The Grimly Queen

by Shayna Krishnasamy

  She looks over at me, ever so slowly, her chin pausing mid-way through the turn, as though reconsidering. At first I think her annoyed, but her expression corrects me; her eyes bright and dancing, her skin ever so pale and yet blotchy, fevered. (Frankly, she looks a little unstable. She looks just like my Aunt Heidi did right before she set fire to her neighbour’s azaleas.)

  They’re buffoons, she says, focusing on my left shoulder. Every one of them.

  Absolutely, I say with confidence (the first time I’ve ever felt confident about anything in my life). I wouldn’t go back in there if you paid me.

  She crosses her arms over her chest. Her breath comes out in gaspy clouds.

  I say (rambling, unsure of what I’m going to say next until I say it), There’s a bus stop on the corner. You can get out of here right now. You don’t have to stay here, just because they expect you to.

  Where would we go? she asks. (We? That’s right, we. Forever after, we). She drifts over to my side of the stairs and leans on the green metal railing, standing just a bit too close, her shoulder nudging mine.

  I pause. I try to think of the most exotic destination possible. I say, hesitantly, Madagascar?

  Naturally, she says. She kicks some snow under the railing and watches it fall to the ground below, mesmerized. I suddenly notice her designer gray pea coat, her expensive, though battered, leather boots. (Who exactly am I talking to?)

  She looks up at me and again I notice her dancing eyes, the nervous twitch of her smile (her manner awakening in me once more the simple joy of study, of worship). And they’ll never find us? she asks, playing it as a joke, though it comes out as a plea.

  Oh no, they will, I answer, my eyes fixed on hers, watching them widen, ever so slightly. But not before we’ve forgotten all about them.

  She smiles and nods in appreciation, and we lean on the railing, side by side. (This is the beginning of Regan and me, right now. This is it.)

  The door bursts open behind us and I fall into shadow. A tall boy wearing a tuxedo jacket and boxers steps out.

  Regan, he says, will you please come in and tell Chem that it was Marie and not Mona? He’s driving me nuts! I don’t know why we let him come along. If he brings up Barcelona one more time I’ll kill him, I swear to god.

  I watch her prepare. She straightens her shoulders and puts on an easy expression. She steadies herself, swallowing her trembling as though it were medicine she’s resigned to taking. Then she turns around.

  She says (her voice vastly different than it was a moment ago, deeper somehow, and steadier), It’s funny how Chem becomes unbearable only when you’re losing to him at poker.

  He sighs with his whole body. Just come the fuck inside, Regan, he whines. I can’t take these people without you. Alright?

  On this last word he does look at me, for a split-second, before turning on his heel and going back in.

  She takes off her hat and ruffles her hair and puts the hat back on. She reaches for the door and pauses, her fingers on the handle.

  Without looking at me she says, I believed it for a moment, didn’t you?

  And she’s gone.

  (It’s only later, when I find my well-meaning friend and the Brit falling out of a bathroom together, that she slurs to me how she was asking around on my behalf, and there was someone, a girl, King Lear something or other, haha, and she was looking for a roommate, and so she just went ahead and gave her my number, because she seemed really cool, and she was wearing these great boots.

  Probably rolling in it, too, she says, one arm wrapped around my shoulder. All these kids are, you know. They don’t live in this dorm, no sir.

  What are they? I ask.

  Bloody rich, she says as we trip down the stairs. Bloody born with bloody silver spoons in their mouths. Bloody loaded.

  Like you?

  Bloody hilarious.)

  She calls the next day. I’ve drawn the blue industrial blinds against the sunlight, turning the room into an underwater cave, the incessant ringing muffled by the water. I can hardly hear it.

  Hello? I answer quietly (afraid it might be my mother, who likes to use her love against me, or Trina’s brother, who gets hostile when I don’t laugh at his dirty jokes).

  Wait, who’s this? asks the person on the other end (a boy, but not the brother).

  I frown at the cordless phone, wondering. Did I call someone?

  I hear the sound of grappling as the phone is handed off, and a laugh. Then a deeper voice yells, Regan!

  I sit up in bed, the covers slithering off my body, reluctantly releasing their mold. For reasons I don’t understand, my heart begins to pound.

