Guy

by Jowita Bydlowska

  I go downstairs. I have to get a new phone. Something quieter. Electronic. Perhaps I could program one of the slower Charlie songs into it, instead of this hysterical ringing. It’s one of those ancient things, a rotary with an old-school cradle, a present from Gloria. Not something I’d buy, as I generally dislike old things, so-called antiques, which is just another word for hyped-up trash. This piece of shit has to go.

  On the phone, Gloria says, “I know, I know. We were supposed to take a break. I respect that. I’m not calling about that, or I mean, not about us, that’s not why I’m calling. How are you?”

  “I’m great.”

  “That’s great,” she breathes.

  “What’s up?”

  “Believe it or not, business. It’s something important.”

  I know this little trick. It’s a girl trick. She’s got business to discuss, something important, something absolutely needing my attention right away, something that has nothing to do with us but that is something that is extremely urgent, perhaps something like a bomb strapped to her throat and me being the only person in the world familiar with the code on its lock. That must be it.

  “You alone?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Okay,” she sighs.

  I want to go back to bed.

  “The campaign. I’m getting even more requests.”

  “I –”

  “And $isi talked to some people and told them about how it was your initiative and now there are some people, some media outlets, interested in doing a bigger story. They want to talk to the guy who thought it all up, you know, give it a personality or something; it’s an article –”

  “I don’t want to give it my personality,” I say. It’s not the greatest idea. I don’t want to reveal that I’m the personality behind anything, especially behind this, since it’s not really anything I have a lot to say about, other than I just wanted to give $isi a nice going-away gift because at one point I felt it was my fault she got a tumour. And I wanted to make some money off her before being officially fired. So that’s the personality.

  “$isi is pretty adamant that you get the recognition. I mean, brain tumour awareness has skyrocketed.The stigma is fading.The positiveness is taking over –”

  “The positivity.”

  “Right, sure. People think it’s really neat that someone had the – had the balls to do – bad analogy, I know – but the balls to make it seem acceptable. I mean, it’s much bigger than Walk for the Cure – it’s another level; people are really pretty impressed. They want to meet the man behind this thing, who wanted to fight the stigma, to change that perception –”

  Naturally, people are emotional about tumours. There are many good side effects of the campaign: girls shaving their heads for their sick friends or for their idol, $isi, to show their support, to show that they’re all the same. I read all the press about it already, the speculations on what it means for young women to show such solidarity and such sensitivity where normally they just focus on frivolous things: boys and clothes and tampons – but that I’m the driving force behind it all? Nonsense.

  “There’s a journalist who wants to interview you for an article in Elle, not for Brain Tumour Awareness Month because that’s in May –”

  “I don’t think that was my motivation.The stigma-changing.”

  “And so you told me. But maybe you’d like to change your motivation? Maybe you could be okay, for once, with the fact that you had some impact and that people are fucking interested, no?”

  “Are you angry?”

  “Yes, I’m fucking angry.”

  “Is this really about the tumour?”

  Silence. Of course not. I know that she was probably pretty excited she finally had a legitimate reason to call me, even though it broke our rule of no contact, and I know that she is not a one-agenda-minded person, that there’s always some manipulation going on with her. And, right now, our relationship is that manipulation’s drive, the real reason behind the phone call.

  “I’ll think about it. This article.”

  “Okay. Are you really okay?”

  She probably wants me to say no. She wants me to say that I’ve changed my mind and that I want to see her, that I want her to have my baby, two babies – or seven! – and that we’ll try everything: in vitro and renting out wombs, and we’ll apply for a little Ukrainian or a little Mexican just in case, and that I will sell my bachelor pad and amend my ways and become the proper full-time boyfriend that she hopes I will become.

  “Yeah, I’m really good, Gloria.”

  I think of Bride upstairs, all naked, her skin collecting all kinds of moisture from the humid air around her.

  “Great,” she says, her voice small, so small that it’s hoping I will notice how small it is and change my okay to not okay.

  “I have to go,” I say.

