Praise for Sarah Mlynowski

“Mlynowski is out for a rollicking good time from the start.”

—Arizona Republic on Fishbowl

“Undemandingly perfect…wonderfully bitchy.”

—Jewish Chronicle on Fishbowl

“A fresh and witty take on real-life exams in love, lust, trust and friendship.”

—Bestselling author Jessica Adams on Fishbowl

“This entertaining debut [offers] both humor and substance…. [Anyone] who’s ever been bored by an unfulfilling job…jealous of a roommate who has it all together…or thoroughly perplexed by boy-speak will find something to enjoy here. Mlynowski may not be able to provide all the solutions, but she certainly makes the problems fun.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A likable heroine.”

—Booklist

“Milkrun by Sarah Mlynowski is funny, touching, sassy, and bright. It’s as spicy as cinnamon-flecked foam on cappuccino and as honest as strong black coffee.”

—Anthology magazine

For Bonnie, Ronit, Lisa, Jaime, Mel and Todd:

my roommates, past and present.

Fishbowl
Sarah Mlynowski

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you, thank you, thank you to the people who read and reread drafts of this book: Sam Bell, my devoted editor; Elissa Harris Ambrose, my grammar-queen mom; Jess Braun, my long-standing coconspirator; Bonnie Altro, my favorite storyteller; Todd Swidler, my exceptionally patient boyfriend; and Kathrin Menge and Ana Movileanu, my perceptive, speed-reading ex-coworkers.

Special thanks to the Oakville firefighters who—extremely sweetly—explained the technicalities of burning down one’s kitchen. Oh, and let me try on the funky gear.

Cheers for the RDI team: Laura Morris, Margaret Marbury, Margie Miller, Tara Kelly, Tania Charzewski, Pam Spengler-Jaffee…and I mustn’t forget Craig Swinwood.

Finally, thanks to the endless support of family and friends (Dad, Louisa, Bubbe, Grandma, Squirt, Rob, Lynda, Sohmer, Merjane and the Wednesday Night Dinner Girls).

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE: A TINY BIT OF FORESHADOWING

1 ALLIE’S MISTAKE

2 JODINE DOESN’T WANT TO TALK

3 EMMA GETS PISSED

4 ALLIE GETS EXCITED

5 JODINE ARRIVES

6 EMMA GETS ATTENTION

7 JODINE HOLDS THE BUTTER

8 IRRITATING OMNISCIENT NARRATOR ADDS HER TWO CENTS (WHO IS SHE, ANYWAY?)

9 JODINE NAMES HER FISH

10 EMMA’S BEING SELFISH AND IS FEELING SORRY FOR HERSELF (SURPRISE, SURPRISE)

11 ALLIE GETS NAUSEOUS

12 TUESDAY 7:00 A.M.: NOTE TAPED TO INSIDE OF FRONT DOOR (NOT TO REFRIGERATOR FOR OBVIOUS REASONS)

13 JODINE WORKS IT

14 ALLIE GOES NUTS

15 EMMA DEALS

16 THE POSTURIZATION OF ALLIE

17 POSTER MANIA

18 ALLIE! YOU’RE BEING AN IDIOT! HE LIKES YOU!

19 EMMA LOOKS SILLY

20 JODINE GETS READY

21 OMNISCIENT NARRATOR TRIES TO GIVE UNBIASED MULTI-PERSPECTIVE ACCOUNT OF PARTY

22 EMMA GOES NUTS

23 ALLIE CONTEMPLATES THE FUTURE

24 JODINE’S DRUG INDUCED EPIPHANY

25 EMMA’S ILLICIT PHONE CALL

26 JODINE COUNTS DOWN

27 PAY ATTENTION, ALLIE!

28 OMNISCIENT NARRATOR RINGS IN THE NEW YEAR

29 JODINE HAS A HANGOVER

30 ALLIE IS OBLIVIOUS

31 EMMA TAKES A PILL

32 JODINE GETS CHOKED UP

33 DID YOU HAVE TO KEEP LEFTOVERS, EMMA?

34 ‘TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE VALENTINE’S DAY, AND THINGS GOT A LITTLE GORY, SO POUR YOURSELF SOME CHARDONNAY, WHILE THE ANNOYING OMNISCIENT NARRATOR RECOUNTS THE STORY

35 WHEN HARRY MET ALLIE

36 JODINE LETS GO

EPILOGUE: THE OMNISCIENT NARRATOR TELLS YOU WHAT HAPPENS TWO AND A HALF MONTHS LATER

Prologue

A TINY BIT OF FORESHADOWING

Allison, Jodine and Emma are going to set their apartment on fire. No, they’re not going to do it on purpose. What kind of lunatics do you think they are?

Now, don’t go worrying. No one will get hurt. There will be no heart-stopping da-da-da E.R. music in the background, no one in white yelling Stat!, no George Clooney look-a-like climbing aboard a gurney to thump life back into someone’s heart, and no artificial respiration of any kind, including the mouth-to-mouth variety.

And we’re all thankful for that, of course. Although when Janet, the substitute teacher who lives in the apartment upstairs, tells the story, she’ll kind of wish something slightly more significant will have happened, like maybe the girls get trapped in the bathroom while the flames lick the closed door, and they stand sweating and shivering under the running shower, and they see smoke creeping in from the hallway, and just as they’re about to pass out…No, wait! Maybe one of them will pass out. She’ll faint away just as the cute fireman throws open the door and tosses all three girls over his muscle-rippled shoulders. He’ll look as if he stepped right off a Chippendales calendar (except his fireman’s getup is done up) to carry them into the midnight air to safety. And then he’ll give the passed-out girl resuscitation (yes! yes! the mouth-to-mouth variety) and she’s breathing! She’s going to make it! Isn’t it wonderful to be alive!

But this isn’t going to happen. This is Janet’s fantasy, and Janet is not an important player in this story.

Sorry, Janet.

Anyway, the girls will have to go to the E.R., but it’ll be more of a formality than because of any real concern. Something about sucking in too much carbon monoxide and needing oxygen. They’ll also need to shower. When they get out of that burning apartment, they won’t exactly be making a fashion statement, although they’d make excellent “before” or “fashion don’t” pictures, if any glossy magazine decides to snap their pictures. Which, of course, isn’t going to happen, either, because why would a fashion photographer be sitting in the waiting room of the E.R.? Be serious. The girls’ faces are going to look as if they’ve been rubbed with black chalk, if black chalk even exists, as there are no white blackboards. And their hair…if their mothers were to see their hair in that rat’s-nest sooty condition, they’d probably cover their eyes and scream, “Cut it off! Just cut it all off!” while flashing back to incidents of pink chewing gum. Mothers can sometimes get a wee bit overdramatic.

These girls ain’t going to be a pretty sight.

But do you know what they’re going to need? Even more than a shower?

Insurance. Sounds kind of superfluous next to oxygen and water, but when you don’t have protection, things tend to get a little messy.

Anyway, you don’t have to worry about all this fire mumbo jumbo right at this moment. The girls haven’t even met yet. So relax. Have a cup of coffee. Never mind, there’s no need to stimulate any heart-stopping da-da-da E.R.-beat hyperactivity. Have a cup of herbal tea instead. And pay attention to the first name in each chapter title or you’re not going to have a clue who’s talking. Oh, and forget you ever heard about the “burning down” of any “apartment.”

So did you hear about the fire at 56B Blake?

(Fire? What fire? Insert your blank stare here.)

Well done!

1
ALLIE’S MISTAKE

ALLIE

Eeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Shut. Up.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Shut. Up. Pause.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Shut! Up! I’m trying to mind my own business while I stir my instant coffee (my brewer has gone back to Vancouver with its owner, one of my former roommates. My other college roommate, most furniture, all forms of cutlery and the living-room TV have also deserted me for the rainy city of Vancouver), but this teeth-scratching eeeeeeeeeeeeep keeps interrupting me. It’s like when you bite your lip by accident and it gets all puffy, and because it’s puffy, you keep biting it—you know?

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Please, please, please stop.

Three minutes and ten seconds later: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Time to detonate the smoke detector. I’ve lived in this apartment for over two years and in all that time, not once have the batteries run out. But isn’t that always the case? They had to wait for Rebecca and Melissa to move out before they decided to kick the bucket. My ex-roommates are each at least half a foot taller than my five-foot frame (I prefer to be called petite, not short, and none of that vertically challenged crap, thank you very much) and could have reached it by standing on a stool without the aid of a phone book. Both could have easily, without breaking a glow, popped out the offending batteries, making the eeeeeeeeeeeeep go away. Go figure.

The beeping offends my ears yet again, and I examine my right thumb for a piece of stray nail to chew on. Gross? Yes. A bad habit I picked up from my mom.

Maybe this eeeeeeeeeeeeeping is a sign. A sign for me to get dressed, walk to the nearest Starbucks and order a cappuccino before going to work. Maybe while I’m there I will meet someone capable of stopping this eeeeeeeeeeeeeping. Maybe I will make new friends. I need new friends. Now that my former roomies have left town, I have only one friend left in Toronto, Clint, but secretly, I’m a little in love with Clint, so I don’t think he counts. I’ve tried not to be in love with him, because he’s not in love with me. I realized this last year (me loving him and him not loving me). I had a little too much Mike’s Hard Lemonade (Canadian girl beer) and said, “I love you, Clint.” And he got as pale as loose-leaf paper and said, “Thank you.”

Thank you? What is thank you? Thank you for making me a turkey sandwich, Allie, maybe. Thank you for taping TWIB (that’s This Week in Baseball for all those not in love with Blue Jays–obsessed men) while I was out sleeping with the slut from my economics class. Worst-case scenario, obviously, but still applicable. But thank you for the “I love you”? What does that mean? He started stammering all boylike that he had to go, he had an early class (as if he ever went to class), and I realized what a mistake, what a huge mistake I had just made, and I said, “As a friend, I mean. I love you as a friend. You’re my best friend.”

So technically I don’t know for sure he doesn’t love me. It’s certainly possible that he believed me about me not loving him that way. And if he doesn’t think I’m in love with him, he probably doesn’t want to risk potential embarrassment and disappointment by admitting his true feelings for me. He’s probably afraid of making the first move, because of his fear of rejection. Not that he’s ever been afraid of being rejected by other girls.

But I’m different from other girls. I am. Clint says no one appreciates him the way I do.

So you see, I’m having a bit of a current living-in-Toronto friend drought. Obviously, I’ll have two built-in friends when my two new roomies arrive in a couple weeks, but who should I talk to until then? I wish I had a dog. I’ve always wanted a dog. A dog that will sleep on my pillow. A dog that I can take for walks and feed snacks and teach to roll over and walk on two legs and do other fun tricks, and maybe one day I can present him on David Letterman’s Stupid Pet Tricks. But shouldn’t I ask my new roomies if I want to get a dog? In case they’re allergic? Is it the ethical thing to do? Could I hide the dog? It could sleep in my room. I have the biggest one.

But if I can call them to ask them this, that means I have someone to talk to. And if I have someone to talk to, then I really don’t need a dog, now do I?

Eeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Maybe by the time I get back from coffee and work the eeeeeeeeeeeeeping will have stopped. Sometimes you wish for something and it actually does happen. Really. Like in fourth grade. I went to sleep crying because in the morning I had to take the Monday multiplication test and I was stuck on table nine. For five weeks, Mrs. Tupper (who probably never used Bounce, because her skirt always stuck to the inside of her thighs) had been making me stand up in front of the class and answer, “Allison, what is nine times two?” And when I answered eighteen, she’d ask, “What is nine times five?” She’d ask me six questions in all, assuring me that if I passed the test, I could move on to the tenth table, but if I answered even one wrong, I’d have to repeat table nine again the next Monday.

Anyway, for five weeks I went to bed crying because even though nine times ten and nine times eleven were no-brainers (“Multiplication isn’t your foe, times it by ten and add an O. Don’t let math give you trouble, times it by eleven and you’re seeing double!”—Mom made those up for me), I would either forget nine times eight (seventy-two!) or nine times nine (eighty-one!), and for some inexplicable reason answered sixty-five to both. Anyway, I had been on the ninth table for five weeks now, and the test was in the morning. I knew that one (maybe two) more days of practice would really be helpful, and then poof, the next morning there was a flood. There’s never been a flood in my part of the city in its entire history. How weird was that? Needless to say, the schools were closed, since no one could get to them unless they had a boat or Jet Ski. Totally bizarre. And when I took the test (on Tuesday) I passed.

See? It happens.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeep.

I brush my teeth, throw on jean shorts, a tank top and sandals. I grab my purse and head out the door.

Mission not accomplished. Work—good. Well, not good as in fulfilling good. How can telemarketing be fulfilling? Although, I raise money for the Ontario University Alumni Fund so it’s actually telefundraising, which isn’t as immoral or annoying as telemarketing. And I did raise over five hundred bucks today, which is pretty good. Anyway. Cappuccino—also good. Meeting taller friends so they can fix the eeeeeeeeeeeep—bad.

But what’s this? Silence? I look up at the offender on the wall in the living room next to the kitchen’s entranceway. Has the sour-milk-sipping noise come to an end?

No sound except passing traffic. I leave the windows open because it is a breath-hampering, fluid-draining ninety-seven degrees outside. And I can’t afford an air conditioner. I once had a fan, but like everything else that gave me joy, it is now in Vancouver.

Quiet. See? I told you it could happen. Sometimes when you wish for something hard enough—

Eeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Damn.

Hmm. There’s a pharmacy next door to Starbucks. Why didn’t I think to buy batteries? Wouldn’t that have made more sense than to assume that the obviously dying batteries would self-heal while I was getting caffeinated?

I roll the computer chair from my bedroom into the living room and place it beneath the smoke detector. This is a bad plan. A very bad plan. My computer chair is one of those $15.99 You-Put-It-Together! chairs whose wheels are about as sturdy as legs in high heels after three glasses of zinfandel. Unfortunately, my other chairs, which are metal, sturdier, more appropriate for this situation (and which used to be arranged around a glass kitchen table which had to be placed beside the kitchen instead of inside it due to space limitations) are gone. With the glass table. In Vancouver.

I pump the computer chair as high as it can go. And now, the moment of suspense. It’s just me, an eeeeeeeeeeeeeping smoke alarm, and a rolling computer chair in a couchless, coffeemaker-free apartment.

Steady. Stea-dy. Lift right arm to smoke detector. Lift left hand to mouth. Insert pinky nail between lips. Excellent nail over-growth. Mmm. Missions accomplished. Superfluous nail piece is freely rolling around my tongue. And both hands are placed squarely on the smoke detector.

Now what?

Press button?

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPP. Whoops. Remove batteries? Why can’t I remove batteries? Chair! Swerving! Seconds from head injury! Need both hands to balance! Steady! Stea-dy.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Stop. That. Now. Remove smoke detector? Crunch. Smoke detector removed. Three-minute wait. Beeping stopped.

Tee-hee.

