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Are you there, Beckett?
We’re not on the phone, Princess. You can see me.
Beckett conditioned his long hair a second time and waited. He would stay in the shower until Princess sighed and went back to bed. If she was having second thoughts about the surgery, then she could get a flight credit and put all this nonsense behind her. As he was rinsing out the conditioner, eyes closed tightly, he heard her enter the shower. She smoothed the lather away from his neck and shoulders.
She gave him a tight-lipped smile when he opened his eyes. He hadn’t seen her naked in a long time. He could not perceive a single flaw. She thought there was too much space between her breasts, too much separation. He was trying to read her mind. Doubts. She needed a reason not to go.
I wish I had your body, he said.
She attempted to frown. Because he didn’t mean that, because the kind of envious woman he was channelling was phony, because he did have her body and did nothing with it.
He squeezed some of her conditioner into his hands and massaged it into the ends of her hair, hand over hand.
Did something happen at work with the new instructor?
Miss Toronto? We’re not talking about her. This is about Keza. She’s the oldest friend I have, Beckett.
Questionable, he thought, but said: You don’t owe her anything. You have tons of other friends, he said. More than me. Stephanie worships the ground you walk on.
He had an impulse to tell her about John in Arizona but could not find a bridge between his childhood friend and hers. Maybe Keza had backed out of the trip at the last minute and now Princess wanted to cancel everything.
As if to change the subject, he spun her around and rinsed her hair. He washed her back. Then he stepped close behind her and washed her flat stomach.
You know Kanye’s mother died during liposuction, Princess said. Or Yeezy. What’s his name now?
While she was talking, Beckett reached one hand lower into her pubic hair. With the other, he tried to get hard. But in the end, he used his fingers and she pretended that it was having an effect and he pretended that he was a powerful man from a romance novel. She turned around to face him, cupped his thigh from the back. Then she tried to, like, like, to like, finger him. Who knew what went on in people’s minds, but Beckett suspected that she thought she was helping him discover something he would like, that she was being open-minded, reminding him of the kind of partner she was. He grabbed her hand, they jostled, she shushed him, shh shh shh, like he was a dog. Relax, she told him, while digging into him with her middle finger. It was uncomfortable, her nail, and he was not, how do you say, empty or clean, although they were in the shower.
It’s called a prostate orgasm, she said.
And he said, No thank you, in a strained formal way. He didn’t care what it was called. But she continued anyway with one hand and with the other she choked him. He was not into asphyxiation either. She would do anything for him, even lead him to a little death and back.
She pumped his neck. His body was between the spray and her body. She tried to insert a second finger. The soap was burning him. He protested but she continued burrowing then he decisively shouldered her away and she slipped. He tried to catch her but as her foot was sliding forward, it knocked him down. He almost broke the enclosure as he was falling and landed heavily on her. Her head was awkward in the bathtub.
He thought he killed her for a second. He remembered a murder scene from the first season of Fargo.
She stirred. She would show up to surgery with a concussion and bruises on her back and the international authorities would descend on the house. Helicopter above.
He stepped over her, dripping on her, on his way to the toilet.
She wiped her face with her hands and hung her arm out the side of the bathtub like the Death of Marat. She could see him from where she was lying. The water was falling on her breasts. Beckett noticed the scar of the first augmentation near her armpit. There was a red patch on her hip where he had landed on her. Her curls had gone straight. She didn’t look away while he wiped himself, studied the toilet paper. Her face. The contented, slack smile of a drunk. They were married. But his embarrassment was keen.
You okay? she asked.
Beckett didn’t answer for a long time. He should have been the one to ask.
Instead, he said, What’s wrong with you? I’m not into that kink stuff.
You’re not into any stuff. She looked at him sincerely at that point. I’m trying, Beckett.
After he flushed, he dressed quickly without drying himself properly, without saying anything more to her, and went back outside.
