by Zoe Whittall
“It’s the Chinese Year of the Fire Rat. There’s supposed to be a lot of natural disasters.”
I make no resolutions.
Rachel lines us all up on the couch and takes a photo, laughing. Somehow, she never looks undone — even when she drinks the most.
10
•••
T-CELL GIANT
MARCH 1996
Seven is trying to erase his short-term memory.
He swears this to me over cherry pie breakfast at Futenbulle Diner on Bernard. I’m eating off of his plate with my hands. We are beginning to feel the winter subside and the thaw creep into our hearts. Squishing each finger into the sugary mess of cherry filling and drawing tiny brains on the scratched white ceramic surface, I’m trying to have one day without thinking about the breakup. The thirty-day promise didn’t work out so well. Now, at almost ninety days, the pain was starting to subside. Seven is the perfect distraction. Sometimes he’s like a radio you can turn on and just nod your head to. He’s just dyed his spiky hair a beautiful shade of dusty rose. He perches on his chair, pushing his cherry red sunglasses up the bridge of his nose, his fingers newly tattooed with tiny blue stars on each. His wallet chain, attached to his baggy, dark blue jeans, jingles when he walks. His new Chucks are hot pink, kicking my legs under the table as he talks excitedly. He’s constantly eating but never gains an ounce. His metabolism is the only thing faster than his run-on sentences.
I’ve decided to fully commit myself to my friendships and not be one of those girls who can’t survive without a partner. I am independent, I am going to give all I can to my friends and love them well. They are permanent in a way lovers never can be. Suits me fine. I decide Seven and I will bond in more than a casual roommate and drunken bar-friend way. I ask him details about his life. He shows me photo albums and tells me funny stories. I will seek permanence where permanence really lives — in friendships and family. I go home to Dorval every Monday night for dinner with my parents where we watch sitcoms, and I feel like it calms me.
“How will you erase your short-term memory, hon?” Half-interested.
His mouth moves fast, arms waving in emphatic swirls. “I have a plan, Eve, it’s almost too simple.”
He shows me a series of lists and graphs I can barely decipher on the paper placemat. I was late to meet him and he created an empire on the thin, rough paper.
“I will accomplish this in four weeks by adopting a strict regime of drugs, sex and debauchery.” He goes on to explain that the consumption of illicit things is paramount.
“Yeah, and how is that any different from how you live now?”
“More concentration, more purposeful action!” He doesn’t seem to notice my mocking.
He’s been letting me sample things lately. Gets a kick out of corrupting me. Last night I tried E for the first time. I threw up. I danced. I don’t think I really got it the way you’re supposed to.
“More sex, as well, I have to have more sex!”
It’s hard to imagine Seven having more sex without giving up things like work, sleep or food. Even right now, the boy at the table by the stairs is looking at Seven in a way you only usually witness on the faces of tigers in nature documentaries.
I, on the other hand, haven’t had the requisite rebound love affair. It’s been three months of solo sleeps and erotic malaise. Jenny is busy with her boyfriend. Della’s friends weren’t my friends. Rachel is married to her books and thesis. Melanie takes me out for drinks sometimes. And there are the girls from the women’s centre I go to actions with. But I guess if I’m going to concentrate on friends I should try to make some more or connect more intensely with the ones I have. I feel lonely for the first time in my life.
“I’m going to watch a lot of TV, and develop a new sleep pattern.” He pushes his finger on the table for emphasis. He shows me a pie chart with 25-minute nap intervals pencilled in red throughout the day. “A guy at the bar works for the cable company. He’s stopping by to give us every channel imaginable.”
Seven rationalizes that while constantly inundated with images and sound, chemical, sexual and emotional chaos, he will never have to have much thought of the next five minutes, let alone tomorrow.
“I can change the way I feel about time,” he says, dipping a key into a tiny baggie of coke he produces from a small heart-shaped pocket he sewed into his soft blue T-shirt, making a half-assed attempt to hide in the shade of the large plastic tree beside our table.
“You should really go to the bathroom to do bumps, honey. We’re going to get kicked out again.”
