Difficult People

by Catriona Wright

  After Zumba class the next week, Carla bombarded me with questions about Liam. I deflected, told her he was a douchey finance bro, that she shouldn’t waste her time on him. He only dated girls who wore Tiffany necklaces and had elaborate skin-care regimens involving rosewater and glycolic acid. I admitted he could sometimes, on the rarest of occasions, be funny in a gross frat-boy kind of way. I didn’t get into our whole sad history. My mom’s drinking. Our parents’ car accident. Liam ordering the lilies and delivering the eulogy.

  I was sick of talking about him. I wanted to go out just us girls. Use those Zumba moves on the dance floor. Pick up guys. But Carla kept pressuring me to text him. I said he had to work late, he had a date, he was out of town, he was sick, all vomit and mucus. Truth is I didn’t want them to sleep together. She was my friend. Plus, she was a little too fucked up for Liam. I was worried he’d contract a disease or something, and he was vulnerable right now, susceptible to her allure. The breakup had seriously messed with his head. He was spending every night watching Bruce Lee movies and stuffing his face with Cool Ranch Doritos instead of his usual pseudo-Buddhist koan book and protein bar routine. He was too lazy to berate me about my laziness. Eventually Carla stopped asking me about him. We still got drunk at her place instead, but the energy was different—strained and awkward.

  A few weeks later, standing in line at the liquor store, our calves sore from jumping and our hair damp and smelling of melon—Carla always borrowed my shampoo—Carla told me about her latest escapade.

  “There he was standing in the living room, in shorts and a neon tank top. Thick, hipster beard, some horrible tattoo of Thomas the Tank Engine or something spouting exhaust all over his arms. He’s holding onto my banged-up hula girl lamp. It’s the middle of the day, so I’m thinking he’s on something. Meth? Molly? I don’t know. And he just puts the lamp down again. ‘How much?’ he says, totally coherent, not fucked up sounding. ‘It’s not for sale,’ I say. ‘I’ll give you three hundred,’ he says, and that’s when I recognize him. He’s the bartender from the Canary Factory! So I sell it to him because I love that place, but then before I know it, we’re going at it on the couch and his finger is in my…”

  I cut her off. “Was he trying to steal it from you? Did he break into your apartment? Does he live in the building? I don’t understand this story.”

  “I never leave my door locked. If all burglars are that hot, they can help themselves.”

  “Am I supposed to believe this actually happened?”

  Carla pouted and we didn’t talk for the rest of the wait time, just held our metal baskets and stared at an ad of a pixelated woman laughing and responsibly enjoying a single glass of Riesling. The silence expanded as we walked to Carla’s apartment, a sad place in a squat, crumbling building. She didn’t have the luxury of a stepbrother who footed the rent. The elevator stank of weed and grease and wet fur. When we got inside, I cracked a beer and rifled through the books piled on the floor, second-hand novels with disintegrating covers and layers of stickers gumming their spines. Jane Eyre, The Bell Jar, Prozac Nation. The same novels I’d loved when I used to read. As I drank, my heart softened. Did it really matter if Carla was pretending? Embellishing? Had I always been straightforward with her? Sure, we didn’t have to hide our drinking from each other, but that didn’t mean we were legitimately close, not like best friends in movies. I’d never told her about those fallow years of adolescence when I barely left the house or talked to anyone except Liam. Besides, I didn’t want to go back to drinking alone, watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and botching pedicures.

  “Should I text Liam?” I said. “He should be home from work by now.”

  “If you want.” Carla shrugged, barely concealing a smile.

  Liam agreed to meet us at a nearby patio, the one with the wobbly wrought-iron tables and chili pepper lights. Mostly empty, it was just a few customers and some tattooed and scornful waiters. Once again, Liam played the gentleman, ordering drinks and nachos, refusing to let anyone else pay. “So,” he said to Carla, pouring her another beer. “How do you help your clients improve their performance?”

  “What?” Carla scrunched her forehead. She put her beer down on the rickety table, and the amber liquid sloshed. I steadied the glass, careful not to touch the fuchsia lipstick crescent on the rim.