* * *
He walked through the cemetery while chewing five sticks of gum and making origami hearts out of the wrappers. He could still feel his anus. Princess hadn’t cut off his clothes with a pair of scissors. He wasn’t the kind of man to touch his anus or be found naked hanging from a noose.
What really bothered him, though, was that she had decided something, as if she had arrived at a truth before him. In all things, she was more experienced than he was. She had travelled more, tasted more, exercised more, studied more, even earned more at one point. The first time Princess had anal, in high school with an exchange student, it was a mess, she’d told Beckett, but then again she did not know what would be done to her or have time to prepare.
He scattered his origami hearts into the night for strangers to find.
He returned home from his walk, shivering. The wet clothes clung to him. It was an unusually chilly night for early May. The house was dark and silent. As he made his way up the stairs, the air pressed against him like fur. He lay beside Princess as if nothing had happened. She turned toward him when she felt his weight on the bed. He could sense her eyes on his face.
Do you want to talk? she asked.
About what? At that moment, he didn’t want to talk about it to anyone except Google.
You don’t have to take me to the airport, she said. You can go start Viv’s job.
I’m taking you to the airport, he said. He’d go for a run afterward then buy a few bags of concrete for Viv’s landscaping project.
Princess stared at him for a while, waiting for more, then she turned away.
When he woke up four hours later, her leg and arm were over him like a big pillow, like his friend John who moved to Arizona. He drove her to the airport so she could get Copacabana curves and leave him for a man who wore a thick gold chain, had gold fillings deep in his mouth, and worked out six days a week in a white tank top
* * *
GUEST
CHAPTER
Within hours of his wife’s departure, Beckett found himself naked in a stranger’s bathroom.
He went straight from the airport to Viv’s running group, because he needed to relieve himself of the finger that—the finger that Princess stuck up his . A boundary had been breached. Only he couldn’t bring up the finger. How do you oh-by-the-way something like that into a conversation? Especially when Viv herself was unloading about one of Casper’s friends who was becoming a “woman-hating, borderline skinhead” and pushing “an aggressive, hierarchical dominate-or-be-dominated” worldview on her son.
Casper addressed me as woman the other day, she said. They curved along the seawall, coddled between the city, the bay, and low clouds. Next thing you know, he’ll be gunning down a nail salon.
Is he racist or just sexist? Beckett asked.
Just? Viv said. Just sexist. You can be both.
Of course, of course. I didn’t mean—
Beckett was trying to be a good listener, waiting for an opening. The need to tell Viv about the finger grew inside of him until he felt a pressure in his bladder. A descending weight. He thought, This is how a uterus must feel. He groaned and Viv worried that he was cramping, but when he explained that he just needed a bathroom, she pointed to someone in the group who lived nearby, a guy from her progressive church.
For much of the morning, the man with the bathroom had run erratically between different conversations, like a child chasing a soccer ball wherever it went, instead of playing a position. At the moment, he was running backward while chatting up two women. He looked like a white Trevor Noah. Should Beckett say that? People were so humourless these days. Technically, Trevor Noah was as white as he was Black. Should he say that? Princess would know.
You mean Crystal Meth over there? Beckett said finally.
Viv beckoned him. He’s high on life. And maybe Jesus.
That’s what they all say.
Beckett knew plumbers who were on meth. They wore polarized sunglasses and went rollerblading on sunny days, weaving their legs through agility cones.
Viv waved the man over again. He approached. A Bluetooth speaker strapped to his bicep sprayed dubstep, music that skinned Beckett and squirted lemon over his raw body.
No problemo, Bro. I gotchu, he said and pointed to a building in the distance.
Viv resumed her story about Casper’s friend, but she didn’t get far before the man cleared his throat theatrically. She ignored him. He cleared his throat again, this time dipping his forehead toward Beckett.
You guys met before, Viv said.
No reaction.
At my New Year’s party. Viv offered a fresh introduction: Beckett, like the writer, she said. Cliff, like the notes.