  “Yes, sorry. I’ll get Trish to call you to follow up.”

  “How is Trish?”

  “She’s great. She’s dating a really nice guy now, a lawyer.”

  “Good for her. Have a good day, Gloria,” I say and hang up before she says I love you or fuck you or I hate you.

  I want to run upstairs. But I pace myself.

  I feed the dog. I open the fridge to check what’s inside to see if I can get inspired about breakfast. I count backwards from twenty. I count backwards from twenty again.

  I run upstairs.

  Upstairs, Bride is not in bed anymore. She is standing by the window, holding a piece of paper. I walk up to her, noticing how elongated she is, leanness and smoothness; a space between her legs that filters an entire bar of light that falls on the dark wooden floor behind her and doesn’t stop until it reaches the bed. Jason told me a space like this is valuable in the PUA community – a girl with space gets a whole extra point: an Eight becomes Nine. Nonsense.

  She turns around. Her eyes are red. “What is this?” There’s an aura about her, dark clouds that managed to pass the sun between her legs and envelop her in heaviness.

  I take a closer look at the paper. “It’s a letter from a girl.”

  “Why do you keep this shit?” she almost whispers, and I think this is the first time I’ve seen her vulnerable. I feel relief, even happiness.

  “Because I’m a sentimental fuck, that’s why. Why do you have it in your hand?”

  “Because it was right there.” She nods in the direction of my desk. Quite possibly, it was there. But also quite possibly, she had to open the desk to find it, which also makes me happy. But I need to appease. I want to fuck her one more time before she goes.

  “I’m sorry, Bride. It was very insensitive of me to leave it lying around. It’s just a letter from a crazy girl who liked me too much and who is no longer in my life.”

  “Dolores.”

  “Yes, some girl named Dolores.”

  “What was she like?”

  What was she like? “She was just some girl,” I say.

  “Am I just some girl?”

  “No. No, you are special,” I say. I realize I mean it. I’m troubled by this.

  “Special.”

  I laugh, I’m not sure why.To pretend that I didn’t mean it?

  “Oh God. I’m being crazy.” She laughs too, and the dark clouds around her part as abruptly as they came on. Her body, stiff and tense a moment ago, goes slack as if someone let a bit of air out of her. “I’m sorry.” She walks up to the desk and sets the letter down carefully.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say, surprised by this change of tactic on her part: first the instant anger, but now this sudden apology.

  She says, “I was so excited about meeting you and then we had the most amazing sex ever. I get confused by sex sometimes, by the intimacy. It felt as if we were in a relationship. As if I owned you.”

  My anxiety is a little bird stuck in my throat, fluttering, fluttering. I swallow, swallow, hoping to drown the fluttering fucker, push it down, make it disappear.

  “Wanna come b
ack to bed?” I say, and she nods and walks up to me, naked and sweaty and smelling of sex with a hint of mental illness.

  I try not to think how I wanted her to say she does own me. I, too, am possibly smelling of mental illness. I just can’t smell it on myself.

  I lift her chin and kiss her, still not entirely done with the bird in my throat. Perhaps it’s not worth it? My dick has a different idea as it pushes insistently against her thigh, and she presses herself against it and says, “Okay, let’s go.”

  26

  WHEN SHE FINALLY GOES HOME, BRIDE DOESN’T LET ME drive her but instead calls a guy who she says owns a tattoo shop on the boardwalk. He must be a zombie subordinate from Bride’s zombie compound judging by the level of his barely open-eyed indifference to anything around him, including Bride. I wonder if they’re lovers, but Bride ignores him too.

  I nap the entire day away as if sleeping off a hangover.

  ***

  Humans are unpredictable. I’m unpredictable – especially to myself lately. It’s not that my personality has changed. Personality is not supposed to be fluid. It has relatively fixed enduring features, enduring traits, traits such as neuroticism or extraversion. What has changed is my preference, which I thought would stay unchangeable, like my personality. And with my preference, my mission to be a plain girl’s prince has changed as well. Or I should say, there’s no way I’m going to be able to be a prince with Bride. She doesn’t need a prince. She’s crept up on me, her dead eyes mocking me, fixing me in place like an animal being hunted.

