Despite the leather chairs, Bibliothèque is flashy and full of aimless pretty girls of all types and leg-length. Most are under thirty, or pretend to be. They are not actually aimless even though they look it. The girls come here because this is the place to find a boyfriend, or at least a friendly sponsor, if he happens to be tied down already (sometimes to a former club member, who was once just like them). The girls present their breasts and shoulders and cheeks and teeth and phones, light bouncing off their jewellery and their eyes, like this is a pageant – and in a way, it is. A big aquarium with tropical fish had been installed on the glass rooftop, and I remarked to Gloria that it’s like decorating a baby’s room – the aquarium is for the girls.
“Because they like the fish. Because the fish are pretty. So they will bring more girlfriends here to look at the fish.”
“So the girls are like the fish?”
“A woman needs a fish like a man needs a bicycle,” I laughed.
Gloria didn’t laugh. “Are you having a stroke?”
Gloria’s company can be exhausting. Some days it’s like hanging out with a homeroom teacher. Anyway, the aquarium disappeared one day. A waitress tells me all the fish died after someone threw cocaine in the tank.
I’m immune to the girls in here. Even the plain ones are too much, adorned in their sparkly bits, lines memorized from one of those books about how to catch and train a man. Sometimes when I’m here, I picture myself wrapped inside a giant condom to keep all the mental illness and sparkly filth away.
I would like to stay away from these clubs for good, but right now I need this place in order to find someone to help me to keep the Tumour Thing going. I go to Bibliothèque night after night, pretending to be a bland-yet-exuding-friendliness type – a guy everyone wants to talk to because you can just tell he will listen.
I’m an okay actor, save for the inability to tell jokes. I can become a friendly person, a chatting/listening machine, asking about people’s jobs, their clothes and the television they like. People love talking about TV shows. I talk about The Sopranos, the greatest TV show that’s ever existed. I’ve never seen it. But almost everyone can and will talk about The Sopranos, and no one really listens to anyone, so it doesn’t matter that I haven’t seen it.
For my outings, I wear a white T-shirt, a black Varvatos suit jacket, a rotation of skinny Tiger of Sweden jeans, always paired with a set of ugly Coach tennis shoes. This outfit makes me look like one of those ad agency guys, exactly who I’m trying to attract.
I sit and wait. I check my Facebook. Try to come up with clever status updates. I scroll through the recipes I’ve posted. I count my comments. Not a lot of comments. I message my new Mexican clicker to request more comments.
I look up from Facebook to look at people. I shouldn’t look too busy. I should look inviting.
A girl journalist starts chatting with me. The Sopranos comes up. She tells me she’s just like Adriana. I have no idea what that means, but she seems proud of herself, so I say, “Interesting,” and she smiles and squints at me. “What do you do?”
I could probably fuck her, but I won’t. “Nothing. Unemployed.”
She gasps. She checks her phone. “I have to go.”
“Yes, please go,” I say, and her eyes turn big and her ponytail whips around and she clicks off on her silver heels.
An older woman with a baby-rat face and a cloud of teased yellow-red hair, wearing black-patent Louboutins that she shows while crossing and uncrossing her legs, has been watching me. She’s someone I actually hooked up with once, after Gloria and I had a fight in here and I was left alone to feel bad and remorseful.
“That’s Mildred,” someone says beside me. “She used to be married to some famous Canadian musician or an actor. She’s okay for fifty.”
“You should go for it.”
“She’s a Six,” the guy says. I like him.
“A solid Six.”
“I don’t go anywhere below Seven,” he laughs.
“I like anything from One up,” I laugh.
He quickly looks behind me. “Yeah? You should go for it yourself then.”
“Are you with an ad agency?”
“Who isn’t?”
“Anything I’d know?”
“We did that cat food ad. We do a ton of shit, but everyone always talks about the cat food.”
“Where you’ve got guys pretending to be cats? Those were great.”