I think I broke it. I guess I should put it back on the wall. I can’t just leave it on the table. What table? (Do milk crates covered in a tablecloth count as a table?) Okay, smoke detector is now back on ceiling.

I carefully crouch into a sitting position and insert another finger into my mouth. I wait three minutes.

No eeeeeeeeeeeeep. Not even one tiny eee.

Now, isn’t that better?

2
JODINE DOESN’T WANT TO TALK

JODINE

August 27—Agenda:

1 Call car to bring me to airport.√

2 Call mother to remind her to pick me up at airport.√

3 Purge fridge of remaining food.√

4 Sweep.√

5 Throw out garbage.√

6 Close windows.√

7 Return apartment key to superintendent.√

8 Save car receipt to airport (firm has agreed to reimburse).√

9 Verify frequent-flyer points credited to account.√

10 Bring suits to dry cleaner.

11 Call Happy Movers to confirm truck rental for move to new apartment.

“Hello,” the annoying businessman sitting in the window seat beside me says as he removes his suit jacket. “How are you doing on this fine day?”

Terrific. Shouldn’t the fact that I’m in the middle of reviewing something be a sign that I’m not interested in pursuing a conversation? “Fine, thanks.”

He squashes his arm on the seat rest. “I’m doing well, too.”

I pull out the New York Times. People are usually less likely to intrude on one’s personal time when one appears to be engaged, especially if the engagement happens to be reading the Times. It’s not a comic book, or worse, a fashion magazine. It spells serious all over it.

“What are you reading, little lady?”

It takes me another moment to get over the traumatizing shock of being called a little lady. Is he blind? “The paper,” I answer in yet another dismissive attempt. Maybe now he will set sail the notion of small talk? Float away, annoying man! Float away!

“So what do you do?”

“I’m a student.” Now vanish. Enough.

“Oh, that’s nice,” he says in a pat-me-on-the-head voice. Notice he does not think to ask the obvious question, What are you studying? Not that I care. I do not wish to engage in a conversation with this man. I’m not sure why people believe being seated next to someone implies an ensuing conversation.

He puffs himself up like a blown-up life jacket. “I run an international appliance sales force. It’s one of the largest in the world.”

I don’t remember asking, but now that you’ve opened the field up for discussion, let me ask, is that why you’re sitting in 23D in the economy section, next to me? Because you’re so rich and powerful? “That’s nice,” I say instead. It’s not that I’m a coward; why should I be rude?

I slip my Discman headphones out of my carry-on and over my ears. Unfortunately, my CD player is broken. I realized this while waiting to board. But the important thing is, he doesn’t realize this. Maybe if I nod my head and shake it side to side as if I’m in the swing, I’ll be able to pull it off.

Forty-five minutes until landing.

My mother had better be on time to pick me up. In her last attempt to pick me up at the Toronto airport, when I flew back from a law conference in Calgary, she was fifty-five minutes late. Apparently she was under the false impression that my arrival time was at five, despite the photocopied version of my itinerary taped prominently to the refrigerator, which clearly stated that my flight was landing at four. When she drove up at four-fifty-five, she was congratulating herself for arriving five minutes early. My primary question, ignoring the more obvious why-didn’t-she-pay-attention-to-the-time-on-the-fridge query, was why didn’t she call the airport to verify the arrival time? Why, why, why, would one drive to the airport, a forty-five-minute trek in Toronto, without first confirming the accurate arrival time? The possibility of my flight being delayed was more than likely. It was December; a snowstorm was practically guaranteed. It made no sense.

This time, I specifically instructed her to call the airport. I even gave her the number. I should have insisted, however, on taking a cab. Sigh. Her inability to make it here for the assigned time is now beyond my control.

Dear, sweet Mom. In the last year, at least four times that I can remember, she’s left her keys in the car while it was running and had to call my father to bring her the spare. Not that my dad is much better. Once when my mom—“But it slammed shut so fast! Before I could catch it!”—locked herself out, smack in the middle of downtown Queen Street, my dad trekked all the way to meet her, only to realize he’d left the spare keys back at the house, on the—“But I could have sworn I’d put them in my pocket”—kitchen table. They called me to rescue them. And when I got there, after two hours of subway-hell, they were having a giggly submarine picnic lunch on the hood of the car. How frustrating is that? Fine, I admit they can be a tiny bit adorable. They thought it was the funniest thing that had ever happened to them.

One week of living with my parents. Seven days. One hundred and sixty-eight hours. That’s all I have left. Seven days of explaining to my mother how to work that “intercourse machine” so that she can go “to the line” (“Internet, Mom. Online, Mom”). Seven days of picking up my father’s seemingly strategically discarded socks on the kitchen floor. Why would one take off his socks in the kitchen? There is no carpet, just cold tiles.

They will be fine without me around to take care of them, won’t they?

I should get a cell phone to make sure I can be reached at all times.

Besides enabling me to live in New York for the summer, my summer job allowed me to save up enough money to afford my own place here in Toronto. If I had to make the one-hour subway trek to school from my parents’ house in nosebleed land for one more year, I think I might have dropped out of school and taken a job at the corner coffee shop. Yeah, right.

Last year, I had to walk fifteen minutes just to get to the bus stop that would take me to the subway that would take me to school. My new apartment is a five-minute walk from school. Five minutes!

My brother, Adam, forwarded me an e-mail about this apartment. The younger sister of one of his friends was looking for renters. It’s a three-bedroom, bottom floor apartment of a duplex, and her two roommates were moving back to British Columbia. But the best part is that she’s lived in the apartment since before rent control—it’s therefore only $500 a month per renter. My ridiculously high-paying $2,000-a-week summer law job has provided me with the funds to cover at least one year. Then, in May, I’m off to New York again, for a full-time job. The requisite being, of course, that I keep my grade point average above a B, which I can do without batting an un-mascaraed eye.

Not that I’m a regular eye-batter. I’m actually more of an eye-rubber. This annoying eye-massaging fetish I somehow picked up usually follows fits of exhaustion in the library. And then I leave the building looking as if I’ve been elbowed in the bridge of my nose. There is an abundance of library time in my schedule. I’m there every morning from nine to ten, in school from ten to three, and then back in the library until ten at night, with only quarter-hour breaks for a fat-free cheese sandwich lunch and a low-carb dinner.

But the best part about living five minutes away from school is the close proximity of Ontario University’s gym. My day’s newfound one hour and fifty minutes of saved travel time will facilitate my additional working-out time. For the past two years, I’ve had to work out at the Y near my house after putting in time at the school library, which on a regular, day-to-day basis, resulted in a complete emotional and physical breakdown.

My lack of spare time may also have been partly responsible for the demise of my relationship with Manny. Or, unless apathy is considered an emotion, the demise might have been caused by my lack of any feeling toward him. I won’t deny that he’s a good guy—he is. He ranks number one in our class, and has sat with me for hours whenever I had a case I couldn’t wrap my brain around.

But here’s the thing: he has to pee all the time.

This might sound insignificant and possibly irrelevant or even discriminatory, but isn’t the woman normally the one with the smaller bladder? I find it extremely irritating to constantly have to wait for him by the bathroom. For example, we’re on our way from class to the library, and he says, “Hold on one second, Jodine, I have to pee.” Or “Tell me what I miss of the movie, I just have to run to the bathroom, excuse me, excuse me…”

It makes no sense. Can’t he hold it in?

Annoying-Lying-Businessman in the seat next to me appears to be asleep. His eyes are closed and a thin river of drool is leaking out of the corner of his opened mouth. It’s only two o’clock. Who falls asleep at two o’clock? The person sitting next to him refuses to entertain him for a lousy one-hour flight and he can’t muster enough stimuli for staying conscious? At least he’s leaning toward the window, not toward his seat divider, the supposedly adequate buffer between us.

Little lady. Hah.

I hate being patronized. My mother’s favorite story of me is when she took me, a scared-but-trying-not-to-show-it six-year-old, to the pediatrician for my annual TB test. It’s the one where they insert three little dots into your arm, and you hope these dots won’t blow up into explosive pimples, because then they have to amputate or something. Anyway, when I asked the doctor if I was going to get a needle, he shook his head dramatically, insisting on drawing a happy face with a red marker on my arm while emphatically declaring, “No, needle, only a nose!” Then he stuck a three-pronged needle between the haphazardly drawn eyes and leering grin. I remember thinking, Why, oh why, is this silly, patronizing man speaking to me as if I were a child?

My mother thinks the story is hysterical. She tells it at family gatherings. She’s been calling me a thirty-year-old stuck in a little girl’s body for as long as I can remember. So what does that make me now? Fifty?

I remove my headphones and close my eyes. I always request the row behind the emergency exit. I like to be as close as possible to an escape while still having the ability to lean back. Annoying-Lying-Drooling-Businessman is now snoring. How can any one person make so much noise? His emissions are even drowning out the screeching baby in the row behind me. Yet another peeve of mine. Parents should be required by law to drive any offspring under the age of three to long-distance destinations. Young children, babies in particular, obviously don’t like to fly, so why must we all suffer?

Apparently I must suffer because I forgot to ensure that my Discman was intact. A moronic oversight for which I must (sigh) accept responsibility. If one doesn’t think and carefully plan ahead, one loses the right to complain about unpleasant outcomes.

Case Study Number One, regarding planning ahead: if one does not order a vegetarian meal beforehand, even though one is not, in fact, a vegetarian, then one has no choice except to eat the heap of brown plasticine offered at mealtime. One must not try to dwell on that lovely mushroom omelette and fruit salad the woman across the aisle is eating, or else one might go crazy.

Case Study Number Two, regarding planning ahead: Benjamin, an I-bank associate in New York. At first he seemed relatively normal. Always called after a date to say thank you. Never did anything annoying like send flowers to the office or send embarrassing e-mails. Great smile, great date, great kisser. An A minus in bed. All a perfectly gloss-coated experience until last week when he started blubbering about how much he loved me, couldn’t handle me leaving, wanted to transfer to Toronto and move in with me. Transfer to Toronto? We were only dating five weeks! Does that make sense? How could he move in with me? First of all, I already signed a lease. Second, I wasn’t sure he was the person I wanted to spend my life with, never mind an entire semester. Allowing him to pick up and move to a foreign country was somewhat implying that I was considering him as a potential life mate, right?

I reach into the small space that Annoying-Lying-Drooling-Snoring-Businessman has left at my feet and pull out my “List of Benjamin’s Flaws” from my carry-on.

1. He has a feminine laugh.

I don’t think I need to elaborate on this. What woman wants a man with a feminine laugh?

2. He constantly wants to go dancing.

I hate dancing, mostly because I can’t dance. I wish I could, but I can’t. So I don’t. To most men, this is not a big concern, since most normal men do not start squirming in their chairs when “Sexual Healing” comes on.

3. He is too impulsive.

If he’s supposed to be so much in love, why can’t he wait nine more months for me—in New York? I could visit him. My Christmas vacation plans aren’t finalized yet. The New Year’s reservations are booked but not confirmed. Kidding. I’m not that anal. Really.

4. He is too sentimental.

He said he loved me. I started laughing.

5. He called me cold.

Now that’s insulting. I am not cold. He said I am just like that Simon and Garfunkel song. A rock that does not feel. I am realistic, but I repeat, not cold. So I am not like most women. I don’t appreciate when men who have only known me for five weeks tell me they love me. I don’t sit around with my other girlfriends, wondering what shades I should use to highlight my hair so that men will send me flowers. I can buy my own flowers, thank you very much. I am not afraid of never having a man fall in love with me. I have already had men fall in love with me. This summer, Benjamin. Last year, Manny. In college, Jonah. High school, Will. All three told me they loved me—and meant it. They called it making love when we slept together. They all wanted me to meet their mothers.

Dilemma Number One: I did not want to meet their mothers. I already have one of my own, thank you very much.

Dilemma Number Two: I call it “having sex.”

Dilemma Number Three: I said, “You love me? That’s sweet.”

I put down the list and reflect on something my mother once told me: “There’s a lid for every pot.” No. I dismiss her attempts at motherly wisdom. People are not household appliances. Everyone is born alone and dies alone. You are not created to fit with anything else. Of course I would like to find the person who is most likely to make me happy in life. The person who fits me best. But I refuse to adjust so that I can fit to someone else’s jagged shape.

“You’re a real piece of work,” Benjamin said, his voice cracking, before slamming my apartment door.

I pull my hair out of its usual low ponytail, shake it out and then tie it back again.

Fine, I admit it. Hurting him made me feel a little shitty. A lot shitty. I’m not out to crush men’s feelings. It’s a nonpremeditated causal effect.

Is there something chemically wrong with me? Everyone else seems to fall in love all over the place. When will I feel like belting out, “And I…I…I…will always love you-ou-ou-ou…?” and cherishing those other sweet Whitney memories? And how will I lose that loving feeling if I’ve never even found it? What if there is some sort of gross abnormality in my DNA? What if I am a rock? AN EMOTIONLESS, DEAD-INSIDE ROCK?

Or maybe unlike most people, I’m not willing to brainwash myself into believing I’m in love.

Meaning behind Case Study Number Two, otherwise known as the Benjamin Experience: One mustn’t allow someone else to derail her carefully laid out plans. If one isn’t cautious, a carefree fling might snowball into a messy relationship.

Thirty minutes until landing.

A perfect opportunity for leg lifts.

Lift left knee. Hold to ten. Release left knee.

Lift right knee. Hold to ten. Release right knee.

Lift left knee. Hold to fifteen. Release left knee.

Lift right knee. Hold to fifteen. Release right knee.

Too bad there is not enough room for sit-ups. Would Annoying-Lying-Drooling-Snoring-Businessman notice if I lifted the seat divider and used his lap as a headrest?

Not worth his potential consciousness. Then I might have to talk to him.

3
EMMA GETS PISSED

EMMA

“You’re not wearing that. Go back inside and change.”

Why is Nick so full of shit? Was he a toilet in his last life? “I most certainly am wearing this. I bought it today. It’s gorgeous.” It is a soft, luscious, red silk tank top with a plunging neckline. It cost a fortune. It could be the most stunning tank top ever designed. It feels like lotion against my skin. Like my favorite thirty-dollar lip gloss against my lips. I love it. If he makes me choose between the tank top and him, he’s not going to get off on my decision.

He pounds his fists against the steering wheel. “Why do you want to wear something that makes you look like a slut?”

I don’t understand the question. Because I like looking like a slut? “Funny that you hate when I look like a whore, but love when I act like one.”

He scrunches his face as though he just swallowed a shot of tequila. “Fuck off,” he swears.

“You fuck off.”

Another lovely night out with Nick. Best thing about Nick: he’s amazing in bed. And I mean fucking incredible. It’s always all about me. He won’t settle for anything less than two orgasms every time. Even if I tell him it’s okay, tonight can be a blow job night, he still insists on making me come. Worst thing about Nick: he’s more stubborn than a TV remote control without batteries.

