Poison Shy

by Stacey Madden

  “Melanie, you okay?”

  Finally she collapsed onto the mattress. “Damn. I needed that.”

  “So you are alive.”

  “You too.” She turned and bent over the side of the bed in search of her underwear, her goosepimpled ass in my face. It, too, was smeared with blood.

  “What just happened?”

  She stood and slid her panties up her thighs. “Um, I just fucked you.”

  “I mean, what’s with the . . . I’ve never . . .”

  She patted me on the cheek. “I’m female. I bleed once a month. It’s a little something called biology.”

  “Yeah, but —”

  “Shove over, stud. I’m going back to sleep.”

  “Like that?”

  “I’m tired, okay? Send me your laundry bill. Now, shove over!”

  I went to the bathroom to rinse myself off while she burrowed under the covers. Squinting into the mirror, I saw the face of a confused young man with a bloody handprint on his cheek. I coughed and spat into the sink. Told myself this was it. Now that I’d slept with her I could go back to my normal life, killing bugs in strangers’ homes and drinking my face off with Chad. I could even get used to Farah being around. Maybe the three of us could go on a road trip to Montreal and see what Patricia was up to.

  I wiped my chest and hands with a wet towel and went back to the pull-out. Melanie was asleep again, or pretending to be. She looked like a murder victim, something out of a movie.

  7

  I woke the next morning in a tangle of bloodstained sheets. Melanie was no longer beside me. I checked the clock: just after eight. I had to be at work in less than an hour.

  “Hello?” I said, a stranger in my own home. “Anyone here?”

  The plumbing clicked in the walls.

  “Melanie?”

  Nothing.

  I sat upright. My vision blurred into a kaleidoscopic swirl of purple and beige. My mouth was dry as cement mix. I could smell the vinegary scent of my armpits despite the stench of dried blood. I needed a hot shower, a large glass of water, and possibly an exorcist.

  When my vision returned I noticed a torn piece of paper tacked to the back of my front door. Something was scribbled on it in pink highlighter. I wobbled over and read it:

  Had to run to work

  Don’t choke on your breakfast and die

  Mel 444-6187

  I crumpled the note and shot it at my garbage can as though it were a miniature basketball. It bounced off the edge and fell to the floor.

  “Fuck it,” I muttered.

  After gulping a few litres of water straight from my kitchen tap and sterilizing myself in a scalding hot shower, I began to feel human again. I burned some frozen waffles, covered them in syrup, and devoured them in seconds.

  My uniform was buried in a pile of dirty laundry in the closet. I threw it on in a hurry and nearly fell down my front steps on my way out. Two teenaged boys with white-blond hair sat on the bench outside the laundromat with folders in their laps and brochures in their chest pockets.

  “Excuse me, sir,” one of them called as I rushed past. “Are you interested in hearing about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints?”

  “Maybe,” I said, quickening my pace. “But I don’t think He’d be interested in hearing about me.”

  I stumbled into work right on time, only to have Dick inform me I’d been assigned another bedbug job across town. Bill had taken the van and was already on site. Dick dropped an oily bus token in my hand and glared at me without a word as I backed out of the office.

  The bus was full of strangers who judged me from behind their stolid commuters’ masks. Tweens with mp3 players, grannies with drug store paperbacks, basement dwellers scouring want ads. I sat next to an obscenely thin woman in a fur coat who smelled like coffee. Her bony legs, all nylons and varicose veins, hung over the seat like sausage links. She held a transfer in front of her, pinched between thumb and forefinger, as though she was reading the world’s smallest newspaper.

  It took me a moment to realize it was my landlady, Bette. It would be awkward to talk to her outside the monthly ritual of dropping my rent in her mailbox, so I kept quiet and checked under my seat for something to read. I found a page torn from the sports section of the Toronto Sun, a dusty shoeprint stamped across the logo for the Toronto Maple Leafs. “Buds Drop Sixth in a Row.” I started to read about how the referees were to blame for the loss when Bette placed her wrinkled hand on my knee.