He nods and looks in the direction of the glass door leading to the patio, as if he saw someone there he knows.
I look in the same direction, but there isn’t anybody there; he’s just one of those guys who is always looking for a better party than the one he’s at.
I try to guess his age. Close to mine. But balding. Expensive glasses. I’d ask him where he got the frames but I don’t. We’ll exchange fashion tips another time.
I say, “I’m in the music business. I need an ad for cancer.”
“Like the Run for the Cure stuff?”
“Like that, but different. I want to make cancer cool.”
“Twisted. I like it.” I really do like him.
“Good. I know someone who has a tumour, one of my clients, a pop star. I want people to respond to it positively, you know, connect with it. They have grey ribbons. It’s a brain tumour.”
“Terrible.”
“Yeah. Terrible. But that’s my point – we’re demonizing it. And it’s just part of life. I want to make it acceptable. No drama.”
“Drama is bad.”
“Unless it’s the mentally ill or children. Or seniors.”
“Soldiers.”
“Yes. Exactly,” I say and watch him chug his beer, something behind his eyes whirring, some kind of machine that probably has access to everything that’s ever been trendy, trying to come up with the perfect formula for me.
This is why this unpleasant place is okay after all – watching this guy, I become aware of how everyone here is actually working on something. Sure, it’s mostly about hookups, about sad lost Sixes like Mildred, but it’s also about being on, being ready to talk about making tumours acceptable if it may mean more money, a step up to glory. I’m always impressed with people trying to make something out of themselves.
“Mmm,” my new best friend says and takes a sip out of his new bottle of Heineken, which shows up along with my Scotch. Dalwhinnie.
“It should be a WTF strategy,” my new best friend says.
“What?”
“The Tumour Thing. You know, WTF, what the fuck, as in, what the fuck was that? It’s basically a hidden ad, like a teaser. I mean, I don’t know what that would be exactly right now, but I think that’s the route to go.”
“We don’t tell people it’s about a tumour?”
“Precisely. Right. We just do some other stuff, you know, not even related, and then there could be a big reveal. Or not. No drama.”
“No. No IVs. Something quiet and sexy instead,” I say.
He blinks at me, smiles. “Yeah.”Then his eyes lose their focus and he’s looking past me. “Ah screw it. She’s almost a Six-and-a-half. One more beer and she’ll be a Seven.”
I recall the feeling of Mildred’s teeth on my skin. I look around the rooftop patio. There are transactions buzzing all around me, the eager eyes and mouths, the shiny hair and skin. Everywhere, the ringed fingers and bracelets touching shoulders, shoulders shaking in laughter and iPhones flashing, the tiny trays of olives and almonds everywhere.
I notice two women at a table near us. They are sitting head to head, whispering to each other, hands covering mouths. They’re both attractive, with big bodies full of angles, wide faces and slightly upturned eyes. They look Russian. I like how they talk, how absorbed they seem in each other.
I catch a few women who might be glancing toward their table, though I can’t be sure because they could be trying to look at me. But not likely – it’s the girls, not me, they’re interested in. I know enough about the female psyche to kno
w that the girls’ giggly familiarity would feel threatening to other women, driving them a little crazy about not being let in on the secret.
I tap the ad guy on the shoulder to ask him what he thinks.
“Nine-and-a-half. Both of them. So that’s what?”
“Nineteen.”
“Nineteen,” he giggles. “Listen, my standards are dropping proportionally to time going by. By last call, Mildred will be an Eight.” He winks at me. He gets up. He hands me his card. PAT on one side, TRICK@kolektiv on the other. Thick cardboard paper.
After PAT TRICK leaves, I watch the Nineteens for a short while. I picture them on film, talking about something to do with $isi’s situation, giggling and being intimate and best-friendly with each other. There’s a rush of sudden happiness, a spark going off in my brain.
***
At home, there’s a surprise waiting for me. A new bouquet of roses. I put this one in water, intending to give it to Gloria tomorrow when I see her for dinner at Bibliothèque.