  There’s more shuffling and shushing and at one point the phone hits the ground (followed by a series of grunts and a voice clearly stating, Uncalled for!), and then there’s a sudden silence. I wonder if the line has gone dead.

  I hear her say, Well aren’t you clever, now go away. (A pause). Go!

  A door slams.

  Hi, Regan says (though it’s more of a sigh).

  Hi, I reply.

  Silence seeps between us like blood from a wound. She seems to be catching her breath. I picture her sitting all alone on an enormous four poster mahogany bed, while I’m here alone on my bed in this cluttered room.

  So… I begin.

  So, she interrupts, suddenly alert. She says, When are you moving in?

  She’s sitting on the hood of a car that isn’t hers, a mug of coffee in her hands, when my cab pulls up. I lurch onto the sidewalk with my suitcase and three duct-taped boxes (the entirety of my belongings, which isn’t much. I left most of my things behind, unable to face the prospect of bubble-wrap). I stand awkwardly in front of her, my schoolbag slipping off my shoulder, as she gazes down the street at a traffic light turning from red to green. I wonder if she remembers me (though, what exactly is there to remember? It was just one conversation. How is she to know it changed me?).

  This is total shit, she says as she turns toward me, emptying the mug onto the street. When she looks up she squints at me (in recognition? Disgust?), then slides to the curb. She says, Did you bring food?

  I hand her a bag of chips from the shopping bag on my wrist and she hugs it to herself, smiling widely. She leans in and whispers in my ear, You are my new best friend.

  I smile tentatively as she takes my hand. She’s still wearing that same hat.

  Come on, she says.

  The apartment can’t be described in usual terms. My well-meaning friend, although wrong about most things (like using the word ‘funk’), was right about the wealth. Regan tells me later that it belonged to her great-grandfather, a recluse who enjoyed dachshunds, gothic novels and good cheese. He had the place designed to his specifications. It occupies the second floor of two townhouses, the separating walls torn down long ago. (One odd remnant of this melding is that to access Regan’s room you have to cross through the kitchen.)

  As we come in the front door I notice the wood-paneling on the walls, which darkens the front hallway. There are doors, multitudes of doors, doors which will baffle and amuse me for as long as I stay in The Apartments (as I eventually take to calling the place, because the singular simply doesn’t do it justice. My dorm room could fit on the balcony). I advance slowly down the hall. The walls are laden with paintings and family portraits, the rug underfoot worn from decades of footsteps. Regan goes through a door on the left and I follow.

  The room is an immense library, bookcases covering every inch of wall space. Regan sits down at a large oaken desk at the far end of the room (a curiously long space, though it will strike me as funny that I thought so when I see my bedroom). She lights a lamp and the absolute chaos of the room hits me in the face.

  Over every couch (there are three in this room alone) and antique side table (seven), and even covering the mantle over the fireplace (which, if you gaze through, is also the fireplace in the kitchen), are volumes and volumes of books laid open, their pages fluttering with our movements.
r />   I suck in a breath and Regan raises her eyebrows, puzzled.

  Lot of books, I say mildly.

  She glances around, sidestepping a pile of texts by the foot of a lamp, picking up a book from the armrest of the couch and putting it back down on the seat of a chair.

  I guess so, she says. The maid had to be let go, and then they just all, sort of, accumulated. She waves her hands about as she says this, as though she can’t fathom who it was that took all the books down from the shelves (as though she’s forgotten that she is the only one who lives here. Or was).

  I like it this way, I say impulsively, and she grins, shaking her head as she comes toward me.

  You’ll only spoil me with your flattery, she says, pausing with her face close to mine. You’ll regret it later.

  I doubt it, I reply.

  That’s what they all say, she says over her shoulder, and wanders into the next room.

  Still following, I enter an open room with two pairs of French doors filling its back wall, their floor-length curtains tied shut. In the dim, I nearly walk into Regan when she stops in the middle of the floor.

  She turns, her face masked by the dark. You’ll like it here, won’t you? she asks, her tone changing suddenly from breezy to urgent, her fingers curled around my elbow. You’ll stay? (And I’m back on the road to Madagascar again, back with the other Regan who, I’ll come to learn, nobody sees but me. The Regan whose eyes dance, whose lips quiver, who cries out in her sleep.)