Seven doesn’t appear to be hearing today. “Eve, I’m trying to tell you that dying will have no meaning.”
This from the man who last month barely survived a rooftop jump, eight stories up, wearing only a crash helmet. “I am a T-cell giant!” he’d exclaimed as I dug my nails into my face watching his leap — surrounded by the empty comfort of a gaggle of beer-drinking rooftop friends, stoic in their defence of a fake beach party in the middle of a snowstorm, parkas with hoods pulled up, too drunk to notice the cold. Their mouths suddenly joyfully agape in shock or pride as Seven reached the other side of the alley.
Compared to Jenny, I was a cautious introvert. Compared to Seven, I was a great-grandmother.
I feel myself chew on each cherry as though it were an exercise in precision, pressing the fork tines down on the pastry, turning it all into a pink paste. It’s like when you repeat a word too many times, it becomes something else. This cherry between the roof of my mouth and my tongue becomes a ticking clock, its own increment of time.
I take a slow sip of my tea. It’s 10:00 a.m. I haven’t slept yet. My jaw is slack to one side and I begin to wonder if I look like one of those annoying, greasy raver kids who hang out in the park some mornings, dancing like idiots. I should give up and buy a visor.
Seven leaves a big tip for Chantal, the waitress, whom he has a vague memory of throwing a fork at yesterday. Soon, he will have fully forgotten such small details.
I watch him flitter about the restaurant, stopping to grab the sugar dispenser from the table by the stairs. He holds the jar somewhat suggestively and I’m wondering what happened to his last project, which had involved stapling slices of Wonder Bread to our living-room wall in a checkerboard pattern, taking meticulous care to date each addition with his label maker. “I’m documenting the evolution of mould!” he exclaimed. I wiped day-old liquid eyeliner from my face that had dried while I napped on the sofa.
We’ve both become big eyed and unambitious in the conventional sense, unlike Rachel, who upon publishing her first small-press book of poetry last month, tattooed her isbn number across her left tit and took flight. She rides around town in her tapered, red lady wool coat with the classy black buttons on her red tricycle, fearless in the slushy ice, with baskets filled with cvs. Now she’s almost finished writing a novel. If we approach her while she sits at the computer in her office she growls like the feral cats in the alley.
She used to take us to her upscale parties filled with industry people, until we began playing scavenger hunts using things we could steal from their homes. She says we have no work ethic and has taken to avoiding us lately, as if our lack of career ambition is contagious. She’s been labelling the food in the fridge because we keep getting high and eating her fancy cheese.
When I told Rachel that Della and I broke up, she said, Finally. There is something off about that girl. I think she’s totally full of shit. First of all, what is she, like, 45? And she had that one art show ten years ago that got a lot of press. What has she done since then? She manipulates baby dykes, that’s what she does.
I personally think Rachel could use a little manipulation from someone. She hasn’t had a serious girlfriend in a while.
I tried to kiss her once, when we were both on the couch drinking wine and watching The Breakfast Club. We could both talk along with the dialogue. I got swept up in the moment. You know the one, where Molly Ringwald takes o
ff one of her diamond earrings and gives it to Judd Nelson and “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” features loudly. She laughed, patted my head condescendingly and said, Sorry, honey, I don’t fuck my roommates.
I hadn’t even thought about sex. I just missed kissing. Sometimes, a perfect new-wave soundtrack makes me an illogical romantic.
So while Seven is trying to render time irrelevant, and Rachel tries to fill time with success-making endeavours, I am forever trying to slow it down. I gave up taking buses to the West Island to work at my dad’s store. Melanie got me a job at a health-food store in my neighbourhood called Santé! I take naps in the storage room on beds of barley and rice. Melanie and I call it Satan for short.
I light a cigarette, pushing away the plate stained red and gummy. I want time like this with just breath; never frenetic, or too occupied. The arch of my back elastic against the bed frame.
