by Anna Roberts
“What did you say?”
“Milan Kundera.”
He really picks the inappropriate moments to bust out the Spanish. Jeez.
“And what did he say?” I blurt, panicked.
“He said...” Jesús leans over and shows me the text message.
LOL WHO R U AND WHEN DID U STEAL HANNA’S PHONE?
“I’m going to my room,” I mutter. “And I’m locking the door. Don’t ask me to come out.”
“Don’t worry. We won’t,” says Kate.
I take my phone and close the bedroom door. The text messages make no sense. I could really do with some help right now, but my Inner Goddess is still sulking and...
...blue?
Well, exactly. What does it mean? Is it maybe...a plot? I want to e-mail Crispian but he won’t be at his computer. I hope he has a nice cell. He always liked the finer things in life. I wonder when they’re going to let him out?
For a moment I think about phoning my mother, but this is all her fault anyway. If she hadn’t colluded with my English Professor then Crispian would never have been arrested and he’d be right here with me.
I take out a book – my much-abused copy of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Her simple, pastoral problems are so much less than mine and distract me for a while, as I listen to the apartment fill with the sounds of voices, squeals, hiccups and drunken shouts. And people wonder why I prefer nineteenth century novels to real life. People were so much more civilised back then.
After a couple more hours I realise that some problems are constant, regardless of time or place; I really need to pee. If only I’d been quicker to move my stuff into the apartment so that Kate didn’t have time to call dibs on the bedroom with the en suite. Oh God, this is bad, but I can’t leave the room without being besieged by Kate and Jesús’ terrible stoner friends. And he’s out there – I can hear his voice, mingling with Jesús’.
“...it was kind of my girlfriend’s idea to make it Boobulon Twelve, you know?”
“...yeah, yeah – totally. She’s right.”
“You think so?”
“Oh yeah. Absolutely. You want to build up to a title like Sex Queens of Boobulon Sixty-Nine – that’s like specific kink. Don’t blow your load all at once.”
“Thanks man, I really appreciate your input – you being a professional and all that.”
Huh. This is the shape of the publishing industry? It’s no wonder nobody appreciates me at work.
It’s starting to hurt. What am I going to do? I don’t even have a vase in here. The only real receptacles in my room are made of macramé (Thanks Mom) and the only hollow objects to hand are my collection of china kitty cats. And even then, although they're hollow they're very small and I don’t think they’d hold much. And I think I’m going to pee quite a lot.
My phone bloops. Holy crap.
IN COLD BLOOD
Why? Why does he keep doing this to me? What did I do to deserve this? I’m frightened but right at that moment I’m so mad and so desperate that I don’t care. I fling open the door and come face to face with Timothy Grope.
“In Cold Blood?” I gasp.
He blinks at me, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lip, a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon open in one hand. “Yeah,” he says. “Nineteen sixty five.”
I don’t have time to ask him what he means. I feel my bladder begin to overflow and run (from the knees down) to the bathroom. I elbow my way to the front of the queue, open the door, yank up my skirt and feel my buttocks hit the toilet seat not a second too soon.
It’s then that I realise I’m not alone in the bathroom, and that for the second time in my life I forgot to take down my panties before I started to pee. Kate takes her head out of the sink and stares unsteadily at me.
“I thought you weren’t coming out,” she slurs.
“I had to,” I say, my teeth clenched and my knees doubly so. “I had to pee.”
“Well, yeah – I didn’t want to say anything, but you were hitting the Twinings pretty hard earlier.”
I stand up and see in her eyes signs of something going down in the sad, delusional alcohol sponge she calls a brain. I can tell she’s wondering why I’m not pulling up my panties.
“Oh holy shit,” she says. “You did it again, didn’t you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I bet you don’t. And you’re not even drunk this time.”
“That,” I mutter, darkly. “Can be remedied.” And with that I march into the kitchen, where the punchbowl foams and the shots are lined up, waiting.