  “Brandon. I thought that was you.”

  “Oh, hello, Bette. Since when do you take Frayne transit?”

  “Since my Dodge broke down. A piece of advice: never buy an American car. Japanese is the way to go.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind for when I’m in the market.”

  The bus went over a pothole and Bette fell into my lap. As I helped her settle back into her seat, the photograph I’d taken from Melanie’s apartment fell out of my pocket and onto the floor. Bette reached down and picked it up before I could get to it.

  “Isn’t she a pretty one! Girlfriend?” She held the photo two inches in front of her face.

  “Yes. Well, no. Well, kind of. She’s —”

  “A little young for the likes of you.”

  “It’s an old picture.”

  She attempted to fix the creases in the photo by folding them back against themselves. “Reminds me of me when I was young.”

  The hair on the back of my neck prickled. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yessir. I had dark hair, mind you. And no freckles. And I’ve worn glasses all my life. But other than that, she’s my spitting image!” She handed the photo back to me and looked at the name sewn onto my uniform. “Why does your uniform have the name Dennis on it?”

  “When they hired me they gave me a spare and never bothered to get it changed.”

  “I see. I guess you can pretend to be someone else while you’re zapping bugs. That’s kind of fun.”

  “I’ve never tried that, but you know what? It sounds like a good idea.” I stuffed the photograph back into my pocket and stood up. “Well, this is my stop.”

  “What a coinkidink. Mine too. I’ve got to collect some rent from a deadbeat tenant who’s always late with his payments. Would you mind helping me up?”

  She grabbed my forearm and pulled herself out of her seat. She was barely five feet tall. When she reached up to ding the bell she nearly toppled over. I noticed an alligator-skin flask sticking out the pocket of her fur coat as I followed her to the exit door.

  When I stepped off the bus behind her, a gust of wind blew some grit into my eye. I dug my knuckle into my socket, and when I opened my eyes again, I saw a bald Bette chasing her hair down the street, her fur coat flopping heavily behind her like the dead animal it was. I had no idea she wore a wig.

  I caught up to the tumbling coif, plucked it off the sidewalk, and slapped it against my thigh. A cloud of dust exploded from it. Pebbles fell to the sidewalk. I sneezed.

  “Thank you very much,” Bette said, catching her breath. She took an inhaler out of her pocket and puffed on it. Her pockmarked scalp was coated with a cobwebby fuzz.

  I handed her the wig, but she didn’t put it on right away. Instead, she removed the flask from her pocket and offered me a drink.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  She unscrewed the cap, took a swig. “Cancer,” she said, and shrugged.

  “Bette, I had no idea. I’m sorry.”

  She waved a hand at me as if to dismiss it. “Bad things happen to everyone.”

  I bit my lip as she walked away. There really was something poisonous about this town, where even the wealthy were doomed. Down the block I saw the Kill ’Em All van parked outside a tenement. Bill was leaning against the hatch eating a doughnut.

  “’Bout time,” he said as I approac
hed. There was a smear of raspberry jelly on the upper of his chins.

  “Sorry.”

  He opened the passenger door and took out a box of doughnuts. “Want one? They’re fresh as shit.”

  By the time our client had cleared out of the apartment, we’d eaten the whole box. And then we fumigated the hell out of the place. As we were loading up the van to leave, Melanie’s picture fell out of my pocket again.

  “What do we have here?” Bill said. He bent to pick it up.

  “It’s nothing.”

  He stared intensely at the photograph for a moment, then flicked the corner and nodded. “The doughnut shop.”

  “Huh?”

  He spat onto the curb, a long sugary rope of pink goo. “Darryl’s Doughnuts. This chick works there. Bought the dozen off her this morning.”

  “Really.”

  “Why? Did you bang her last night or something?”

  “What?”

  “Hey, I’m just asking. You have a picture of her, for Chrissakes.”

  “Give me that,” I said, and snatched the photo out of his hands.

  “Jeez, Brandon, relax. She’s not your sister, is she? Shit, I’m sorry. I gotta learn to shut my damn trap once in a while.”

