My Best Friend Has Issues

by Laura Marney

  ‘Good one, Chloe, that’ll be a treat for the fucking cockroaches!’ I screamed. ‘I spent hours making that pie. Well I’m not cleaning it up. You threw it, you can clean it,’ I yelled.

  ‘You know what?’ Chloe said, ‘I’ve had it with this shit.’

  She rushed into the kitchen and started banging about. She came back with a black poly bag and began stuffing the dogs’ bowls and toys into it.

  ‘Oh Jeezo,’ I said, ‘what are you playing at now?’

  ‘I gave that dog a home, her and her pups, all pissing, shitting eight of them. Well you’re right; a time comes when they have to fend for themselves.’

  ‘You know I wasn’t talking about the dogs.’

  ‘Sure you were. They can fend for themselves on their own fucking time, down on the street. Let’s see how long they last.’

  ‘Look, calm down. We’ll have to find homes for the pups in a few weeks’ time, we’ve talked about that, but not yet, they’re not ready, you know that.’

  Chloe clipped Juegita’s lead on to her collar and the dog danced with glee at the prospect of being taken out. The puppies caught their mother’s mood and joined in.

  Even at this stage, although I could see she was furious, I hoped I could jolly her along, cajole her out of her rage. Cajoling had been become my method of managing Chloe.

  ‘Come on, you’re over-reacting. You love Juegita, I know you do.’

  ‘Love?’ Chloe spat in my face. ‘I don’t love anything. Anything or anyone.’

  Chloe, no more drama, please? We’ve had enough for today. It’s too exhausting.’

  ‘Don’t fucking tell me what I’ve had enough of!’ Spittle flew out of her mouth as she screamed. ‘I know what I’ve had enough of! You can take your cutesy doggy lecture and blow it outta your ass!’

  ‘Listen to yourself. You’re behaving like a spoiled brat.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up and stop telling me how to run my life. Like you know any better.’

  ‘I know better than to kick dogs.’

  ‘I’m taking these dogs: my dogs! Not yours! I’m taking them and I’m dumping them, the same way I’m dumping you. This is my apartment, missy, and when I get back I want you and your cheap nasty little Wal-Mart backpack outta here!’

  ‘Oh! Nasty! Nasty is it? You weren’t saying that when you were so desperate for me to move in,’ I shouted. ‘Poor little Chloe, all alone in Barcelona, desperate for a friend. But you don’t know the first thing about friendship. You torment people for your own sick twisted fun.’

  ‘What people?’ Chloe scoffed.

  ‘People! My friends for starters; my friends and a defenceless wee puppy. People and dogs. Dogs are people too. I’m sick of your petty cruelties, Chloe. You’re a heartless, selfish bitch. You’re fucking dangerous, you are. You and all your carry on and all the grief you give me. You’re what caused my heart attack!’

  ‘I wish you’d had a fatal heart attack, I wish you’d had a massive coronary and you’re face had turned blue, because right about now you’d be where you should be: in a box in the cargo hold on a plane back to fucking Scotchland!’

  ‘Well that’s nice. And by the way, you’re not dumping me, I’m dumping you,’ I shouted, hurling my keys at her. ‘I can’t stick it any longer. I’m sick of your neediness and your constant bleating, oh, mommy doesn’t love me!’ I put my hand to my brow and struck a melodramatic pose. ‘Oh, I’m an artist don’t you know, that’s why I’m such a nutcase, I suffer for my art! Art, which, by the way, is SHITE! A five-year-old mongoloid could do better. Well I’m not your fucking therapist. I’m sick of your tantrums, I’ve had it and I’m leaving. I’m dumping you Chloe, just like mommy did!’

  Chloe picked up the keys I’d thrown at her and put them in her pocket. She stood in the doorway with Juegita straining at the leash to get out and heaved the poly bag over her shoulder. She’d obviously not seen a mirror recently. With her eyes still ringed in black mascara, she looked like a zombie. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have let her leave the flat like that but fuck her. Her face reflected her mental state. She was mental. I hoped the mossos, the local police, would catch and physically restrain the psychotic bitch.