  But I’m supposed to be the hunter. I am the hunter. But not with her. Am I already stripped of my control after ten passive months with Gloria? Was it $isi, her illness, or was it Dolores and her roses, the fact that she found me, that it was so easy to find me? Can anyone find me? Can anyone hunt me?

  ***

  In order to regain some control, I decide not to contact Bride right away. It’s an old trick to make a girl think you don’t care about her. I’ve never had to use it because I’ve never cared before, but it comes naturally to me, pretending not to care. I simply decide not to think about her. I’m optimistic about this. Girls respond to being ignored and tend to fall even deeper for you. So that’s what I do.

  I start preparing a salad for later. Spinach leaves, peppers. A boiled egg. Bacon, crumbled into chunks. Blue cheese.

  I take my time. I’m methodical, meditative. I think of Gloria’s raisin chewing. I allow myself to not worry about time.

  Bride told me she was working at the smoothie shack all summer, though she’s not a local girl. She said home was close to the Canadian border; there was a Canadian boyfriend that she lived with for a few months.

  The tip of my knife breaks. I think of the kid who sold me the set of the knives – a little pimply twat who knocked on the door of my beach house, and who proceeded to lie about the knives’ magical powers, their indestructibility, their lifetime guarantee. The kid joked that the knives should last till the end of the world. Upstairs, Gloria waited for me in the bedroom, naked. The kid prattled on and I told him okay, okay and took the box of knives from his hands and signed my name on a piece of paper.

  Bride said she’s twenty.

  “Fuck,” I say. I look at the knife. The world will end now.

  I throw the knife in the trash.

  Bride said she loves $isi and has shaved her head to show her devotion. She owns all of Charlie’s albums, even the ones before they went electronic. She didn’t say anything about how and if she was impressed with my representing pop stars.

  I rummage in the cupboard and find an eight-inch Shun knife that I bought in Tokyo. Nothing will break now. Only the Japanese truly know how to live. I chop. Bride said my other protégé, eighteen-year-old Fifi, is boring but her younger sister listens to her, which is exactly as it should be. Fifi’s specifically designed to appeal to thirteen-year-olds; it would trouble me if Bride herself was into her. Her mother likes Fifi, too, which is fine. Mothers are often undiscerning when it comes to music. This is because it’s been a while since they cared about anything besides lunch boxes.

  The bacon is crumbled. I cut up the egg.

  Bride loves movies, especially violent movies. She hates sweatpants.

  And now I am going to really stop thinking about her.

  ***

  Celia Stone of Elle magazine calls and says in a breathless voice that she’s been researching the Grey Campaign and is surprised we haven’t–

  “Mmmhmm.”

  “So, can you tell me a little bit about the campaign?”

  I consider hanging up on her, but I’m bored, having spent my whole day working out, napping and watching reruns of The Sopranos. I’ve even slacked off on eating my lovely salad today. Instead of finishing it, eating it, I consumed a tower of guacamole and arugula with egg on crackers, which is not a terrible snack except that I added too much cumin.

  “Guy, is this a bad time?”

  “Not really. If you’re having fun.” I picture her: middle-aged, wide-bodied, carefully outlined makeup, too much of it, kooky haircut (diagonal bangs, multicoloured highlights, that sort of thing).

  She coos, “What made you so in tune with people, with what they’re going through? The stigma of being the brain tumour victim or the cancer survivor – I mean, we only have these terms with negative connotations, but now there’s this new slew of young people who are fighters, who don’t pity themselves just because they’re sick or their friends are – I mean, you must feel some kind of responsibility for this. I mean, in a sense, this is a great triumph.”

  “A triumph?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like I won something in a contest? What’s behind door number three? A tumour!”

  “Sorry?”

  “Never mind. Look, there were no noble motives behind this. For me. It’s just my job. Money.”