“Go change,” he says, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

Big baby. He didn’t mind my cleavage-revealing tops when we started dating last year. Lately, he’s like a pig-in-shit whenever I wear a sweatshirt and sweatpants. In his ideal world I’d be wearing a full-piece snowsuit twenty-four hours a day. Or fourteen hours a day. The other ten hours he’s happy to have me parading in front of him in the cheesy-ass lingerie he buys me. Red, lace, crotch-less panties. Feather garters. Snakeskin teddies. Could he want me to look any more like a porn star? He even likes when I design my pubic hair so that I look like a twelve-year-old. I think he’s been watching too much Playboy TV. For his eyes only there’s no such thing as too tarted up, but when he takes me out in public, it’s like we live in Iraq. Other men aren’t entitled to catch a glimpse of my ankles or neck or whatever else they’re not allowed to see in foreign countries. Talk about your Madonna-whore complex.

“I am not changing.” Why should I change? I have a great body. I’m not one of those fake-modest do-I-look-fat? does-my-ass-look-big? girls. I do not look fat. My ass does not look big. My bras are 34Ds. I look forward to bikini shopping come spring. That may sound conceited, but aren’t magazines always telling women to be proud of what they have? Judging from my mother’s chronology of old pictures, I have about eight years, tops, to flaunt my looks before everything starts to go. At thirty-three my mother’s size-five pants were a little too snug. At thirty-six, her husband was sleeping with someone my age. My age now, not my age then—I’ll give him credit for that, at least. The window of opportunity to have men salivate at my scantily clothed perfect breasts exists for just a limited while; it is therefore my sacred duty to use them at full capacity.

“Then we’re not going anywhere,” Nick says, his lips pouting. Ironic, really. He was first attracted to my breasts, and I was first attracted to his stubbornness. We were at a club on Richmond and he kept staring at my black negligee with no back and barely any front. He repeatedly sent me vodka martinis and I repeatedly sent them back to him. We ended up in his bed—where I’ve been pretty much ever since, except for the four times I’ve broken up with him. And then got back together once he proved his undivided love and desire.

By now he should be trained not to pull this bullshit with me. Who does he think he is, dictating what I get to wear? I will wear whatever I want. I am in charge of my own body. I am in charge of what parts of my body will be flaunted and what parts will be kept under snowsuits. Not that I even have a snowsuit. I have a ski suit, which is too trendy and too tight and too lacking in protective layers to be appropriate for anything but the chalet. I haven’t worn it since I moved to Toronto, because the skiing is shit in this city. Compared to Montreal, anyway. Not to mention lacking in the nightlife, restaurants and men department.

“Fine!” I yell, throwing the door open and swinging my feet out of the car, feet dressed in gorgeous new patent leather red sandals purchased last week. “If you’re going to behave like a fresh piece of shit, I’m going home.”

Why must I play this game? He’s in love with me. He can’t live without me. It’s now his turn to proclaim that I’m being silly, I can wear whatever I want, I look beautiful, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…

“Em…” He leans toward the open window.

“Yes?”

“Don’t wait up,” he says, and drives off.

“Go to hell!” I scream and give the finger to the tail of his Mustang as it tears down my street. “If you don’t stop that car, don’t ever bother calling me again!”

His car slows down…and then turns the corner.

Bastard. Pervert-bastard. This time it’s over-over.

“I thought you were going out?” my father asks as I slam the front door, post breakup cigarette. He and the stepbitch are sitting at the kitchen table, probably involved in one of their many discussions about how fucked up I am. I’m their favorite topic of conversation. If it weren’t for all my supposed screwups, I bet they’d be divorced for lack of a common interest.

“You sound disappointed. Don’t stop discussing me just because I’m here.”

“Of course we’re not disappointed, dear,” AJ says, patting my father on the arm and speaking extremely slowly. “Don’t be silly. Stephen and I just thought you were going out, that’s all.”

Blah, blah, blah. I ask you, is AJ an appropriate name for a stepmother? What happened to Marge? Or Stella? AJ sounds like a boy I pinned down at recess in the fifth grade during an episode of kissing tag. I’m pretty sure AJ stands for Annoying Jerk-off. First of all, she’s only thirty-six. That’s ten years older than I am and eighteen years younger than my cradle-snatching father. AJ has the annoying habit of speaking for my father, and my father has the annoying habit of letting AJ speak for him. She also tends to speak to me in the identical voice she uses while speaking to her six-year-old daughter.

“Spare me the bullshit, please,” I say. “You’re counting the seconds until I’m out of the house.”

AJ, aka Stepbitch, rolls her eyes at my father.

I am moving out in eight days. AJ found me a room in an apartment with two complete strangers. She works with one of the girls, Allison, but unlike Allison, she’s a volunteer. They do something for Ontario University a few times a week. AJ acts like I should be grateful, as if she’s doing me a favor, but she only set it up to get me out of the house, away from her precious daughter, Barbie. I’m not kidding. Her name is Barbie. Not that she’s ever going to look like a Barbie. She’s a chunky, short kid. And let’s not forget her big nose and glasses. I guess conniving ol’ AJ (actually, young AJ) will manipulate my father into spending my inheritance on a nose job and laser eye surgery.

Apparently I have a bad attitude and I’m negatively influencing Barbie’s development.

Fuck that.

Barbie is not really a bad kid. When I baby-sit, I let her watch music videos and I teach her how to do the moves. She might be a pretty good dancer one day, that is, if her legs ever get long enough to reach the floor from a sitting position.

I even let her play with my hair. I’m amazed at how long it took that kid to learn how to make a braid. Of course, she uses only two strands, which is kind of like juggling with two balls instead of three.

I brought back some of my old clothes, after visiting my mother in Montreal. Too bad AJ feeds her so much, because poor Barbie couldn’t even get one of her bloated thighs into one of my dresses.

I’m trying to get her to dance the weight off.

I try to pretend to like AJ in front of the kid so I don’t add to her list of things she’s going to need to talk about in therapy one day.

“I’m not going to listen to this abuse,” AJ whines, and leaves the kitchen.

Silence.

I pour myself a glass of juice and sit down in her deserted seat. It’s hot. She probably farted in it.

“Why do you insist on upsetting her?”

I’m upsetting her? Let’s tally up, shall we? She had an affair with my father. She convinced him to desert my mother and me, move to Toronto and marry her. As far as I’m concerned, I’m entitled to blame her for every messed-up thing I do. I have problems maintaining relationships? AJ’s fault. I don’t trust people? AJ’s to blame. I killed someone? AJ. I haven’t actually killed anyone, but if I did she would have driven me to it. How can anything I do possibly equal her actions? She drove a clearing truck right through the soft patch of snow that was my life.

“Fighting with your boyfriend does not give you the right to take out your anger on us,” my father says.

“Nick and I aren’t fighting.” I hate when he blames Nick for everything. It’s like when Nick says I’m being a bitch because I’m on my period, which is a dumb expression because how can someone be on her period? Are they straddling it? And just because I’m being a bitch doesn’t mean I have my period. It may mean that I have PMS, mind you, but that Nick doesn’t need to know.

“Does AJ ever ask you for a thank-you? For letting you live here for the past two years? No. For getting you a job at Stiletto? For finding you an apartment? No. For lending you her basement furniture for your apartment? No. All she asks is that you treat her decently. And can you even do that? No.”

First of all, why was she “letting” me live here? Isn’t part of a father’s responsibility to take care of his kid? I wanted to do the two-year design program at the Toronto School of Art. I would have been happy to live on my own and let them foot the bill, but my father thought all of us living together would be a good opportunity for us to get to know one another. Apparently AJ has now changed her mind.

Second, she didn’t get me the job at Stiletto to help me. She used employment as an excuse for exiling me from her Rosedale palace. Is it my fault that she happens to know someone in the industry of my dreams? What does she expect from me? It’s not even a high-paying job. If my salary were a shirt, it would barely be enough material to cover my nipples.

“Thank you, Daddy,” I say in a Popsicle-sweet voice. “I truly appreciate everything AJ has done to make my life more successful. If she hadn’t fucked you while you were married to my mother, I might not have ended up right here at this kitchen table, drinking juice.”

So I’m a big baby. Shoot me.

My father gets up and leaves the kitchen. He’s always taking off. Maybe he was an airplane in his last life.

The moonlight spills into the kitchen and my body glitter dances.

Maybe I’ll play dress-up with Barbie.

Maybe I’ll take her shopping tomorrow.

Things could be worse. Daddy dear hasn’t taken back his credit card.

Another breakup equals another shopping spree.

4
ALLIE GETS EXCITED

ALLIE

One hour till Clint comes. Well, not comes exactly, but comes over. Maybe comes.

So that’s it, then. I’ll organize for potential coming. I’ll take the vodka out of the cupboard and put it into the freezer. Hea-vy. Why did I buy the supersize bottle? Was I planning on bathing in it? How much vodka can two people drink?

Ditto for the cranberry juice. Supersize? Puh-lease. But it will make a perfect vodka diluter later and a fab dry-mouth remedy immediately. Mmm, good. Back into the fridge. Whoops…cranberry juice leakage. Why can’t I ever remember to screw the top back on properly?

Will cranberry juice make me have to pee? It’s supposed to cure bladder infections, but I don’t want to be running to the bathroom every five seconds, do I? Talk about ruining the mood. Although I read you have a better orgasm when you have to pee. I think that’s just for women. I don’t think guys can have to pee and be hard at the same time. I also read that if you’re about to have a G-spot orgasm you feel like you have to pee.

I’ve never had a G-spot orgasm. I’ve never had an orgasm during sex. I’ve never had sex.

I’m a twenty-two-year-old virgin.

Is that crazy? It’s not like I have a third eye or a missing front tooth or anything. There are other virgins. Thousands of them, probably. It’s just that the others are either waiting for marriage, religious or ugly.

Or thirteen years old.

I’m pathetic.

But I’m waiting to meet a man I’m utterly in love with! Or a little in love with. Or, at least, a man I like.

Or, at least, a man who likes me.

Okay, fine. I’m waiting for a man, any man, as long as I like him and want to sleep with him, and as long as he likes me and wants to sleep with me. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for, is it?

Open mouth. Insert nail of left ring finger. Mmm.

I almost did it in high school. With Gordon. God knows he wanted to. He asked me pretty much every day: “When are you going to be ready? Are you ready yet? How come everyone else is doing it? How come everyone else is ready?” I wanted to, but for some mind-numbing, inexplicable reason, I felt it was my duty to say no. We’re too young. We’re not ready. Why is that exactly? Someone remind me, please. Teenage girls want to do it as much as guys do. We daydream about doing it, we imagine ourselves doing it, but we believe it is our duty not to do it. Except for the girls who actually do it. They’re the ones we call sluts when their backs are turned. They’re the ones we pretended to be when our eyes were closed.

Is it possible I waited too long and now it won’t even work? Does that happen? Can a hymen ferment?

Gordon dumped me and slept with Stephanie Miller. “Thank God I didn’t sleep with him,” I said, crying into the purple bedspread of my then best friend, Jennifer (while wishing I had slept with him and that he still loved me).

You’d think I would have done it at least once over the next four years, but I haven’t had a boyfriend since Gordon. I’ve dated, of course, and I’ve fooled around a lot (everything but), but I feel gross about losing my virginity on a one-night stand. I don’t have to marry the guy, but I should be dating him for at least three months. Is an entire season too prudish? Maybe six weeks. Reality TV shows take place in under six weeks and look how complex those relationships become.

Okay, how about four weeks? I can accept that. I don’t think it’s crazy to plan on being with someone for four measly weeks. A lot can happen in four weeks. For example, you get your period at least once. Most people, anyway. For some inexplicable reason, I’m on the “Surprise! It’ll come whenever you’re wearing white pants!” cycle, which is sometimes every four months, sometimes every two weeks. But at least it comes. (Not that I’ve ever had to agonize about it not coming. Nope, I’ve never been in that particular predicament.) By the time I got it for the first time, I was already geriatric enough for my parents, my brother, my friends, my teachers and even the grocery deliveryman to be repeatedly harassing me with “So? Are you a woman yet? What’s taking so long?” type comments.

Apparently I’m a late bloomer.

In college, I would have slept with Ronald. Yes, I admit it. I dated a guy named Ronald, although I always tried to call him Ron. (“I prefer Ronald, thanks.” Why, why, why? Why would anyone except for the nerd-turned-cool-guy in Can’t Buy Me Love prefer Ronald?) We dated for two weeks in junior year, and one night, when we were fooling around, I told him “the truth.” Big mistake. Huge. (That’s a line from Pretty Woman—you know, when she walks into the snobby store that wouldn’t let her shop there before, to show them how much she spent in the other store? I love that movie. I’ve seen it forty-six times. Maybe I shouldn’t be admitting that, either.)

Somehow I had always been under the impression that when I finally did offer my virginity to a guy (Would you like some tea with this virginity, sir? Or would you prefer it to go?), it would be something he’d want. Apparently this is not the case. It FREAKS guys out. His you-know-what turned as soft as a decaying banana. And then Ronald left, saying he had an eight o’clock class in the morning. (Funny, his eight o’clock class was the last thing on his mind five minutes ago, when his banana wasn’t overripe.) He ignored me for the next week in the cafeteria, and when I saw him at a dorm party that weekend, he drunkenly admitted that he felt there would be too much commitment involved if we were to get intimate.

Who wants to have sex with a guy whose name is Ronald, anyway?

Who wants to have sex with a guy who uses the word intimate?

Is it possible I haven’t had sex with anyone because I’ve been subconsciously saving myself for Clint? No…maybe…but what if it never happens? Will I stay a virgin forever?

The clock on the VCR, which even when it was connected to a TV refused to play videos, says 6:10, which actually means that it’s 7:10, because it’s still on eastern standard time. In a few months it will be right again.

Fifty minutes till Clint-time. It has to happen.

Time to prepare the body and make it sexable.

Tonight’s shower requires many props. Got the loofah. Got the razor. Got the pear body wash. Got the citrus face wash. Got the watermelon-fortified shampoo. Got the avocado leave-in conditioner that was stuck through the mailbox and because it’s just me picking up the mail, it’s mine, all mine! (The girls and I used to rock-paper-scissors for these mini treasures.)

I place my glasses on the sink. I know I should put them into their case, because if I don’t, I’ll never remember where they are and spend a minimum of twenty-five minutes frantically searching for them tomorrow morning. But I don’t know where the case is.

Fab! So much hot water! No one flushing the toilet while I’m trying to cleanse myself! The apartment has two bathrooms. One has a shower and toilet, and the other one has just a toilet. I’m in the one with the shower and toilet, obviously. The other bathroom is off the smallest bedroom, soon to be Emma’s room, once Rebecca’s room. Isn’t that weird? Why build an apartment like that, where the master bedroom, mine, has no bathroom, and the smallest one does? It must be built for students—to make it fair. If a family moved in here, the kid would have its own bathroom and the parents would have to share!