  ‘You think because you’re rich and spoiled and your mummy doesn’t love you,’ I told her, ‘you think that makes it okay for you to hurt people. Well it doesn’t. You can’t play with people’s lives Chloe.’

  ‘Really?’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘I think you’ll find I can.’

  With all the shouting the dogs had become excited. In the mayhem of howling and barking and eight wagging tails rushing out the door, Chloe, with her zombie eyes blazing, screamed at me: ‘Now get the fuck outta my apartment!’

  Chapter 41

  Go back to Scotchland, that was rich. A week ago I had a valid ticket back to Scotchland. Even after the heart attack I could still have made the flight if I wasn’t so doped up on the medication. The plane ticket had been non-transferable, non-returnable. Three hundred euros down the drain.

  The medication wasn’t the only thing that stopped me catching that flight. The opportunity of an all expenses paid education at one of America’s top universities, who wouldn’t be enticed? I’d spent my life watching TV shows where people lived just such an idyllic Californian lifestyle. The irony was that now Chloe would go, and I, who’d subtly sold her the idea, wouldn’t. I’d have to leave Barcelona, leave my nutcase friend, give up my hopes for Berkeley. I’d have to crawl back under my stone; settle for a Cumbernauld lifestyle.

  But with such an unstable character as Chloe, how could I have expected things to turn out any different? She was right about one thing: I had to get out of here. We were driving each other crazy. If I stayed we’d end up killing each other. It was a lovely flat and all that, but it wasn’t worth this much grief.

  I began packing by attacking the bundle of clean laundry that was stacked on the bedroom chair. For as long as I’d been here there’d always been laundry on that chair, my pants and bras mixed with Chloe’s. I washed her clothes; I wasn’t going to put them away for her. Hers never made it back into the drawers. She just dipped into the bundle whenever she needed clean stuff, taking mine when she ran out of her own. Our clothes had become interchangeable.

  Choosing what to take was a confusing task. I sat down on the bed. Another three hundred euros. That would bring the total to thirteen hundred. How the hell was I going to pay that back? If I didn’t, Chloe would have the moral high ground. There was no way I’d give her that satisfaction. I’d save it up and send it to her. If she refused to accept it I’d come to America and find her and throw it in her face. Then she’d be sorry. She’d have lost the best friend she ever had.

  The tin was still at the back of the cupboard. It looked like it hadn’t been touched since the last time I’d opened it. I slid out another three hundred. The last ticket cost more than that. It was three hundred and fifteen. I found a bundle with tens and fives and took one of each. I’d need to get myself and my luggage to the airport but I still had a few journeys left on my metro ticket. I’d manage.

  It was still very hot. Down in the bowels of the metro system it was a lot hotter. Humfing my heavy rucksack on and off the underground trains might be too much. I could over-exert myself. I didn’t want to have another heart attack while I was stuck in a subway. I might not survive the next one. They didn’t have defibrillation machines down there. It could take them ages to get me out and to the hospital and by then it might be too late. They’d call Chloe and she’d have to identify my body.

  My imagination was working overtime. A taxi cost thirty euros. I peeled off another three tens. And I might need a hotel. If I couldn’t get a flight today, I’d need to spend the night somewhere. I didn’t know where there were cheap hostels except in Raval and I wasn’t going there. I had already taken thirteen forty-five, I might as well round it up to fifteen hundred.

  I pulled a hundred-euro note out and then another one. I was replacing the smaller notes i
n their original bundles when I heard a clicking noise.

  How long had she been gone? She’d said I had to be out of here by the time she came back. She was going to go ballistic. She might even think I was hanging around hoping she’d changed her mind. She’d think a lot worse if she found me with the tin opened and her money all over the floor.

  Chloe had caught me once before in a compromising situation: with Ewan’s equipment in my mouth, or very nearly. And now, unless I could get the money back in the tin and the tin back in the cupboard before she made it to the bedroom, she was going to catch me again.

