Читать книгу Fishbowl - Sarah Mlynowski - Страница 13

EMMA

My first thought when I wake up is that I’m on the wrong side of the bed. I normally sleep on the right side and now I’m on the left. Even though I’m in the same queen-size bed I slept in at my dad’s, it feels different because I’ve had to readjust my sleeping position so that I can sleep facing the window.

How long does it take for a new apartment to stop feeling like I have a new guy’s tongue in my mouth? How long does it take for the angle the sunlight spills through the blinds, the post-wakeup walk to the bathroom, and my butt imprint in the couch to feel as natural as pulling on my favorite pair of jeans?

My second thought is that my apartment smells like a funeral home. Fortunately not the decaying, rotting, flesh odor (although I’ve never actually been a witness to that particular experience), but sweet-smelling because of the abundance of useless flowers.

Face it, if the guy is dead, flowers won’t help.

Speaking about corpses, I start to think about Nick, my controlling, obsessive deadbeat of an ex-boyfriend. “Allie! Allie!” I shout.

“Yeah?” she yells back.

“C’mere for a sec!”

Two seconds later, Allie knocks on my door.

“One second,” I answer for no real apparent reason. She could have just come in, but the fact that she knocked makes me wonder how long she’ll wait for me to give her permission to open the door. Two minutes? Five minutes? Will she kill time, twiddling her thumbs or picking her nose, more likely biting her nails, for ten minutes?

Okay. Enough. “Enter,” I say.

She opens the door and sticks her head in. “Morning. Do you want some juice?”

“No, thanks. Did Nick have flowers delivered again?”

“Yup. You’re not going to believe this. Twenty-one roses.”

“What color?”

“Red.”

Week one post breakup, he sent seven red roses. Week two post breakup, he left fourteen. Week three, today, his present is about as surprising as my feet hurting after a night of dancing in three-inch-heel boots. So the asshole knows how to multiply, whoopee-do. And red…again? Couldn’t he be a little creative with the colors? Why not, say six red, six white, six pink, and what’s left? Three? Three purple? Are there purple roses? What about purple hearts? No, wait. I’m the one who’s wounded. Forget purple. Seven red, seven pink, seven white. It’s not the eighties anymore; he can mix red and pink. He won’t get arrested for clashing.

I roll myself in my cream satin sheets like tobacco and weed in a crisp sheet of rolling paper. “I didn’t hear the bell.”

“Me, neither, I was asleep. I found them outside the door. Our door, not the outside door. I guess the delivery boy rang Janet and she brought them inside.”

“Is there a card?”

“As always. Here.” She skips toward my bed, hands me the card, and then sits down carefully.

“Love you…miss you…” I read aloud. Blah blah blah. Cry me a river. He should have thought of that three weeks ago. Before I spent twenty minutes doing tongue Pilates with some hot, anonymous bar stud who showered me with compliments and cosmopolitans.

You can’t do that when you have a boyfriend, can you?

Maybe you can. It’s just not nice.

“Where’s the birthday girl?” I ask.

“She went to the gym this morning, came home, and now she’s at the library.”

“That’s the way I spend my birthday, too,” I say. “What time is it?”

Allie giggles. “One-ish.”

That giggling is going to put me over the edge. It sounds like urine chiming against toilet water at high speed. Be fair, I reprimand myself. Allie’s not so bad. I mean, how bad can she possibly be? She admires me, for fuck’s sake. She thinks I’m the shit. Just look at her, carefully perched on my bedspread as if she’s afraid her ass will wear the bedspread out. She’s treating it like it’s a shrine, which is totally strange considering what kind of slob she is. I wish I had a couch in here. But there’s barely room for me to walk in here. My room is all bed.

“You have the coolest job ever,” she says, flipping through next month’s copy of Stiletto, which put me to sleep last night. I reach across my nightstand for a cigarette. For a moment I consider asking her to open the window, but then I do it myself. Then I wonder if she would have done it, just because I tell her to do it.

I take a deep drag. I wonder what would happen if I told her to get off my bed. Would she ask why? Would she start crying and think I was mad at her?

Can I tell her to get off the couch in the living room if I want to? It’s mine.