Seven offers me a bump. I decline with a shrug and shake of my head. I can’t seem to separate the word “cocaine” from stories with titles like “Eve Has Immediate Heart Attack” or “Eve Turns Into a Junkie Criminal.” I was raised on Degrassi Junior High and after-school specials. I read all the paperback spinoffs. My Canadian moral core is built on CBC drama plot lines. Seven kisses my cheeks goodbye and leaves me with the cheque. The tiger boy follows him.
Outside on the sidewalk I stand still, feeling every bone in my hands but not my feet. I see three bundles of tulips abandoned on my left and one dead squirrel on my right. It brings tears to my eyes, the little furry guy. I pull a leopard-print handkerchief out of my pocket and cover the poor squirrel. I sit on my skateboard at the edge of the curb a few feet down and think about what I should do with my day. Roll to the right. Roll to the left. Pause. Repeat. I know Della is in the park right now with her new dog, or sleeping off a hangover. I make it a practice not to go east of St-Denis for anything. A clean break. I even avoid buying seven-inch records at L’Oblique, my favourite record store. I think about her all the time. I see a white cat across the street jumping up on the dumpster and think of Tomato. I have dreams she comes to me and apologizes for everything and I absolve her. I wake up thirsty. I go to work. I go to class. I go for beer. I wake up and repeat.
Falling asleep briefly with my chin in my hands, I dream about being a guest at Lydia Lunch’s sixtieth birthday. Waking up, a truck passes by and exhales exhaust warmth around my ankles. It smells like chocolate.
I feel like I’m having the world’s slowest nervous breakdown.
I’m startled out of my dream by Seven, who crouches behind me to squeeze my shoulder, my hair sticking in his lip gloss, his teeth stained red. I see my reflection in his sunglasses, my hair white blond, my face thinner than ever.
“I realized that I never even asked you how you are. I’m so self-absorbed! Are you over her yet? Don’t worry if you get sad today. It’s just the drugs!” he says, unlocking his low-rider and biking off before I can respond.
When I get home Rachel is sitting on the couch. She’s never home during daylight hours. It’s jarring. She’s wearing a long plaid shirt and grey wool work socks and that’s it. She has mascara bruises under her eyes. Her hair is fluffy. On the coffee table in front of her there’s an open bag of Ruffles potato chips, a greasy paper bag of warm bagels from Fairmount Bagel and three open containers of cream cheese, salmon paté and what appears to be some sort of onion dip for the chips.
“PMS?” I inquire.
Rachel sighs. I start to wonder if she’s had a seizure or a stroke or something. Her eyes are so blank, the pause so pronounced. She reaches under the blanket on the couch and produces a letter.
“Rejection letter from the last publisher.”
“For your novel?”
“Yeah.”
“Eighteen of the eighteen I sent out.”
“What about the publisher who put out your poems?”
“They’re about to go under.”
Lap covered in chip crumbs, bagel dough stuck between her perfect teeth, she doesn’t seem like the confident starlet, the workaholic, precise politico rolling her eyes at her slacker daydreamer roommates. She looks flawed. Her eyes are dark jawbreaker candies, somehow beautiful and anchoring.
I sit next to her on the couch tentatively and reach out for an awkward sideways hug. I’m not sure I’ve ever touched her before except by accident and that awkward attempt at a kiss rebuffed. Lack of touch defined our roles, as both of us cuddle with Seven constantly, bookend him with platonic affection.
“I smoked all of Seven’s pot and got a little hungry.” She starts laughing, looking at the empty bags, picking one up to throw across the room, but it doesn’t go very far, just lands at the end of the coffee table. I knew at this moment that my friendship with Rachel was circumstantial, that, just like Melanie at the health-food store, we’d be thrown together for a concentrated number of hours and when we moved apart, quit or got fired, we wouldn’t really have coffee like we planned to when we ran into each other at the drugstore and scrawled numbers on the backs of our hands. This hug; the time we ran down St-Dominique in the sudden rainstorm on our way to buy toilet paper and smokes, heaving and laughing and soaked through our clothes; the occasional political debate over breakfast. This is what we’ll have. And it will be good, solid, limited. In ten years I’ll be at a bookstore and I’ll see a copy of her novel, a review from The Globe and Mail pinned up beside the display of her hardcover accomplishment. I will think about going to the reading, but wonder if she’ll remember me. If fame distorts memory. If she’ll remember the hug we shared over her rejection letters.