  Liam smiled. “You told me you were a performance enhancement consultant.”

  I poured my own beer. “She was joking.” Under my breath, I added, “Not that I get the joke.” I leaned between them to grab some of the chips drooping beneath an unholy sludge of guacamole, olives and cheddar.

  “First,” Carla’s face was smooth now, and her voice deepened, like she was some late night sex advice show host. “I have to observe the client to see what their base level is.”

  He took a long sip of beer. “What if their base level is expert.”

  “Base level of what?” I said. “I can’t track this simile. Metaphor. Analogy, whatever.”

  The two of them went on and on, ignoring me and flirting like two recently released inmates. I devoured the nachos, even the sad, dry, no-topping dregs and ordered a shot of Wild Turkey. I tried eavesdropping on other customers only to be bored by work colleagues lobbing acronyms back and forth. I tried to steer the conversation to Mario and Zumba, to novels, but nothing took. On my way back to the bar for another shot, I bumped into a muscular man in a pale yellow polo shirt.

  “Sorry,” I said, trying to angle around him to get the bar­tender’s attention.

  “Buy me a drink to make up for it,” he said.

  Ready to ignore him or tell him to fuck off, I faltered when he smiled at me with a mouth full of blindingly white teeth. I imagined describing him to Carla. The kind of guy who spends a month’s rent on laser whitening.

  “I’ll let you buy me a drink,” I said.

  He laughed. We did a few shots together, and for some reason he started showing me pictures on his phone. The view of Lake Ontario from his condo window. Him in a shiny cobalt suit at some corporate gala.

  The kind of guy who obsesses over pocket squares, who’s a total square in bed.

  He grabbed my waist and kissed me. I relaxed into it and draped my hands on his neck, pleased by the light stubble I found there—some gruffness beneath a sleek exterior. His arms were hard and warm. I felt protected. Attractive.

  “I can call us a cab,” he whispered.

  “I need to go to the ladies first,” I said, my heart bucking.

  Under the fluorescent washroom lights, my face looked splotchy, my eyes red. Would he go down on me? I could feel my pubic hair growing, pressing against the weak elastic of my old grey underwear with the faded period stains at the crotch. Would he expect me to moan, to go on top? My left breast, slightly bigger than the right, swelled in its cup. Another time, I decided, when I could prepare myself. I sneaked out of the bar.

  At three in the morning, I got a call. Carla crying, distraught, slurring her words. “He held my hands down. He was so strong. I didn’t want to. Well, I did. But not then. I had my period. I wanted to wait. I thought, he’s her stepbrother so he might be someone to wait for. Someone worth it. He’s Angela’s stepbrother. He’s the kind of guy who might be worth waiting for. You know? You know? Your stepbrother is a fucking piece of shit. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But he is. I’m allowed to say so. Maybe I’m a bit fucked up right now. But that’s not a straight reason. Who knows? Maybe I led him on. He can’t fucking handle his alcohol. Not like his sister. Not like his baby sister.”

  Still blurry myself, I tried to ask her questions, but she rambled and rambled. After a few minutes I hung up and turned my phone to silent. She was too smashed. She didn’t know what she was talking about. She’d be embarrassed in the morning. I went downstairs and drank everything I could find—beer, whiskey, crème de menthe, vermouth—anything to put me to sleep.

 
The next day I was frying an egg when Liam emerged from his room, yawning and stretching himself wide. He held my hands down… he was too strong… Carla’s words kept cycling through my head. I didn’t want to accuse him, but I needed more information. Carla was a liar, sure. But why lie about this? I was expecting one of her usual Playboy-style sex romp tales about how they did it in the washroom or in an alley or in a tree. Just a misunderstanding most likely. Too much booze. I wanted to hear him say it wasn’t true.

  He poured himself a glass of orange juice. “Your friend is a mess,” he said.

  “You’re the one who boned her.” The speed of my reply surprised me. And why did I use the word bone? I’d never referred to sex that way before. Maybe because it sounded cartoonish, like Fred Flintstone talking to the guys about Wilma. A bleached word. Clean and free of messy flesh. Much safer than other words I might have used.