I certainly did my duty in adding ambience to the apartment—a purple shaggy throw rug under a glass coffee table, purple-and-gray throw pillows to match my purple suede couch and leather purple recliner. All courtesy of AJ’s basement. And of course, the dried flowers, gifts from Nick, which I later attached to a metal hanger and hung upside down to dry them out. And dishes. And framed photographs that I “borrowed” from Stiletto.

Is there anything in this place that isn’t mine?

The table, I suppose. Although that’s just a tablecloth covering milk crates. And Allie rolled her computer chair beside it to pass for a kitchen chair. Since I brought everything else, you’d think Jodine could just go and buy a table and chairs.

I exhale toward the window. “My job’s not that exciting. It’s Stiletto, not Cosmo. Sure, I get to see celebrities when they come to the office, but they’re Canadian celebrities. How’s that for an oxymoron?”

“Yeah, but you’re a fashion editor,” she says, emphasizing the word fashion as though it was some sort of golden calf.

“A fashion editor’s assistant.”

She’s now lying flat out on my bed, all reverence forgotten. Maybe she’s trying to duck beneath the smoke. “You can’t start as the editor in chief,” she says to console me.

Apparently not. “I don’t expect to be promoted after only two months, but how long do I have to search through model cards, trying to find the perfect five-foot-eight, one-hundred-ten-pound brunette with that ‘little extra something’? And why does Amanda, my Aren’t-I-Crafty-I-Make-My-Own-Jewelry boss, get all the party invites? Last week, she wet her pants because page six of The Talker mentioned her as one of the guests at a restaurant opening in Yorkville,” I say, getting all worked up. Not that the bar scene in this city is worth the effort it takes me to put on a thong. It’s only Toronto. But Aren’t-I-Crafty acts like every party invite she gets is an invite to the damn Oscars. She acts like my high-school friends who spent years pillaging fashion magazines for the perfect prom dress and then felt devastated when the guys they had their eyes on asked someone else. I used to say it’s only high school, dammit, get a hold of yourself.

I need another cigarette.

My cigarette intake has multiplied exponentially since I’ve moved out on my own. Awful, really, but now that I can smoke without being banished outside, I can’t find any reason not to smoke constantly. Besides the whole lung cancer-emphysema thing, of course. And as a plus it drives Jodine crazy.

When I first moved in and pulled out a cigarette, I thought she was going to detonate. But I told Allie from the get-go that I was a smoker, so it’s Jodine’s tough luck. She tried to be all rational about it, saying I could light up as long as I blew the smoke out the window so as not to pollute the entire apartment.

And she punctuated her suggestion with a cough.

Still, it seems like a fair agreement. But I’ve decided that the smoking-near-the-window policy will only be followed when Jodine is home. Except for in my room—I can’t have it smelling bad, can I?

“Can I have one?” comes a whisper from the horizontal side of the bed.

“One what?”

“Cigarette.” Giggle, giggle.

I nearly fall out of bed from shock. The last time I felt this way was when Nick asked me if we could not smoke up one night because he wanted to be able to concentrate on a presentation he had the next day. I hand Allie a cigarette and try not to gawk. “Since when do you smoke?”

She looks like a child smeared in her mother’s red lipstick. She doesn’t inhale, just puffs in and out like she’s sucking on the smoke. “I don’t (cough, cough). Just sometimes.” She smiles and sucks again.

Halfway through our cigarettes, I hear Jodine’s key jingling in the door lock. Allie turns white and stubs out her cigarette in an empty water glass.

We’re both laughing when Jodine knocks on my door. She doesn’t wait for a “come in.” She just enters.

“You’re still in bed?” she asks. “Do you know what time it is?”

“One-ish,” I say, stretching lazily.

The best part about not being in school anymore is lazy weekends. Spread-eagle days stuffed with omelettes and bacon and home fries and pillows and TV and shopping and restaurants and dancing and Cosmos. I’m capable of sleeping past three on weekends, if left uninterrupted. Which makes me hate my job even more Monday mornings, because I end up falling asleep at 3:00 a.m. on Sunday nights.

Usually, anyway.

Fuck.

I’m supposed to work on a presentation today about shoes for a Monday morning meeting. Is that fair? Why does my boss feel that she’s entitled to my weekend time?

Forget it. I’ll do it tomorrow. I have too much to do today.

“How about bringing me some juice?” I ask Jodine.

“What, are you crippled?”

