Natasha wants to go out for dinner somewhere tonight but that means I have to shower, brush my teeth, and put on a nice goddamn collared shirt with clean pants (I have no clean clothes at the moment). She tells me that we never do anything she wants to do and I say
'well what about Tiffany's the other night' and she says
'you left and completely embarrassed me' and I laugh and say 'oh yea' at which point she hangs up.
I called 9-1-1 with an anonymous tip that the Cab-stalker is hiding out on Percy Street. Later in the week, when I turn on the news, all I see is commentary on the continued hostilities in Syria, another CEO of some company is getting charged with sexual assault, and brief mention that the Ottawa Police still have no leads on the recent abductions in and around Sandy Hill.
At night I can't sleep and in the mornings I try and get excited for the day, but black crows are cawing on the inside, reverberating my bones so that I shake sometimes and not even a goddamn shot of whiskey helps. My pain is throbbing, because I've been feeling this same way since the day she told me she doesn't feel the same way anymore. And I can't help but think that I blew it. They say you always want what you can't have, but it's not that; it's just that we take it all for granted. Not until you're waking up alone in cold sweats, waking up with a bottle of whiskey sitting beside the bed, and you can't hardly sleep anyways because seeing an old cripple reaching for juice-boxes at the grocery store makes you cry.
The worst part about all of this, even though I would do anything to get back with Sam right now, if we did get back together and all, I'm scared it might still be the same as it ended up before, and it's the best goddamn thing I've ever had, you know, so what the fuck can a guy do but go out and make a romantic gesture?
So that afternoon I go home and I clean up my apartment. I picture the two of us sitting on my bed, laughing at how small my place is. At the various holes in the wall or how my fire alarm is smashed in because the goddamn thing wouldn't stop buzzing one morning. And she would say 'Charles, you're such a silly boy' and I'd say 'but I'm your silly boy' or something corny like that, and everything would be alright again because Sam wouldn't care about my job prospects or who we were going to the club with that night?
But it's not like that; maybe it never was.
I have a shower and stare at myself in the mirror for a while before throwing on my new jeans and a beige sweater that Sam bought me for my 21st birthday. Jesus fucking Christ, that seemed so long ago now - what is happening? Help me my pretties - I'm melting?.
I walk downtown to the Rideau Centre and the snow is falling again, landing all wet and cold on the back of my neck. The sky is all grey overhead, and cars drive by noisily through the slush.
I go into People's and pick out a diamond necklace that shines silver in the florescent lights above.
"She must be a very special lady," the clerk says.
"Oh she is ma'am," I tell her, "she is."
I buy the diamond necklace for close to five hundred bucks - money that is supposed to be used for groceries and rent this month.
I've never had much use for money, to be honest. I mean, yeah, I use it a lot, sure. But I'm pro-economy. I'm good for democracy. Hurrah for capitalism! For pillaging and rape and slaughter! Because any piece of currency I get in my hands burns like poison until I've managed to secrete it upon some unsuspecting shop clerk or bartender. They probably need it more than me anyways.
Take Paul for instance, he's been married three times now - no kids. He's got that little two-seated sports-car, his expensive sunglasses and a Rolodex that has some pretty important people in it, but all of that shit was conditional.
I'm sitting in Sam's house at her kitchen table. Her hair is down and she's wearing a blue v-neck that makes her tits look amazing. I told her that I wanted to cook dinner for us sometime and she invited me over almost instantly, which I took as a good sign. She seems relaxed, and I catch her looking at me between bites.
"It's great that we can do this again," she says.
I nod, take a bite.
"It's been so long now - sometimes I miss those days."
Even though I haven't been here in a long time, it still looked the same, her house, but it didn't feel the same (maybe because I wasn't in any of the pictures on the fridge anymore).
"I haven't had a nice home-made meal like this in a while?" I tell her.
"Why don't you cook for yourself?" she asks. "You're a good cook."
"I don't like cooking for myself. I liked cooking for us though."