  I jumped off the bed and scrambled across the floor. It was too late. Chloe burst in and found me shoving bundles of notes back in the tin.

  ‘I knew it, I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist putting your hand in the cookie jar!’ she squealed.

  She was laughing. She seemed to be in excellent spirits. And she was alone.

  ‘Where’s Juegita and the pups?’ I asked.

  ‘None of your business. Why are you still in my apartment?’

  ‘I was just leaving.’

  ‘No you weren’t,’ she said chirpily.

  Chloe flopped down on to the bed. She lay on her stomach and crossed her legs. She propped up her chin with her hand and swung her legs lazily up and down.

  ‘But actually I’m much more interested to know: why are you stealing my money?’

  ‘I’m not. I’m…’ What could I say? ‘I wasn’t going to take it all.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  Chloe had found the hundred-euro notes I’d left on the bed and was counting through them with great glee.

  ‘Three, four, five hundred. Well, well, quite a haul.’

  I couldn’t deny it.

  ‘Keep it,’ she said, lobbing it gently to me where I knelt on the floor, ‘you’ll need it.’

  I threw it back at her.

  ‘I don’t need anything from you.’

  ‘Oh really? And how are you gonna live? I assume you’re staying on in Barcelona?’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘So you’ll need money. You don’t have any of your own money left.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘But Meester Bond,’ said Chloe, affecting an accent, ‘I know everytheeng about you!’

  She laughed. She laughed and made eye contact with me, trying to make me laugh. It was a good joke, but I wasn’t giving in.

  Chloe rolled to the edge of the bed, pulled out a fat bundle from the tin and, with her arm outstretched, offered it to me.

  ‘You’re gonna need more than five hundred.’

  I put my hands behind my back to indicate my refusal to take it.

  ‘Now come on, Alison, say you get a room in an apartment for, I don’t know, four fifty. Let’s say five hundred for some place decent, and five hundred deposit. That brings you up to a grand. Even when you start work, it’s gonna be a month before you get paid. You have to eat and probably have to pay for transport.’

  ‘You don’t even know how much money’s in that tin, do you?’ I asked her.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t want you to be short on money. I don’t like to think of you wandering the streets cold and hungry.’

  ‘Like Juegita and the pups you mean? I’m not your pet Chloe. I can look after myself.’

  ‘Oh yeah? How? You gonna sell your ass like the girls in Raval? Because honey, you’re not gonna get much.’

  This did make me laugh. Not laugh exactly but smile. She was so cheeky. She could never take anything seriously.

  ‘It’ll be better than staying here with you, you mad bitch.’

  ‘Hey, did I ask you to stay?’ She was smiling. ‘I don’t want you here.’

  She did want me there. Obviously she did. I had to smile.

  ‘Good, because I’m not staying.’

  ‘Look, ‘said Chloe, suddenly sounding exasperated, ‘I just want you to take the money and get a room in a decent apartment.’

  This confused me.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes!’ she was losing her patience now.

  ‘Chloe, I said some terrible things. I didn’t mean them.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She nodded but otherwise ignored my attempt to apologise.

  ‘Maybe you can get somewhere close by,’ she continued. ‘I could help you find a place. We’d be neighbours. Maybe we could visit.’

  She did want me out.

  ‘What about Berkeley?’ I asked.

  ‘What about it?’

  Now wasn’t the time to ask about Berkeley.

  Maybe I could get a room in a flat. It might rescue our relationship. We’d still have all the good times together and none of the disadvantages.

  ‘Would you like me to live nearby?

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You know we’re gonna drive each other crazy if we both stay here. It’s better this way. This way we can still be friends.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said quietly.

  ‘There’s no rush,’ Chloe said soothingly. ‘We can start looking tomorrow.’

  ‘Okay,’ I nodded, ‘but there’s something I have to tell you.’

  I weighed up the risk I was about to take, but I had to tell her.