Chapter Four
Twihards and Other Cryptids of the Pacific Northwest
A corridor stretches before me. It is lined either side with doors, all of them labelled with strange words. CONFLICT. EXPOSITION. RISING ACTION. CLIMAX. Drawn by the anvil-soft sexual symbolism, I open the door marked CLIMAX, but there is nothing behind the door but a brick wall. Confused, I open a door marked CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, but once more I am faced with brick, hard, unyielding. What can it mean? The next door is labelled SYMBOLISM and my heart races strangely as I turn the handle. My Inner Goddess is standing behind it, dressed as a mime.
“What’s going on?” I ask, but she just shakes her head and points to her closed lips.
“What does this mean?” I demand, knowing she’s only doing this to annoy me. She was never any good at mime anyway – she could barely even do the Invisible Box and spent most of her time sticking her middle finger up at me.
She holds up a cardboard placard. It says THIS IS YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED SYMBOLIC DREAM.
“Oh,” I muse. “I guess I was due for one of those, huh?”
She nods and flips over the placard. PLEASE BE PATIENT – THE PLOT WILL BE WITH YOU SHORTLY.
The door to the side of her is labelled POINTLESS CRAP THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN CUT. There is a strange noise behind it, a kind of haphazard mechanical rattling. As I lean closer it gets louder and at first it sounds like a football stadium full of people are trying to break the world’s largest tap-dance record, only they’re all out of time with one another. Then I hear the dings of carriage returns and realise what I’m hearing. Typewriters. Thousands of them.
I reach for the door handle but my Inner Goddess grabs my wrist and shuffles another placard to the front of her stack.
DON’T OPEN THAT DOOR. THE MONKEYS THROW POO.
I wake face down on the big, cowskin couch, stirred by the sound of the TV. Jesús is sitting a couple of inches from my nose, and I am grateful for my recumbent position; his legs are apart and his robe gaping at the lap, and I know that if I were to move my head I’d get an eyeful of the parts Kate seems to find so fascinating.
“Hey,” he says, peering liverishly at me out of the corner of his eye. He has a bag of frozen peas pressed to his forehead. “How you feeling?”
I mean to say “Awful,” but my brain is running at least ten minutes behind actual events and what comes out is “The monkeys throw poo.”
“Yep,” says Jesús, nodding in bilious agreement. “They’ll do that.”
Kate shuffles in from the kitchen area, her hair flattened on one side, a glass in her hand. “Here,” she says, handing it to Jesús. “Plinky fizz thing.”
She sits down, almost sitting on my head, and pushes a cushion into Jesús’ lap. I was right – you probably could see everything. “Whasson TV?” she mumbles.
"Weather."
They stare like zombies at the screen and wince when the loud music and gaudy, urgent graphics of the local news fill the room. I peel my cheek from the couch and sit up. Oh God. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea.
The room performs an elaborate waltz step, whirling halfway round twice and then switching to a tango with a backbend so deep that I find myself on the floor with my feet on the couch. "What happened?" I groan.
"You challenged your boss to a drinking contest," says Jesús.
"I what?"
Kate steps over me to get another Alka Seltzer. Oka
y - I officially could have done without that view. "You started yelling about Truman Capote," she said. "And he kept saying 'Nineteen Sixty Five'. Then you kind of threw down and challenged him to Jell-O shots."
"Where is he?"
"Dude, where do you think? The emergency room. I don't know how you do it - you're like a hundred pounds wet and you never eat anything to soak up the booze."
Holy crap. I put Timothy Grope in the hospital? I'm so going to get fired on Monday. She hands me a glass and I hold my nose as I chug down the gross fizz. "Why didn't you stop me?" I ask.
"Are you kidding?" says Kate. "Last night when I told you to slow down you threatened to give me a mammogram with the fucking George Foreman grill. Were you always such an angry drunk or was this just since you became an official prison playmate?"
I get up, badly in need of a cup of tea. Was the newsreader always this loud? Jeez. I hear his cadence shift to the grating, jokey tone that usually means he’s about to finish the broadcast with a story about Bigfoot. That or Twilight fans. Whichever is weirdest that week.
“Holy shit,” says Jesús. “Kate, look – I told you it was a thing.”
“What was a thing?”