I’d need my own bathroom if I lived with a boy. When I’m with Clint, I leave the water running when I pee so he doesn’t realize what I’m doing in there.

Melissa let me use her bathroom if someone was using the shower in the main bathroom. I hope that Emma won’t mind the same rule.

That felt great. Why don’t I ever remember to keep my towel next to the shower? Thirty minutes until he’s here. The skin around my thumbnail is bleeding. I reach over to the toilet paper roll and rip off a few squares, and bandage my injured finger and apply pressure. Why do I do that? And when did I do that? Why don’t I even notice when I’m biting anymore?

Post-shower is really prime biting time. The skin gets all pruned. There are so many little pieces and layers for teeth to grab on to. That sounded disgusting. That’s it. It’s over. I’m stopping. No more biting. How can I make ecstatic nail marks on Clint’s back if I have no nails?

“What are you doing?” he asked me earlier today. When I realized it was him on the phone, I got into my Phone Concentration position. This is basically lying down on my unmade bed in a right-angle position, my feet up against the wall above my pillow. I love my bed. I have a yellow daisy-covered duvet cover and six soft throw pillows in varying shades of yellow. I love my bed most when it’s made. Which only happens on sheet-changing day or when a guy comes over, the latter not being too often. The former being less often than I should admit. What can I say? I hate doing laundry.

“Not much,” I answered. “You?”

“Maybe I’ll come by later to watch Korpics.” Korpics is that new let’s-hang-out-at-the-water-cooler-to-talk-about-lives-that-aren’t-ours detective show. The fact that it’s only available on the Extra channel—Canada’s version of HBO—only increases its water-cooler coolness factor since only select people are capable of chiming into the conversation.

Luckily, I’m part of the select few.

I know he doesn’t get Korpics at his place, but he could have gone to see it at a bar if what he was really interested in doing was “watching.” It’s an excuse. It has to be. He’s never asked to watch TV here before.

Hemorrhage averted. I throw the soiled toilet paper into the slightly overflowing garbage, leave the towels discarded on the tiled floor (I will remember to pick those up before he gets here. I will, I will, I will…) and wander naked to my closet, something I would never do if anyone else were home. What to wear…It can’t be something that looks like I want action. I need a hangout outfit. Not too Victoria’s Secret, because why would I be wearing anything sexy if I’m just sitting around the apartment? I have to look like I don’t care what I look like, right? That’s the rule with guys. They want what they can’t have. So if I look like I’m not interested in the slightest, he’ll be interested. The grosser I look the more he’ll want me.

Decision made. I’ll wear my old camp overalls, the ones with the tear on the left knee from when I tripped on the bench in the rec hall. Which killed.

A cattle rancher stares back at me from my reflection in the mirror. What if being this extreme on the gross-a-meter repulses him? Maybe I should go casual. Gap modelesque. And makeup that doesn’t look like makeup. Natural makeup with no lipstick. No lipstick looks more natural.

The truth is I hate wearing lipstick because I’m perpetually afraid of getting it on my teeth. I have a tiny overbite and I’m always convinced that I’ll spend half the day walking around with red-stained front teeth.

Jeans and a little T-shirt?

Modrobes (look like doctor scrub pants but in funky orange) and a tank?

A wrap skirt?

Why would I be wearing a skirt to sit around in my apartment?

The buzzer sounds.

Oh, God. He’s here! I’m going for the true natural look, then. Jeans and a tank top it is. Why is he so early? He couldn’t wait to see me? He couldn’t wait to see me!

The buckle digs into my stomach. I hope it’s because I put my jeans in the dryer by mistake, and has nothing to do with that cheesecake I polished off last night.

Mmm. Cheesecake.

They’ll stretch, right?

Note to self—hold in stomach. And butt.

Can you hold in your butt?

“Coming!” I holler. I certainly hope I’ll get the chance to say that again later.

My reflection catches me off guard in the mirror next to the door. Yuck. I got deodorant on the sides of my tank top. Why does that happen? The bottle says “Clear!” So why are there white tire tracks on all my shirts?

“Hold on!” I scream (I hope I won’t have to say that later tonight) while running to my room. I throw my tank into my laundry basket and squeeze into a white T-shirt.

“Who is it?” I ask. You never know. I don’t want to let an ax murderer into my house.

“It’s Em,” replies a voice that does not belong to a yummy-smelling hard body. Em? Who’s Em? Oh, Emma.

“Hi!” I say, opening the door.

“Hey. I just came by to drop some shit off. Hope that’s all right.” She’s holding a fancy-looking metallic-green box.

“Sure, no problem. Come in.”

She leans toward me and air-kisses me near the right cheek. I pull my head back just as she heads in for a double, and I end up smashing her in the face.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to kill you there,” I say.

“It’s the Montreal double-kiss. You’ll get used to it. It’s addictive.”

I don’t think I’m a double-kiss type of girl, but you never know. “Aren’t the movers bringing over your stuff?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want them touching my perfume collection. They’ll help themselves to a present for their girlfriends or mothers or whomever. I thought I’d drop them off myself on my way out. Is that cool?”

“Of course. Cool. Do you need any help?”

“No, I got it. Thanks.”

As she walks toward her new room, her gold hair swishes below her shoulders. Why can’t I have gold hair? What are you if you have gold hair? A golde? I don’t think I could pull it off. I couldn’t pull off the Uma Thurman Pulp Fiction bangs that frame her face, either. Or the perfectly arched eyebrows. They look like they stepped right off a McDonald’s sign.

“So how are you?” she asks, flashing her head back at me.

“Fine. Thanks. How are you?” The chunky silver belt around her hips scratches her size-zero silver jeans as she walks. How do I get pants that make my butt look like that? And a top that makes my boobs look like that? She’s wearing a black cotton V-neck, the perfect sexy hangout shirt.

I follow her into her recently painted red room. Her father sent a man named Harry over to paint the walls, install new silver blinds and disinfect the bathroom. Emma pulls the blinds open, exposing the black sky and our reflections in the window. Emma glitters.

“I like your belt,” I say. Ooh, I hope she lets me borrow her clothes. I wonder how long it’ll take me to get down to a size zero? I must stop staring. She’ll think I’m a creep.

Must not look. Pretend she’s an eclipse.

Where does she buy belts like that?

“Thanks.”

“Nick didn’t want to come with you?” I met Nick when Emma came to see the apartment last month.

“That fuckhead? It’s over. What an idiot.”

But he was so hot! “What happened?”

She closes her eyes as if the scene is unfolding in her head. “He called me a slut.” Her eyes flutter open.

“No!”

She scrunches her lips as if she’s just swallowed a French fry soaked in vinegar. “He’s absurdly controlling. I shouldn’t have to put up with that.”

“Of course not!”

Her eyelids slam shut. “He wanted me to change my clothes. Do you believe?”

I shake my head to show that no, I do not believe (despite the fact in the past twenty minutes I’ve tried on about a gazillion outfits, but those were without Clint ever knowing, so it doesn’t count). But she can’t see my reaction because her eyes are still closed. Hello?

“And then he drove off. Do you believe that?”

I pointlessly shake my head again.

“Then he went out with his friends and didn’t call me until the next day. Do you believe that?”

I shake my head again, this time adding a little sigh for emphasis and audio concurrence.

“Of course I told him to go jerk himself off when he finally had the decency to apologize. Obviously.”

Yes. Obviously. Now I’m picturing a masturbating Nick. I wonder if that’s what she’s seeing behind her eyelids, too.

“I’m exorcising my life of shit-suckers.”

I don’t know exactly what a shit-sucker is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not something I want to be.

“No more dickheads telling me what to do.” She opens her eyes and places the green box in the corner of the room.

Why didn’t I ever paint my walls red? Now I can never do it because I’ll look like a copycat. Why didn’t I think of that first? Why why why? She’s officially moving in the day after tomorrow. Maybe I can have my room painted purple by then. No can do. Jodine is moving in tomorrow.

“New apartment, new frame of mind,” she says. “So what’s Jodine like?”

Oh my God. She practically read my mind! Is that a sign we’re going to make good roommates or what?

“I haven’t met her. We spoke on the phone a couple of times, though,” I say.

“I hope she’s normal.”

“I’m sure she’s normal. I met her brother and he seemed nice. And we’ve been e-mailing back and forth for about a month.”

“If she’s freakish we’ll keep her locked in her room,” she says, revealing a perfectly white tooth-bleach commercial smile. She’s wearing a brownish lipstick and of course none of it has smeared onto her teeth. “I wonder what she looks like.”

“She’s tall with long brown hair.”

“How do you know? She sent you a picture?”

“What? Oh, no.” Hmm. I have absolutely no reason to think she’s tall with long brown hair. That’s how I pictured her looking, because she sounded exactly like Christine Torrins on the phone, a girl I went to college with, and I had brilliantly deduced that they must look exactly alike as well. “I don’t know, actually.”

“She hasn’t seen the place? What kind of a person rents an apartment without seeing it first? I bet she’s a flake.”

I suddenly feel defensive for Jodine. “Her brother took some digital pictures for her.”

“Don’t judge an apartment by its pictures. That’s how you know her? You know her brother?”

“Yeah. My brother is a friend of her brother.”

“Is he hot?”

“Her brother or my brother?”

“Either,” she answers, and laughs.

“I don’t know.” How do I answer that? First of all, I can’t tell if my brother’s cute. He’s my brother. He looks like me. Second, no I don’t think Jodine’s brother is cute—he has a unibrow and a big head, but I’m not going to start making fun of my new roomie’s family, am I? Besides, maybe Emma will like him, I don’t know. How cool would it be if Emma started dating Jodine’s brother?

“Are they single?”

“My brother isn’t. I don’t know about Jodine’s. We can ask her tomorrow.”

“Shit. I gotta go. I’m meeting some friends in Yorkville. What are you up to tonight? Wanna join us?”

I almost regret having made plans. Almost. “A friend is coming over to watch Korpics. I get Extra and he doesn’t.”

“We get Extra?”

“Yeah. We get movies and most of the HBO shows, and it’s only a few extra dollars a month.”

Emma’s lips scrunch back into their just-ate-vinegar position.

Uh-oh. “Unless you guys want to—to cancel it,” I stammer. Please don’t want to cancel it. I really, really like it and I keep forgetting to fix the VCR.

“No, we shouldn’t cancel it. Do you think we can splice the cable into my room? I’m bringing a TV.”

“Oh, definitely. I splice it into my room.”

“Who do you have plans with? You don’t have a boyfriend, do you?”

“Not a boyfriend exactly…”

She smiles knowingly. “I get it. A ‘special’ friend.”

“You could say that.” Very, very special. “Do you think this looks okay?” I twirl.

She eyes me up and down. “Your hair is so long.”

I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. “But what about the outfit?”

“It’s cute.”

Cute? Is that good? It doesn’t sound good. A younger cousin with spaghetti sauce on his chin is cute. “I wish I had a shirt like yours. Where did you get it?”

“Some store on Queen Street. I’ll take you. Do you want to wear mine?”

“The one you have on?” Is it possible? Is she so awesome that she’ll not only help me shop for a new wardrobe but she’ll lend me the shirt off her back (literally) in the interim? It’s a good thing the material is stretchy—not that she’s lacking anything up front. There’s just more to me on the sides. “But what are you going to wear?”

“I’ll borrow a sweatshirt. Don’t worry—I know where you live.”

She follows me into my oh-so-boring white-walled but maybe soon-to-be-purple room. Unfortunately I haven’t yet cleaned it for Clint’s visit. I was supposed to be doing that now, instead of chatting. She was inevitably going to find out I was messy, but it didn’t have to be before she even moved in, did it?

I pull a semiwrinkled blue Champions sweatshirt out of a pile and hand it to her. What should I do now? Should I leave my room and let her change? Apparently not. My new roomie is not as conscious of public nudity as I am. She whips off her shirt in a fluid stripperlike motion and sits on my bed, wearing a see-through beige bra. She has huge nipples. I shouldn’t stare at her nipples. What is wrong with me? I don’t mean to be staring at her nipples. Did she see me staring at her nipples? It’s just that women hardly ever see each other naked. Really. Men see each other’s private parts every time they use a urinal. Women see breasts on TV, of course, but these aren’t real breasts, they’re Hollywood-perfect breasts, which are far from the real thing. Far from my real thing, anyway.

How does she manage to look like a Victoria’s Secret model even in my five-year-old safe-to-paint-a-garage sweatshirt?

She hands me her cleavage-revealing shirt.

She doesn’t expect me to try this on in front of her, does she?

Apparently she does. I’d like to turn around while I take off my shirt. Will she think I’m weird if I turn around while I take off my shirt? It’s not that I think she really cares what my boobs look like or anything. Can I turn around when she didn’t turn around? Is that bad-mannered? Is she entitled to see my bra now that I’ve seen hers? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours? At least I’m wearing a good bra for Chrissake (or Clint’s sake).

I try the trick we used to use in camp when you had to change in front of the whole cabin. I put on the cleavage shirt before taking off the old shirt. It doesn’t work. Now both shirts are tangled around my neck and I feel like a five-year-old struggling to take off her snowsuit.

I remove my top from my neck and slip on her shirt. The armpit material has an already-been-worn aroma, but nothing that a little extra spritzes of perfume won’t fix. (Maybe a few extra spritzes of her perfume? Am I becoming Single, White Female?) Hmm. Maybe she doesn’t wear deodorant and that’s why there are no white marks on her shirt.

“What do you think?” I ask, catching a glimpse of my new sexy-yet-casual self in the mirror over my bureau.

“Very hot.”

Hot? Hot is good. Much better than cute. Yes, I think I like my new roomie.

After Emma leaves, I run around my room and bathroom, trying to make it look Clint-presentable. And then I stumble upon an additional dilemma. Do I move the TV in my room into the living room, or keep it in the bedroom? The only place to sit in my room is on the bed. Unless he wants to sit on my lone computer chair. Into the living room the TV must go. Hea-vy. Arms hurt. How can something so small be so heavy?

Hmm. Do I just plug it in and turn it on? Where’s the cable? Do I use the red cable or the yellow cable? Red or yellow? Five minutes until he’s here…I feel like I’m in a Lethal Weapon and I’m about to cut the yellow wire and there are only three seconds left, and what should I do? Yellow, red, yellow red yellowredyellow…red. Definitely red. I plug in the red.

Nope.

Yellow?

Nope.

Okay. TV goes back to my bedroom. He’d have to sit on the floor in the living room, anyway. Thank God Emma will be here soon with couches.

Heavy heavy heavy.

Korpics starts in three minutes. Where is he?

I sit on my bed.

It smells good in here, right?

Maybe I should open the window.

Should I spray perfume on the bedspread?

It’s starting!

I should fluff up the pillows so they look more inviting.

Fluff-fluff.

Fluff.

One minute into Korpics.

Where is he?

Two minutes into Korpics. People are already dying and he’s not even here. He’s going to come in the middle and I’m going to have to miss some of the show and I hate missing parts of shows.

