Fishbowl, page 23
“No!” Jodine laughs.
“Maybe I want to get back together.”
“You have to get a grip.”
I’d like to get a grip—around Nick’s neck. I light up another cigarette and inhale.
“Where’s Allie now?” Jodine asks.
“At work.” Monique was the one dressed as a prostitute.
“Why did she go so early?” Jodine asks.
Allie’s Sunday shift starts at six and it’s only five. “Because she forgot to change her clock. I wanted to talk to you privately so I didn’t remind her.” Nick went home with a prostitute.
Jodine laughs. “I can’t believe you let her go to work an hour early!”
“I needed to talk to you about Clint.” He went home with a disgusting whore.
Jodine sighs and reclines her chair again. “So do I. I met someone at the party.”
Why are we talking about her? She has a boyfriend. She shouldn’t be meeting anyone. “Don’t you have a boyfriend?”
“Manny’s not really a boyfriend. I was at the bar and—”
“I have to call him,” I interrupt Jodine, who for some reason is babbling about Greek mythology or something. How dare he go home with another girl! How dare he! He comes to his ex’s party and goes home with another girl, a prostitute, a disgusting whore!
“You have to call who?”
“I have to call Nick.”
“Nick? We’re not talking about Nick. We’re talking about Count Zeus!”
Can’t her problems wait for two seconds? Aren’t mine a little more pressing at the moment? “Why doesn’t he miss me?” I say out loud, more to myself than to her. “Didn’t I look good last night? He chose a whore over me, can you believe it? What is he, blind? I have to call him. I have to tell him what a prick he is. I have to tell him that he misses me.” I hurry into my room and close the door.
“She’s not a real whore, Emma! She’s a law student!” Jodine hollers from the living room.
I dial his number. Pressing the familiar buttons sends streaks of regret through my arms. It rings once. Twice.
“Hello?” he answers.
“Nick.” Thank God he answered. “Hi.”
“Emma?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Hi.”
What is this? What is oh? “I need to talk to you,” I say.
“Talk? Now?”
What, he’s deaf now, too? “No, I called now, but I want to talk tomorrow,” I say, immediately regretting my choice of words. “Yes, now,” I amend in what I hope he recognizes as my deep, throaty voice.
“Now isn’t a good time.” His voice, however, is tense. Not the reaction I was hoping for.
“Why not?”
“Well…”
“Well what?”
“I have someone…someone is here.”
Someone is there? Oh, my God. “Is it the call girl? Is it? Is that whore in your apartment?” I shriek.
“Emma, calm down.” His voice takes on a condescending crescendo. “Don’t call her a whore. Her name is Monique. She’s a law student.”
Congratufuckinglations. “Why is she there?”
“We’re hanging out.”
Hanging out? Is that what law students are calling it these days? “Let me talk to her,” I say. I should be allowed to talk to her. If she wants my man, let her fight it out with me and not just sneak behind my back.
“No, you can’t talk to her.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can’t.” This is the second time in two minutes that someone has said “No you can’t” to me. “Can I go now?” he asks before I have time to reflect on this.
Go? Does he think I’m letting him off the phone so he can go “hang out”? I don’t think so. “Did she just get there?”
“Not exactly.”
Oh, my God, he did fuck her. “You fucked her!” My low, throaty voice has reached an octave that until this moment only opera singers have reached.
“Emma, that’s none of your business. We’ve been finished for months now. Get over it.” The next thing I know there’s a dial tone blaring into my ear.
He hung up on me. HE HUNG UP ON ME?
I storm into the living room. “Get up. We’re going.”
Jodine jumps off the chair. “Going? To 411? You think Count Zeus will be there?” she asks, her face brightening.
What is she rambling about? Why would we be going back to 411? “We’re going to Nick’s. Come on.”
Jodine sits back down. “We’re not going to Nick’s. You’re crazy and I have a headache.”