“The dumpster cat-person thing.”
“What?”
I glance at the TV. A blonde named Lauren Stein is nodding and pretending to understand an anxious looking Hispanic girl. I recognise her as Milagros from the coffee shop.
“It was a person,” the translation says. “But it had the ears of a cat and it hissed at me. It spoke a language I didn’t understand – like ‘baka, baka’ that’s what it said. I don’t know how long it had been living in our dumpster but it looked to be well fed.”
Jesús frowns. “Bullshit. That’s not what she’s saying.”
“I caught ‘chocha’,” says Kate. “But I guess they can’t say that on the news.”
“She’s saying it had a fupa.”
“A what?”
“A Fat Upper Pussy Area – fupa. You know. When a chick’s like normal but she’s kind of skinny fat and her little belly drops down and makes the top of her pussy look fat.”
Kate grabs the pack of frozen peas and smacks him over the back of the head with it. “That’s some gross sexist shit. You should be fucking ashamed of yourself.”
He reaches for the peas but she holds them above her head as she watches the end of the news segment. “Thanks Lauren,” bellows the newsreader. “Guess the Pacific Northwest got another weird mystery to go along with the Sasquatch, huh?”
Lauren simpers. “That and the inexplicable success of those Twilight novels, Blane!”
“I like Twilight,” I say, but Kate is interested in the news.
“Maybe it’s a Twilight fangirl,” she muses aloud.
“What is?”
“The cat girl fatty dumpster thing. El Fupacabra. Maybe some dumpy little fangirl lost the ability to tell fact from fiction and came up here to look for Edward Cullen.”
“Do Twilight fangirls do that kind of thing?” asks Jesús, looking at me as if he expects an answer. I’m not a fangirl. I just know a sympathetic, well rounded and in no way manipulative or sociopathic heroine when I read one.
“Dude, you’ve seen them on YouTube. They’re fucking crazy enough for anything. Going feral in a series of Seattle dumpsters is small potatoes to a really dedicated Twihard.”
I sink the floor. The room is dancing around me again. I think it’s trying to cha-cha this time, and I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to keep my Twinings down.
“That’s an interesting shade of green you’ve turned,” says Kate, pushing a plastic bowl towards me with her foot. “Do you want me to get a picture? You might want to get a swatch made up for the bridesmaid dresses.”
I blink uncomprehendingly at her for a moment and then the whole day comes back to me, foggy through last night’s booze but...holy crap! Did I...? Did he? Was that a real thing that...? Could it be...?
Yes. You said yes. Because you’re an idiot.
Oh look. Little Miss Drama Queen is back from the dead.
As if I could stay away while you were being violently ill.
- Hate you.
Hate you ba-ack.
“Oh my God,” I murmur. “I’m getting married!”
Because nothing says True Love like an unhinged co-dependent settling for the first sperm bearing mammal who looks twice at her.
“I won’t lie,” says Kate. “I think it’s a terrible idea.”
Jesús slides off the couch and crawls off to the bathroom. I think blissfully of the bridesmaid’s dress I’m going to inflict on Kate for all the times she’s called me a shitlord. Bright pink. No. Canary yellow. With big orange bows and a huge poofy skirt.
“It’s perfect,” I say. “It couldn’t have worked out better for us.”
“Better for you,” she says. “You put your ears back whenever another woman so much as coughs near him.”
“Exactly. If he’s in prison I won’t have to worry about him cheating on me.”
“Well, yeah b...” Kate cuts herself off. “No,” she agrees. “No. You’re right. You won’t. He’s...yeah.”
The door-buzzer goes, a jagged shard of noise piercing my poor, sensitive skull. I can hear Jesús throwing up in the bathroom.
“Oog,” moans Kate. “Who the fuck could that be?”
Holy crap! It’s probably Timothy Grope. They’ve released him from the hospital and now he’s going to come and get even with me. A thin, curdled memory swirls in the toilet bowl of my hung-over mind – I remember him leaning too heavily on my shoulder, breathing vodka all over me and telling me there are no professionals in the publishing game any more.