"Oh, Charlie Boy," she laughs.
She lives here with three other girls and they have a Spice Girls poster up on their living room wall, and beside the Spice Girls is a poster of Starry Night, which always cracked me up.
Sam's perfume reminds me of oranges and apples and scented candles.
"What have you been doing?" she asks.
"The same old stuff," I sigh. "I've been kind of in a rut since, well, I don't know, since always I guess."
"Charlie," she says, reaching across the table and touching my hand. "You're a great guy, you're smart, charming, funny. There's no reason you can't be successful and happy."
"That's just it, why do you have to be successful to be happy? Why can't we just be happy with what we have? I mean, what do we need all the other shit for?"
"What other shit?"
"It doesn't matter, I miss you."
I'm not hungry anymore and her plate is empty. The room is quiet. God, I just want her to say it. I want her to admit what she feels so we can go back to the way things were, but it's locked up somewhere inside her; deep inside her ocean blue ring that she's still wearing on her little finger.
"Have you talked with your mother lately?"
"Yes," she sighs, "she's doing fine. Her migraines are coming back again though, which usually leads to pain killers and booze. I worry about her, but she's so damn stubborn, she won't let anyone tell her what to do."
"That's too bad," I say.
"Yeah, it's frustrating," she says. "Her new husband doesn't make things any easier. I don't like him."
"Why?"
"Because he's a selfish bastard, and he's going to end up bankrupting my mom. God, I just wish my parents hadn't got divorced?"
"Me too."
We both sit there for a moment in silence.
I get up and walk over to the kitchen window. I light a cigarette and watch the pale smoke evaporate in the empty night air. The snow is glistening all frozen off the trees and makes the tears glisten in my eyes. Samantha comes up behind me and says 'what's wrong?' and I say 'I want you back' reaching for her, and she looks at me weird and sort of pushes herself away. I go over to her and get down on my knees like a real jerk-off, opening up the box with the diamond necklace in it. She looks at it and starts crying because she says she doesn't want to go back to the way it was.
"But things use to be so good."
"Used to be," she says.
And I guess there's not much else to say about it because when I try and hold her again she squirms away from me and runs upstairs to her room. She's gone before I can even show her the goddamn ballet tickets. I throw the necklace down on the ground and it shatters; the tiny diamonds scattering all over the floor, lost beneath the fridge.
That night I'm driving down Alta Vista Drive in Paul's convertible. I've got the top down even though it's a goddamn blizzard out. I can't stop fucking crying and it only helps when I really let it out, just wailing like a fucking baby, otherwise I feel like I'm choking - which is why I needed the fresh-air, if you must inquire, and the beer. Overall I'd say that it feels like a great inconvenience to even be alive right now.
I turn the radio up because a Nickelback song just came on that I'm pretty into called 'something in your mouth' but all I can picture while I'm listening to the words is Samantha with her pretty lips wrapped around some other guys dick.
My head is pretty soaked and the wet snow drips down the back of my neck as I drive. I shiver and pull
out the locket with the old lady and she looks disappointedly at me. Her frowning face makes me cringe and so I put it back in my pocket. I take a long drink of beer, and toss the can out of the car. I look up and panic because I'm careening right for someone's mailbox. I turn the wheel frantically but the tires won't grab. The car starts to spin and I can do nothing as the tires brake uselessly on the black ice. As the wheel thrashes from side to side in my hands I start to laugh and decide to completely let go, releasing my grip on the steering wheel and pulling my hands back.
The car misses the mailbox and does a nose dive into the ditch. There's an explosion of snow over the windshield and I smack my forehead on the steering wheel pretty good. I can feel the blood from my forehead start trickling down the side of my face. My door won't open because the front half of the convertible is buried in the ditch. I'm covered in snow and wetness. Luckily the street is empty, and the beers are unharmed. There's a tiny cloud of grey smoke coming from under the hood and I'm hammered drunk, still laughing at this whole situation. I try putting the car in reverse but the back tires just spin uselessly in the air. I climb over the back seat, making sure to grab the last beer, and jump down onto the cold pavement from off the trunk. The car is standing almost completely straight up on in the air, the back wheels hanging uselessly above my head.