Hah! The fact that he’s late proves that he doesn’t care about watching the show, because if he cared he wouldn’t be even a minute late for it, right? If he were coming all the way here to watch it, then he would certainly be on time for it, right?

Unless he changed his mind and found somewhere else to watch it. And he’s not coming. And I’ll be staring at the television not absorbing anything that goes on, sitting here wallflower-like as the minutes turn into hours, the hours into days.

The doorbell buzzes.

Finally! I speed through the hallway and throw open the door.

“Hey,” he says. And smiles. He has a big smile. A big, beautiful smile exposing big, beautiful teeth. (All the better to eat you with, my dear, I think. Now that’s sick. Why do I always start having perverted thoughts when he’s around?) His smile finally looks proportioned. His face has filled out since he put on about twenty pounds last summer, but the good kind of twenty pounds. The muscle kind. He used to be a bit too skinny and his smile looked kind of out of place. Now he’s completely gorgeous. Of course, I thought he was completely gorgeous before, even when he wasn’t really, you know?

Did his eyes just sneak a peek at my cleavage? I think they did! Hah! It’s working! He’s falling in love! Or in lust. I’ll take lust. He already loves me as a friend, so all I need really is to provoke a little lust. If he feels lust, then there’s nothing missing. I might as well start ordering the wedding invitations immediately. Kidding!

Kind of.

“You’re missing it!” I tell him, impossibly trying to pout but too happy to see him to be angry with him. “It started five minutes ago.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He kisses me on the cheek. “You smell like a fruit salad.”

Who doesn’t like fruit salad? He’s slightly more casual than I am. Not that I expected him to dress up. He’s not one of those dress-up guys at all. Not that he dresses badly or anything. He’s more of a sporty dresser. He wears a lot of baseball caps and those bubble shirts. You know, the kind of shirt that has tiny indented squares patterned all over it—but in one color. He’s wearing a white one now, a white bubble shirt with tiny white bubbles. And snap pants—the blue nylon pants that have snaps all down the sides. They’d be so easy to just rip right off.

“I had the craziest day. Troy Cobrint wants to do the Cobras.”

I try not to stare blankly. Apparently I should be aware of who Troy Cobrint and the Cobras are. “What are the Cobras again?” I figure pleading ignorance to a probable brand name is better than pleading ignorance to a probable Toronto athlete.

“Our new basketball shoes.” Aha! Troy Cobrint must be a basketball player! Brilliant deductive reasoning, Nancy Drew!

“He walked into the office at around ten-thirty. He was supposed to be there for nine, but I guess when you’re that crazy rich and famous you can come and go whenever the hell you want. Anyway, he agreed to endorse the shoes. He said he tried them and liked them. My VP is loving my ass for coming up with the idea to create a shoe for him called Cobra. Get it? Cobrint—Cobra?”

“Got it.”

“I bet I get a crazy raise.” Clint’s favorite adjective is crazy. He sprinkles it in every sentence he can.

“Didn’t you just get a raise?”

He started his marketing job right after we graduated and is already some kind of office hotshot. “Yeah. But since I come up with the craziest ideas, I should be compensated, huh?”

“I’m shocked you’re not VP by now. Maybe next week they’ll make you CEO.”

This whole “attitude” thing is pretty new for Clint. He struggled to keep a B average at school, and was always better at criticizing other people’s athletic abilities than showcasing any of his own. He dated a bit, but not the girls he talked about. And then out of nowhere he got a prime marketing job (possibly through one of his dad’s connections, but that doesn’t mean he’s not qualified), and he now has this whole “big man on campus” attitude going on.

“C’mon.” I grab the piece of his shirt near his wrist (there’s not too much spare material around the chest area anymore) and pull him into my room. How many girls dream about walking into their bedrooms with a guy who looks like this? Hah! And he’s here!

He picks up the freshly arranged yellow pillows one by one and drops them onto the floor. Then he kicks off his shoes and sprawls across my bed. Reaching over, he picks up one of the pillows and squashes it against the wall to prop up his head.

Hmm. Where should I sit? On the corner of the bed? By his feet? Should I lie down? Sprawl next to him? It is my bed. There’s nothing obvious about me sitting on my own bed, is there? Will he think, Wow, it’s so obvious she invited me over because she’s so desperate and no one else wants her? Will he think, I definitely don’t want her and that’s why she’s lying so pathetically on her bed, to make me want her? Will he also think (God forbid), She even moved the living room television into her room so I have no choice but to fool around with her?

I sit on the computer chair.

Swivel.

“Your hair got so blond from the sun!” I say.

He smiles sheepishly. “I highlighted it last week. Do you like it?”

Are men supposed to highlight? “It looks great. Very California. Do you want to know what you missed so far?”

“I can figure it out.”

Oh. Okay.

Twenty minutes later, I’m starting to wish the show were on regular cable, not Extra, so it had commercials through which we could talk. Although if it were on regular TV, he wouldn’t be here, now would he?

Why did I choose the swivel chair? Why why why? Should I make him something to eat? Is he hungry? He’s probably hungry. “Do you want some popcorn?”

“Sure. Thanks. You’re such a sweetheart.”

My heart fully stops. A sweetheart. I am a sweetheart. Men marry women they think are sweethearts. Reason Number One why he should fall in love with me: I am a sweetheart.

Reason Number Two is that I make great popcorn. I do. In the kitchen, I pull out my fancy popcorn maker that goes on the stove, and the real butter.

As soon as I set up the popcorn I peek my head into my room so that I can follow what’s going on. I hate missing my shows. Which is a problem because I have a lot of favorite shows and no VCR to speak of. Now that I’m out of school, I can watch TV all day, which is fab, but I miss the prime times because during the week my shift is at night. This isn’t as annoying as in the summer when it’s repeat season, but soon all the new shows will be on and I’m going to miss them.

Making popcorn is definitely a good call. I’ll be expected to share some of it, which means I’ll have to be on the bed, too. We’ll be lying right next to each other, our hands delicately grazing each other’s in the salad bowl, since Rebecca took the popcorn bowl with her when she left.

What’s taking so long? Standing here by the door is starting to hurt my legs. But I know that as soon as I sit down, it will start to pop, and I’ll have to get up again. C’mon, popcorn, please hurry. The show will be over by the time it’s ready. Although that might not be such a terrible thing. It will force him to stay longer.

Pop. Pop pop pop. It’s almost ready. Pop. FINALLY. Ready.

“Thanks, hon,” he says without lifting his eyes from the television. I love when he calls me hon. You don’t call someone you have no feelings for, hon, right? I oh-so-casually slide onto the bed.

He reaches for the popcorn. Our hands touch in the bowl. His fingers linger. Is he thinking about sneaking his hands under my sexy shirt? And then gently kissing me, and then passionately kissing me and then taking off all my clothes, lying on top of me and pressing his hard broad-shouldered musky-yummy-smelling body into mine? Is the fan on?

He stuffs a fistful of kernels into his mouth.

“What did I miss?” I ask.

He rambles about some sort of murder and “crazy fight scene.” Can’t really concentrate. Clint is in my room. Clint is on my bed.

Why are we wasting time watching TV?

I spend the next thirty minutes trying to casually drop my hand into the popcorn bowl whenever his hand is there, without looking obvious about it.

Is he going to make a move? Maybe when the show is over?

When the credits roll he leans toward me. This is it! This is it! My heart is hammering about a thousand beats a minute. I’m not sure how many beats are normal, but this seems excessive. Can he hear it? I’ll bet he can hear it. I’ll bet he’s wondering if someone is at the door, because the sound of the pounding is echoing throughout the apartment.

And then…he kisses me.

On the cheek.

On the cheek? “Thanks, hon. You’re the best.” He jumps off the bed.

Come back, I telepathically scream. Where are you going? Return to my bed. Return to my bed!

“I’ll see you later this week, okay? We’ll grab dinner.”

“Oh. Okay, sure.” What are you doing? Where are you going? “No problem.”

“You have plans tonight?” He is looking at himself in the mirror, running his fingers through his recently processed hair.

“Um…I’m meeting some friends. My new roommate. Later. You?”

“I’m hooking up with the boys on College. First I have to stop by my place to change.” Apparently his snap pants are of the hangout not make-out variety. “Call me on my cell if you girls end up on College.”

“Definitely.” Definitely not. What a wasted opportunity. If I had gone with Emma then I could have plotted bumping into him. I push myself off the bed with my hands, and my buttered-covered fingers leave a trace on one of the daisies. Ew.

“You’re such a mess,” Clint laughs as I try to scratch the stain off with—oops—the sleeve of Em’s shirt.

Mess? I just cleaned my room for him. What mess? A little butter? Ew. This sleeve procedure isn’t helping the matter. Apparently butter stains must be some sort of contagious virus—the circle has now spread to twice its original size. Since letting him watch this cannot be a good strategy for the Get-Clint-to-Want-to-Have-Sex-with-Me objective, I walk him to the door.

“Have fun tonight. Maybe we’ll see you later,” I say.

See, wasn’t that sneaky of me? When I don’t show up later, he’ll think I’m far too busy to make time for him, thereby increasing my level of desirability. “Sure,” he says, and pats me on the head. “It’ll be fun to hook up.”

Hook up—hook up? Uh-oh, he’s really going. He’s walking away. Wait! I forgot about the vodka! Before next time I’d better forget about my popcorn abilities and focus on my bartending skills.

5
JODINE ARRIVES

JODINE

“You’re here! You’re here!” Through the open passenger’s seat window of the Happy Movers truck, I hear a girl squeal. She’s short, has an incredibly long brown braid, and is wearing gray jaggedly uneven cutoff sweat shorts and a red cotton T-shirt. Is it possible? Can someone look more like Pippi Longstocking?

She was waiting for me on the porch of 56 Blake, my new abode, and is now jumping up and down, trampoline-style. “You’re really here!” she says. Jump. Jump, jump. Each jump is punctuated with a clap of her hands. “It’s you!”

I hope she doesn’t lose her footing and topple down the stairs. “It is I,” I answer, and she runs, no, skips toward me. “You must be Allie.”

“That’s me!” Her wide, overjoyed smile overtakes at least fifty percent of her face. “And you’re gorgeous!”

I am? “Thank you.” Terrific. A suck-up.

“And your eyes are so green! They’re like the color of grass!”

“Um…thanks?”

“Mine are blue. And Emma’s are brown. Isn’t that cool? We’re like a rainbow!”

I raise an eyebrow. What in the world is this person rambling about?

“And you have a fish! I’ve always wanted a fish.”

She is referring to the glass bowl I am carrying, which contains one medium-size, mouth-agape goldfish. “You can have mine,” I tell her.

Adam snorts as he walks to the back of the U-Haul. “Don’t take it. She already tried to pawn it off to both me and our parents.”

“Why? What’s wrong with it?” she asks.

“Nothing is wrong with it. My brother makes it sound as if it’s nuclear.”

“She got it as a Valentine’s Day present and has been trying to pawn it off on someone else,” he explains.

“But it’s so cute!”

I watch as Allie pokes the bowl with her—what is that revolting thing? Her finger! It’s her finger! What is wrong with her finger? Why is it bleeding? Is she diseased? “What happened to your hand?”

She hides her hands behind her back. “Nothing. I bite.”

Nail-biting makes no sense. Why would someone mutilate her own body parts? “You did that to yourself? Let me see.”

“No.” She keeps her hands behind her back. “I’m stopping.”

I didn’t mean to offend her, but really, no one should be causing herself that kind of pain. “Good. It’s disgusting.”

“So no one else in your family wants your fish?” she asks, changing the subject.

“I’d take it,” Adam says, “if I didn’t think it was infinitely more amusing to force Jo here to take care of it.” He laughs.

I hate when he calls me Jo. “If it has an unfortunate accident down the toilet, it will be your fault.”

“Poor fish,” Allie says, looking at it as though it was Little Orphan Annie.

“Oh, he doesn’t take it personally,” I say. “He knows I’m not discriminatory—I hate all animals.”

“But I’m sure you’ll like Whiskers.”

Whiskers. What’s a whiskers? My body begins to feel clammy. Any chance her boyfriend is named Whiskers?

“My cat,” she says, smiling. “Adam told you about my cat, didn’t he? You’ll love him. He’s adorable. All black with gold whiskers.”

I swallow. Cat? Allie has a cat? I can’t have a cat. I can’t live in the same vicinity as a cat. I hate cats. They scratch and bite and meow and do nasty things in the moonlight. Terrific. “Um. No one mentioned a cat.”

She giggles.

Dread has manifested itself into a vacuum cleaner, sucking the moisture out of my mouth. Why is she giggling? This is the most horrendous news I have ever heard. I can’t live here. The move is off. Turn the truck around. Back to the parents.

“I’m kidding, Jodine!” she says, and giggles again.

Huh? What? What kind of a sick joke is that? “You’re kidding?”

“I don’t have a cat. Don’t have a heart attack. You just turned white. Are you okay? I’m sorry. I was kidding.”

Kidding? Is this funny? This isn’t funny. Certainly not ha-ha funny. Maybe this is some kind of new Olympic sport, the how-fast-can-she-make-me-dislike-her event. Or maybe all new roommates have to undergo this kind of inane ritual, as though initiating for a sorority. What a way to begin my next life stage. With a heart attack. I hate being teased.

“I’ll take care of the fish,” she says, attempting a peace offering. “I like animals. We’ll keep it in the kitchen. Maybe even think about getting him some playmates. You know, some roomies of his own.” Again, she giggles.

“Okay.” Amity reinstalled. Can I still accidentally drop the fish down the drain?

“What’s up?” she asks my brother as he opens the back of the U-Haul, fish story concluded. “It was nice of you to come help.”

It’s hot. I rub my arm against my hairline and feel beads of sweat. I hate sweat. I have a minor sweating problem. There are certain shirts I cannot wear because I get stains under my arms. It’s because I work out so often. Despite what comedy sketches and character impersonations seem to imply, when your body is accustomed to working out, you break a sweat much faster than if you’re out of shape.

“Not much, Al,” Adam says with a wave. “What’s up with you?”

Allie turns pinkish, possibly at the comfortable way he throws around the name Al, as if they’re best friends. Does she go by Al? When she called, she used the name Allie. But Adam talks to everyone as though they’ve been best beer buds since tenth grade.

“Nothing’s up,” Allie answers, smiling. “I’m just excited that your sister is moving in.”

Is that smile for him or for me? Are they flirting? Oh, God, listening to my brother get it on with my new roommate would be about as pleasurable as having a tooth pulled.

“Don’t say I didn’t try to warn you,” he says. “Jo is a pain in the ass.”

“Don’t call me Jo,” I say. I hate when he calls me Jo.

“Oh, come on, Jo. Al is practically family.”

I hate when he gets like this. But at present, I am unable to publicly be angry with him, as he was decent enough to help me move. “That doesn’t mean that shortening our names should become a tradition.”

“What’s wrong with Jo?” Allie asks.