  I can’t say… I tell her, allowing the pause to lengthen (for we all have some cruelty in us, even the dazed). I say, I can’t say until you show me my room.

  She crosses the floor and flings open a door beside a painting of a boat floundering at sea. Over Regan’s shoulder I can see the bright white walls, a noticeable contrast to the rest of the apartment. The lamps have been lit and as Regan stands in the doorway taking off her hat, her hair looks like it’s on fire.

  Your new home, she says, and bows.

  I don’t realize at first that it’s me they’re talking about. There are whispers in class (during my first week with Regan, when I’m able to coax myself to attend), a nod in my direction that I assume is meant for the girl sitting behind me, a look or two that I don’t understand but that I decide must have something to do with the ghastly presentation I made a while back (which would have been more on the side of brilliance if I hadn’t put my slides in backward).

  It’s only when a guy with a tattoo of a rhinoceros on his neck stops me as I’m coming out of the bathroom and asks me breathlessly if I really am Regan Lathie’s roommate that I begin to understand.

  Do you know her? I ask as he gazes at me in wonder.

  Know her? he replies in a voice so full of adoration that it’s clear at once that he, one: is gay, two: is in awe of Regan, and possibly three: wants to give up being gay to be with Regan.

  She sat next to me for five minutes at a party once, he gushes, beaming, practically shaking. He takes both my hands in his. You are so lucky, he says.

  When I get back to class a blonde girl with a black eye drops into the seat next to mine, thrusts a wad of cash into my hands, and begs me to tell Regan that she’s really, truly sorry. Before I can reply, she hops up and strides away. I look after her, wondering if Regan could have given her the black eye (hardly likely), wondering what the money is for. Drugs? Blackmail? Half of the start-up cash for a pyramid scheme? (Later I find out she’s a rugby player, the black eye was a misplaced kick, the money was lent to her by Regan to reverse a boob job, but she couldn’t go through with it. Regan rolls her eyes when I give her the cash and says, He’ll cheat on her anyway and they look like balloons.)

  I glance around the room, clutching the dollar bills, and notice curious peeks and stares coming from all directions. A girl leans into the aisle to get a better look at me. There’s a buzz of interest in the air. I stuff the money into my bag and pick up my pen, sweat beading at my hairline. I feel as though I’ve just won a contest I didn’t know I’d entered.

  The guy sitting in front of me turns around and hands me a scrap of paper with a grin. It has his name and phone number on it. For Regan, he mouths.

  It goes on all day, all week. It goes on long after I’ve left school, after I’ve tried unsuccessfully to forget Regan and move on with my life. Once, in a job interview, a middle-aged man in a garish yellow suit tells me I shouldn’t expect any special treatment just because I was once Regan Lathie’s roommate. We don’t do that sort of thing, he says sternly, then winks at me.

  I don’t know what I should be like in my new life with Regan. It’s as though I’m a snake and I’ve shed a skin only to find there isn’t another waiting underneath. I’m wary of Regan, startled by her reputation, the legacy of a person I live with but haven’t yet gotten to know. It’s like rooming with an Olympic gymnast who hasn’t yet shown me her back flip.

  I let her help me decorate my narrow room which runs nearly the entire length of the apartment (outdone only by the kitchen that does run the entire length, its back windows opening onto the balcony, its front ones looking out over the street). I sort through my boxes as Regan puts up prints of her own choosing and carts in rugs and floor lamps from mysterious storage areas (and I stare at her too, a constant questioning running through my brain: who are you, who am I, who are you, who am I, who are you, who am I?).

  When she’s exhausted herself, she collapses onto my bed, her brown hair spread out on the pillow. I lean awkwardly against a dresser, pulling at the waist of my jeans. (I’ve lost so much weight in the past few weeks that all my clothes hang in billowy swaths, my skinny limbs swimming inside them.)

  Don’t be afraid of the place, Regan says, referring to The Apartments. It may seem intimidating at first, but with time it’ll bend to your will.

  She grins mischievously.

  How long have you lived here? I ask.