I don't recognize any of the streets and a lot of the signs are covered in snow, so I guess it doesn't matter. I walk slowly away from the car, my beer freezing between my maniacal fingertips, taking long drinks and wishing I had a cigarette right now. I ruin everything.
'i only wanna hang out with you, like, i just want to be with you all the time' and I would say
'oh yeah me too baby, me too'
But then I'd sneak out after she'd gone to bed to go meet the boys at the bar, or to play X-Box, and when she'd wake up and I wasn't there? I guess that's probably how I felt now - completely fucking alone - and even though I was probably happier than I ever had been in my life, I still found a way to screw everything up. No one wants to be with someone who doesn't appreciate them. And when Valentines' Day came in February and I woke up and she had that big bag with a new shirt and chocolates and a really sweet card that she made herself - and I had nothing to give her, well that was entirely my fault.
After a while I stop and look back at where I crashed Paul's car, and the way that the trunk of the car is sticking up in the air, the shadow of the opened doors all spread out around it, well it sort of looked like a cross.
Chapter 19
I put a cigarette out on my arm today and the flesh sizzled up all pink and melting.
Chapter 20
It's Sunday night and I'm sleeping at Natasha's, her soft figure already asleep beside me, the gentle rise and fall of her chest. She was a good girl with a good heart; her head wasn't her own though.
I get a text from Sam that says 'sorry'. It says some other stuff too about how she still loves me, and that she misses me too but that's only because we were both so used to each other.
Winter weather melting outside the window. Exams coming up for classes that seem foreign to me because I haven't gone to any of them in over a month. Love is just an addiction, we grow accustom to someone and our brain gets used to being with them all the time. Love doesn't really exist.
And why does March always have to feel like an eternity?
Paul's been calling me like crazy, and every time I pick up the phone he starts screaming at me and I laugh for a little bit before I hang up. He can't say a goddamn thing to me. Even though I'd never actually tell Meredith about what I saw - not because I'm like a good guy or anything. I just couldn't bear to see that look on her face again. I am a coward.
Natasha lets out a sigh from her sleep and I sort of feel like playing poker so I hop on her laptop and open up Party Poker. I deposit 200 hundred bucks with my Visa card and I enter this superturbo tournament where you start with 300 hundred measly chips and the blinds go up every minute - short story shorter - I loose. So I toss on another 300 hundred bucks with the ol' plastic and I win a couple small games, but after that I start playing in a high stakes cash game and proceed to lose about seven hundred bucks to some asshole that sucks out on me twice. I close the laptop and wonder how I'm going to pay for groceries for the next month.
The next day Natasha has to get up early for work. I keep trying to pull her back into bed with me but she resists. I start making faces and rolling around, which makes her laugh and say 'i love you' before she leaves. I lay around for a bit until I hear one of her roommates in the shower. I sneak out while the bathroom door is still closed.
When I get home to my shithole apartment, I turn my cell phone on and see that Sylvester has been texting me all night about his dick and how sore it is. Patrick sent me a bunch of messages too, most of them saying the same thing: I'm so fucked right now. I toss my phone aside and yawn because last night I didn't really sleep at all. I roll over on my bed and pass out with my shoes still on.
?wrapped in silk, her hair around my fingertips - walking down the beach - then on the water, towards the sun that's burning orange over the horizon, the waves rolling softly on the shore, white caps rolling towards me as I move stealthily atop the water - completely weightless and carefree - my feet move me across the sea, and suddenly everything changes -
Natasha is with me now, we're in a car and she's driving. I start eating out her pussy while she drives, reaching over across the armrest and burying my head beneath her skirt. She giggles and says
'you're such a little whore Charles'
and when I look back up Natasha has transformed into Sam and she's got red-eyes and fangs and she says
'you really are Charlie Boy, just a fucking whore.'