“I prefer Jodine.”

“If my name were Jodine, I’d prefer Jo,” Adam comments. “What kind of a name is Jodine? What is a Jodine?”

I ignore him as he unloads the boxes off the truck. If I’m going to make him angry, it’s wise to do so after he has unpacked.

“What took you guys so long?” Allie asks, picking up one of my two wicker baskets. “I was getting worried. Did you fly in today?”

“No. I flew in last week. The flight was surprisingly on time. And Mom even remembered to pick me up on time from the airport,” I say to Adam. “But loading the truck took longer than I anticipated.”

Adam shakes his head. “Your new roommate insisted on checking off every item on her list as it entered the truck. And then she double-checked it all. Three times.”

“I had to make sure I didn’t forget anything. And by the way, double-checking three times would imply that I checked it six times, which I most certainly did not.”

“No, it would imply that you’re neurotic, which you most certainly are. So what if you’d forgotten something? You’re not in Siberia. Mom would have brought you it eventually.”

“You are always mocking my list system. Yet you’re the one who is constantly forgetting things, whereas I am on top of things.”

This time, he ignores me. “How’s Marc?” he asks Allie. I deduce that Marc is Allie’s brother. Adam and Allie’s brother were friends in university.

“He’s great. He and Jen just bought their own place. It’s in Belleville, about five blocks from where I live.”

Interesting the way she says where I “live,” not “lived” or where “her parents live.” She obviously considers her Belleville house her home. My parents’ house is just that—my parents’ house. And I’ve been on my own for less than ten minutes.

“His umbilical cord was always sewn on too tight,” Adam says. “At school he drove home every week to see his parents and Jen.” Incredulity is written all over his face, as though he has just realized that Marc’s preferred mode of transportation was his unicycle, or that he ate only food that was beige. My brother, unlike his family-oriented friend, came back maybe at Christmas, if we were lucky enough to be blessed with his company. As soon as he graduated, he moved back to Toronto and rented a place downtown.

I suppose I could have rented my own place, too, rather than have to put up with roommates. Except for one small factor: I can’t afford it. My parents can’t afford to subsidize me, either, not that I would have asked them. As for Adam, he can’t really afford his own two-bedroom apartment downtown, but he took out loans, which is something I would never do. Presently, he owes his life to the bank.

Still, even though I have roommates, at least I have a place I can call almost my own. And I can afford it. And unlike Allie, I consider this to be my main residence. My parents, however, don’t agree with me on this. For example, they refused to let me take my bed, dresser and night table with me, claiming they want me to have a place to sleep and unpack when I come “home.” They tried to placate me by surprising me with a new double futon and a box filled with pieces of a put-together-yourself dresser. Yes, of course I was thankful for their thoughtfulness and monetary help, but letting other people pick out my furniture is about as pleasant as rubbing bug repellant into a skin irritation. Why not surprise me with money and allow me to do my own choosing? Your bed is where you spend—in an ideal world eight hours but in reality you’re lucky if you get six—a large portion of your time. Having one’s bed chosen by someone else is too personal. And by your parents, unthinkable. What could be worse than having someone else pick out your bed?

“I can’t believe you haven’t even seen the place yet!” Allie gushes as she hoists a duffel bag of my clothes over her shoulder, and unknowingly sparks a far greater concern in my mind and stomach: an apartment. An apartment is far more personal than a bed. It’s where one spends all of one’s pre-school/post-gym waking and nonwaking hours. Someone else picking your apartment is far more invasive than having someone else picking one’s bed.

Terrific. What have I done? Why did I let my brother convince me to take this apartment sight unseen? I would not even purchase a dictionary sight unseen! What if it contains hyphenated words that have since become closed compound nouns? Unthinkable.

How did I let this happen? I suppose, like the evolution of language, some things are unavoidable. I think back to the e-mail my brother forwarded me in New York. Dappled with exclamation marks, it was accompanied with pictures of this supposedly huge, too-good-a-deal-to-pass-up apartment at only five hundred a month. I wasn’t planning on moving out of my parents’ place in Toronto, but the more I tossed the idea around in my head, the more agreeable it became. I e-mailed Adam, asking him to take a look at it, knowing I was making his day—he’d been harassing me for years to move out on my own. His e-mail reply said that the apartment was solid, and that although Allie was a sweetheart, she needed to know right away. Suddenly I got cryogenic feet. I told him I’d think about it. I needed to see it for myself, which was not feasible, considering that I was in New York.

Adam e-mailed that some other girl was interested, and it had to be a yea or nay immediately. He also said I’d be an idiot to go with the latter. “Are you actually going to give up one of the nicest and cheapest apartments I’ve ever seen in this city, in one of the coolest areas for a twenty-something to be living in, right off Little Italy, to spend at least a year on the subway and having to listen to dinner stories about our father’s hangnails?”

It’s true. My father repeatedly refers to his hangnails.

“Be spontaneous,” Adam said. “It’s good for you.”

I’m not the spontaneous type. For instance, at coffee shops I always order regular black coffee with one Sweet’n Low. But in spite of this character flaw—or strength, depending how you view it—I found myself answering, “Okay. I’ll take it”—and then immediately questioning my rash decision. What did I do? Sight unseen, I fully put the fate of my happiness into the hands of my big brother.

From inside the truck, he hands me a box and then lets out an elongated burp.

Terrific. Why did I listen to him? He has no concept of refinement. I’ve seen his apartment. He has beer cans overflowing in the garbage. My apartment is going to look like a smelly, rat-infested frat house.

“Let’s go inside! I can’t wait for you to see!” Allie says. I am afraid that at any minute she will break out into a chorus of “Follow the Yellow Brick Road.” The street is pretty, I admit, although there are no yellow bricks. Impressive maple trees line the one-way road, dwarfing the small homes that look like white-and-red Lego houses.

Allie turns the handle of the unlocked front door, and Adam and I enter the foyer to face two additional doors.

“Is it 56A or 56B?” Adam asks. For some inexplicable reason, I find myself rooting for 56A.

Allie takes her key chain from her pocket and opens 56B. I deem this as a bad omen.

Welcome to hell. Here it comes.

The first thing I notice is the brightness. The door leads into a small entranceway off a sun-drenched den. The white blinds are pulled up and the windows are open. Soft air wafts through the room.

“We’re lucky there’s a breeze outside right now. It gets hot here in the summer,” she says.

Terrific. I’m going to have permanent sweat marks. Mercifully I’ll be moving out before next summer.

“My last roomie sponge-painted the walls yellow. We can repaint if you don’t like it.”

If she starts referring to me as her “roomie,” I may have to throttle her. The word itself makes me think of “goomie”—the colored rubber bracelets I was obsessed with in grade school. I used to have over a hundred of them, and I would choose my colors meticulously every morning to match my outfits. We’re not sharing a room, anyway. It’s more of a flat. Flatmate sounds too British. “Housemate”? What about “floormate”? No, it sounds too much like “floor mat.”

“I like the yellow,” I say, surprising myself. “The room looks sort of sun-kissed.” Amazingly, my brother was right about this place. It is solid. It’s fabulous. The ceilings are high, the floors polished wood. The kitchen, which is self-contained and to the left of the living room/dining room area, is white-walled and filled with silver appliances. “I’m impressed.”

“See? You should always listen to me,” Adam says, heading back out the door. “I’m getting more boxes.”

I follow Allie down the corridor. “That’s Em’s room,” she says, pointing to the room on the right. She’s already Em? When did Emma become Em? “And here’s yours,” she says, pointing to a bedroom that’s only slightly larger than Em’s. It’s not as large as my room at my parents, but it’s big enough. I think everything will fit.

This is it. My new home.

I exhale the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

After we finish unloading the boxes, we escort Adam back to the truck. “You sure you didn’t forget anything?” he asks as he climbs into the driver’s seat. “Should we consult your seven hundred lists?”

Allie giggles.

Wonderful. My new roommate, who hasn’t even known me an hour, is already aware of my neuroses.

“She’s slightly sensitive,” Adam tells Allie. “Especially about the lists. Eh, Jo?”

“I like my lists. Get over it. And stop calling me Jo.”

Allie giggles again. Quite the giggler, this girl. Although I’m not quite sure what it is that’s so giggle-worthy. And I wish Adam would wipe that patronizing smile off his face.

“Okay, Jo,” he says. “If you say so.”

“Why do you call her Jo if she hates it?” Allie asks him.

“Excellent question,” I add.

“My sister was supposed to be a boy.”

I can tell by her wrinkled nose that Allie needs further explanation. “He wanted to name me after Joe Namath,” I offer, sighing.

“Who’s Joe Namath?”

“He was a quarterback for the New York Jets,” Adam says.

“My parents attempted to appease him by naming me Jodine. He decided to ignore the Y-chromosome factor in my DNA and refer to me as Jo.”

Allie giggles again. “That’s cute.”

“No, not really. He told his friends he had a brother. They used to make fun of me for looking like a girl. I’d appreciate it if you stick with Jodine.”

Allie’s eyes widen as if her shower just ran out of hot water. “I’m sorry.”

Am I a bitch? “I’m sorry if I sometimes come across too abruptly, but on this particular issue regarding my identity, I’m a little sensitive.”

Adam smirks and starts the engine. “Enjoy her, Al,” he says. “Jo, remember, if you make her cry she’s going to ask you to go back to our parents.” He drives off.

“Sorry,” I say, forcing a big smile to reassure her that, no, I am not Psycho Bitch. “I just hate when he teases me.”

“Hey, I have an older brother too, remember?” Her eyes return to their previously un-Frisbee-like proportions and squint in a smile. Her lips smile correspondingly. “He used to call me Hyena. For no reason at all.” She puts her arm through mine. “Hungry?”

After finishing a cheese-and-salsa omelette—apparently Allie likes to cook—I’m anxious to start organizing. I’m glad I managed to convince my parents not to come along. My mother begged to help me unpack, but I am truly looking forward to attacking it on my own.

“It’s going to take me hours to unpack everything,” I announce, hoping Allie will insist on doing the dishes and send me on my way. Technically it’s my responsibility to do them, since she cooked and it was all her food, but I assume these are special circumstances. And the kitchen is a mess, which I did not partake in the making. She can cook, fine, but the ingredients seem to have exploded all over the countertop. For instance, how, specifically, did salsa get on top of the refrigerator?

“Don’t worry, it won’t take us that long. We’ll do one box at a time. We should start with your bed stuff. Then, if we don’t finish everything today you’ll be all ready for tonight. Of course, if you want to paint the walls or something, you can always sleep with me in my room. Whatever you want.”

What was all this “we” talk? What “we”? This stranger is not going to rummage through my stuff. “Oh, don’t worry about it. I can take care of it. I’m sure you have better things to do than be stuck in my room all day unpacking crusty boxes.”

“Umm…not really.” She giggles again. I will have to throttle her if she doesn’t lose that giggle. Or start calling her Hyena. “I guess I shouldn’t say that, eh? You’ll think I’m a big loser and you just met me.”

“Why don’t you do the dishes and I’ll start unpacking?”

Her eyes widen the way they did when I chastised her for calling me Jo, only this time it’s because I’ve brought about a concept utterly alien to her, the concept of cleaning the kitchen. “Don’t worry about the dishes,” she says. “I’ll do them later. First, I want to set you up. That’s what roomies are for, right?”

My definition of roommate is someone who shares a kitchen and a bathroom—although from the present chaotic state of this kitchen I probably should have negotiated my own bathroom.

In order to avoid crushing her obviously frail feelings, I allow her to help me unpack my bed (“What nice green-colored sheets! They match your eyes! I love them! They’re gorge!”), my shampoo and conditioner (“You use Thermasilk? Does it work? Can I smell it? Wow! It smells awes!”), and my clothes (“Too bad you’re so much taller than me! These pants are fab!”), until I can no longer handle any more abbreviated acclamations and need to take a pizza break. Anyway, all that remains is building a dresser, putting away clothes and hanging a few posters.

I realize that I am a complete freeloader—I have nothing to contribute to the rest of the apartment. Wait! Not true. I have a salad spinner. My parents had two for some inexplicable reason, so I took one.

I’m hoping to finish organizing when Allie is asleep. I’m going to try and fake her out. You know, pretend I’m going to sleep but then continue working? She’s sweet, really, just as Adam said. It’s just that she has so many questions and comments and I’m tired because I was up all night packing and I don’t feel like revealing my life story at this particular moment.

At ten she invites me to watch TV in her room, but I decline. “I think I’ll just read a magazine in bed.”

“Okay. We don’t have to watch TV. Let’s read. I’ll get my book and we’ll read together.”

Haven’t we spent enough time together? Is she ever going to leave me alone? Will we have to get bunk beds? “You know what? I’m exhausted. I don’t think I can even keep my eyes open. I’m going to go to sleep.” I can leave my light on for a bit to read without getting caught, can’t I?

“Okay. Tell me when you’re ready for bed and I’ll tuck you in.”

She has got to be kidding.

“Nightie-night,” she says ten minutes later as I climb under the covers. She pulls the sheets up to my chin and turns off the lights. “What do you want for breakfast?” she asks, popping her head back in the doorway.

Breakfast? She’s already thinking about breakfast? “Whatever.”

I hear her muffled voice speaking on the phone, and although I want to tell her to keep it down, I decide to turn on my recently unpacked stereo and try to drown her out.

A knock on my door awakens me. The sun pours into the room because of my lack of curtains, the glare blinding me from seeing the numbers on my alarm clock.

“Jodine? Are you awake?”

“Mmm.”

“Can I come in?”

“Mmm.”

Allie opens the door with her right hand while balancing a tray with her left. “You’re up?”

A little late for that question, isn’t she? “I am now.”

She strides into my room. “I made you breakfast in bed!”

I am somewhat surprised, as no one has ever made me breakfast in bed. Even lovesick Manny never made me breakfast in bed.

Using my elbows, I prop myself up into a half-stomach-crunch position. Allie gently places the silver tray onto my lap and then sits cross-legged on my bed.

This disturbs me for four reasons: 1. She will now proceed to watch me eat. It is always odd when a person is eating and another one isn’t.

2. No one is allowed to eat in my room, for fear of lingering odors, unsightly crumbs and potential spillage. Perhaps this rule would be expunged during emergency circumstances such as…I can’t think of one at this moment, but I will concede that possible situations could arise.

3. More significant, no one is ever allowed to eat in/on my bed. Ever. No emergency could ever require food to be eaten in/on my bed, including but not exclusive to whipped cream and/or edible food paint. I’ll admit that I’ve indulged in these sumptuous delicacies from time to time, but we were on Manny’s bed, thereby leaving no sticky lactose residue on my sheets.

4. Allie is sitting on my bed without socks. And she did not wipe her feet prior to sitting on my bed. She walked, walked, walked along the floor, accumulating the germs and dust bunnies and whatever other bacteria ferment amid the crevices, and has now contributed these germs to my chosen area of rest. Instead, she should have worn slippers, removing them prior to sitting on the bed, or at the very least, used some sort of excess material to wipe clean her polluted body parts. (I really, really want to ask her to wipe, but I don’t want to embarrass her for her barnyard behavior.)