  Her voice goes a little higher. “You did the campaign because it was your job? Because you get paid?”

  “Of course. What else? It’s just something that we had to deal with. And I had an idea.”

  “It’s a calculated move, not some calling that you’ve had?”

  “Leading question.”

  “I’m just making sure I understand correctly. And Gloria said you’re very modest. She said you’d dispute that you felt this great social responsibility.”

  I laugh. It’s funny. It’s funny she would say that. But it’s predictable she would say that, too, try to make me into a fantasy. “Gloria’s delusional.”

  Celia Stone goes on and on and I say, “Okay,” and hang up to check the voice mail. There is a message, but it’s from Mark. I delete it.

  ***

  The next few days are a mechanical fulfillment of tasks: workouts, meals, naps, walks with Dog, The Sopranos, reading business emails but not replying to them, sleeping – or not sleeping but trying to sleep.

  I finish watching The Sopranos. It’s an interesting show. I can’t relate to any of the characters but I like their mumbled talk, their flashiness, their foreignness. The themes of the show are mostly loyalty and revenge. A character named Ralph kills the protagonist’s horse. The protagonist kills Ralph. The protagonist’s nephew helps to dispose of the body. The whole show follows this pattern: something happens, someone dies because of it, someone kills someone who caused the death, someone else kills the someone who killed the someone who killed the first someone.

  I like the young female character, Adriana. She’s not someone I would date – too pretty, too exotic – but she’s fascinating to watch. Bracelets, fried yellow hair with long streaks of black roots, too much makeup. I am slightly shocked when she dies – it’s so matter-of-fact, her death, but that’s the brilliance of the show. Because that’s how it is in real life. Death just happens – it’s rarely spectacular; there are often no warnings.

  One morning, my father got up and went downstairs to make coffee. My mother joined him minutes later after putting on makeup in the bathroom. My fath
er was dead, slumped in his chair. According to my mother, the newspaper was opened to the Sports section, which my father never read. That detail became an essential part of the story for some reason. Maybe because there was not much else to say about his death.

  ***

  I don’t know what to watch after The Sopranos – I feel empty, lost – so I pick up a book I’ve been reading, a novel that Jason’s girlfriend left behind. The book is about a girl who has leukemia and will die unless her sister, who’s the narrator, donates bone marrow, except she doesn’t want to donate any more bone marrow – she’s been doing it all her life, getting her marrow harvested, and she doesn’t feel like anyone in her family loves her for who she is, only for her marrow. So she rebels, comes to her senses after a teacher has a word with her about her dilemma. I skip some pages. She donates the bone marrow and gets hit by a bus.

  I throw the novel in the garbage.

  In the evening, I watch some porn online. I’m not abnormally interested in pornography; I don’t subscribe to any particular site, but there’s always a nice array of free clips on video sites if you search for them: a library of vaginas and dicks and asses and everything that can be inserted, expelled, swallowed and spat out.

  Today, I spend a few moments watching a man shoving various objects into a very large vagina: dildos, beer bottles, root vegetables. The video is unsexy; it’s like a science experiment you should be able to post on educational websites – showcase the miracles and realities of the grown-up world.

  I click on a couple of other videos: a woman in a teenager’s outfit pretending to lose her virginity in front of an audience of men and women in cocktail attire, a she-male getting gangbanged by two skinheads, a girl covered in a sheet of fishnet-textured rubber getting her vagina inflated with a see-through vagina pump, etcetera. I am aroused, but I’m searching for a specific kind of performer, so I have to control my urge to rub one out.

  I find her eventually: a tattooed bald porn star named Belladonna, who lets an ugly man come in her mouth. In my mind, I superimpose Bride’s face on Belladonna’s – Belladonna is too pretty, too symmetrical. Belladonna is non-verbal, mostly gurgling and moaning, but I have a memory of Bride’s voice demanding I come on her face, and in my head I hear, “Shoot it on my face, baby, come on, shoot it.” I come.