Snapped (10 page)

The Twins look at each other, unsure of what to say. “I guess that would be all right,” the Boy Twin says.

“I mean, it’s the store’s camera, so technically I guess it’s
your
camera,” the Girl Twin says.

“Just like the bathroom,” I say.

“What?” the Twins respond in unison.

“Never mind.”

The Boy Twin takes a picture of me with the Girl Twin then the Girl Twin takes a picture of me with the Boy Twin. I take the camera from the Girl Twin, point it at my face and shoot. I drop the camera and the photo into my bag, not bothering to wait for the picture to emerge. The Girl Twin hands me several boxes of Polaroid pack film. I grab a copy of the current
Snap
from the stand by the door and leave without saying goodbye.

The heat outside is oppressive. Everyone looks like they’re walking in slow motion. My feet race to catch up with my speeding brain. The heavy backbeats have been replaced with up-tempo pop with no lyrics, sunny coffee-shop Muzak. My dog-shit-free heels clickety-click in time with the song in my
head. Gen and Ted jive while Olivier sits gurgling happily on a blanket. Eva and Parrot Girl eat chips and guacamole. They’re wearing leis. Esther is there and Lila is alive—they’re wearing sleeveless minidresses with big Hawaiian prints and their arms are perfectly toned. The Hipster Twins are carving slices off a roast pig on a spit that looks so delicious even the vegan artners can’t resist. Rockabilly Ben swims naked in a pool. Alex sits in a cabana chopping rails of coke and regaling a posse of teenage boys with tales of early-nineties debauchery. Jack eats casserole straight out of the baking dish. He calls me
baby
and
darling
and he kisses my hand. His lips leave a faint imprint of sauce. I run along the grass and dive headfirst into the pool. I touch the bottom then swim to the surface. I stretch out my body and float on my back. People are talking but my ears are underwater and I can’t hear a word.

The other shoppers at the market force me to break my rhythm and my methodic clickety-click, which infuriates me and annihilates the pleasantries of my nightmare backyard luau in favor of a tacky low-budget game show called
Fast Food
where the contestants are held at gunpoint as they do their shopping. There is no time for browsing or reading of labels, calculating the value of this can of deadly mercury-filled tuna over that can, or searching through pockets to find that goddamn coupon or asking the cashier if you can write a fucking check when the line behind you is twenty-deep. There is no time for such fuss. Contestants shop fast for what they need, the good ones have a list and a plan and they pay in cash. The shopper to finish in the shortest time wins a toaster oven and gets to shoot the slow shoppers in the head at close range. There’s a studio audience and everybody cheers when the last coupon-clipping check-writer is killed after pleading for his life and wetting himself.

Three full episodes of
Fast Food
play in my head before I make it to the cashier with my black shoe polish, ground beef and Velveeta. The clerk looks at the ceiling as she asks me how I’m doing, if I have any coupons or some kind of
club card
. She scans the tin of shoe polish, the pound of ground beef, the Velveeta—the Velveeta won’t scan. The cashier sighs and glides the bar code over the scanner again—and again. The Velveeta won’t scan. She keys in the UPC number by hand. The Velveeta won’t register. She picks up the phone on her till. “Price check on four,” she says, her voice broadcast throughout the store. The people in line behind me huff as if somehow I’ve willed the Velveeta not to scan, its code not to register. I think about abandoning the Velveeta, fleeing before the cabal of shoppers behind me overcomes me and suffocates me with a makeshift hood of plastic, not paper, bags. But I cannot leave, I am committed to making this casserole. I could use cheddar, Jack has cheddar in his fridge. But Lila’s recipe calls for Velveeta and Lila’s recipe has a star beside it.

A young man with a spotty face and deep wet circles under his arms approaches the cashier. He sighs loudly and takes the Velveeta away and everyone in line behind me huffs again and I’m sure they’re going to lynch me. I pull the camera out of my bag and hand it to the cashier. “Would you mind taking my picture?”

In Jack’s kitchen I gather all the ingredients and arrange them neatly on the counter, like they do on cooking shows. I brown the ground beef with the onion and some mushrooms and spices. I cook the egg noodles at the same time. I’m very efficient in my dress and heels. I stir a can of tomato soup into the beef mixture and then the Velveeta. Once the
noodles are cooked, I add those, too, and pour it all into a casserole dish I’m surprised Jack has. I cover it and put it in the fridge.