  ‘I’ve already taken money out of here. A thousand euros.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You know?’ I gasped. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Well I didn’t know how much but I knew you had no money left so I figured you had to be getting it outta here. It’s okay.’

  ‘But why d’you keep it in a tin?’

  ‘It’s just whatever’s left in my account at the end of the month. I take it out the bank and put it in the tin. If I don’t take it, Aged P just tops up my allowance. Mean bastard. It’s my money.’

  Still on my knees on the floor I leaned forwards and grasped her hands.

  ‘I swear to you I’ll pay you back every penny. We’ve got a second chance and I promise I’ll never lie, I’ll never do anything behind your back again. We’re a team, Chloe. From now on you can rely on me one hundred percent.’

  ‘Okay, cool. And you can rely on me one hundred per cent too.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So, just so that I can close the case: the underwear. The Victoria’s Secret panty set. You took ‘em, right?’

  I covered my face with my hands.

  ‘How did you know?

  Chloe smiled.

  ‘Meester Bond, I know everytheeng.’

  We spent the rest of the day quietly. Instead of working on her chimney Chloe cleaned the flat. She gave it a very thorough going over. As if all these months I’d been cleaning it, I hadn’t cleaned it properly. As if she was showing me she was going to get along fine without me. I didn’t say anything. For lunch I cooked pasta with a pesto and cream sauce. She said how much she enjoyed it but I wondered if she was just being polite.

  ‘What did you really do with Juegita and the pups?’ I asked her.

  ‘They’re with Josep. I gave him fifty to babysit them for the day. It’s kinda nice without them, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but it’s a bit weird. I miss them.’

  ‘So do I,’ she agreed.

  Later we were out on the terrace watching the sun set over the hills behind the city. The air was cooling and we could hear the evening buzz from the street. Any other night Chloe or I would have suggested going out. Instead we sat in silence, avoiding each other’s glance.

  ‘Kinda weird atmosphere, huh?’

  I didn’t want to hear this but I was forced to nod agreement. Acknowledging the rift between us seemed to make it real and make it worse. Nothing was going to be the same between us ever again.

  ‘If we were a couple we’d have make up sex,’ joked Chloe.

  I lifted my head.

  ‘We still could,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think…’

  ‘Not with ea
ch other, with a boy. We could go out, pick up a boy and have great make up sex. We should do that. I don’t have to stay in bed any more. Why don’t we go out? We haven’t been out on the town for ages.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re well enough?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘But if we’re gonna find you a new apartment tomorrow…’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  I couldn’t hide my disappointment. I didn’t want to find a new apartment.

  ‘But hey,’ said Chloe, ‘you’re right; we haven’t had any fun for ages. Maybe that’s what we need.’

  This encouraged me.

  ‘C’mon, let’s do somewhere nice for dinner and see if we can find a nice looking young man.’

  ‘Yeah, but you always say that. You’re always hot to trot and then you don’t do anything.’

  ‘I wasn’t ready. I am now. I admit it; I’ve been a bit slow on the uptake. Remember Chloe, I’m from Cumbernauld, I’m not used to good things coming my way, I’ve missed too many opportunities. I almost died a week ago. I hadn’t planned on dying a virgin. From now on I take every chance for experience and pleasure that comes my way.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘we could go out tonight, see what happens.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Later, as she applied her mascara Chloe said, ‘You know, you don’t have to find an apartment tomorrow. We could leave it a few days. There’s no rush.’

  I smiled.

  ‘Chuh. Sex with each other,’ I scoffed, ‘as if.’

  Chapter 42

  Never had sausage and beans tasted so good. The restaurant was lovely, a Catalan place where they served the best butifarra and habias in Barcelona. I felt so relaxed, enjoying the calm after the storm. I no longer had to worry about the money I’d taken, or the underwear, or anything. Everything was sorted now.

  ‘Wine?’ said Chloe with the expensive bottle hovering over my glass.

  ‘I don’t know if I should.’

  ‘It’s red, good for your heart.’

  ‘Oh, go on then,’ I said holding out my glass.