16
I MEET PATRICK AT HIS AGENCY. IT’S A WHITE OFFICE, SLICK like a laptop, on the main floor, with the word Kolektiv printed in red on the white wall behind a symmetrical, straight-haired secretary, a Seven.
Patrick manoeuvres me through a bright hallway filled with cubicles filled with guys and girls typing on their Macs, toys and boxes of crap towering on their ergonomic desks. The ceiling is punctuated with skylights. Nobody looks up as we walk by. I let out a silent fart.
We go inside a small conference room, where Patrick gestures toward a chair and I sit down across the table from him. He says, “Got your message. We use two girls. Tens. We shave their heads and we shoot them just talking. Just talking to the camera, recording one of those vlogs, yapping on about, I don’t know, The Sopranos. Or something lighter. Maybe makeup or dating. Or sex. One of them is wearing a ribbon.”
“WTF,” I say.
“WTF. We’ll get someone good to do the script, a funny guy. We’ve got guys to figure out that kind of thing. It has to be about the feeling of it, right? And the look, too.”
I say, “Young, but a bit weary around the eyes. Russians or something. We get them to be rude and sexy and bald and hot and the ribbon is there, maybe just one of them is wearing it. I’ll hire someone good to write a bitchy opinion piece in Slate or Salon.”
“Bald?”
“Chemo.”
“Right. Yeah, man. And we play your client’s music in the background, then louder, maybe third episode or something, and it’ll be totally accidental, just some quiet song or something in the beginning,” he says. He’s wearing an Adidas jacket and a shirt with a video game character on it. Since he’s losing his hair already, the effect is that of an aged toddler. I smile encouragingly at him.
“Yeah, so they talk about neutral topics – fashion, shopping, douching, stuff like that. No cancer. At first.” Patrick sits up, elbows on the table, fingers massaging temples. He talks fast. “Then we do a second campaign after our numbers go up, but it may just happen naturally, you know people googling the song, and the name of the chick and then cancer, and then we can address it directly. Then if our numbers are good – no, they will be good.”
I keep smiling at him. He smiles back.
He says, “That tie is great, by the way,” as if we were two girlfriends catching up over lunch.
“Thank you. I like your glasses.”
“They’re Japanese.”
“Handcrafted?”
“I guess,” he says, and turns the screen of his computer around so that I can read the notes as we talk some more about details: the number of people we need, dates, clothes, etcetera.
I’m finally able to make out the label on his glasses. Charmant.
Eventually, we’re done talking about the strategy and he walks me out. He tells me about how Mildred got indignant because he didn’t ask her to sleep over. He talks about her tits, which are droopy from what I recall, and he says something about how it’s unsettling to see older women shaved – he makes a joke about the skin of plucked chickens. I count down from twenty, and then it’s time to shake his hand and I’m out, stepping right into a busy, sunny day in the city.
17
THE PHONE RINGING JERKS ME AWAKE. I’VE FALLEN ASLEEP, deeply and dreamlessly, like a teenager, after yet another whole afternoon of Skypeing with Kolektiv, followed by reading scripts and looking at videos of all of our vlogging candidates. I can’t tell the bald, Slavic-featured actresses apart anymore.
The shooting starts next week, and it couldn’t be soon enough. $isi’s new song, “Black to Grey,” is leaking everywhere, showing up on top spots in charts, in celebrity news, in music blogs, new fan pages set up by her teenage fans and their mothers.
I pick up the phone, and the phone says, “Guy, I’m sorry.”
“Who is this?” I ask, trying to guess the familiar voice but unable to place it.
“The number you gave me was wrong, but I called your agency and told them I was a cleaning lady at the beach house and there was an emergency,” she giggles. “I’m sorry.”
“Who is this?”
“Dolores.”
She appears then, the way I’d left her in her jean shorts wrapped tightly around her bum, her trusting face.
“Dolores!”
