by Kris Bertin
Leslie’s name got me in the door, but no one was happy about it, because I was in my whites, unshaven and unshowered and smelling like six perfect pints. The woman who let me in was wearing a sparkling silver dress and long white gloves like Miss America. The others were in cocktail dresses and gowns, two were in latex or rubber dresses, purple-black like a balloon. There were maybe fourteen people there, standing around this open-concept loft, drinking in their uncomfortable thick-as-phonebook shoes, watching a porno movie projected on the wall. I had to duck to the bathroom to make myself presentable, to use their handsoap on my armpits and strip down to my t-shirt, wet my hair and try to make myself even the tiniest bit like them.
It was a launch party for a website, something Leslie and Marc had failed to mention. There were little cards everywhere that said SensualCams VIP Pass that sort of came apart like a scratch ticket. A balloon girl asked me:
Are you excited to go live?
And I said yes I am.
Marc and Leslie had also failed to show up, though I might’ve seen them on the overhead. I definitely saw Leslie—naked and rocking back and forth on someone’s face—in what I realized was a repeating loop of performances that made up an ad. In it, her eyes were painted in thick, black strokes like a Pharaoh’s, and she had heavy, pyramid-shaped earrings hanging from her lobes that swung in time with her tits. I might’ve seen Marc’s hairy belly and chin, but not his dick, which was lost between his big, fast-pumping hand and dangling scrotum. It looked, not like he was masturbating, but like he was jangling a bunch of coins in a sack. Like he was judging by weight how many quarters he’d have for laundry day.
I knew I was supposed to be turned on, and had been turned on the entire time I was in the steam of the dish pit, when everything was soft and uncertain in my mind. But when I was there, I didn’t feel much of anything. I stuck with the girl in the silver dress because she had been nice enough to let me in and did her best to make me feel welcome despite it being clear I didn’t belong. And even though I knew we were in her studio, and that she fucked herself just a few feet away—on the little foam couch with a white sheet pinned to the wall, by the flood lamp on a tripod—it didn’t change anything. Even the row of dildos along the windowsill weren’t tantalizing. They were just sort of there, just like the shampoos and body washes and hair products that were in her bathroom.
I decided that, on my own, everything had been uncertain, but here, nothing was. I spent the first while trying to match up the performer and the performer’s code name on the overhead with the people in the room, which was the closest I could get to any sort of mystery. Searching among the stockings and cleavage for Sephora and Valkyrie, Speedy Rider and ~Double D Goddess~. Eventually I remembered why I was here and asked our host (JungleJenny) if she knew which one was Veronica.
Our boss didn’t show up, so people left, she said. She might’ve been here. But I wouldn’t know her real name anyway.
I removed myself from the main room when I realized I was standing alone, feeling both out of place and not there at all. Like the way you are in a dream, a pair of eyes, just watching. That’s when I went from being Moody Guy Nobody Knows to the Guy On Fire Escape.
And that’s where she was, drinking from a wine bottle.
She wore one of those glittery wigs—colour and texture obviously fake—but cut so it fit her. It was blue with silver bits, tight on her head. She was pale, and the wig brought out the veins from under her skin.
Instead of saying hello she said this was her spot, and I told her I didn’t know anyone was out here.
I am someone and I am here, she said.
I was going to leave when she started looking me over, which let me do the same to her. She was beautiful, but everyone here was too, so it almost meant nothing. She had tattoos, which also should have meant nothing, but hers were different. After a second I saw that it was actually only one, not several; something isolated to the centre of her chest, spreading up from between her breasts to her collarbones, stopping just before her throat. Big and complicated and colourful with birds and hearts and an all-seeing eye. It looked ancient and powerful, full of detailed line-work like something from a tarot card.
She asked if I was one of them, and motioned inside.
Do I look like one of them? I asked.
No, but you could be. You could be anyone. Are you a cook?
I lied and said yes. I asked if she worked for the website and she pointed at the humping flesh on the wall.
I squinted to see a pair of wide hips pumping up and down on some guy with an electric-orange tan and tube socks. There was a huge, white scar up the centre of her. A Caesarean.
That’s you? I asked.
She drank instead of answering.
I squinted again and when I looked back at her, she was still drinking from her bottle, staring down into the brick neighbourhood.
I asked if she was Veronica. She laughed and said she was more of a Betty than a Veronica. She kept drinking.
I asked her if it was okay if I smoked.
No, she said. It’s not okay.
I pointed at her bottle and told her that wasn’t any better for her.
What? She smiled, and tilted the bottle towards me. Grape Juice?
Something about the way she answered bothered me and I felt myself starting to leave. But then her hand was on my arm. She said she was going anyway. Stepped back into the apartment, but poked her head back outside, and I felt all that frustration leave me when her eyes locked with mine.
I’m Gretchen, she said.
I didn’t know if that was her real name or her code name so I told her mine was Ace, and she shook my moistureless hand, her eyes still locked on me. I asked if I could call her.