She uses her left big toe to scratch her right ankle. Scratch, scratch. I can taste the food I haven’t even eaten yet regurgitate in my throat. She is spreading germs all over my bed. I can’t take it any longer, and so I say, “Thank you so much for the breakfast. One favor?”

She nods continuously as though the top of her head is attached to an elastic band built into the ceiling. “Sure, spill it.”

Which is precisely what I wish to avoid (the regurgitation of breakfast). “I have this anal obsession about clean feet in or on my bed. Can you wipe them? Just use the newspaper that’s on my chair.”

The look she gives me makes me think I just told her that Santa was really her dad in a rented costume. There is about a thirty-five-percent chance that she will start to cry.

But no! She leans off the bed, picks up the newspaper that only hours ago was in charge of protecting a family picture in the U-Haul. “Oh, sure. No prob. Sorry,” she says, wiping her feet.

Where’s the catch? Why is this girl so damn nice? I look at her feet. They’re now stained with black newspaper ink. This, I admit, is my fault. What could I have been thinking, suggesting a newspaper? (This is how I sometimes get when faced with a dilemma concerning other people’s hygiene habits. Flustered. Irrational.) I can’t ask her to clean them again, can I? I’ll just have to rewash the linen when she isn’t around, so she doesn’t get offended.

When is she not around?

The blue clay bowl on my lap is filled with Rice Krispies and strawberries. Cut-up strawberries. Who has the time or the patience to cut fruit into tiny cubes for the sheer purpose of improving my breakfast experience?

“I didn’t want to wake you, but Emma will be here soon.”

“What time is she coming?”

“Noon.”

“What time is it now?”

Allie looks at her watch. “Eleven-thirty.”

Already? “I want to take a shower before she gets here.”

“Finish your breakfast first.” Yes, Mom. “I can’t wait for you to meet her. Did I tell you she looks like a model?”

Wonderful—a model. Isn’t that number one on the roommate checklist right before nonsmoker and no pets? When I finish eating, I lay my breakfast dishes on top of yesterday’s omelette dishes in the kitchen sink. Apparently not having a dishwasher will be more of a liability than I originally anticipated.

Emma is going to think she’s living with two pigs. “Can you wash up while I shower?” I ask.

“Oh! Good idea. No prob.”

After an in-and-out shower, I find Allie on the phone and the dishes still in the sink. Terrific.

I get dressed and search for my favorite scrunchie to tie my hair back. Where is it? I always leave it beside my bed. Apparently, in my confusion of living in a new environment I’ve misplaced it.

I head to the kitchen and begin washing the dishes. A yellow sponge is leaning against the side of the sink. At least it used to be yellow; it is presently part yellow and part decayed brown.

“No, don’t do them! I was just getting off the phone. Mom, I’ll call you later.” She hangs up and rushes over to the sink. “You wash, I’ll dry?”

“Sounds fair.” Although since she originally offered to do it all, it’s not completely fair. “Do we have any extra sponges? This one is pretty grungy.”

“Let’s see.” She pulls out a crisp new one from the cupboard under the sink. “Here you go.”

Interesting. Why would one continue using a disgusting sponge when there was a new, clean one under the sink? And what other germs are living on this counter? The thought that we’re sharing a bathroom returns, this time frightening me. We’re going to require some serious disinfectant.

The buzzer sounds.

“She’s here! She’s here! I can’t wait for you to meet her. You’re going to love her!”

Allie leaps to the front door, unlocks it and disappears into the hallway. “Hi!” I hear her say. I walk toward them just as they kiss each other on two cheeks. Double-kiss? Are we movie stars?

Emma pushes her bronzed sunglasses on top of her gold head as she walks into the apartment. Is she Rapunzel? What’s with the gold? She couldn’t pick a more natural, normal color?

“Emma, this is Jodine. Jodine, Emma.” She pronounces Emma’s name with a flourish. I almost expect her to give a little hand twirl and bow.

“Hello,” I say. Emma is at least five-seven. Maybe not quite five-seven. Her brown boots add at least two inches to her.

“Nice to meet you.” She saunters into the living room and ogles my head. “You have gorgeous hair. Is that color natural? It’s so black!”

“It’s natural,” I answer, pleased with her flattery regarding my hair yet at the same time exasperated with how willing I am to prostitute my opinions of someone in exchange for a hair compliment.

She reaches out her hand and touches a strand. “And it’s so shiny.”

“Thanks, I, uh, like yours, too.” Okay, so I’m a prostitute.

“Thanks.”

Allie claps her hands. “I love it down, too! You should wear it down all the time, Jodine. It’s so gorge!”

“I might have to, Allie,” I say, and point to the black scrunchie that is perched on the bottom of a braid extending from Allie’s head. “If you keep stealing my elastics.”

Allie blushes. “Whoops. Is this yours?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want it back?”

Yes. “You can use it today.”

“Thanks, Jodine!” Allie’s smile widens. “I’m so happy!” she squeals. “I have two roomies again. This is totally fab!”

Emma’s eyebrows rise, I’m assuming, in amazement of what a cheese ball her new roommate is.

My neck is getting itchy. I want my scrunchie back.

“So what should we do now? When are your movers coming?” Allie asks with a jump. She’s back on her imaginary trampoline.

“In about an hour.”

“Should we play get-to-know-you games?” Allie asks.

What does she want to play? Pictionary? Hide-and-seek? I’m sure my eyebrows are raised as high as Emma’s. (Or at least one of them. That’s my one party trick—I can raise each eyebrow separately.)

I visualize the upcoming year as clearly as if I am remembering it: Emma and I hanging out in her room, rolling our eyes at each other every time Allie says something ridiculously cheesy or abbreviates a word. Two’s company and three’s a crowd, correct? When three people live together, inevitably two will bond and one will end up the odd woman out. It makes sense.

Emma opens her purse, pulls out a hard-shelled sunglasses case, replaces her sunglasses, then slams the case shut. “I have to shit.” She throws her purse onto a table and heads toward the bathroom.

Thanks for sharing.

She opens the bathroom door and disappears inside. The door remains open.

She is using the bathroom while leaving the door open.

She has left the door open. Open, the opposite of closed. (Actually, wouldn’t the opposite of closed be opened with an “ed” tacked on? I mean, you wouldn’t describe a door as being close unless it was in near proximity, or unless you were emotionally attached to it, would you?)

A pack of du Maurier Light cigarettes have slipped out of her purse and onto the kitchen table.

She smokes, and she leaves the door open when she defecates. I feel mildly vomitous, as in full of vomit.

Okay, I volunteer to be the odd woman out. I wish Allie and Emma a blissfully happy life together. I am living with a munchkin and a truck driver.

6
EMMA GETS ATTENTION

EMMA

My first thought when I wake up is that I’m on the wrong side of the bed. I normally sleep on the right side and now I’m on the left. Even though I’m in the same queen-size bed I slept in at my dad’s, it feels different because I’ve had to readjust my sleeping position so that I can sleep facing the window.

How long does it take for a new apartment to stop feeling like I have a new guy’s tongue in my mouth? How long does it take for the angle the sunlight spills through the blinds, the post-wakeup walk to the bathroom, and my butt imprint in the couch to feel as natural as pulling on my favorite pair of jeans?

My second thought is that my apartment smells like a funeral home. Fortunately not the decaying, rotting, flesh odor (although I’ve never actually been a witness to that particular experience), but sweet-smelling because of the abundance of useless flowers.

Face it, if the guy is dead, flowers won’t help.

Speaking about corpses, I start to think about Nick, my controlling, obsessive deadbeat of an ex-boyfriend. “Allie! Allie!” I shout.

“Yeah?” she yells back.

“C’mere for a sec!”

Two seconds later, Allie knocks on my door.

“One second,” I answer for no real apparent reason. She could have just come in, but the fact that she knocked makes me wonder how long she’ll wait for me to give her permission to open the door. Two minutes? Five minutes? Will she kill time, twiddling her thumbs or picking her nose, more likely biting her nails, for ten minutes?

Okay. Enough. “Enter,” I say.

She opens the door and sticks her head in. “Morning. Do you want some juice?”

“No, thanks. Did Nick have flowers delivered again?”

“Yup. You’re not going to believe this. Twenty-one roses.”

“What color?”

“Red.”

Week one post breakup, he sent seven red roses. Week two post breakup, he left fourteen. Week three, today, his present is about as surprising as my feet hurting after a night of dancing in three-inch-heel boots. So the asshole knows how to multiply, whoopee-do. And red…again? Couldn’t he be a little creative with the colors? Why not, say six red, six white, six pink, and what’s left? Three? Three purple? Are there purple roses? What about purple hearts? No, wait. I’m the one who’s wounded. Forget purple. Seven red, seven pink, seven white. It’s not the eighties anymore; he can mix red and pink. He won’t get arrested for clashing.

I roll myself in my cream satin sheets like tobacco and weed in a crisp sheet of rolling paper. “I didn’t hear the bell.”

“Me, neither, I was asleep. I found them outside the door. Our door, not the outside door. I guess the delivery boy rang Janet and she brought them inside.”

“Is there a card?”

“As always. Here.” She skips toward my bed, hands me the card, and then sits down carefully.

“Love you…miss you…” I read aloud. Blah blah blah. Cry me a river. He should have thought of that three weeks ago. Before I spent twenty minutes doing tongue Pilates with some hot, anonymous bar stud who showered me with compliments and cosmopolitans.

You can’t do that when you have a boyfriend, can you?

Maybe you can. It’s just not nice.

“Where’s the birthday girl?” I ask.

“She went to the gym this morning, came home, and now she’s at the library.”

“That’s the way I spend my birthday, too,” I say. “What time is it?”

Allie giggles. “One-ish.”

That giggling is going to put me over the edge. It sounds like urine chiming against toilet water at high speed. Be fair, I reprimand myself. Allie’s not so bad. I mean, how bad can she possibly be? She admires me, for fuck’s sake. She thinks I’m the shit. Just look at her, carefully perched on my bedspread as if she’s afraid her ass will wear the bedspread out. She’s treating it like it’s a shrine, which is totally strange considering what kind of slob she is. I wish I had a couch in here. But there’s barely room for me to walk in here. My room is all bed.

“You have the coolest job ever,” she says, flipping through next month’s copy of Stiletto, which put me to sleep last night. I reach across my nightstand for a cigarette. For a moment I consider asking her to open the window, but then I do it myself. Then I wonder if she would have done it, just because I tell her to do it.

I take a deep drag. I wonder what would happen if I told her to get off my bed. Would she ask why? Would she start crying and think I was mad at her?

Can I tell her to get off the couch in the living room if I want to? It’s mine.

I certainly did my duty in adding ambience to the apartment—a purple shaggy throw rug under a glass coffee table, purple-and-gray throw pillows to match my purple suede couch and leather purple recliner. All courtesy of AJ’s basement. And of course, the dried flowers, gifts from Nick, which I later attached to a metal hanger and hung upside down to dry them out. And dishes. And framed photographs that I “borrowed” from Stiletto.

Is there anything in this place that isn’t mine?

The table, I suppose. Although that’s just a tablecloth covering milk crates. And Allie rolled her computer chair beside it to pass for a kitchen chair. Since I brought everything else, you’d think Jodine could just go and buy a table and chairs.

I exhale toward the window. “My job’s not that exciting. It’s Stiletto, not Cosmo. Sure, I get to see celebrities when they come to the office, but they’re Canadian celebrities. How’s that for an oxymoron?”

“Yeah, but you’re a fashion editor,” she says, emphasizing the word fashion as though it was some sort of golden calf.

“A fashion editor’s assistant.”

She’s now lying flat out on my bed, all reverence forgotten. Maybe she’s trying to duck beneath the smoke. “You can’t start as the editor in chief,” she says to console me.

Apparently not. “I don’t expect to be promoted after only two months, but how long do I have to search through model cards, trying to find the perfect five-foot-eight, one-hundred-ten-pound brunette with that ‘little extra something’? And why does Amanda, my Aren’t-I-Crafty-I-Make-My-Own-Jewelry boss, get all the party invites? Last week, she wet her pants because page six of The Talker mentioned her as one of the guests at a restaurant opening in Yorkville,” I say, getting all worked up. Not that the bar scene in this city is worth the effort it takes me to put on a thong. It’s only Toronto. But Aren’t-I-Crafty acts like every party invite she gets is an invite to the damn Oscars. She acts like my high-school friends who spent years pillaging fashion magazines for the perfect prom dress and then felt devastated when the guys they had their eyes on asked someone else. I used to say it’s only high school, dammit, get a hold of yourself.

I need another cigarette.

My cigarette intake has multiplied exponentially since I’ve moved out on my own. Awful, really, but now that I can smoke without being banished outside, I can’t find any reason not to smoke constantly. Besides the whole lung cancer-emphysema thing, of course. And as a plus it drives Jodine crazy.

When I first moved in and pulled out a cigarette, I thought she was going to detonate. But I told Allie from the get-go that I was a smoker, so it’s Jodine’s tough luck. She tried to be all rational about it, saying I could light up as long as I blew the smoke out the window so as not to pollute the entire apartment.

And she punctuated her suggestion with a cough.

Still, it seems like a fair agreement. But I’ve decided that the smoking-near-the-window policy will only be followed when Jodine is home. Except for in my room—I can’t have it smelling bad, can I?

“Can I have one?” comes a whisper from the horizontal side of the bed.

“One what?”

“Cigarette.” Giggle, giggle.

I nearly fall out of bed from shock. The last time I felt this way was when Nick asked me if we could not smoke up one night because he wanted to be able to concentrate on a presentation he had the next day. I hand Allie a cigarette and try not to gawk. “Since when do you smoke?”

She looks like a child smeared in her mother’s red lipstick. She doesn’t inhale, just puffs in and out like she’s sucking on the smoke. “I don’t (cough, cough). Just sometimes.” She smiles and sucks again.

Halfway through our cigarettes, I hear Jodine’s key jingling in the door lock. Allie turns white and stubs out her cigarette in an empty water glass.

We’re both laughing when Jodine knocks on my door. She doesn’t wait for a “come in.” She just enters.

“You’re still in bed?” she asks. “Do you know what time it is?”

“One-ish,” I say, stretching lazily.

The best part about not being in school anymore is lazy weekends. Spread-eagle days stuffed with omelettes and bacon and home fries and pillows and TV and shopping and restaurants and dancing and Cosmos. I’m capable of sleeping past three on weekends, if left uninterrupted. Which makes me hate my job even more Monday mornings, because I end up falling asleep at 3:00 a.m. on Sunday nights.

Usually, anyway.

Fuck.

I’m supposed to work on a presentation today about shoes for a Monday morning meeting. Is that fair? Why does my boss feel that she’s entitled to my weekend time?

