Snapped (11 page)

I navigate the stairs with some difficulty, but make it to the bottom without falling. I stumble my way to Yonge Street and flag a taxi. I’m close to sleep by the time we pull up in front of Jack’s building.

I unzip Lila’s dress as soon as I’ve dead-bolted the door. I pour the last half of the red wine from earlier into the stemless glass on the desk and drag myself to the kitchen. I turn the oven on and take the casserole out of the fridge. I wash my face clean and shower. I redo my makeup and put on a different dress. I set the table and light candles. I empty a bag of
mixed greens into a bowl and toss it in store-bought vinaigrette. I hear Jack’s key in the door just as the timer on the stove beeps.

I’m wearing oven mitts and holding the baking dish. “I made casserole,” I say brightly, holding it out for Jack to see. Orange pockets of Velveeta bubble up through the browned top.

“I don’t want casserole,” Jack says. His voice is flat.

“But I made it for you.”

“I don’t want casserole, Sara. I’m going to bed.”

I set the baking dish down on the stove and strip off the oven mitts. I toss back the last of my wine and follow Jack into the bedroom, trying not to cry.

He moves away from me when I move close. The lights are out and I’m naked—I’ve even taken my bra off. Jack is wearing boxers and a T-shirt. I press my breasts up against his back and he moves away from me again. I slide an arm around him and slide my hand inside his underwear. His cock gets hard in my hand and he groans and rolls onto his back. I straddle him and fuck him relentlessly until my inner thighs are chafed and he comes inside me.

Jack doesn’t try to talk me out of it when I tell him I’m going home three days early. I want my bed, my pillows and my ugly stretched-out underwear. Jack’s in a rush to get to the edit suite and the taxi I called will be here any minute, but I stop what I’m doing and push Jack back on the couch. I open his pants and hike up Lila’s dress. He feigns disapproval, but his cock is hard and by the time I get him inside me he’s moaning and bucking his hips. I bear down on him and think about Gen and Ted and Eva and
Snap
and that things aren’t really so bad—I just have to deal with it, be professional, wear my glasses and one of Lila’s suits. Jack comes just as my taxi honks outside. I climb off him and adjust my dress. Jack mentions that he’ll be in Montreal next week, to talk with Ted and me about the
Snap
video, TV, online whatever. There are no sentimental goodbyes.

The flight is full and I’m stuck in a middle seat between a businessman who doesn’t look up from the
Fortune
magazine he’s reading as I squeeze by, and a woman whose immediate eye contact and chipper
hello
tell me she’s a chatterer.

“Business or pleasure?” Chatty asks.

I’m bent over trying to pull one of Lila’s
Flair
magazines from the brown leather carry-on without elbowing either Chatty or the businessman, but it’s impossible so I stick my hand in Lila’s purse and feel around until I find my notepad and a pen. “What?”

“Your trip to Montreal—business or pleasure?”

“I live there.” I flip past pages of illegible notes. A Polaroid picture sticks out of the pad. I flip it right-side up and gape in horror. My eyes burn bright red, my mouth is slack and Jack’s glasses balance on the tip of my nose. My hair is disheveled and my shoulders are curled. I’m a softheaded hunchback with cleavage and my face looks so old. I shove the picture back in my bag.

“You’re a lucky one—I’d love to live in Montreal. There’s so much
culture
. It’s so
European.
”

“Mmm,” I say and start making a list of vegetables to buy. I’m going to eat healthier, cook more at home.

Chatty goes on about Montreal and her trip—it’s business, she’s a
life coach
and she’s written a book about women and work and
choices
and all I want to do is finish making my list of vegetables. She finally takes a breath as I write
bok choy
and I think she’s done with me, but she’s not. “So, what do you do?”

“I’m a photographer.” I say this out of habit and with no enthusiasm.

“That sounds exciting.”

“Actually, I’m the co-founder of
Snap
—it’s a weekly magazine, and we do a lot of
consulting.
” I have no idea why I say this.

“I know it,” Chatty says. “You do all that cool youth-culture pop-culture trend stuff.”

“Yup.”

“I’d love to interview you for my next book—it’s stories about successful women entrepreneurs.” Chatty pulls a slim leather case from the inside pocket of her suit jacket and produces a business card. “Seriously. Call me. I’m in town until Saturday. I know you’re probably
obscenely
busy but maybe you could find a window? I’m staying at the Queen Elizabeth.”

“Maybe.” I take her card.
Ellen Franklin, Franklin Enterprises, Toronto.
And in script lettering at the bottom of the card:
Because life is all about options.