I pour red wine into one of those stemless glasses that are deceiving in the volume they hold and take out the Polaroids of myself. I write
Snap Store, Toronto
on one,
Fast Food
on the other and tape them on the pages after the
Artners Dinner
photograph in the notebook that was Lila’s and blank. I smooth out the latest
Snap
and turn to Eva’s
Life of Style
spread. I cut out the brunch picture, the one with Eva and Tiff, Rockabilly Ben and the girl looking away, who I’m convinced is Parrot Girl, and tape it into the notebook. Then I copy Lila’s casserole recipe out word-for-word.

The phone rings. Caller ID tells me it’s Jack calling from his cell. There’s a note by the phone that says
Sara—call Ted and Eva!
I crumple it up and toss it in the garbage. Jack talks fast and in fragments, the way he always does after a shoot. He speaks too loudly after too many hours of blaring playback of whatever song he’s making a video for. I hold the phone away from my ear and page through the phone book until I find Alex’s number and write it in the notebook underneath the casserole recipe. Jack keeps talking. They’re wrapping early, something about the drummer walking out, enough footage, deal with it in post, drinks at the pub, upstairs on Gloucester, you know the one, the pub, upstairs, on Gloucester, come on, you know, yeah, see you there, baby.

Jack isn’t at the pub when I arrive, but Alex is. He stands and waves me over and I wish he’d sit down because people are looking. He’s wearing a silky shirt and a black vest with shiny silver buttons, his pants are brocade and as tight as the
crushed velvet pair I saw him in earlier. I paste on a smile and tell myself this is not a mistake, Alex is an old friend, when he lived in Montreal we used to talk every day, he bought me drinks when I was twenty and had no money, he told me when my hair was all wrong.

“I was so glad that you called!”

“Me, too.” I remember the time my boyfriend dumped me for a man and Alex poured a pitcher of beer over his head. I remember all the blow-job tips he gave me and I really am, genuinely, happy to see him. It’s sad when people lose touch.

“So tell me everything—work is good? The boy is good? There is a boy, right?”

“Jack. He’s meeting us here.”

Alex claps his hands. “Yay!”

As if on cue, Jack walks in followed by a dozen others. There are two women: Renee, the makeup artist Jack uses, whom I’ve met, and Lucy Sparkle, the lead singer of the New York electro-goth band Jack is shooting the video for, whom I haven’t met but I’ve heard only has anal sex with her actor boyfriend because she once got pregnant and had an abortion, this according to a friend of a friend in Manhattan. I shake Lucy’s hand. She’s wearing lipstick the color of eggplant and looks appropriately dour.

Jack gives me a quick kiss and introductions are made all around. “And this is my old friend Alex,” I say with maybe a hint of defiance. Alex stands and curtseys. Jack shoots me a puzzled look that I choose to ignore.

Several drinks in and I’m crossing and recrossing my legs. I’ve been drinking beer and I have to pee, but I can’t leave the table because I need to monitor what Alex is saying because he keeps going off about this time we did this and
that time we did that and I’m mortified, although everyone else—including Jack—seems to find these tales of my aberrant youth riveting. I shift and grimace until I can’t take it anymore and I dash to the bathroom and get in and out as quickly as possible. I don’t have the patience for the pushbutton hand-dryer so I wipe my wet palms on Lila’s dress on my way back to the table where Alex is recounting my brief fling with lesbianism—if a drunken tongue kiss in a club with a hot Swedish girl can be considered lesbianism. I switch from beer to wine.

I should be happy that no one is laughing at Alex or calling him a queeny old hag even though he is and all of his stories are about a million years old. I should be happy that he’s happy being a queeny old hag with old stories. I should be happy that when he lived in Montreal and was the belle of the ball he took me under his wing and taught me about hair and music and blow jobs, but I am not happy at all. How can he just sit there being so fucking happy and old and in those brocade pants? Didn’t he know that the Hipster Twins were laughing at him today? Couldn’t he tell I was lying when I said I was leaving tomorrow? Doesn’t he know that I invited him out because I feel sorry for him? Can’t he just tell me why he’s happy—how he can be so shameless and oblivious and happy—and leave me alone with these people who would never talk to him if he weren’t my guest?