  “No, Bill. It’s fine. I’m sorry. Bad day, that’s all. Come on, I’ll buy lunch. You down for Chinese?”

  I decided, over my box of chow mein, to burn the stolen photograph of Melanie as soon as I got home, and never to set foot in Darryl’s Doughnuts again. Then I read my fortune cookie:

  Be mischievous and you will never be alone.

  The universe was fucking with me. I said goodbye to Bill and felt my demons tug my bones in the direction of Melanie’s work.

  I saw her through the window from the parking lot out front. She sat behind the counter on a stool in a pink and green striped apron that was covered in patches of icing sugar. Her hair, bunched up in a hairnet, stuck out like a wasp’s nest through the hole atop her pink visor. The shop was empty. She leafed through the pages of some celebrity gossip magazine and yawned.

  Was this the same girl who’d ravaged me the night before? Who’d initiated me into a world of blood-soaked sexual aerobics? Who’d turned me into a mindless follower of fortune cookie proverbs?

  She looked up from her magazine and saw me. Stood up and smoothed her apron against her body. Waved me in.

  “Nice uniform,” she said as I stepped inside. “You look like the creepy janitor at my old high school who used to write me secret love poems.”

  “Thanks for the compliment. You look like one of Santa’s elves.”

  “I think you mean the Easter Bunny’s personal slave.” She slid her fingertips along the brim of her visor. “How’d you find out where I work, stalker?”

  “I didn’t. I always come here.”

  “Well, I’ve worked here for almost a year and I’ve never seen you.”

  “I guess that’s a fluke.”

  “Or you’re lying. But that’s okay. I like it when guys come after me.”

  Is that what I was doing? I took a seat and asked for a decaf.

  “You mean you’re going to force me to do my job? That’s cruel. Didn’t I rock your cock last night? You should be nicer to me.”

  When she turned around to pour my coffee, I noticed she was still wearing the yellow shorts, pink pumps, and giraffe T-shirt she’d worn on our date.

  “Didn’t you stop at home before coming to work?” I asked.

  “Didn’t have time.”

  “You’re telling me you came straight here from my place?”

  She clip-clopped over with a saucer and coffee cup in hand and placed them on my table. I noticed the broken nail on her right index finger. “Relax, freak. I had a shower before I left but you were still asleep. Cream and sugar?”

  “Just cream.”

  She pulled two creamers from the pouch on her apron and dropped them in my lap. “Better drink it fast. Darcy’s on his way and I can’t be held responsible for any violent outbursts.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She went back to her stool and picked up the magazine. “He called here just after my shift started. Wanted to know where I’d spent the night. I don’t think he remembers anything from the bar.” She casually flipped through some pages. “Anyway, he’s never happy when I don’t come home.”

  What did that mean?

  I wanted to ask: Isn’t he just a roommate? What kind of roommate waits up? Are you trying to make me paranoid? Are you saying I’m in danger?

  I should have told her to stay out of my life, that I didn’t play stupid games and that she and her fucked-up roommate could go straight to hell.

  But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Because as I was fantasizing about splashing my tepid coffee in her face and storming out of there, the door jingled open and Darcy walked in.

  “My professor is a fascist,” he said as he took a seat at the doughnut bar. “He sent me an email this morning informing me that if I miss any more lectures I’ll be forced to accept a ten percent penalty on my mid-term paper. Is that not the stankest pile of bull? What does my attendance have to do with the papers I write? I’ve based my whole academic career on skipping class and writing killer fucking essays. Class is for retards and ass-lickers. I may have to go to the department head about this.”

  He took a pair of bent cigarettes out of his pocket, placed one behind his ear, and stood the other on the counter facing up.

  “Two smokes?” Melanie said, lip curling. “That’s it?”

  “I’m fucking broke, all right? Give me a break. Know what I ate for breakfast this morning? Cornflakes and water. And that was after puking. It tasted like bile. And there was a dead earwig in my bowl. Take what you get. Speaking of which, give me anything that’s not stale.”