I pull away from her because I realize how bad I smell, and how my jaw aches and how the drugs have worn off completely. I feel like a waste of skin.
“I guess it’s back to the women’s centre for me.” She sighed. Rachel had taken a semester off from coordinating the centre so she could write. She said she was tired of the politics. I watch her get up and go into her room, leaving the mess on the coffee table. I’d never witnessed her not deal with a mess. I picked up the containers and bags, put them away in the kitchen. I could hear Rachel’s soft sobs through her thick bedroom door. I almost knock, but decide to leave her be.
I sleep until 3:35 p.m. on the couch. Rachel is pacing in front of me. “Does this look okay?” She’s wearing a black cotton dress and some eyeliner, her combat boots.
“You look hot. Where are you going?”
“Seven set me up on a stupid date with some dumb girl I’m probably going to hate.”
“Well, that’s the right attitude.”
She smiled. “I know, I know.”
I kiss her on both cheeks and tell her I have to run or I’ll be late for my 4:00 p.m. shift. I jump on my skateboard while trying to clear the sleep crust out of my eyes. I start to feel like I have a skeleton again. A man on the street yells, “Why don’t you smile, pretty girl? Smile!” I grin and give him the finger.
At the corner of St-Laurent the light is slow to change from red to green. A group of preteens are practicing a Spice Girls dance routine on the sunny sidewalk outside the magazine store on the corner of Duluth. There is a bossy, chubby redhead in high-waisted red pants and Converse high tops trying to tell everyone else what to do. “Non! C’est pas comme ça!” And she shows the other girls a jump-up dance move and a kick. I watch her with a huge grin. She has moxy in the bright afternoon sunlight. She turns to look at me, “Eh? Qu’est-ce que tu veux la?” I laugh.
“Rien. C’est cool.” She stares at me without cracking a smile and turns back to the group to continue the very serious business of spicing up their lives. The other girls look cold and cranky.
11
•••
KICK THEM IN THE KNEES AND THEY'LL GO DOWN FASTER
It’s so dead at work that Melanie and I take turns reading and lying on the ground in the storage room while the other minds the cash register. I’m halfway through Heroine by Gail Scott. It’s changing the way I read. We’ve developed a system
where, if the boss comes in, we cut the CD and cough really loudly. Then whoever is slacking can come out of the storage room with whatever we were restocking diligently. Every once in a while I call Rachel to check on her. She doesn’t pick up.
Sitting bent over, arms crossed on a closed white plastic pail of peanut butter, I close the novel and pick at the thumb-holes in the sleeve of my thin black sweater and curl myself into a ball. I notice the silver paint peeling off my boots again and that my socks don’t match. I remember suddenly, like a silent musical montage, Della and I the second time we met.
It was the opening for the student vernissage at Dawson College, where I went to CEGEP. I was wearing a short blue dress and platform boots and kept stumbling. I got drunk on the free red wine in plastic cups. Della walked in and straight to me, wearing a leather jacket, dark jeans, button-up white shirt undone over a tank top. Even while people tapped her shoulder and tried to hug her hello, she came up to me like I was the only person in the room and she had a huge secret to tell me. She kissed both my cheeks and smiled, looked right at me. She smelled intoxicating, some sort of men’s cologne I’d never smelled before.
I’ve been thinking about you all day.
If a guy had uttered those words I’d have rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t even muster a smirk. Della had called me the night before. She got my number from my teacher and said she’d like to have some wine with me at the opening. I said sure. At least I think so. I was floating above myself the entire two minutes of our phone conversation.
“Good. I’m looking forward to it,” she said.
“Me too.”
Fearing the lack of anything I could say that would most definitely ruin the perfect phone call I said, I’m late for work. I’ll see you tomorrow night. I hung up the phone and slid down against the kitchen cupboards, pulling my knees to my chest in a slack-jawed grin. I stared at the chart my mother had recently written on the fridge of things she wasn’t going to eat this year, wheat, dairy, sugar.
