you don’t overdo it, they help get you through your working night. But H. . Nah, I’ve lost too many girls to H, honey. . I don’t want you on that shit. It’s death, man. How long you been shootin’ up?”
“Not long.”
“Okay, listen. I’ll give you one chance, not two. I’ll pay for you to get cleaned up. As I’ve told you before, this is not a charity operation; I’m doin’ it as a favor to myself. I’ve invested good money in you, and I don’t wanna lose my investment. That clear?”
CUT to a room in a private medical clinic. Awinita, trembling and trickling sweat, stands at a window that gives onto a white wall. We grip the windowsill, then our stomach. .
The camera, which is our gaze, explores the room, watches objects writhe with a furtive life of their own, receives reality as sheer horror. The window is light, then dark, then light, then dark. Awinita’s withdrawal lasts twenty-nine days and twenty-nine nights. .
(Sound track: to be dealt with later. Yeah, Milo, I agree — it should be rough but not redundant, not jejunely illustrative of the pain your mother is enduring. Maybe just slip an MP3 into the vortex of a garbage incinerator — something like that?)
Calmer now, we are lying on the bed, on top of the bedspread, staring up at the ceiling.
A jack-in-the-box suddenly springs out of a colored block and starts bouncing gaily around. The floor of the room is dotted with other blocks, no doubt containing other jack-in-the-boxes. It runs slam-bang into a closed door, topples backward in a somersault, and finds itself right-side up again, joyous and unscathed. Just then the door opens and the Bad Giant appears. He raises his huge, hairy foot and brings it down on the jack-in-the-box, crushing it. . but the spring is strong and it bounces up again, knocking the Bad Giant flat on his back.