“We’re going to Nick’s. I need to talk to him. Take an aspirin and drink a glass of water to flush the alcohol out of your system. I need you to come. I really, really shouldn’t be alone right now. I don’t ask for much, but I’m asking you to please, please come with me.”
“Why do you close your eyes when you talk?”
“I do?” What the fuck is she talking about?
“Yeah. Only when you get upset.”
“Who cares? Let’s go.”
“All right,” she says, not moving.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” she answers. “It’s just that…”
“What? WHAT?”
“Your eyes,” she says with awe. “Are those tears?”
Hello? I’m human. I have feelings. Which is more than I can say about that piece of shit who left me for a fucking whore. No doubt about it, any man who can do this to his soul mate has to be a complete scumbag.
“Emma, can you slow down? You’re scaring me.”
I turn right onto Eglinton Avenue and make a sharp left onto his street.
“Have you ever gotten any speeding tickets?”
“A few.”
“How borderline are you to losing your license?”
“As borderline as you can get.”
“Don’t close your eyes when you drive.”
“Sorry. I’m trying to think but you keep talking.” I pull up two houses behind his duplex.
“He lives here by himself? How does he afford it?”
“His father pays for it.”
I turn off the ignition. We stare at the house. Here I am. What do I do now? “Do I just ring the door and yell at him?” I ask Jodine.
She considers this and shakes her head. “You’ll look petty.”
“I want revenge. Can I key his car?”
“If you’re caught, you’ll have to pay for the damages. I’m not sure if no-fault car insurance covers felony.”
We snicker. What am I doing here again? Have I gone crazy? I need a smoke. Where are my smokes?
A two-hundred-watt idea pops into my head. “Wait here.” I get out of the car and close the door before Jodine can ask me what I’m doing. I walk toward his duplex and follow the path into his backyard. The fence lock is broken, just as I remember.
And there it is. His prized possession. Ah. The sweet, sweet taste of revenge. It’s a good thing this fall has been so warm or he would have moved it inside.
“Let’s go,” I say when I get back to the car.
“Where?” she asks wearily.
“You’ll see.”
I take off down the block. “I think there’s a twenty-four-hour hardware store open on Mount Pleasant Road.”
“Hardware store?” Jodine sounds mildly alarmed. “What do we need at a hardware store?”
I start laughing uncontrollably. “It’s a surprise,” I say.
I slam into Park in the hardware store parking lot. “I’m leaving the car running, so don’t go anywhere.”
“Where am I going?”
I run into the store. “Hi!” I say to the hardware man. He’s wearing overalls and a baseball cap. It’s Tim the Tool-Man Taylor!
“Can I help you, doll?”
Help you can. “Can I get an ax?”
“An ax?” He looks at me with surprise. Do dolls not buy axes? I follow him to aisle eight.
He pulls out the mother of all axes. “This what you want?” he asks me.
“How about something a tiny bit smaller?”
He scratches his head. “You mean a hatchet?”
Whatever. Not sure what a hatchet is. Sounds like something Ma and Pa Hillbilly would bury after a feud with them-there neighbors. “Sure, a hatchet.”
Tool-Man Taylor hands me the perfect-size mechanism of destruction.
I’m not sure if being seen in the middle of the night with a mechanism of destruction is a good thing. “Uh, could you wrap it, please?”
He ties a plastic bag around the handle. Now the thing looks like a hatchet with a bandage.
“That’s it?”
“You want a bow and ribbons, go to the Gap,” he says.
I take off the bag and wrap it around the blade. Now it looks like a giant lollipop, but it’ll have to do. I go to the car.
“What’s in the bag?” Jodine asks.
“You’ll see.” I throw the car into Reverse and head back toward Nick-the-Prick’s. I stop the car two houses down from his place and turn off the engine.
“It’s too bad we’re not wearing our Charlie’s Angels costumes for effect,” she says. “Am I waiting in the car?”