Notes? More like the bar, he said and held out his fist for Beckett to bump. Or the big red dog. The OG alpha dog. But you can call me Gluten. Then he made a weird pivot in the conversation, permanently severing the previous conversation about Casper: Did you know that the inside of your cheek is made of the same tissue as the inside of a vagina?
Beckett telepathically beamed the word meth to Viv.
Did you get that off Instagram? Viv asked. For Beckett’s benefit, she added: Cliff’s an influencer. He’s of that generation educated by the internet.
Actually, he said, I got it off a . Off Deb. You know Deb? She’s married to Connie. Just a little trivia for you.
Sounds more like a male fantasy.
Beckett was missing something in the conversation.
Try it. Gluten was sucking his cheek.
He clasped Beckett by the back of the neck. Viv protested, but Gluten flashed her a conspiratorial look and Beckett perceived that Gluten was trying to distract him from his bladder.
So Beckett sucked in his cheek and tasted. Was he made of Princess?
I guess, he said.
Right?
Gluten tightened his grip on Beckett’s neck and steered him uphill on Thurlow, away from the group and toward his building, an older rental high-rise in the West End. There was strong water pressure coming out of Gluten’s throat: Yeah, Cain killed Abel, but people are missing the point of the story. The real lesson is that you should give people what they ask for, not what you think they want. If Cain had only—Beckett recognized the language as English but had stopped listening.
Pump Up the Jam started playing. Synth chords. Gluten pumped his fist in the air like he was in a club and bellowed, Yeayuhh!
Beckett concentrated on his form, pumping his arms, counting his breaths. But the universe conspired against him. Pump Up the Jam reminded him of sump pumps. The bass throbbed through his bladder. Liquid sloshed around inside of him every time his foot struck the sidewalk. His heel caught a puddle from last night’s rain. The city was misted with the early morning stench of dog urine. When they neared Gluten’s building, he noticed a woman pouring coolant into her car through a funnel. He could practically hear the pitch change. Even Gluten’s cycling jersey in Beckett’s peripheral vision was the lurid colour of multivitamin urine.
In the lobby, Beckett bounced on his toes. He should have gone in an alley. The building was old, over twenty floors and only two elevators. He would have gladly taken the stairs, anything to keep moving. Gluten matched Beckett’s energy, occasionally jumping high and tucking his knees into his chest. His faucet was saying something about the NBA, GOATs, and verticals.
To distract himself in the elevator, Beckett interrupted Gluten and asked, You’ve got a gluten intolerance?
The opposite, Gluten said. Then he launched into a story he clearly loved to tell about how he used to work at a donut shop in university and would bring donut holes to his seminar classes each week. At the end of the fall semester, legend had it, he came to class with a sack of donut holes over his shoulder. So he was Santa for a class. And Sugar Daddy the semester after that. But Gluten was the name that stuck.
Hey, Glute, Beckett interrupted.
Gluten.
I don’t think you understand. I really gotta go.
I can’t make the elevator go any faster, Gluten said, but he jabbed the 9 with his thumb. And as an apology, he flashed a big smile the way one might flash a wad of cash held together with a money clip. It was a smile, Beckett guessed, that had been effective since childhood. Mechanically perfect, big, straight teeth so white they were almost blue. His best feature and he knew it. Princess would approve.
Beckett breathed audibly, trying to focus on the in and the out. Gluten fiddled with his armband and tried on versions of his name, like no one had abbreviated Gluten to Glute before. Glute, he said. Glutes. Hey, Glutey boy. He nodded crisply.
The elevator stopped and opened. Seventh floor. But no one was waiting. This time, Gluten made no effort to press close. Beckett had to reach around him to access the panel. The door groaned closed. An industrial alarm siren sounded inside Beckett’s bladder. He squeezed his eyes shut and flexed his calves to the aerosol of Gluten’s acid music.
It’s a real addiction, Gluten said.
Beckett had lost track of the conversation. The elevator jerked upward, almost spilling his bladder.