  He glared at me. “Is that what she told you? She threw herself at me, the little freak.”

  “You were flirting with her,” I said, suddenly questioning myself. “I thought you liked her. Had a crush on her, whatever.”

  “Had a crush on her? I wouldn’t stick my dick in that.” He laughed, shaking his head as though he’d just heard a great joke.

  “She said.” I took a deep breath. “She said, she said—”

  “It would probably come out covered in spiders and radioactive goo.”

  I nodded, uneasy. He was hungover, possibly even still tipsy. No point having this conversation now. I would press him later. Tomorrow, probably. In the next week, most likely. Sometime after he paid this month’s rent, definitely.

  I couldn’t concentrate through Zumba class. I kept flinging out my right hand instead of my left, crumping when I should have been six-stepping and avoiding eye contact with Carla in the mirror. Mario winked at me and repeated the choreography in a louder voice. What would I say to her?

  In the shower after class I squeezed a gob of orange shampoo into my palm and tried to pass her the bottle but she shook her head, opting to pump some thin, pink industrial stuff out of the free dispensers. She put her clothes on quickly so I had to rush, forgoing a bra to keep up. I held the door to the outside open for her and we walked a few blocks in silence, the brutal sunlight pounding our skin.

  “I’m always afraid I’ll pass gas when Mario makes us do those squats,” I said.

  She didn’t reply.

  “Beer store?” My voice sounded strangely hollow and high-pitched. “My treat. Me lady deserveth only the finest lagers. Oh, and I need to tell you about this dude…”

  “You should really move out.” She took a few deep breaths. “Your stepbrother isn’t a good guy.”

  “He’s a terrible drinker.” I needed to deescalate the conversation. If I could get her to laugh, I told myself, the curse would be broken and our dynamic would be restored. We would be two sluts slutting around town, in control of our own bodies. “Not like us wizened alcoholics.”

  “Angela.” Carla stopped. “You know it’s more serious than that. I’m going to press charges.”

  “Do you really think the police would believe you?” What the fuck was I talking about? I was scrambling. I hadn’t expected the conversation to go this way, had expected more doubt, more room for alternate interpretations. Part of me was angered by her certainty. I’d always given Liam the benefit of the doubt, even when he walked in on me in the shower or when he left porn open on his laptop. It was a mistake, a guy thing. Why make such a big deal? “I don’t want you to go through all that, put Liam through all that and for what? You’re not exactly a virgin. He’s an asshole, fine. It was bad sex, fine. But let’s just leave it at that.”

  “I get that you’re protecting yourself, Angela. I appreciate that you rely on him and everything.” She stopped walking. “But you are being massively shitty right now.”

  “I’m not protecting myself. I’m protecting you! Wouldn’t it be better to make this one of your stories? You know? Wouldn’t it be easier? I met this guy in my friend’s living room. Total basic bro, always droning on about mutual funds, but he looked like my friend so I figured that could be an interesting twist on a tired genre. That kind of thing?”

  Carla whimpered. “Fuck you, Angela. Seriously.” She walked ahead at a fast clip. I didn’t try to catch up.

  Every week I told myself I’d go back to Zumba and every week I talked myself out of it. I dialled her number and hung up after one ring. I imagined conversations with her, conversations in which I apologized with trembling eloquence and she punched me playfully on the arm and we laughed and laughed, maybe even went for beers, on me of course. Once I thought I saw her exiting a corner store and I ducked into an alleyway to avoid her, my hands shaking, my tongue parched. What could I have done? She got herself into these horrible situations. I missed her terribly. I told myself she was too far gone. She would drag me down with her. I only had enough energy to get my own shit together.

  And I did get my shit together, sort of. I stopped drinking, mostly. Nothing is ever that clean, but overall my life became soberish. I got a job at a call centre out in the suburbs and worked my way up to manager. When Liam got married and moved to Vancouver, we stopped talking. No big confrontation, no recriminations, no confessions, just nothing left to say. That is, nothing I could bring myself to say. I moved into my own apartment, painted the walls purple and blue and filled it with ugly secondhand furniture with paisley upholstery. I started dating a guy I met on the Internet, a patient divorced dad who cooked carbonara and took me hiking. I learned what it felt like to have sex without being wasted. Pretty great, but also confusing and sometimes awkward and disappointing. I wished I could talk to Carla about it.