I can’t give you my number, she said. I don’t have one.
Do you have Facebook?
No I don’t have Facebook.
Oh.
After a moment, she raised her eyebrows, her wig raising with them.
Do you know what a dead drop is? She asked.
No.
It’s a kind of mailbox we both check. I don’t have a phone but I use a dead drop. Do you want to know where it is?
I felt stupid again, like I was being fucked with, but her face lit up when she saw I was thinking it over. Finally I said yeah, I want to know, and she explained hers was in an alley behind a place called Foolhardy’s on Queen Street. In a wall overtop the dumpster. She explained that there was a mural of a bunch of dragons, and the dead drop was in a hole in the centre of the yellow dragon’s eye.
You can roll up a piece of paper and put it in there, she said. Can you remember all that?
I said I could, which was all she needed to hear in order to leave.
I was out there for a long time before I remembered I was there to smoke. When I finished my cigarette, I picked up her bottle of wine. There was no label to speak of. I took a swig.
It was sweet and mild and made my heart race.
Grape juice.
I took a VIP PASS on the way out.
When I got up the next day I was still thinking about her. I went to the website before I got dressed, holding the erection I’d woken up with, trying to save it for her. Tore open the ticket and put in the code. I kept clicking from window to window looking for something of her in those tiny thumbnails. Blue hair. Her tattoo. A face that made me feel something thicken in my chest.
Finally I found that vertical scar and a chest scribbled in ink and I clicked on it. She was doing a backwards cowgirl, two strong male hands on her hips. But when she brought her open mouth and big eyes up to the webcam, I could plainly see it wasn’t Gretchen. She seemed too happy. Or maybe too nice. I kept flicking back and forth through the different cams, looking for her. A lot of the girls were just sitting, clothed, waiting for someone to come into the room, brushing their hair, fixing th
eir cleavage. I found Leslie in a pair of argyle socks and nothing else. She was sitting in her living room, in the same chair I had sat in, with her bare legs up against her chest, her arms around her knees, a piece of toast hanging from her hand. She was looking at something off camera and rubbing her nose every so often. Smoke was coming up from an ashtray somewhere beside her.
In the dish pit, I gave the card to Diego, who became deadly serious about the whole matter. He touched the little cartoon woman on the card with all four fingers like she was a saint. This is nice website, man.
I told him I knew someone who worked for them. He nodded seriously, steam rising all around us.
This looks like a very fucking hot site, bro. How much?
It’s yours, I said.
I will use this, he grinned. I will get some use out of this gift, bro, let me tell you.
I always knew what Diego was thinking or feeling because he never let anything stay inside himself. Everything just poured out of him. It didn’t matter if it was stupid or crude or embarrassing, because no one, not the servers or the managers or even the cooks listened to him. He could let loose everything inside of himself and fill up the entire basement with the sound of his thoughts and no one could hear it except me.
This time was all about how he’d have to figure out some way to watch the shows alone. His wife was pregnant with his third child and wasn’t fucking him, something he’d mentioned every shift for a month now. This time, he left out the part about her placenta being on a dangerous angle, something that might put the baby at risk if they fucked. This fact had fallen out of him one time, when he came to work sad and somber, and was never repeated again. Instead, he’d settled into a routine of complaining about her that he didn’t seem to be able to control, that sprayed out of him like it was on a timer.
He held two steel-wool scouring pads to his crotch, cupping them like they were heavy. My balls are like this, man.
I told him mine were too, and he punched me, asked what her name was.
All I could do was shrug because I wasn’t even sure.
Of course, there was no dead drop. There was no bar called Foolhardy’s either. The dumpster and the dragon mural and the other stuff were all there, but I only found it by trudging through a mile of alleyways stinking with trash. The wall and the yellow dragon’s eye were smooth with plaster. I was balanced on top of two trashcans feeling around for it when I realized it. Then a window opened two floors up across from me and I fell down.
It was her.
She was leaning out the window in a blue t-shirt, her hair—her real hair—looking sort of dull and cropped close, like she’d recently shaved it.
Ace, she said.
I picked myself up and said Gretchen.
She said that wasn’t her name. Now her name was Katja.
She asked why I came and I asked her what she thought I was there for.
You’re here to try and fuck me, she guessed. Or make me your girlfriend. Make me do something you saw me do on the internet.
You weren’t on that website, I shouted up to her.
I’m in the fine print on the legal page.
Then she thought about it, and decided to laugh at me:
You actually joined?
I felt another wave of embarrassment and it must’ve shown. She laughed even harder.
I thought (but didn’t say) that I wasn’t going to stand there and take this. But I did. Waited through a minute of laughter.
You want to go on a date, huh? She said in a mocking tone. You wanna fall in love?
Yeah, I said, I do.
Fine, she said. Let’s fall in love.
We went to a nearby place called Frankie’s that she said she went to every day.
I started to order breakfast but she told me to stop, waved away the server, who called her Tonya, not Gretchen.