Sugar.
Yeah, sugar, Beckett said, eyes still closed. He exhaled through his mouth. My wife tried to quit a couple of times.
Quit? Gluten said. Bro, I’ve got six kinds of sugar in my kitchen right now, he said. I’ll hit you with some lemon loaf after this. I made it yesterday. Don’t worry. I’m gonna hook [clap] you [clap] up [clap]. First one’s free. You are a guest in my house.
Time slowed. Gluten continued his constant stream over the music, which had taken a Darth Vader turn.
The doors parted on the ninth floor and the two of them rushed down the hallway. Of course, Gluten’s apartment was at the vanishing point.
You ever do Kegels? Gluten said. People think it’s for the ladies but the fellas can do it too. You gotta imagine yourself pressing down on your pelvic floor.
Some urine darted out, like the head of a furtive animal, and Beckett found himself squeezing vague muscles—where the was your pelvic floor—to stop the flow. He felt lightheaded. He might pass out. Gluten had some trouble getting the key into the hole. She had tried to insert a second finger. The soap was burning him. Gluten fumbled the keys and dropped them. Maybe he was a sadist who enjoyed seeing people in agony.
Kegels, Gluten said, named after—
And then Beckett couldn’t hold it. He became a glass of water falling in slow motion. Warm liquid ran down his thighs. On the inside mat, he tried to squeeze his crotch shut with his hand. He tried to remove his shoes with his feet. The mat darkened under him. Now the ammonia smell. No amount of squeezing or Kegels could stop the waterfall. Beckett pushed past Gluten to the bathroom on the immediate left, stumbling over shoes, and under a pullup bar that kept the door permanently open. The stream was coming down, through his fingers and down his legs, and Beckett didn’t have the precision to manage the toilet, so he stepped into the shower and when he glimpsed Gluten entering the bathroom behind him in his ankle socks, he pulled the curtain shut and turned on the water to drown everything out.
* * *
Cold water blasted horizontally into Beckett’s thighs, his back, his neck, his skull. Gluten had upgraded the rental shower system. The pressure was like strong knuckles knocking on Beckett’s body. And although the water was freezing, his mouth slackened with relief. His eyes rolled back and watered. There would be no recovery from this shame.
The first thing that Beckett noticed when he opened his eyes—when he opened my eyes—when I opened my eyes was the yellow stream flowing between my feet toward the drain, which was slightly backed up. The tub also had a ring of grime around it. Bring on the fungal infection. I deserved athlete’s foot for this failure of self-control. I deserved to be gassed in a field like cattle with foot and mouth disease.
Oh man, I heard Gluten say to himself, likely just realizing the extent of the mess I’d made.
Then I saw through the shower curtain, which had a rectangular transparent cutout from my shoulders upward, that he was, in fact, urinating, his back to me, one hand on his hip, shorts pulled down his thighs like a newly potty-trained boy would do. His glutes were darker than the rest of his skin, the opposite of my body. I averted my eyes toward the shower tiles, peeled off my clothes at last, and let them slap the tub in a soggy mass. I could do penance by cleaning his tub. I would get on my knees and (load the gun) scrub until my hands were eaten away by cleaning agents. I could still hear his urine falling into the toilet. A flush. Then I heard the toilet paper spin on the roll, the vanity door close, the faucet run briefly, followed by sounds I couldn’t identify. He was probably spritzing disinfectant along the yellow trail I made to the bathroom. I couldn’t look. He’d roll up a magazine and whack me on the nose. Bad boy. Bad, bad boy. I put my head against the tile (four-by-four-inch, decades out of style). I had no choice—I would have to stay in this man’s shower until all the water on earth ran out. At least he’s a stranger, I thought. And the thought beneath that was, At least I don’t respect him. At least I never have to see him again. At least our lives don’t overlap except for this running group that, heaven help me, I was right to avoid for such a long time and would never revisit.