I’ll bet Alex won’t tell me his happy secret even if I ask nicely—I imagine it’s the only thing he has of any value, though some of his records might fetch a nice price considering the current market for eighties vinyl. I wish I had a tiny tape recorder. Ted gave me one once to record the interviews I did for
Snap
when I used to do interviews. I used it once
then buried it in the back of my desk. Notes were easier and besides most of the people I interviewed were in bands or fashion and so drunk and stoned that anything I wrote was often at least close to what they meant and most of the time I made them sound better, smarter, cooler than they really were. But the tiny tape recorder would be easier than the notes I’m scribbling on the small pad I’ve dug out of my purse. My pen moves furtively, my hands under the table. I can’t see what I’m writing and Alex is talking too fast and I fear I’m missing the clues that he’s dropping, the hidden hints to his happy secret.

My hand cramps at a crucial point in the conversation—Alex is talking about the time we went to Maine and couldn’t find a place to eat where the fish wasn’t fried—and my pen drops to the floor. “Fuck!” I drop to my knees and feel around the sticky tiles until my hands are filthy and I find the pen. I hit my head on the underside of the table as I try to stand and my wineglass topples over, spilling cheap Merlot down the back of Lila’s dress. “Fuck!”

Jack bends down and helps me up. Everyone stares. A flash goes off in my eyes and I’m blind. Alex breaks the silence with laughter and everyone joins in. My vision returns and I see Alex setting the camera and the undeveloped photo on top of my open purse. “I couldn’t resist,” he says with a satisfied smile. That I’m humiliated, filthy and sticky makes him happy, he’s practically erupting in cheer. His secret to happiness is revealed. I won’t need my notes.

I order another glass of wine to replace the one that’s drying on my back. Jack leans over. “Maybe you should take it easy, baby,” he says.

“Fuck off,” I snarl at him.

The chatter around the table dies until dour Lucy Sparkle, who allegedly uses anal sex as birth control, speaks up. “Hey, Sara, Jack says you can hook me up with Gen-Gen.”

“What?”

“Gen-Gen—Genevieve whatever—the French chick. We want to cover ‘J’taime My Baby Tonight.’ We do it live and it’s fucking awesome.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Didn’t I read she’s doing a TV thing?” Alex chimes in.

“And making a new album.” Jack talks like he’s the fucking authority on Gen but the only reason he knows anything about her at all is because of me.

“Oh my God. Sara—you have to hook us up. It would be wicked to work with her,” says Lucy.

“Wicked.” I pretend to agree, but what I’m really thinking about is how you’d get two big cocks up Lucy’s teensy little ass like that porn star who’s interviewed in the new
Snap.
“Has anyone seen the new
Snap
?” I ask and look accusingly at Lucy. She’s got a confused face on but I think she knows what I mean.

“I was reading it today on set,” says Renee the makeup artist. I love Renee. “Loved that new column with all the pictures—is that Eva B. your sister?”

I hate Renee. “She’s my assistant,” I say, doing my best to keep my voice even.

“Well, it’s great. Her look is so
fresh.
”

Fuck off, Renee. You’re not looking so fresh with your messy ponytail and your vintage Polo rugby shirt that’s probably a boy’s size twelve from the eighties that on second thought might not be a bad look—it might be a DO—but I just can’t tell. I have to go. I tell Jack that I have to go and he
tells me to relax. I pull on his sleeve and tell him I have to go
now
and he tells me to chill.

“I do not want to chill, I want to
go.
”

Alex lets out a whoop. “Oooh, you’d better go, Jack. You don’t want to set this one off.”

“Shut up, Alex,” I say.

“Uh-oh—she’s in a mood,” Alex says in a singsong voice.

I will kill him. No, I’ll make him kill himself, bite his own penis off right here on the table and bleed out while we watch and order more drinks—that, I’d stick around for. Alex was always bragging about how he was so flexible, that he could suck his own cock, get him high on coke or poppers and he’d show you. I think about grey pubic hair and then I really have to go. I stand up and straighten my dress. The stream of wine down my back is dry and stiff. I grab my bag. I think of Lila and what she would do. She would walk feetfirst, shoulders back and clickety-click out of there. She wouldn’t have been in a grubby pub—she would be designing dresses and eating casserole and reading her fashion magazines while enjoying a civilized drink and transcribing the pathetic ramblings of the kind of people who frequent grubby pubs.