“I’ll get it,” Allie says, and smiles at me. “I need some myself.”

Allie has a mild problem with orange juice. If there were an OJA (Orange Juice Anonymous) chapter in Toronto, she’d be its most frequent patron. She drinks it all the time. At lunch. At dinner. With a snack. I’m trying to figure out why she’s offered to bring me a glass. Does she really need some juice for herself, to wash away the smoke-stink in her throat? Or is she really the suck I think she is? Or is it possible she’s just plain nice?

She scurries into the kitchen and I throw the covers off my body.

“Where are you?” Allie asks, five minutes later.

How can it take five minutes to get a glass of orange juice? I mean, what can possibly happen on the way from my room to the kitchen? “In here!” I call from the toilet.

She walks through my room, into the bathroom, holding a small glass of orange juice. She blushes when she sees me and wraps a strand of her way-too-long hair around her thumb and puts the split ends in her mouth. That girl is always eating various parts of her body. I wouldn’t want to be left on a deserted island with her. We run low on food and I’m a goner.

She seems to be debating her next move. Should she leave? Ignore my position on the throne and continue talking to me?

Allie is working out quite well as a roommate, in spite of her obvious flaws. I even let her use my bathroom when Jodine is showering in theirs. And she’s a riot. A few days ago, when she was brushing her teeth, I couldn’t figure out why she said, “I still have my retainer, too!” Then I realized she must have thought my diaphragm was some sort of orthodontic contraption. It’s a good thing she didn’t find my vibrator—I wouldn’t want the poor girl to start singing into it or anything like that. Or what if she thought it was a hand blender?

“I think Jodine works out way too much,” she says to me while her eyes search frantically for something to rest on. They settle on the fuchsia floor mat.

“Every day does seem a bit excessive,” I answer, and fart simultaneously. Oops.

Allie giggles and turns bright red. She retreats into my bedroom, making herself at home again on the bed, this time lying vertically. “I think she’s anorexic!” she raises her voice to be heard.

“You think? Keep an eye on her at lunch. If she doesn’t eat the cake, I’d say there’s a pretty good chance you’re right.”

Allie and I are taking Jodine out for a late lunch, to celebrate her birthday. Her parents booked her for last night, and some guy, Manny, has booked her for tonight.

I’m sure that whatever Jodine doesn’t eat, Allie will polish off in no time.

An hour later, the three of us are seated around a table at a downtown Mexican café. “Nothing wrong with a birthday fuck,” I comment.

“No,” Jodine answers quickly, and condescendingly. “He’s an ex. I don’t make it a habit of revisiting past errors.”

Well la-di-da. “I don’t make it a habit of even talking to exes.” So there. “And that’s because when you go out with an ex on your birthday, you end up fucking your ex.”

Allie giggles.

“I don’t fuck my exes,” Jodine says, emphasizing the word fuck, and Allie giggles again.

Allie giggles anytime someone says “fuck.”

Allie giggles anytime someone speaks.

“Bet you ten bucks you do,” I say.

Giggle, giggle.

“You’re on.”

I’m on a mission here to remove the pole that is shoved all the way up Jodine’s ass. Maybe getting laid will help her.

“How will we know if you’re having sex?” Allie asks.

Jodine looks at her sideways. “Isn’t my word good enough? Do you want to see the videotape?”

“Oh, you do that, too?” I ask.

Jodine ignores me. “Why do you have to know, exactly?” she asks Allie.

“I meant, so I don’t knock and try to come in. We need a warning system.”

“First of all, I always make the guy take his shoes off at the front door. Who knows where his feet have been? Consequently, if you see a pair of men’s shoes on the front floor mat, don’t come in. But you realize all this planning is purely academic. I repeat, I do not have sex with my exes.”

“But how will I know if the shoes belong to a guy of yours or Em’s?”

“I doubt it would be a problem for tonight. You two are going out after lunch, right? And then later to a movie or something? So you’ll know if one of you decides to slip away and bring home a guy of your own. Second, this may shock you, but my long-term plan is to develop a monogamous relationship so that in the future, you’ll both be able to identify a pair of shoes with a corresponding man.”

“That’s not my long-term plan,” I comment. “I like the first scenario better. The part about sneaking off with a guy of my own.”

“Boys do have more than one pair of shoes,” Allie says, obviously still concerned about the logistics behind the plan. “This could get complicated.”

