Snapped

by Pamela Klaffke

  “Look how that worked out,” Gen said.

  “You were fine with it at the time.”

  “I could have never done that with Ted.”

  “I’m not saying you should have. It’s different with you and Ted.”

  “It’s never going to be serious with Jack unless you’re monogamous.”

  “Who says I want serious? Who says monogamy is the only way?” Discussing the finer points of your open long-distance relationship with your staunchly monogamous married friend is ill-advised.

  “Come on, Sara. You’re almost forty.”

  “Yup. I’m almost forty.”

  I know that I’m supposed to know what this means. People say it all the time. You’re almost forty. Wow, you’re turning forty. How are you with the big four-oh? How am I with the big four-oh? The big four-oh is super, and I’m not quite there yet, but thanks for reminding me. And yes, I know I’m not married and I know I don’t have a baby and I don’t think I want either of those things. And yes, my boyfriend is nine years younger, so you can stop asking questions and doing speculative math in your head. I am fine with the big four-oh, but you people are freaking me out, and I already had my freak-out at thirty-five, so stop it or I will slap you.

  Eva wanders over to the newsstand, leaving Jack and I a moment alone. It’s always the same. I’ll be ready, almost anxious for him to go, to get back to work, to sprawl in my bed and sleep alone, but then I want him to stay and I nearly cry. I kiss him goodbye at the security gate and he says he loves me and that he’ll call when he gets in.

  I find Eva at the newsstand thumbing through a celebrity tabloid. “That one’s my favorites,” I say.

  “Me, too,” she says. “It’s so trashy.”

  “But not too trashy. There has to be a balance.”

  “I used to buy it at this Metro stop up in Chabanel when I’d go look at fabrics, then I’d put it inside, like, V or Japanese Vogue or something and read it on the way home. I didn’t want anyone to see me with it.”

  We step out of the terminal and walk to Eva’s car. “You can’t worry about what everyone else thinks.”

  “Oh, I don’t, not now. Especially after reading that column you wrote about embracing your guilty pleasures.”

  “I wrote that years ago.”

  Eva stops for a moment. “Two thousand and one, I think. Sometime in the spring?”

  I have no idea if she’s right, but I’ll assume she is. “I think you know more about me than I do.”

  The drive to the airport and back with the top of Eva’s convertible down has sobered me up and a dull headache is setting in. Eva parks and we walk to the corner and buy two bottles of cheap French wine at the depanneur. A couple glasses and my headache is masked by the liquor. Then there’s the guilt and the phantom pain of work tomorrow. It’s not even eight.

  Eva walks around my apartment as if it were a museum. She looks closely at everything, every picture, every knickknack, the title on every spine of every book on my shelves. She doesn’t touch a thing. I take my camera out and upload the weekend’s photos onto my computer. Of the twelve DOs for the fashion page, seven are strong enough to use. I only need five. I have fifteen DON’Ts, of which ten are hysterical, but I only need five of those, as well. And then there’s Parrot Girl.

  I hate Parrot Girl because I don’t know what to do with her. It used to be easier when people just dressed how they dressed and it was about style, not irony and preciousness or getting their picture taken. I’m tired of Parrot Girl and all the other girls who may not have parrots but they’re the same because they try so hard not to be. I hate Parrot Girl and her soccer socks and her cowboy boots and her satin jacket. But I hate her most because I know she looks ridiculous and that she is a DON’T. But it’s not about me and my personal DON’Ts, not really, not anymore, it’s about the perception of DON’Ts and knowing whether twenty-year-olds will think Parrot Girl is a DON’T. Stuffy American companies don’t pay people twenty thousand dollars to talk to their marketing department for a day unless they can tell them definitively what a DON’T is to a twenty-year-old. I’m almost forty. I want to slap myself, but instead I take another swig of wine, and then I want to slap Parrot Girl, but she’s not here. Eva is. I don’t want to slap her. She’s twenty-four. I could ask her what she thinks about Parrot Girl. She’d be thrilled, I’m sure. But I don’t because I can’t, because I can’t fucking tell what Parrot Girl is. Is she a poseur or some newfangled post-post-ironic poster child for some save-the-birds society? Is she wrong or all right? Is she a test, a comeuppance for something I did last week or last year? Fuck me. Is she a DO or a DON’T?