Forget it. I’ll do it tomorrow. I have too much to do today.

“How about bringing me some juice?” I ask Jodine.

“What, are you crippled?”

“I’ll get it,” Allie says, and smiles at me. “I need some myself.”

Allie has a mild problem with orange juice. If there were an OJA (Orange Juice Anonymous) chapter in Toronto, she’d be its most frequent patron. She drinks it all the time. At lunch. At dinner. With a snack. I’m trying to figure out why she’s offered to bring me a glass. Does she really need some juice for herself, to wash away the smoke-stink in her throat? Or is she really the suck I think she is? Or is it possible she’s just plain nice?

She scurries into the kitchen and I throw the covers off my body.

“Where are you?” Allie asks, five minutes later.

How can it take five minutes to get a glass of orange juice? I mean, what can possibly happen on the way from my room to the kitchen? “In here!” I call from the toilet.

She walks through my room, into the bathroom, holding a small glass of orange juice. She blushes when she sees me and wraps a strand of her way-too-long hair around her thumb and puts the split ends in her mouth. That girl is always eating various parts of her body. I wouldn’t want to be left on a deserted island with her. We run low on food and I’m a goner.

She seems to be debating her next move. Should she leave? Ignore my position on the throne and continue talking to me?

Allie is working out quite well as a roommate, in spite of her obvious flaws. I even let her use my bathroom when Jodine is showering in theirs. And she’s a riot. A few days ago, when she was brushing her teeth, I couldn’t figure out why she said, “I still have my retainer, too!” Then I realized she must have thought my diaphragm was some sort of orthodontic contraption. It’s a good thing she didn’t find my vibrator—I wouldn’t want the poor girl to start singing into it or anything like that. Or what if she thought it was a hand blender?

“I think Jodine works out way too much,” she says to me while her eyes search frantically for something to rest on. They settle on the fuchsia floor mat.

“Every day does seem a bit excessive,” I answer, and fart simultaneously. Oops.

Allie giggles and turns bright red. She retreats into my bedroom, making herself at home again on the bed, this time lying vertically. “I think she’s anorexic!” she raises her voice to be heard.

“You think? Keep an eye on her at lunch. If she doesn’t eat the cake, I’d say there’s a pretty good chance you’re right.”

Allie and I are taking Jodine out for a late lunch, to celebrate her birthday. Her parents booked her for last night, and some guy, Manny, has booked her for tonight.

I’m sure that whatever Jodine doesn’t eat, Allie will polish off in no time.

An hour later, the three of us are seated around a table at a downtown Mexican café. “Nothing wrong with a birthday fuck,” I comment.

“No,” Jodine answers quickly, and condescendingly. “He’s an ex. I don’t make it a habit of revisiting past errors.”

Well la-di-da. “I don’t make it a habit of even talking to exes.” So there. “And that’s because when you go out with an ex on your birthday, you end up fucking your ex.”

Allie giggles.

“I don’t fuck my exes,” Jodine says, emphasizing the word fuck, and Allie giggles again.

Allie giggles anytime someone says “fuck.”

Allie giggles anytime someone speaks.

“Bet you ten bucks you do,” I say.

Giggle, giggle.

“You’re on.”

I’m on a mission here to remove the pole that is shoved all the way up Jodine’s ass. Maybe getting laid will help her.

“How will we know if you’re having sex?” Allie asks.

Jodine looks at her sideways. “Isn’t my word good enough? Do you want to see the videotape?”

“Oh, you do that, too?” I ask.

Jodine ignores me. “Why do you have to know, exactly?” she asks Allie.

“I meant, so I don’t knock and try to come in. We need a warning system.”

“First of all, I always make the guy take his shoes off at the front door. Who knows where his feet have been? Consequently, if you see a pair of men’s shoes on the front floor mat, don’t come in. But you realize all this planning is purely academic. I repeat, I do not have sex with my exes.”

“But how will I know if the shoes belong to a guy of yours or Em’s?”

“I doubt it would be a problem for tonight. You two are going out after lunch, right? And then later to a movie or something? So you’ll know if one of you decides to slip away and bring home a guy of your own. Second, this may shock you, but my long-term plan is to develop a monogamous relationship so that in the future, you’ll both be able to identify a pair of shoes with a corresponding man.”

“That’s not my long-term plan,” I comment. “I like the first scenario better. The part about sneaking off with a guy of my own.”

“Boys do have more than one pair of shoes,” Allie says, obviously still concerned about the logistics behind the plan. “This could get complicated.”

“I’ll tie a red ribbon around my doorknob or something,” Jodine offers.

I think about this for a minute. “Who has red ribbons? Use a scrunchie. We all have scrunchies, right?”

I know Jodine has one. She wears it in her hair every day. I’ve only seen her hair down once.

So we agree. Scrunchies on doorknobs equals don’t knock.

A waitress appears at our table. “Can I get a strawberry daiquiri?” I ask.

“Virgin?” Allie asks.

“No, you?” I say, and laugh.

Allie turns bright red and mumbles something to herself. Uh-oh. She’s had sex, right? She can’t be a virgin. Can she?

“I’d like a Diet Coke,” Jodine says.

Allie stops mumbling to herself. “Do you have any juice?”

“Orange okay?”

“Fab. I’ll have a large, please.”

When the waitress delivers our fajitas and drinks simultaneously, I laugh at Allie’s huge glass of orange pulp. “What is it with you and juice? Don’t you ever have soft drinks?”

“No. Pop burns my mouth,” she explains, spreading at least a gallon of sour cream over the tortilla. Next, she carefully places the pieces of chicken on the cream, lays out another layer of sour cream, then the salsa, then the cheese, then another large glob of cream. Her meal looks like strawberry pudding. Jodine makes her fajita with a thin film of salsa, a few strategically placed pieces of chicken and a pound of lettuce. I try to keep the ingredients in proportion.

“What does that mean, soft drinks burn your mouth?” Jodine asks. “They’re supposed to be cold. You do know that, right?”

Allie giggles. “Yes, I know.”

I would have been offended by Jodine’s comment, but Allie doesn’t seem to care when Jodine talks to her like she’s missing a few keys on her keyboard.

“I don’t like the bubbles,” Allie says. “They burn.”

Jodine rolls her eyes. “You’re not supposed to gargle the pop,” she says. “You sip and swallow.”

“Sounds masochistic.” Giggle, giggle.

“You get used to it. You stop noticing the bubbles.”

“What about the first time you tried it?”

“The first time I tried pop? I can’t recall the first time I tried pop, Allie.” She takes a small bite out of her fajita. She eats everything in small bites. Eating takes her hours. “It’s like riding a bike,” she says. “Once you do it, it becomes habit.”

“I don’t know how to ride a bike.”

Both Jodine’s and my jaws drop in shock. “Unbelievable,” Jodine says.

“I don’t, really,” Allie repeats.

Jodine takes another sip of her Diet Coke. “Didn’t your father run behind you, pretending to hold the back of your seat, telling you he would never let go and then let go?”

My father never did that. He bought me a two-thousand-dollar bike and told me to figure it out. Bastard.

“My father tried to teach me, but I was afraid to take off the training wheels.”

Jodine looks at Allie with disbelief. “That’s absurd. I’ll teach you how to ride.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What uh-huh?”

“Everyone says they’re going to teach me when I tell them I don’t know how, but no one ever does.”

“Do you ever ask them about it again?”

“No.”

“Then don’t expect them to teach you. Your bike-riding skills aren’t everyone’s top priority. If you want me to teach you, then ask me. Biking is great exercise.”

Not exactly a selling point for Allie. While she seems to have an abundance of energy, she prefers to spend her free time lying in bed reading or watching TV. “Have you ever actually tried Coke?” I ask.

“I don’t think so.”

Impossible! “You’ve never tried Coke? What do you drink with your Jack Daniel’s? What do you have at barbecues?”

Allie stares at me blankly. “Uh, orange juice?”

“If there is no orange juice?”

She appears deep in thought. “Sometimes I pick an orange soda and wait for it to get flat. Then it tastes like that orange drink at McDonald’s. They call it a drink but it has no bubbles, did you know? I used to order the small orange juice cartons, but they cost a fortune and they’re not always included in the trio meals. Getting orange juice at movie theaters used to be a problem, too, but ever since the whole Snapple craze, they almost always sell juice, any flavor.”

Apparently an entire carbonated-free world exists that I am unaware of. Jodine meets my gaze across the table and we both start laughing. “Try it,” she says, pushing her glass toward Allie.

“Why? I know I won’t like it.”

“Just try it. I want to see.”

“See what?”

I reach over and take a sip from Jodine’s glass. “All the cool kids are doing it,” I say.

“Fine, I’ll try if it’ll amuse you. But, Jodine, you have to try a cigarette.”

I almost choke on the so-called offensive bubbles.

“Terrific,” Jodine says, squinting her eyes. “But why?”

“Just try one. I want to see.”

“But you don’t even smoke.”

“I’ll have one, too. We’ll all have a drink, and we’ll all have a smoke.”

“I feel left out,” I say. “What do I have to do?”

“You have to close the door the next time you’re in the main bathroom,” Jodine says, passing Allie her glass.

Allie puckers her lips and sips the Coke as if drinking a glass of straight tequila. And then the three of us crowd by the restaurant bar as I hand out cigarettes.

“You look like a freak, smoking,” Jodine says to Allie. “Are you on the Stair Master? Why are you breathing like that?”

Allie blows out the smoke she was holding in her mouth—the smoke she should have been inhaling but was keeping prisoner inside her cheeks—into Jodine’s face. “Can you teach us to French inhale?” she asks me.

“That’s why they call me Frenchy, you know.”

“Sure it is.”

“Who calls you Frenchy?” Jodine asks.

“No one.”

“It’s from Grease,” Allie explains.

“I’ve never seen it.”

Allie’s jaw drops. “No way! Didn’t you watch any fun movies growing up?”

“Yes,” I say defensively. “I saw The Wizard of Oz. And Annie. And Amadeus.

“I can make smoke circles. Wanna see?” I blow three consecutive Cheerios-shaped ovals into the air.

“Again!” Allie demands, and I do it again. They try, and a few minutes later we’re all laughing, watching smoke circles stretch and evaporate into the air.

After lunch, I drive Jodine home so that she can prepare for her nondate and convince Allie to go shopping with me. What better way to spend a Saturday? Shopping and then a movie. Allie claims she doesn’t need anything but agrees to come along to keep me company. I drive us to Yorkdale Mall. At Mendocino, I charge three hundred dollars on a pair of pants and sweater. She tries on the same pants, but looks like a stuffed handmade pillow with the cotton balls spilling out.

“What do you think?” she asks, trying to see every angle of herself in the three-sided mirror.

She’s not a fat girl; she just shouldn’t be walking around in tight pants. Maybe I shouldn’t tell her that. Maybe I should tell her she has great legs and that she’d look better in a skirt. But then, won’t she know I’m lying? “What do you need to buy those for?” I say. “You can borrow mine.” Very good! A most sensitive and appropriate politically correct answer.

She could also use a haircut. She’s too short for hair that comes down past her tits. And a few highlights wouldn’t hurt. Make that many highlights.

After shopping, I climb back into bed for an afternoon siesta, and Allie climbs into her bed to read. When I wake up, the sun has already fallen below the house in front of ours, and the sky is tinted purple. The phone rings, and a minute later Allie bounces into my room, looking like she accidentally dropped my vibrator down her pants.

“Clint wants to go for a drink! Clint wants to go for a drink!” she says, clapping her hands in excitement.

“Clint? What kind of a name is Clint? Is he a cowboy?”

“Clint is a beautiful name. It’s the most beautiful name in the whole world.”

Snort. “You are such a cheese ball,” I say, laughing. “Does that mean you’re ditching me and the movie?” I try to feign indignation, but a bunch of my old school friends already invited me to meet them for a drink up at Yonge and Eglinton. But seriously—there’s someone a step higher than me on Allie’s pedestal? Can I take this Clint character?

“Oh. Uh-oh.” She looks like she’s about to cry. “Should I cancel? Do you want me to cancel? I’ll cancel if you want me to.” There is no way she’s not praying to herself that I won’t make her cancel. I can practically see her mouth moving.

“Don’t cancel,” I say, dismissing her with my hand.

She sighs with relief.

After she showers, I help her get ready. “No, Allie, you can’t wear the same top of mine that you wore last time…I know I said it looked very hot but he’s already seen you in it…. Yes, you can borrow something else.”

At one in the morning, when I get home from Yonge and Eglinton, Allie is sitting on the couch, looking miserable, watching the end of Saturday Night Live. She nudges her chin toward Jodine’s room. I can hear the faint sound of Marvin Gaye coming from behind the walls.

A black scrunchie is on the doorknob.

7
JODINE HOLDS THE BUTTER

JODINE

I am so angry, my hands are shaking. If I were a cartoon character, gray clouds of smoke would be steaming from my ears, and my face would be the color of Emma’s nails, cherry red. It’s 3:11 a.m. and someone is making popcorn. Popcorn! At 3:11 in the morning! Why would anyone make popcorn at 3:11 in the morning? It makes no sense.

Every night it’s something. Usually it’s the giggling. Too often, when I’m trying to fall asleep, Allie is giggling on the phone. I can’t decipher what she’s actually saying or to whom she is speaking. All I hear is that infernal giggling like a bad echo reverberating through the walls. I would buy earplugs, except that they present two immediate problems. First, how would I hear my alarm clock? And second, whenever earplugs are remotely near my body, I tense with stress. I wore them when I took the LSATs, and now whenever I think of them, my back tenses in an “I am about to sit still for the next three hours that will define my entire future” Pavlovian manner. Since falling asleep requires the absence of stress, I doubt that a stress-inducing object will succeed in blocking out nocturnal distractions.

The first time I heard the giggles I didn’t think anything of them, hoping the incident was a one-time thing. The second time, I couldn’t stand it. I attempted to ignore them; honestly, I did. I tried to fall asleep, despite the feeling that a pack of flies was buzzing around in my ears, but I ended up tossing and turning, turning and tossing, and eventually I slipped into my black-and-white-and-red Minnie Mouse slippers from Disney World, padded over to Allie’s room and knocked three times on the door.

“Come in!” she sang out, obviously unaware of the purpose of my visit. Did she think I was stopping by for a late-night girlie chat? Me? “Hold on, it’s one of my roomies,” she said into the phone. “Hi, Jay!”

These days, she has been calling me Jay. First she tried Jo, not believing me when I told her that I despised it. Then for some inexplicable reason she tried Jon. Jon? First of all, I despise all male names for females. You know, like Sidney or Michael. But no female has ever even tried using Jon before. I even dislike those ambiguous names that can go either way, like Robin. Although I must point out that I am in favor of names like Carol or Lynn; no matter how many males carry these identifiers, and no matter how they are spelled—Carol/Caroll, Lyn/Lynn—an extra consonant, in my book, does not legitimize the transsexual operation. To me, these names are strictly feminine.

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