“I’ll tie a red ribbon around my doorknob or something,” Jodine offers.

I think about this for a minute. “Who has red ribbons? Use a scrunchie. We all have scrunchies, right?”

I know Jodine has one. She wears it in her hair every day. I’ve only seen her hair down once.

So we agree. Scrunchies on doorknobs equals don’t knock.

A waitress appears at our table. “Can I get a strawberry daiquiri?” I ask.

“Virgin?” Allie asks.

“No, you?” I say, and laugh.

Allie turns bright red and mumbles something to herself. Uh-oh. She’s had sex, right? She can’t be a virgin. Can she?

“I’d like a Diet Coke,” Jodine says.

Allie stops mumbling to herself. “Do you have any juice?”

“Orange okay?”

“Fab. I’ll have a large, please.”

When the waitress delivers our fajitas and drinks simultaneously, I laugh at Allie’s huge glass of orange pulp. “What is it with you and juice? Don’t you ever have soft drinks?”

“No. Pop burns my mouth,” she explains, spreading at least a gallon of sour cream over the tortilla. Next, she carefully places the pieces of chicken on the cream, lays out another layer of sour cream, then the salsa, then the cheese, then another large glob of cream. Her meal looks like strawberry pudding. Jodine makes her fajita with a thin film of salsa, a few strategically placed pieces of chicken and a pound of lettuce. I try to keep the ingredients in proportion.

“What does that mean, soft drinks burn your mouth?” Jodine asks. “They’re supposed to be cold. You do know that, right?”

Allie giggles. “Yes, I know.”

I would have been offended by Jodine’s comment, but Allie doesn’t seem to care when Jodine talks to her like she’s missing a few keys on her keyboard.

“I don’t like the bubbles,” Allie says. “They burn.”

Jodine rolls her eyes. “You’re not supposed to gargle the pop,” she says. “You sip and swallow.”

“Sounds masochistic.” Giggle, giggle.

“You get used to it. You stop noticing the bubbles.”

“What about the first time you tried it?”

“The first time I tried pop? I can’t recall the first time I tried pop, Allie.” She takes a small bite out of her fajita. She eats everything in small bites. Eating takes her hours. “It’s like riding a bike,” she says. “Once you do it, it becomes habit.”

“I don’t know how to ride a bike.”

Both Jodine’s and my jaws drop in shock. “Unbelievable,” Jodine says.

“I don’t, really,” Allie repeats.

Jodine takes another sip of her Diet Coke. “Didn’t your father run behind you, pretending to hold the back of your seat, telling you he would never let go and then let go?”

My father never did that. He bought me a two-thousand-dollar bike and told me to figure it out. Bastard.

“My father tried to teach me, but I was afraid to take off the training wheels.”

Jodine looks at Allie with disbelief. “That’s absurd. I’ll teach you how to ride.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What uh-huh?”

“Everyone says they’re going to teach me when I tell them I don’t know how, but no one ever does.”

“Do you ever ask them about it again?”

“No.”

“Then don’t expect them to teach you. Your bike-riding skills aren’t everyone’s top priority. If you want me to teach you, then ask me. Biking is great exercise.”

Not exactly a selling point for Allie. While she seems to have an abundance of energy, she prefers to spend her free time lying in bed reading or watching TV. “Have you ever actually tried Coke?” I ask.

“I don’t think so.”

Impossible! “You’ve never tried Coke? What do you drink with your Jack Daniel’s? What do you have at barbecues?”

Allie stares at me blankly. “Uh, orange juice?”

“If there is no orange juice?”

She appears deep in thought. “Sometimes I pick an orange soda and wait for it to get flat. Then it tastes like that orange drink at McDonald’s. They call it a drink but it has no bubbles, did you know? I used to order the small orange juice cartons, but they cost a fortune and they’re not always included in the trio meals. Getting orange juice at movie theaters used to be a problem, too, but ever since the whole Snapple craze, they almost always sell juice, any flavor.”

Apparently an entire carbonated-free world exists that I am unaware of. Jodine meets my gaze across the table and we both start laughing. “Try it,” she says, pushing her glass toward Allie.

“Why? I know I won’t like it.”

“Just try it. I want to see.”

“See what?”