  My brain flips over and hurts. Get me a cold compress and a very soft pillow. Let me not care and play dead or pretend I’m a teacher, a strict schoolmarm. It’s a pop quiz for Eva: who’s a DO, who’s a DON’T? Pencils down in three minutes! I’ll check her work right away, taking my time—making her wait, making her nervous and possibly sweaty, though Eva seems likely to be one of those girls whose sweat smells like rosewater and never stains. Yes, a pop quiz could be fun, with Parrot Girl first up. No, second—I don’t need Eva to sense that I need her, and that I want her to spill every secret she knows.

  I’m quite sure that Eva would tell me everything—anything—I wanted. She’d be happy, I’d be happy, we could do a dance around the living room because we’d know, we’d know, we’d know just what Parrot Girl is. We could revel and open more wine, make a toast to the most fabulous DO or DON’T of the week. I stare at the photo of Parrot Girl and her stupid fucking parrot and my mouth seals shut. I say nothing and there will be no pop quiz. I don’t need Eva, she holds no secrets I haven’t heard or told before. Parrot Girl is my problem, she’s a riddle, not a test, maybe even a joke.

  I click through the photos and print them out. I spread them on the floor and Eva stands beside me as I decide which photos will make the column. Skinny Denim Shorts Man with the skeevy mustache is a DON’T. Skinny Pink Polo Shirt Man with the mutton chops and a kilt is a DO. Headband Girl is a DON’T. Babushka Girl is a DO. And so it goes until there is one more DON’T slot and one more DO. Parrot Girl is still on the floor. My confidence is sunk; it’s not too late for the pop quiz and this is no joke. I’ve made a Skinny Pink Polo Shirt Man with mutton chops and a kilt a DO. He looks absurd and he’s trying too hard but I know he’s a DO because the boys at Snap keep trying to grow mutton chops and half of them are in kilts—but never sarongs—and they really like pink and girls like Eva like them. And there are no fucking pets at all so it’s really not so complicated.

  I look closer at the photo: it’s technically good. I have to use it. Eva shuffles her feet. She’s bored, she’s waiting, one second longer and she’ll know I’m a fraud. I pick up the photo and put it on the DON’T pile. I feel a rush of bravado and decide she’ll be the feature DON’T. Eva’s shuffling stops. Fuck Parrot Girl.

  Jack calls. He’s home and safe. The flight was good. No snacks or bar service, but it was only an hour and he tells me he found a half-eaten protein bar in his jacket pocket. I’m drunk and I can’t believe I’m dating someone who eats protein bars. Eva’s sitting on the sofa wearing gloves and examining issues six and eight of Snap. She told me that she carries the gloves in her handbag at all times. She won’t read an important book or periodical without them, she said. Eva is odd. I slip into my bedroom and say this to Jack and he says, “You’re odd.” And he’s right, of course. I like her—Eva—and her oddness. I like that she carries gloves in her bag and wears panty hose and orthopedic shoes and has hair the color of a Francophone grandma. Jack tells me he loves me and that he misses me already. “I know you do, baby,” I say and as soon as that baby is out of my mouth I feel again like I want to vomit.

  Eva is too drunk to drive so I tell her she can stay here. I make up the spare room that’s so rarely used. I lend her a black cotton camisole and a pair of boxer shorts printed with grinning flowers. They’re Japanese and they were free. They look cute o
n Eva. I rifle through my sleepwear options and decide on a long black silk chemise with lace trim and a matching robe. I keep my bra on so my breasts won’t flop around. I catch myself in the mirror. I look like a madam, but the silk feels cool and soft against my skin. At home, I’m usually in long johns and T-shirts, my hair tied back in a ponytail and my glasses on. I swipe a neutral gloss across my lips before heading back to the living room.