“It’s me! I’m sorry! I didn’t know how else to get a hold of you. I’ve got your address, too. I’ll visit as soon as I –”
“What is this about, Dolores?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why do you want to visit? Why are you calling me? What’s going on with you?” I say, but I already know.
Of course I know. Dolores thinks she is in love and she wants to prove her love by stalking me. She wants to show up on my doorstep with her little suitcase, and she wants to have a romance. She doesn’t understand the gap between us. She thinks she has a right to me. She thinks that I am, indeed, a vampire prince who has found her at last, his princess. She thinks that there’s actually an us.
“Well. I love you,” she says simply. As if that answered all my questions.
“Dolores –”
“I know, I know, it’s crazy, and I was even thinking that you gave me the wrong number on purpose and you haven’t been answering my emails? But then I thought you couldn’t do that, not you, I mean, we connected, no? Like, we really connected. I looked at the paper and it was clear that the one was really a seven and that I was just an idiot for misreading it. But now here I am. So I was thinking of booking the ticket –”
“No. But I’d love to have a coffee or something if you’re ever in town,” I say. Coffee. Not risky; things come up at the last minute; everyone cancels coffees all the time. It’s almost expected.
“What?”
“When you’re in town. We’ll have coffee. Right now is not the best time,” I say.
“Oh. So you really don’t want to see me?” Her voice is small. I see her eyes then, opened wide, the whites so white, the blues so blue.
“It’s not that, it’s –”
It’s exactly that. Why won’t I just say it? I won’t just say it because I am not a dick. Women love me. And because of that, sometimes, I need to lie and present myself in the best possible light, and simply telling her to fuck off is not something I can stand behind a hundred percent just yet.
I know, I know, for all the $isi lessons, I’m still lacking the ability to make myself absolutely clear. I’m trying to quickly come up with something to end this conversation without hanging up abruptly and calling my phone provider to give me a new number.
“Oh, that’s a relief! I couldn’t come right away, so I just sent the roses to your address.”
“I moved. No roses, Dolores. They probably went to the wrong address,” I say. This is a poor strategy. Now I’m going to make her think that I’ve been sitting here, waiting for something like roses, that I feel wronged by not receiving the roses that she just said she’d been sending.
“So where do
you stay now? Different place? I’m trying to book the flight after my mid-terms and it’s around Thanksgiving so it’s, like, really expensive.”
“I’m away during Thanksgiving.”
“This is why I’m calling,” she says, as if we’ve had a bunch of conversations already, trying to make plans to meet.
“I’m away the rest of October and November, actually,” I say, and there’s finally some silence on the other end.
“I can come down sooner?”
“I –”
She says, “Friday? This Friday?”
I look out the window. I scan the building, a grid of glass. I focus on one particular apartment. A man is standing in the window, hand to his ear, shaking his head.
I shake my head, “Listen. I’m going to be honest. I don’t want you to come down. I have to go now. I have to take Dog out for a walk.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s what I mean, Princess. I don’t want you to come down to visit me.”
“But, Guy –”
“No. I’m talking now. It’s over. We’re over. I’ve met someone else. Her name is Gloria. And I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I don’t buy it,” Dolores says.
My seduction has freed something in her, something much larger than just a glimpse of hope. Faith. A monster of faith – faith so grotesquely enlarged, so clearly and definitely in disproportion to what she realistically should believe about herself. I hang up. I’m a dick.
As soon as I hang up, I block her number.
I pace around my apartment. The dog picks up my nervous energy; he erupts and stops in half-barks as he clicks in circles around the kitchen. When I look at him, he freezes. He looks up from underneath his shy brows. “No kennel. Don’t worry.”
I almost never talk to Dog, and he looks at me even more stunned when I do. “No kennel,” I say. “What?”
Dog keeps staring, his tail slapping the floor unsurely. God, that face. I laugh as he continues staring. Laughing releases the tension that’s wound up like a coil around my throat.
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