  Five years, she says. My parents abandoned me to it. She turns on her side, looking out the window that overlooks the balcony and lines up perfectly with the same window in her room on the other side. (What a wonder this place would be to a child, I think. It’s like a labyrinth, every room linked to several others by a series of doors, every window holding a secret view.)

  I used to see ghosts in the corridors, Regan says seriously, then smirks at my expression of alarm. Only my imaginings, she assures me. Imaginings of the wealthy brat.

  You’re not a brat, I say.

  She gets on her knees. I’m struck by how beautiful she is, a fact that escaped me during the hours of work. She glows, even in a man’s work shirt and battered jeans, her blue eyes striking in their frame of dark lashes. She grabs me by the hands and pulls me onto the bed to kneel with her, two giggly girls on a flowered bed spread, hands clasped.

  You know why I love you already? she asks. I shake my head, embarrassed by the intensity of her affection, by her searching, liquid eyes. She says, Because you’re my defender. You will save me.

  She reaches out and smoothes my straggly hair.

  She says, I always knew I’d be saved by a girl with golden hair.

  Hardly golden, I protest, twisting my locks out of the way.

  She grasps me by the shoulders. I’m going to dye mine to match, she says.

  Hopping off the bed, she skips from the room and reappears moments later holding a box with a picture of a blonde model on the front. (How does she suddenly have such things right when she needs them? How? It’s always, Oh, I have a multi-speed blender. Oh, I have a deep-sea diving suit. How?)

  She holds the box out in front of her like it’s a Bible and she’s a priest bringing Jesus to the heathens. I stare at her, expecting a revelation.

  She whispers, And then we can be twins.

  When I wake up in The Apartments I listen for Regan. If she’s home she’ll be prowling.

  (Never after do I meet anyone as restless as she, with such hazardous sleeping patterns.) Regan is in the writing program and paces as she writes, her noteboo
ks strewn about the place like confetti, abandoned wherever they fall. Often, in the early hours of the morning, I find her holed up in the Library, the books surrounding her on all sides, her eyes glassy and unfocused. Sometimes, she doesn’t recognize me.

  Many nights, Regan doesn’t come home at all. When I’ve just moved in and we’re still new to each other, still tentative, I sit back and watch in puzzlement as she stumbles home near noon, exhausted and jumpy. I peer out from behind my door as she makes straight for the Library and writes for hours, forgoing meals. (They tell me she’s brilliant. They tell me she’s her father’s daughter, and I don’t ask who her father is. I can tell they would think it a sin not to know.)

  Once in a while, when I wake, she’s in bed with me, her hair smelling of smoke, her face creased in a frown. (Regan never sleeps alone.)

  But on an average morning, I come out of sleep to find myself in the immense lonely apartment, the rooms echoing with her absence. I slip through one of the two doors that connect my room with the living room and pick my way through the islands of furniture, passing the fireplace that divides the doors leading onto the balcony, crossing through the kitchen, dim and musty at all times of day.

  I come to a stop at her doorway.

  (What am I doing? How do I allow it? Maybe it’s because of the way people talk about her as though she’s a celebrity, a prophet, a saint. Maybe it’s my own deceptive spirit. I don’t know.)

  I step into her room.

  She has so few things, considering. Her parents give her free reign over their accounts (she’s shown me the credit cards, a pack of them) and yet Regan shows little interest in shopping. Her room is sparse, nearly bare. A woven rug covers the floor. An ivory Buddha sits on the window ledge, smiling jovially, watching me.

  I move directly to the closet and pull open the double doors.

  The clothes are so tightly packed that I can hardly pry open a space. I yank out one outfit after another and try them on, though Regan and I are hardly the same size. She has a remarkable array of party dresses, in every possible color, presumably dating back to her days as mummy and daddy’s society girl. None of them are her style. In fact, a good portion of her wardrobe seems to be comprised of gifts, never worn, purchased by unsuspectingrelatives with no idea of Regan’s taste or size. There is a bright blue jumpsuit, flared at the ankles; a fluorescent green raincoat that zips at the back; several floral skirts; and my personal favourite, a crushed velvet gown with a corset (possibly a long-forgotten Halloween costume).