  As we finish the wine, Eva tells me all about how great and important and influential I am. Sometimes I ask her about herself. She grew up in Pointe-Claire with an Anglo mother and a French father, not far it turns out from Ted and Genevieve’s new house. I look up their address in my book and Eva knows the street, it’s about six blocks from her parents’ place. She’s living there now, just temporarily she says. She has a job, an office PA for a French film company, but the pay is shit. She hates it, says the producer is a prick who wears a fedora and a trench coat every day and does nothing except play video games and look at porn on his cell phone. I tell her I’ll take his picture and make him the featured DON’T one week. She laughs until her eyes tear and I do, too. Eva tells me she went to private school, with uniforms that she started altering at thirteen. She says she makes clothes she sometimes sells to friends, but mostly she’s a stylist and a writer—like me. Except when I was twenty-four no one knew what a stylist did and no one knew our names. I tell her this and she goes on about how it’s about time people—but mostly me—were recognized for our talent. We’re the ones who spot and set the trends, not the movie stars, not the pop stars. Eva is very passionate about this. I’m fading and my eyes are heavy, but Eva keeps talking, telling me how remarkable and inspiring I am. “Look at all you’ve accomplished—look at everything you’ve done. And you’re not even forty.” Eva says this and it’s better than sex, it’s better than a lullaby.

  Swag

  Red wine is crusted around the corners of my mouth and looks nearly black. I scrape it off with my fingernail and splash water on my face before pinning my hair up and stepping into the shower. Under the water I’m dizzy and hot. I feel like I’m sweating. I step out and wrap myself in an oversize towel and sit on the edge of the bathtub for a long time, still and silent. If I move my head I fear it may explode. I reach for my body cream and rub it in all over. It has a faint vanilla scent, but I can still smell the toxic odor of yesterday afternoon’s champagne and last night’s wine on my skin. I spritz myself with extra perfume. I spray my hair with a citrusy refresher that absorbs the smell of smoke, then I work it into two low pigtails. Ted will know I’m hungover. I always wear my hair in pigtails when I’m hungover. It used to be, even five years ago, that I’d often be asked for ID in bars, liquor stores, buying cigarettes at chain stores with signs declaring Anyone Who Looks Under 30 Will Be Asked For Identification. I examine my face. No one will be asking me for ID today.

  My face sucks up the first layer of moisturizer in seconds, so I slather on another. It’s the eyes. The eyes are the biggest problem. It’s not so much the wrinkles, but the skin—it’s like the thinnest tissue paper, delicate and soft, never totally smooth, which makes concealer an issue. Applying it evenly on the puffy, papery skin is next to impossible and no matter how much blending and dabbing I do, it’s never perfect. Still, I grout the area around my eyes with concealer, set it with a light powder, then attack with an expensive moisturizing spray gel that I nabbed from the Swag Shack at the office. I feel my skin suck it in and I wait for the promised youthful, reenergizing glow that after five minutes doesn’t appear, so I give up and brush my teeth again. My tongue is still dark with wine. I brush it raw with my toothbrush, which looks too gross to ever use again, so I toss it in the trash and want to climb right in with it, but the pail is too small. I don’t have a garbage pail big enough anywhere in the apartment. I could probably fold myself into one of those black plastic jumbo bags I use to dump all bottles into after a party—the ones I leave around back of the building for the bottle-picker with the beard and the giant tricycle who I always try to smile at but can never quite look in the eye or say hello to. The jumbo bag is problematic, though. I’d need someone to twist-tie the top for me and get me to the Dumpster and Ted isn’t strong enough to lift me. Jack is, but he wouldn’t do it. I could ask Eva if she has any big-guy friends, but that might seem weird since we just met.

  Eva’s not in the spare room, but I can tell she slept there because the bed is made just so, all crisp corners and symmetry. I find her in the kitchen slicing fresh bagels from the Fairmount Bakery, which is not close by, but she says it was no big deal to nip up there and back. She’s also picked up cut flowers and opened the blinds to the day.

  “I have Mondays off,” she says between bagel bites. “We shoot Tuesday to Saturday.”

  I remember now. She’s a film office PA. She lives in Pointe-Claire with her parents. There’s a guy with a hat and porn on his phone. “So what are your plans for today?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. Just hang around, I guess. But should probably go home and change. I used your shower, though. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Use whatever you want. And if you’re looking for something to wear, I’m sure you could find something at my office—we’ve got piles of stuff.” It is true. The Swag Shack is full of free stuff companies send us in hopes that we’ll write about it, put it on our IT LIST. Most of the stuff is crap that no one could possibly want, but sometimes it is such spectacular crap we put it on our ICK LIST. Then the publicists at the companies—the very people who sent us this crap stuff in the first place—call up whining and angry and we laugh at them and ask them if they’ve ever actually read Snap and they get all flustered and say yes, of course, but are suddenly nervous and polite and have a call they have to take on the other line, so goodbye.