I reach over and take a sip from Jodine’s glass. “All the cool kids are doing it,” I say.

“Fine, I’ll try if it’ll amuse you. But, Jodine, you have to try a cigarette.”

I almost choke on the so-called offensive bubbles.

“Terrific,” Jodine says, squinting her eyes. “But why?”

“Just try one. I want to see.”

“But you don’t even smoke.”

“I’ll have one, too. We’ll all have a drink, and we’ll all have a smoke.”

“I feel left out,” I say. “What do I have to do?”

“You have to close the door the next time you’re in the main bathroom,” Jodine says, passing Allie her glass.

Allie puckers her lips and sips the Coke as if drinking a glass of straight tequila. And then the three of us crowd by the restaurant bar as I hand out cigarettes.

“You look like a freak, smoking,” Jodine says to Allie. “Are you on the Stair Master? Why are you breathing like that?”

Allie blows out the smoke she was holding in her mouth—the smoke she should have been inhaling but was keeping prisoner inside her cheeks—into Jodine’s face. “Can you teach us to French inhale?” she asks me.

“That’s why they call me Frenchy, you know.”

“Sure it is.”

“Who calls you Frenchy?” Jodine asks.

“No one.”

“It’s from Grease,” Allie explains.

“I’ve never seen it.”

Allie’s jaw drops. “No way! Didn’t you watch any fun movies growing up?”

“Yes,” I say defensively. “I saw The Wizard of Oz. And Annie. And Amadeus.

“I can make smoke circles. Wanna see?” I blow three consecutive Cheerios-shaped ovals into the air.

“Again!” Allie demands, and I do it again. They try, and a few minutes later we’re all laughing, watching smoke circles stretch and evaporate into the air.

After lunch, I drive Jodine home so that she can prepare for her nondate and convince Allie to go shopping with me. What better way to spend a Saturday? Shopping and then a movie. Allie claims she doesn’t need anything but agrees to come along to keep me company. I drive us to Yorkdale Mall. At Mendocino, I charge three hundred dollars on a pair of pants and sweater. She tries on the same pants, but looks like a stuffed handmade pillow with the cotton balls spilling out.

“What do you think?” she asks, trying to see every angle of herself in the three-sided mirror.

She’s not a fat girl; she just shouldn’t be walking around in tight pants. Maybe I shouldn’t tell her that. Maybe I should tell her she has great legs and that she’d look better in a skirt. But then, won’t she know I’m lying? “What do you need to buy those for?” I say. “You can borrow mine.” Very good! A most sensitive and appropriate politically correct answer.

She could also use a haircut. She’s too short for hair that comes down past her tits. And a few highlights wouldn’t hurt. Make that many highlights.

After shopping, I climb back into bed for an afternoon siesta, and Allie climbs into her bed to read. When I wake up, the sun has already fallen below the house in front of ours, and the sky is tinted purple. The phone rings, and a minute later Allie bounces into my room, looking like she accidentally dropped my vibrator down her pants.

“Clint wants to go for a drink! Clint wants to go for a drink!” she says, clapping her hands in excitement.

“Clint? What kind of a name is Clint? Is he a cowboy?”

“Clint is a beautiful name. It’s the most beautiful name in the whole world.”

Snort. “You are such a cheese ball,” I say, laughing. “Does that mean you’re ditching me and the movie?” I try to feign indignation, but a bunch of my old school friends already invited me to meet them for a drink up at Yonge and Eglinton. But seriously—there’s someone a step higher than me on Allie’s pedestal? Can I take this Clint character?

“Oh. Uh-oh.” She looks like she’s about to cry. “Should I cancel? Do you want me to cancel? I’ll cancel if you want me to.” There is no way she’s not praying to herself that I won’t make her cancel. I can practically see her mouth moving.

“Don’t cancel,” I say, dismissing her with my hand.

She sighs with relief.

After she showers, I help her get ready. “No, Allie, you can’t wear the same top of mine that you wore last time…I know I said it looked very hot but he’s already seen you in it…. Yes, you can borrow something else.”

At one in the morning, when I get home from Yonge and Eglinton, Allie is sitting on the couch, looking miserable, watching the end of Saturday Night Live. She nudges her chin toward Jodine’s room. I can hear the faint sound of Marvin Gaye coming from behind the walls.

A black scrunchie is on the doorknob.