After we deplane I try to lose Chatty Ellen Franklin by taking out my cell phone and pretending to check my messages even though the phone has been dead for more than a week, its charger plugged into the wall by my bed at home. I race through the terminal doing my best imitation of someone determined and important, the dead phone pressed to my ear. But Chatty Ellen Franklin catches up to me at baggage claim so I nip outside to smoke.

Chatty Ellen Franklin smokes, too. This is unexpected and elevates her a smidgen above her previous ranking as airline irritant. We smoke and make the requisite small talk about how awful smoking is and about how neither one of us really smokes that much, mostly when we’re stressed or when we drink, which for me is pretty much all the time but I don’t tell Chatty Ellen Franklin that.

We get our bags and I agree to share a taxi, not so much because Chatty Ellen Franklin has won me over with her perma-smile and motivational lingo but because I’m too exhausted to make an excuse not to and she thinks I’m a successful entrepreneur who should be in a book.

As we make our way into the city I learn that Chatty Ellen
Franklin is all about women helping women. She speaks to women’s organizations and networking groups about making the best choices for themselves—
because life is all about options—
and about encouraging other women to do the same. “It never ceases to shock me how it’s often
women
who keep other
women
down when we should be supporting each other. If a woman is unhappy with her choices she doesn’t want the women around her to be happy with theirs—you must have run in to this on your way up.”

I push the power window button up and down, up and down until I catch the driver glaring at me in the rearview mirror and stop. “Not that much—I’ve always worked mainly with men,” I say.

“Ah,” says Chatty Ellen Franklin, like this one statement has profound meaning. “But you have girlfriends? We see the same kind of judgment and competition in friendships, as well.”

“I can see where you’re coming from,” I say in the most noncommittal way. I could explain how I’ve alienated my best girlfriend by mocking her Wonderful Friends, how I want to quash my assistant like a pesky bug because she’s got this great
Life of Style.
I could explain my deep-seated loathing of Parrot Girl and how the only call I want to return is Esther’s—if she calls—and why I’m wearing a dead woman’s dress. I could try to explain but I don’t, of course, because I can’t explain it at all.

Chatty Ellen Franklin is dropped off first at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel with her bags and her life with its limitless options. I tell her I’ll call the same way a guy does after a drunken one-night stand and so-so sex. I think about my vegetable list and resolve to be nicer to Eva and to call Gen after I’ve sucked back a bottle of wine and when I know Ted won’t be home.

I’m not sure whether I should knock. But then I think, it’s my place and that would be kind of ridiculous. There’s music playing so I know Eva’s there. I turn my key and tiptoe inside, which is as ridiculous as knocking.

There’s no one in the kitchen or the living room, but I can see one of Eva’s vintage sweaters tossed over the back of a chair and an open bottle of sparkling water on the coffee table. It’s a bright and sunny Sunday afternoon but the shades are drawn and the windows shut. The door to the guest room is closed. I hear Eva talking but can’t make out what she’s saying. She must be on the phone. I pull up the shades and open the windows. I pour myself a glass of sparkling water and take a seat on the sofa. As I shuffle through a stack of mail I hear Eva giggle. I collect the magazines and newspaper sections that are strewn around the room and arrange them in a pile and I hear Eva moan. I’m about to rush into the guest room to make sure she hasn’t hurt herself when she moans again, louder this time, and lets loose a string of demands to fuck her, fuck her harder, fuck her
cunt
.

I stand in the middle of the living room, unmoving.
Eva said
cunt. I notice a pair of men’s shoes beside my peacock-feather-print wing chair and an expensive-looking briefcase that’s not dissimilar to an old-fashioned doctor’s bag and that’s when I know that Eva’s in my guest room moaning and demanding that Ted fuck her cunt with his mushroom-head dick.

I can’t leave. But I don’t want to stay. I want to hijack Eva’s car and bolt out to Pointe-Claire and get Gen and Olivier and drive them to a safe house that serves Cobb salads and has a round-the-clock spa, a place where suburban women go when they discover that their husbands are cheating on them
with fake redheads who are all
golly-gee
and manners on the surface, but are in fact more
fuck my cunt
. But I don’t leave. I stand, paralyzed, thinking that someone should publish an etiquette book that’s actually useful, one that would tell people like me what to do in situations like this.

Ted walks out of the guest room and things are suddenly much worse. He doesn’t see me and he’s not wearing any pants. I don’t want to look but I do—his mushroom-head cock swings as he makes his way to the bathroom. And he’s humming. It’s all too much. As my ass thuds into my peacock-print wing chair, Ted yelps, startled. It could be a scene in a movie if I hadn’t opened the shades and the hiss of air being pushed out of the chair cushion wasn’t audible. Plus I should be smoking and from where I’m sitting I can’t reach my cigarettes.

“Sara!”