  There is good stuff, too. Cute clothes, but it’s been ages since a pair of pants that fit me have come in and I could use new pants. The free-stuff publicists call up our market editors and ask about me, about Ted—favorite colors, hated colors, sizes. I haven’t gotten around to telling anyone that I’m not an eight, but a ten now, so none of the pants they send over fit. If they ask, I tell our market editors I don’t like the pants—any of them—even if I do. It’s better than sending some internal e-mail that’s sure to end up on someone’s goddamn blog announcing that my ass is fatter. Like they haven’t noticed. But skirts, if they’re A-line or pleated, they fit. My waist is still an eight—it’s my ass that’s a ten. And tops are fine. Shoes and handbags are the best. I don’t wear jewelry so I couldn’t care whether it’s free or not.

  I take Eva to work with me. It’s exciting for her and I’m happy that she drives and that I don’t have to walk or contend with the Metro today. My legs are achy and my knee cracks as I cross it over the other in the passenger seat of Eva’s Saab. She presses a button and the top comes down. I’m grateful for this because I worry that the smell of my hangover has defeated that extra spray of perfume.

  The Snap building is squat and two storeys, a former embroidery factory in the east end. The first floor is reception and production, there’s a fully equipped photo studio, and piled high to the ceiling in one corner there’s a heap of old Macs that looks like it could tumble down at any moment, but really they’re all superglued together and affixed to the wall. Sometimes when Ted and I are taking corporate clients though we tell them it’s art.

  I spin Eva around through production, the studio, mumble a few introductions. She seems impressed and keeps saying, “Oh, my gosh.” Eva doesn’t swear, I’ve noticed. She says goodness and gosh, and I’m waiting for a golly-gee. This could annoy me, but it’s Eva so it doesn’t.

  We take the freight elevator to the second floor. I can’t face the stairs even though I know my ass will never shrink riding an elevator. Today I’m a lazy bitch and I couldn’t care. I’ve brought a CD with the DOs and DON’Ts fashion photos for the week. I’ll give it to Layout, then show it to Ted, who will laugh and sign off and we’ll get proofs of the
entire issue and mark it up one more time before six when it has to go to the printer. By noon tomorrow it’ll be in record stores and fashion boutiques and cafés in Montreal that we’ve personally approved. On Wednesday, it’ll be in more record stores and fashion boutiques and cafés across the country and in the States that I suppose someone at some point has visited and approved on our behalf, but that’s Ted’s responsibility, not mine.

  My office, like Ted’s, is an actual office, with walls and windows and a door that locks. When we first moved into the building it was all open and chaos. Music blared and people smoked at their desks, although even back then it was against city bylaws. There’s still music and chaos and it’s fun to watch through the windows of my quiet, sound-proofed office, but I have to smoke on the roof.

  Music and chaos is good for business, so we built the boardroom in the middle of it all and glassed it in. Ted’s in there meeting with our branding team. I wave and he nods. I lead Eva to my office and collapse immediately into the swiveling fuchsia chair I received as a gift from a boring furniture manufacturer that made a splash in the market by hiring a flamboyant women’s wear designer to create a line of equally flamboyant home and office furnishings that got lots of press but sold abysmally. Our research showed the price point was too high—there are only so many people who will pay eight thousand dollars for a polka-dot leather sofa and they don’t shop at the boring furniture manufacturer’s stores. So they can’t say we didn’t tell them so.

  “I love your chair,” Eva says.

  “Here—give it a try. It’s stylish and ergonomic.” Christ. I’m an infomercial. I muster all my strength and lift myself out of it, placing both hands on my desk in front of me for balance. I hear my knees crack—both of them this time. Beside my desk there’s an empty garbage pail. It’s larger than your average office garbage pail, but I know I can’t wedge my ass into that one, either.