She explained that this wasn’t the date. The date hadn’t started yet. Then she pointed at some candy machine next to a jukebox. Told me to listen up.
There were over five hundred Vendco vending machines on the west side of the city alone, in malls and bus stations, stadiums and restaurants, bars, grocery stores, ranging in size from those little gumball dispensers to towering snack machines. She pointed to an extra-long cargo van parked out front that we were going to fill. Then she showed me a bunch of keys, one for every machine’s padlock, labelled with dirty bits of tape and yellow paper and on a big silver ring. Unlock them, take the machines away, tell whoever asked that we’re repairing them, easy-peasy. We would only take them from big, busy areas, never small businesses where they might know the owners. Katja wanted fifteen gumball-style machines, two drink machines, and one snack machine.
I asked why but she said there was no why. I had more questions but I could see there was no point in asking.
You don’t want to? She asked. You’re okay with the cams, but not this?
So you are a cam girl?
I’m mostly just the accountant now, she said, then motioned around her. And this.
And what’s this?
A person who takes things, stupid.
Once we got in the truck she wanted to know if I had a record. I said I didn’t, but I’m not sure if that’s what she wanted to hear.
She said I needed a name because she wasn’t calling me Ace all night.
I put on a real hard scowl and said my name was Tony, but she just laughed and pinched my cheek.
Aww. Tony’s from the wrong side of the tracks? Had a hard life, has he?
He has. He actually really has.
Ooo, she raised her eyebrows. Dangerous.
I went to light a cigarette and she told me Tony doesn’t smoke.
I told her he does, and she took my cigarette and lighter and said he doesn’t. Especially not in Katja’s van.
The Vendco job went off without a hitch. No one asked what we were doing, the little machines were easy to carry, and the big ones weren’t hard to manage once you got them on the dolly. Katja was as tall as me, which I hadn’t realized until now. Just as strong, maybe stronger. Smarter. When we walked side by side, we didn’t feel like a couple. It was more like we were partners. A few times I tried to reach over and touch her arm, but she was all business. I was told to focus.
It started out as an exciting thing to do, and the both of us were full of energy. It was like all the feelings I had expected to feel at the party were there with me. I vibrated in my seat, and everything she said was funny and sharp and witty and I was on fire. But little by little, as we completed more of the work, it just sort of became another job. I started to remember that I knew nothing about her, that she knew nothing about me, and that my being with her was probably a bad idea.
When we were done she parked in the alley and made me wait at the entrance to keep a look out while she went around to the back. I heard her screwing around with the machines, clinking and clanking for almost a half hour. When she finally closed the door, she came over to me with heavy plastic grocery bags. Three triple-bagged sacs filled with quarters and two filled with jellybeans, roasted peanuts, chocolate-covered raisins, and little plastic blisters with prizes inside. She made me take them, hold them steady in front of myself. When we kissed, she put both hands on the bags like they were part of me.
I wanted to smoke afterwards, sweaty and exhausted on her mattress, the taste of her still in my mouth. She didn’t tell me not to, but she asked if I would wait. She even said please. When I said I would, she thanked me. She got up to make us tea, pushing aside a hanging sheet to head into her kitchenette. It was a bachelor’s apartment, but she’d strung up shower curtains and swatches of fabric to divide everything up.
She did have a scar on her stomach, but it was going in the wrong direction. I kept looking at it, touching it. That, and her tattoo. It was huge, and even more complex than I thought. Now that it wa
s uncovered I could see that the flowers and flames and birds were all coming from a huge, flaming bird, spitting fire upwards to the eye. There was a banner with something in Latin. I asked her what it meant and she said memento mori, which answered nothing.
She gave me tea and asked me on another date. Frankie’s Pub again, by the insane asylum.
I asked if that’s where she came from but she didn’t laugh.
That’s not funny, she answered.
Happiness left me. I didn’t like the way she could move back and forth between the things she’d made up and the things she actually felt, or the way she could wield either of them against me. When I’d asked what she needed the machines for, she said they were for her father, for Father’s Day. All of my excitement was gone too, and underneath it, I had anger for her.
I asked her why she was like this.
She shook her head solemnly and put my hands on her breasts. She declared that she lost both of them to cancer but had survived and now every day was a gift.
I tried to sidestep her nonsense by looking into her eyes, sternly, and telling her my name was Chris. That I was twenty-two years old and from Charlottetown. That I came here after dropping out of college because I was all fucked up.
She saw that I was giving her something of myself and softened a little. Clarified that she didn’t actually lose her tits. But she did come back from the dead.
Then I asked it as quietly as I could. Maybe so she couldn’t hear what was in my voice.
What’s your real name?
Gretchen, she said.
Really?
She shrugged, and that’s what did it. That was all I could take. I left.
She said she loved me as I got dressed, but in a nonchalant kind of way, her legs crossed, still holding a saucer and a teacup over her naked body. Said it like it was something she said all the time. From the window she called down.