  A decade after my last encounter with her, I was at a bland corporate pub eating lunch with call centre co-workers when I saw her sitting at the bar. I considered ignoring her, nodded distractedly while everyone else ate soggy onion rings and one-upped each other with tales of rude customers, but then I became worried she’d spotted me. Taking a deep breath, I walked over, hyperaware of my surroundings: my flats whacking the floor, the dust coating a sad plastic fern, a server squeezing chlorinated mist out of a nozzle and wiping the filthy table with a rag.

  As I got nearer I could see Carla was drinking a can of Diet Coke through a straw and highlighting things in a textbook. Maybe she’d gotten sober, too. I fought the desire to lean in close enough to read the words she’d glazed in yellow. Was she studying nursing, accounting, psychology? Screwing my face into a smile, I tapped her shoulder. A muted cucumber smell rose from her hair. She swivelled the stool.

  “Carla.” Facing her head on, I could see that she’d gained weight, her cheeks looked plumper. She was wearing muted neutral makeup and no jewellery. Her grey cardigan strained at the buttons. Nodding distantly, she scanned the room over my shoulder as though looking for someone more interesting to talk to, as though planning her escape. I wondered if she was stoned or zonked on antidepressants.

  “It’s Angela. Haven’t aged too well, I guess?” I said and forced a laugh.

  She closed her eyes and massaged the bridge of her nose. “I know who you are.”

  “You look great,” I said, floundering a bit, wanting to keep it light. I swayed along to the music, a teen love ballad swelling with auto-tuned emotion. “Still Zumba-ing? I don’t have much time for exercise these days.”

  The veins on her forehead pulsed as she pinched her nose harder. Was she going to keep her eyes closed this whole time? At least I was attempting to reconcile, that was something, some small progress. It was stupid of me to think she would acknowledge me. I was nothing to her.

  “Better get back to the grind,” I said, though I’d never used that phrase before. “Nice to see you.”

  She opened her eyes. “Is this more what you had in mind, Angela?” she said, her words cold and severe. She bobbed her head from side to side, her
ponytail whipping her neck more and more frantically as she spoke in a grotesque slurred voice. “Liam’s the kind of guy who’s never not waxing his chest hair. You know? Super corny in the sack. Wants me to call him Daddy, ordering me around. Obviously learned all his sex moves from porn movies and not the progressive ones either. Not feminist porn award-winners. Would have jizzed all over my face if I let him…”

  I stood there, my knees unsteady and my face numb. I stood there, waves of shame passing over me. I stood there and listened.

  Them

  I placed three live crickets and a teaspoon of vitamin powder in a Ziploc bag and shook it until the insects were coated white: a reptile’s Shake ’n Bake. Lifting the lid of the terrarium, I airdropped the meal. Hera and Zeus didn’t seem to notice the hyper ghosts hopping around them in a cloud of nutrient-enhanced dust. They lounged on driftwood, sunning themselves under the heat lamp like a retired couple comatose beneath the Florida sun. It was my fault. They’d been spoiled by the apricot baby food I gave them when I was too lazy to pick up crickets from Pets, Companions & Beyond.

  It was nine p.m., half an hour until party time. My outfit had been selected days ago, but when I tried on the silver mini-dress again it seemed flashy. Instead I opted for a chambray button-down tucked into a maroon pencil skirt. I applied blush, eyeliner, mascara. The fuchsia lipstick was wiped off almost as soon as it was applied. Too brash.

  I draped a sheet over the geckos’ home.

  “Nobody better mess with you tonight,” I whispered.

  The living room, recently tidied and vacuumed by me, contained a red sofa and several mismatched chairs that Taylor and I had found on people’s lawns. There was a bookshelf along one wall and a coffee table in the centre of the room, on which I’d positioned a tasteful array of cheeses, crackers and olives. Now that we’d officially graduated, it was time to adult it up.