“No, I need your help. Follow me. And shh!” She follows me and the lollipop-hatchet back to Nick-the-Prick’s, through the fence, into the backyard.
She crouches against the house’s brick wall. “He should really fix that lock,” she whispers. “So what are we doing? Tee-peeing his backyard? What’s in the bag? Shaving cream and toilet paper?”
I point to the six-foot plant that is slightly hidden beside the fence. “You see that?”
“The tree? That’s what you want me to cover in toilet paper?”
“That baby is coming down.” I pull the bag off the hatchet and grin wildly. “It’s the perfect revenge. He loves that plant!”
Jodine gasps. “What is that? What are you talking about? We can’t just cut down a tree. I’m not a tree murderer! Why would we cut down a tree?”
“It’s not a tree,” I giggle. “It’s a marijuana plant.”
Jodine’s mouth opens in shock. “We’re…it’s…”
“Close your mouth. You’re acting as though you’ve never seen one before.”
“Not everyone has led the illustrious life you have,” she hisses at me. “How can he grow this stuff here? What about the people who live upstairs? Isn’t this problematical?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Jodine. They’re a hundred and eighty years old. They don’t steal any—they don’t smoke dope. Now, get ready to catch it. I’m going to start chopping.”
“Catch it? But…but…”
“Shh. Just catch.”
I plunge into it. This baby is going down.
A quarter in…halfway in…three quarters in…a light bursts on in the upstairs bathroom.
I freeze. I can see Nick-the-Prick’s face clearly. He’s in the upstairs bathroom.
“He can’t see us,” Jodine whispers. “It’s too dark out here.”
“I know,” I whisper back. “But you know what that is, don’t you? It’s the after-sex pee. I can’t believe he did it again, especially after our conversation.”
“Fucker.”
“I can’t believe Monique is such a ho.” I try to keep my voice at scratch level. “I’m calling her Mo-Ho from now on.”
“What’s a Mo-Ho?”
“Like J. Lo? Jennifer Lopez? Get it? Mo-Ho?”
“You’re insane.”
Nick-the-Prick sticks his index finger into his nose.
“Don’t laugh,” I whisper, giggling. “Shh!”
He turns the light off and I go back to work. A few more strokes and the plant starts falling. “Timmmmmber!” I whisper.
“Ouch!” Jodine mutters. “I got it. Let’s go.” She lifts the front end and I pick up the back.
“I can get disbarred for this,” she says, kicking the fence open with her foot.
“You haven’t even been barred yet. But if you do, you can always get a job as a drug dealer.”
“Too much manual labor,” she grunts as we trudge out the yard.
“Yeah, but think of the benefits.” I motion down the street. “I’ll get the car,” I tell her. “You wait here.”
Her eyes widen. “You can’t leave me with this thing!”
“I’ll be two minutes. If anyone comes, pretend it’s a Christmas tree.”
I make a mad dash for the car, start the engine and drive toward her with the door still open.
We try shoving the plant across the back seat, but about a quarter of it sticks out of the car.
“Let’s put it through the window,” I suggest.
“Are you nuts? There must be some kind of law against driving with things hanging out the window. What if we get stopped? One more ticket and you might lose your license.”
This woman is going to be a lawyer? And she’s worried about my license? I look at her face and realize she’s kidding. “Do you have any other ideas?”
She turns the plant around and places the end with the jagged edge on the back seat and props up the end with the flowers on the dashboard. “Violà!”
Now, why didn’t I think of that?
“Where’s the hatchet?” she says.
“Don’t you have it?”
“Why would I have it? It’s your hatchet. I’m just here for company.”
She’s starting to annoy me. “I don’t think so. Once you got in the car you became an accessory to the crime.”
“We have to go back and get it. It has our fingerprints on it.”
“Think, Jodine. Nick-the-Prick isn’t exactly going to call the police. ‘Hi, Officer, someone stole my marijuana plant?’ We’ve committed the perfect crime. Besides, we don’t have time to go back. We have to make another stop.”