The car crashes so all three of us get thrown out of the windshield and for a while I'm just flying through the air, suspended in nothingness, and it feels good so I don't really want to come down - then something changes - and everything is shaking with loud banging sounds and wetness?
Paul is in my apartment and he's got me pinned down by the shoulders, leering over me with his sinister face.
"Get off me," I say.
"What did you do to my car!?" he screams.
I try and push him off me but he decks me in the face pretty good, and I watch the bastard take a step back. His wedding ring leaves a gash above my eye and I feel that familiar trickle of blood begin to flow. Paul stands there breathing heavily looking down at me. I start laughing, which is all I can seem to do these days, and he asks me what the fuck is wrong with me.
"Fuck you dirt bag," I say.
He runs at me again, and even though I'm quicker than the old bastard, there just wasn't much room to maneuver in my little kingdom of an apartment. He heaves me down onto the ground and screams some shit about how much I've fucked up for him over the years. I squirm as he reins blows down upon my weathered face. I can taste that metal taste in my mouth and feel the blood trickling down my cheeks. He he he. What does it even fucking matter? Bright flashes of light explode behind my eyes.
He finally stops and moves away from my laid out body. I lie there all comatose,
watching out of the corner of my eye as he contemplates whether I'm dead or not. He paces around my room huffing and puffing for a minute, rubbing at the back of his neck.
He looks at me and says get the fuck up kid.
I stay perfectly still, lying there on the floor with my mouth hanging slightly open.
"Come on Charlie," he says, with real concern now. "Are you okay?"
As he moves closer and closer I amass a good amount of blood and snot in my mouth. I can see that he is genuinely concerned, his neck straining and beads of sweat pooling at the corners of his forehead. He says my name again and leans in closer. I wait until I can feel his breath blowing on my cheek, then I hork the goddamn phlegm ball right into his ugly goddamn face. At this point, Paul kicks me between the eyes and I do actually get knocked out.
I wake up on my cold hard-woo
d floor with dried blood covering my face and ants crawling up my arm. For once I can't laugh because I'm actually hurting right now - and sober. So fixing that quickly, I stuff some whiskey down my throat and almost puke, which makes me cry a little bit. I try and calm down by slapping myself in the face. I go into my bathroom and strip down naked in front of the mirror. My face is all purple on the one side and it looks like I've been crying blood, all streaked down my cheeks in wet patches. The gash above my right eye is crusted and dark red. I smile like a madman and drink some more whiskey. I don't bother cleaning my face and I throw on the same blood-stained clothes that I had on before. Then I head out the door.
People are staring at me rather strangely as I make my way down the street, and for once they are noticing me, the bastards! I smile and wave and say hello to everyone, looking like a raving lunatic with my bloody tears. No one has anything to say back to me except for this one guy who asks me if I need help, and I say 'you bet your fucking ass I do, bucko.' I reach out for him but he lurches away from me in disgust. I manage to get on a bus that will take me to Meredith and Paul's house. The driver almost doesn't let me on because I'm such a bloody mess. I show him that all the blood is pretty much dried now, rubbing at my shirt and face. He grimaces and nods begrudgingly. When I get off I say goodbye to everyone on the bus but they all just stare at me.
I felt pretty goddamn good now, to be honest.
I stroll on in the front door of the place my mom lives, and Paul is just getting home too, taking off his coat in the living room. He can't do a goddamn thing but stare helplessly as I stroll through the house, with my shoes ON, and I sit down at the kitchen table like I'm ready to eat dinner, blood still leaking from my face. Paul moves to the entrance of the kitchen and just stares at me, not knowing what to say as the blood drips down the curve of my cheek and splashes onto the clear white table cloth.
And that's when Meredith walks into the room.
She looks at me for an instant, and then bursts into tears. I smile at Paul and give him the finger under the table. Then I turn back to my mom and ask her what's for supper.