  Melanie stuck the cigarette between her lips and served Darcy a sticky cruller. He took a bite and turned to me.

  “Afternoon, pops,” he said, then did a double-take. “You?” He turned to Melanie. “What’s he doing here?” Back to me. “She steal your wallet?”

  I sipped my coffee. It was cold.

  Melanie nudged Darcy’s shoulder. “Give me a light.”

  Darcy took a soggy pack of matches out of his pocket and handed them over. There was just one match left in the pack, hanging off the end like a broken limb. Melanie folded it over and struck it against the black strip with one hand. She waited for Darcy to put his cigarette in his mouth and lit his first, then her own.

  I stood up. The metal legs of my chair squealed along the floor. “I’m gonna get going.”

  “What’s the matter?” Darcy said. “You don’t want to hang out? Come on. I want to hear bug stories. Ever kill a human by mistake? Some neglected baby left in its crib? What’s the lifespan of your average centipede? You know — the brownish ones you see in basements that make girls scream. Are you a snooper? A panty sniffer? Come on, Bug Man. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?”

  “I’ll see you around, Melanie,” I said.

  “Hang on,” she said as I made my way to the door. She was trying not to laugh. “Are you really leaving?”

  I shrugged then nodded.

  “Okay, well, call me.” She took a big pull on her cigarette and exhaled a vaporous cone in the direction of the ceiling.

  “Or don’t,” Darcy added.

  I left. Stuffed my hands in the lint-lined pockets of my uniform and walked slump-shouldered through Darryl’s Doughnuts’ parking lot, the wind echoing. An alarm went off behind me and my heart almost exploded. I turned around; Melanie and Darcy had set off the smoke detector with their cigarettes. Melanie crawled up onto the counter then onto Darcy’s shoulders. Her shorts rode up her ass. Darcy gripped her kneecaps and held her steady. She swatted at the smoke alarm with a rag and accidentally kicked over a stack o
f Styrofoam cups. The alarm finally stopped. The two of them laughed like maniacs.

  I walked home in the rain and fog. Stopped at the liquor store and picked up a case of beer called La Fin du Monde — a brand to reflect my mood. At the corner of my street I slipped on a flattened juice box and fell. Bashed up my elbows trying to keep the beer from smashing. Inside, I picked Melanie’s note out of my garbage and put it in my sock drawer. Peeled the bloody sheets off my bed, stuffed them in a duffel bag and threw it across the room. Masturbated to the thought of tying her down and fucking her on the doughnut counter, then indulged in a deep, manly cry under the comfortless spray of a cold shower.

  That night was Halloween. I went downstairs to the laundromat to wash the blood out of my bedsheets. The place was full of costumed students with baskets full of salty, yellowed underwear. They all seemed to know each other, like they’d planned some kind of All Hallows’ Eve laundry social. I could still hear them laughing and cracking beers after I’d gone back upstairs. It took a fair amount of restraint not to throw myself out the window when they launched into an a capella version of “Monster Mash.”

  Fortunately they left after that — and that’s when I started drinking.

  While children roamed the streets begging candy from strangers, I sat flipping channels like a misanthropic shut-in. Sipped my beers with mechanical stillness, eyes glued to a reality show in which a band of white-trash strippers competed for the chance to date an over-the-hill rock star. I couldn’t get enough. They were showing the whole season in a marathon session. I only left my spot on the couch three times: twice to pee, once to get my sheets out of the dryer. The stains had smudged and turned brown, but I didn’t care. I didn’t plan on seeing Melanie ever again. All I wanted to do was sit on my ass and drink until the sun came up. I kept the twelve-pack on the floor in front of me and used it as an ottoman. Each beer I cracked was warmer than its predecessor. The malty liquid sloshed in my belly whenever I scratched an itch or rubbed my eye.

  I started to get drowsy. I fell asleep for a split second, then jerked awake to a parade of water-balloon breasts in stars-and-stripes bikinis. Outside, teenagers exploded pumpkins with cherry bombs, then ran away screaming.