“What now?”
“The pharmacy.”
“We have enough drugs,” she says with a straight face.
Jodine made two jokes in one night! Alert the media!
“I’ll stay here,” I tell her as I pull into the pharmacy parking lot. “Go in and get a pack of garbage bags so we can cover the plant.”
“Okay.” She opens the door.
“One more thing.”
“What?”
“Get a pack of rolling papers.”
“Rolling papers! Why?”
“For papier mâché. Why do you think? To roll with.”
“They’re not going to sell them at a pharmacy.”
“I promise they will.”
“How do I know what they look like?”
“Just ask for them.”
“Isn’t that illegal? Won’t they know what we want them for?”
“If they ask, which they won’t because they sell about a million packs of them a day, tell them you’re rolling your own cigarettes.”
Jodine looks as if she’s going to have a heart attack.
“Go on,” I urge. “The longer I sit here with a six-foot marijuana plant sticking onto my dashboard, the more chance we have of being spotted.”
Three minutes later, Jodine rushes back into the car. “I can’t believe how easy that was!”
I reverse out of the parking lot onto the road.
“Can you please, please slow down now?” Jodine asks. “Getting a ticket right now would be really, really bad.”
I cross my fingers for a male cop.
23
ALLIE CONTEMPLATES THE FUTURE
ALLIE
“Sure, I’d love to donate fifty dollars to buy a library book,” Mrs. Connington says.
“Wonderful!” I press Script Two on my screen. Wohoo! My third today! I’m defying all laws of averages! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Telemarketing Girl!
“I think my daughter-in-law’s nephew wrote a book about whales. Can I buy that book?”
The targets don’t always get that the buying of a book is a theoretical deal. I readjust the headset on my hair. “While I can’t guarantee that the library will purchase your selection, I can certainly jot down your recommendation.”
Sometimes the targets are pretty nice. It’s sad that this surprises me, but it does. I guess it’s because most people are so mean. I don’t know why this is so; I’ve never hung up on a telemarketer when he/she calls me, even if he/she is selling steak knives. (We need steak knives, actually. And forks and spoons. Hello? Tele marketers? Call us!) Even if I know I’m not going to buy anything, I would never be rude. It’s someone’s living.
Phone surveys are my favorite. Pre-fire, someone from the Ontario government called and asked me four gazillion questions, which I didn’t really mind because I love the idea of being included in provincial statistics. (“That’s me! I’m a college graduate! Look!”) He asked me if I was in sales and I said yes. I tried to explain that I was in phone sales, as in telesales, not the sale of phones. But phones would be a stupid thing to sell, via phone. If someone answered, then he already had one, right? Anyway, the Ontario research guy said, “Thank you for your time, but I’m afraid that people in sales are not eligible for this survey,” and hung up. Huh? Is there something wrong with people in sales? Are we not researchable? Am I even in sales? And what about the four gazillion questions he already asked me? They weren’t part of the survey? It took four gazillion questions to get to the point where he could realize that I wasn’t even survey-able?
Script Two is blinking on my screen like a flashing red stoplight. I’m not talking about an eight-sided stop sign; I’m talking about a converted traffic light, you know? When I first got my training driver’s license, my parents had the dumb idea that my brother was the ideal instructor candidate. On our first driving excursion, he told me that stop signs with white borders were optional. I believed him and almost ran over an old lady walking her poodle. I would have lost a ton of points for that one. Instead, I swerved and took off my dad’s side mirror. I tried to explain to my parents that it was my brother’s fault, but they claimed I should have known my brother was teasing and if I wasn’t sure, I should have checked the manual. As Jay would say, does that make any sense? What was I supposed to do? Pull out the manual while I was driving? Would that have been any safer?
I don’t like driving. I’m not great at it. I’ve been in three accidents and they’ve all been in the parking lots of shopping malls.