“Hey, Ted.” I don’t turn to face him. One look at that mushroom-head cock today was enough. I remember that when I was a child and I asked my mother how, if a woman had boy and girl twin babies, the mother could tell which was which. My mother said that the boy twin would have a
ding-dong
between his legs and the girl twin wouldn’t. The Hipster Twins from the
Snap
store in Toronto pop into my head, naked and identical except for the flaccid, pasty
ding-dong
between the Boy Twin’s legs. My chest heaves. I feel sick.

“Sara, I—”

I hold a hand above my head. “Don’t.”

“Shit!” It’s Eva, standing in the guest room doorway. She’s wearing my black silk robe, the one that matches the lace-trimmed chemise. Eva’s too short to be wearing it and it drags on the floor.

“Hello, Eva.” I say this slowly. I motion them over to the
sofa. “Come, sit.” I stand as they sit. When I stick my arm out toward them to grab my cigarettes they both jerk back. It’s a movie, maybe a sitcom. No, definitely a movie of the week, a cautionary tale with Gen cast as the wronged wife, the woman in peril. The cast will be culled exclusively from actors who starred on nineties’ teenage soaps.

“Please, Sara, don’t tell Gen. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Ted is holding my favorite throw pillow over his mushroom-head cock and now I’m going to have to burn it. “Please, Sara. It didn’t mean anything.”

Eva glares at Ted. “Since it
didn’t mean anything
it won’t matter if Gen finds out.” She’s practically spitting.

“That’s not what I mean, Eva, come on.” Ted turns to me. “It just happened.” He looks like he’s going to cry. He should cry. In the movie of the week he would cry.

I take a deep drag and wave my cigarette at them as I blow smoke rings. “You should go.” They look at each other. “
Both
of you.”

Ted starts to protest and Eva talks over him. They jockey for position, raise their voices to be heard and all I hear is noise. They each want the chance to
explain
but I tell them to leave. I have a headache and I need a drink.

I may have cut my time in Toronto short but as far as I’m concerned I’m still on vacation and can’t be expected in the office until Thursday. That should give Ted enough time to deal with Eva and tell Gen or not and figure out that it’s best if he never brings it up to me again.

My first instinct is to tell Gen. She’d want to know. Or maybe not. I want her to know but I don’t want to be the one to tell her. Maybe she already knows, maybe they have an
arrangement
, though that’s unlikely considering Gen’s view
on my arrangement with Jack. I’ve slept with married men whose wives didn’t know and no one got hurt, except on occasion me if it went on for too long and I started to believe that I loved him and he loved me and that somehow someday we would be together. Gen slept with a married guy once, I’m sure she told me this in the early intense days of our friendship when if Gen wasn’t with Ted she was with me, drinking wine and spilling all of the secrets she didn’t tell Ted. And Eva—maybe it was just once, maybe she made a mistake. But, no, Eva said
cunt
and that tells me this was not a one-time thing.

I rewind the past month, try to recall every time I was with Ted and Eva together at the office, at lunch, Trend Mecca Bootcamp Weekend. Oh, God. Bootcamp weekend. Oh my God. Ted was there—he was never there before. I left early. Oh my God. I took Eva to their house for Olivier’s birthday. I aided and abetted. I was drunk and stupid and it didn’t occur to me that anyone other than Gen—and even this I find endlessly appalling—would want to fuck Ted and his mushroom-head dick. It’s not that he’s bad-looking or dumb or boring, but he’s
Ted.
And I am an unwitting accomplice, an accessory after the fact. But it’s not my fault, it’s none of my business, I can’t get involved.

“Oh, my. That is a sticky one, dear,” says Esther when I tell her about Ted and Eva and Gen and how I thought about telling Gen but decided I should stay out of it.

We’re walking to a bar Esther knows near her place. After Ted and Eva left I called Esther and suggested a drink. Walking to have a drink is much healthier than pouring a bottle of wine down my throat alone, at home, with the telephone in
dangerously close proximity. My cell phone is still dead and the voice-mail box on my home phone is full. I erased none of the angry messages from Gen or Ted or the panicked ones from Eva or the ones from Diane who used to work at
Snap
wanting to know if I could be a judge on the TV show she produces called
Stylemaker
. I will erase none of these messages so no one can leave a new one.

Esther doesn’t move very fast and I’m finding it hard to keep my pace slow to match hers. We stop at a corner and wait for the red light to change even though there’s no traffic coming in any direction. There’s a boarded-up shop—Esther says it used to be a tailor’s shop—that’s postered and graffittied with a giant For Sale sign that looks like it’s weathered more than one winter. Someone has spray-painted
Satin Rules
in red block letters on a slab of plywood that’s been nailed over one of the building’s windows.