...never were, baby. There never were. Just the money people – th’ ones who got lucky and the ones who didn’t...
I hurry back into my bedroom and close the door behind me, but I can hear Kate’s footsteps. “Hanna, what are you doing?” she says. “Come out – there’s someone here to see you.”
“Is it him?”
“Who?”
“Timothy Grope.”
“Fuck no. He’s probably still sleeping off the stomach pump. It’s Crispian’s attorney.”
What would his attorney want with me? I unlock the door.
When I see her I almost wish she was Timothy Grope. Crispian's attorney is a woman - a tall, blonde, attractive woman. She looks to be over forty but she still has legs up to Canada. Her silver blonde hair is cut in a sleek, fashionable bob and she looks both sexy and authoritative - the kind of woman who would never let her friend talk her into getting her anus bleached just so she could find out how much the peroxide stung, the kind of woman who has never cracked a nineteenth century novel but knows every single goddamn position in the Kama Sutra and then some. The kind of woman who hates me.
"Down girl," Kate whispers, holding my elbow.
"Yes?" I say.
The attorney holds out a manicured hand. "Hi," she says. "I'm Helena Robinson - I represent Crispian Neigh. I guess you must be Hanna?"
I catch hold of her index finger between finger and thumb, and jerk it up and down a couple of times by way of greeting. Jeez - isn't this just typical? One moment I'm talking about how he could never cheat on me in prison and the next up comes Miss Helena Handbasket here, with all her legs and boobs and things. Crap, crap and thrice crapola.
She smiles too widely at me. “So,” she smarms. “I’m going to be constructing Crispian’s defence and I’d like it if you could tell me in your own words about your...uh...dealings with him. Your relationship.”
“Oh, look – her favourite subject,” says Kate. “Can I get you some coffee, Ms. Robinson? Or tea?"
"Thanks," murmurs Helena Handbasket, peering warily around. "I'll take a black coffee if you have one?" Even I have to admit the state of the kitchen doesn't inspire confidence. The surfaces are covered in shot-glasses, the cupboard doors are spackled with clots of vodka Jell-O and I'm pretty sure that t
he singed ruin sticking out of the George Foreman grill used to be my favourite bra.
"Crispian bought me that," I say, opening the grill. Goddammit - it is too. "How did that get in there?"
"I dunno," shrugs Kate, who almost certainly, without a single shadow of a solitary skulking doubt knows exactly how it got in there. "What's that melted to the grill?"
Ms. Handbasket peers inside. "It looks like a...GPS tracker of some sort? Excuse me, did you say that my client bought this for you?"
"Yes," I mope, sitting down at the wreck of a kitchen table. "It was the first night I ever spent with him. We didn't...you know...not that night, but he put me in bed with him."
Ms. Handbasket blinks slowly. Actually I suppose it's the only way she can blink - not only is she blonde but her forehead looks kind of unnaturally smooth. "He put you in bed with him?" she repeats. Oh dear. Crispian's definitely going to have to fire this one - I mean, there's blonde and then there's this.
"Yes. I was unconscious at the time."
"Oh boy," she says, putting on a pair of thin-framed reading glasses. "And how come you were unconscious, Miss Squeal?"
"I'd been throwing up on a Mexican," I say.
"What?"
"It's simple," says Kate. "She was shitfaced, right? Like, almost as shitfaced as she was last night...oh wait, is she going to be like a character witness or something because I probably shouldn't have mentioned the dipsomania, right?"
"It's really...nothing," murmurs Ms. Handbasket, holding up her hands. She taps something into her laptop.
"I am not a dipsomaniac," I protest. "I'd just had a really bad day and needed to cut loose."
"As did her stomach," says Kate. "All over my boyfriend."
"Oh shut up - he wasn't even your boyfriend then. You went home with Crispian's brother..."
"...yeah? So? At least I didn't pee myself and drunk-dial My Little Stalker. You didn't even call me to let me know you weren't dead, you dumbass."
"I didn't know where I was," I say. "I'd passed out. And don't act as if you'd even care - you were too busy slutting it up with Mr. Beige."
