Kicking Tomorrow Read Online Free Page A

beachbag.
    She rolls over, shows him. “Palmistry, astrology, dice-divination, cartomancy, moleosophy, dream interpretation, telepathy
and
ESP , graphology, yoga, and omens.”
    “Moleosophy?”
    “The study of moles and their meaning. I have one on the aureole of my left nipple. Look, see?” Robbie looks. “It means I’m an active, energetic person. Want to meditate?”
    He shrugs. Can’t hurt. Rosie whispers to him his confidential personal mantra, cupping her hand to his ear
– forrum –
and shows him the lotus position.…
    He has trouble concentrating. Not just because he’s stoned, and not because he’s at a rock concert; it’s just that the benefit of repeating a Sanskrit word over and over in his head and picturing nothing but a white screen, utter nothingness, for twenty minutes, frankly eludes him. Dad would probably laugh that it shouldn’t be such an impossible task for Robbie of all people, but he’d never appreciate the real problem: Robbie’s Sanskrit word sounds too much like the
Montreal
Forum, and Yvan Cournoyer and the Canadiens keep skating in to push a puck around and score on the power play. In his mind Robbie calls an end to the period and brings on the Zamboni to clear the ice of tuques and ice-cream wrappers and frozen spit, in slow ovals, and fill hismind again with utter white. But it’s futile. He opens his eyes a fraction and peeps over at Rosie. She’s sitting with an upright back and her fingers poised, her eyes wide open, vicariously enjoying his perfect transcendence.…
    “Good try!” she says. “Now gimme your palm. Boy, I’m reading
everything
these days. Tea leaves, toenails, bus transfers, toast. Fate leaves fingerprints all
over
the place.”
    Everything except intelligent books, thinks Robbie the Big Reader, rolling his eyes. He knows Rosie wants his palm only to make physical contact with him, and her extreme eagerness makes him retreat farther. Though in the end his curiosity wins out.
    “Ivy?” Rosie says. “Lemme see. Hmm. No, I don’t think so. I don’t see her in your future at all.”
    He pulls away, wipes the damp on his jeans.
    Rosie shrugs, then crosses her arms to pull off her tank-top; points her toes in the air, and slips off her tights. Then she stretches out on her belly beside him in a minuscule black bikini, closes her eyes, and demands he oil her all over.
    “I’m so short-sighted I can’t see the stage anyway,” she says. “You can give me the play-by-play while I listen.”
    How cheap and greasy mascara looks in the bright sun, he thinks. He examines her body, sees how her curves are traced with swirling trails of hair – not dyed black like the hair on her head, but gold as a bumblebee – on her cheeks, on her arms, down her back too. Her shoulder blades like wings. Her wasp waist. The startling rise of her rump and the tantalizing shadow where her bikini-bottom spans the valley; her golden down disappearing there like a pollinated path.
    He looks up to see a couple of guys, hairy as buffalo, ogling her too. He gives them a defiant look, like: Bug off, this is MY queen bee. Pours a palmful of baby oil on her back, and works it in. Rosie reaching back with one arm and deftly unhooking herbra. But after Robbie sees them turn away, he thumbs her flesh without enthusiasm again. He’s really saving himself for Ivy. Just because Rosie and he made out last winter in an episode he’d rather not dwell on right now thank you very much, doesn’t mean he’s
committing
himself, exactly.
    Soon he’s aware of her standing up. He hears her voice, up in the clouds, saying she’s going in search of a Johnny-on-the-Spot. He watches her buzz off as he remains cross-legged on the beach towel, his fizzing warm bottle between his thighs, all pumped up as happy and buoyant as a multicoloured hot-air balloon.
    Now his perception has become microscopic. With the hot bubbles of alcohol burping up the back of his nose and tickling his nostrils, and the sun