The Devil You Know (7 page)

“Um, My-'ammy?” No recognition. “Mi-ami? Moons over Miami?”

“Oh, it rhymes!” Carrie seemed delighted. “I never thought of that before.”

Emily considered explaining further, but before she could, Carrie's face took on its serious cloudy look. “If I could go anywhere, know where I'd go?” she asked.

“Where?”

“I'd go home,” she said and, like a well-trained movie star, her dark-lined eyes instantly brimmed with tears.

“Oh, for fuck's sake,” Emily said, setting down the menu. “Don't cry.

Don't do this, Carrie, you'll make yourself crazy.”

“I know, but I just miss my family soooo much. It was one thing when they were only an hour away, but now they're so far and I can't just see them whenever I want to!”

“Yeah, I know…but you're always obsessed with whatever you can't have.”

“I'm what?”

“Nothing,” Emily said. “Forget it. I'm just coming down a bit and getting bummed out. Let's just eat our food and get out of here, go smoke a joint.”

“No—what do you mean; I'm obsessed with what I can't have?”

Emily sighed. “I just mean that, like, with your parents, or guys, or whatever, that you get really interested in something or someone if you can't get it. Like, if a guy already has a girlfriend or lives out of town or whatever. That's all I meant, but, like, everyone does that, right? We all do that.”

“Well, Merry fucking Christmas.” Carrie picked up a crayon and, head down, began filling in the placemat maze.

“Aw, come on…I'm really sorry, okay? I didn't mean anything. I don't want you to be sad, that's all. Your parents aren't even—”

Her head popped up. “Oh, now what, you're gonna talk shit about my parents too?” She was dangerously near to shouting.

“I was going to say that they're not even here, so there's no point in worrying about them,” Emily said with finality, but Carrie didn't look fooled.

The waitress arrived with their plates and plunked them down at the table's edge. Emily slid the ketchup over to Carrie. “C'mon,” she said. “It's Christmas, right? Let's not fight.” But even as she said it, there was an urge inside her to have that fight, to tell her to go fuck herself, with her sulking and her stupid surprises and her boyfriend stealing and her bullshit. Emily imagined tipping Carrie's plate into her lap, dumping the glass of Diet Coke over her head. Instead, she pulled the container of sugar over. Every restaurant in town had the Commonwealth Games sugar packets with the cartoon killer-whale mascot in various sporting events. Carrie's favourite was the skeet-shooting one, because it featured the manically grinning orca standing on his tail fin and clutching a rifle. Emily found one in the container and set it beside Carrie's plate. “See? I even got you a Christmas present and everything.”

“That reminds me…” Carrie said, rummaging through her mini backpack. She pulled out a small red box with a white ribbon tied around it.

“What's this?”

“It's your present,” she said. “Open it,” she added without enthusiasm. Carrie usually loved giving presents.

Inside the box was a pair of earrings: silver hoops with a swirly rainbow bead. Emily had seen them at a stall in Market Square weeks before but couldn't afford them. “Carrie, oh my god...”

“They weren't that expensive,” she grumbled.

Emily remembered agreeing that they wouldn't buy each other gifts; that their gifts to each other would be the booze and weed that they went halfers on. She twisted inside with guilt as she watched Carrie finger the sugar packet, and for a moment Emily wondered if maybe that was the point. She smiled her most grateful, kindest smile. “I'm going to the bathroom to put them on. Come with me?”

“Nah, you go ahead.”

Emily didn't look good. Being high and staring at her own face was always a bad idea. The bluish anti-heroin light of the restroom wasn't helping, casting shadows under her eyes and making her skin look sallow. She put the earrings on and turned her head back and forth, the little beads sliding around. They were lovely. She'd have to try and save some money in the next few weeks to get Carrie a present too. Maybe a new journal. Carrie loved to write poetry and read it to Emily. Emily never knew what to say. Honestly, she thought it was pretty bad, but she could never say that. Any response weaker than unbridled enthusiasm could send Carrie into a daylong funk. Emily wrote in a diary sometimes too, but having to share its contents with anyone was her worst nightmare. She didn't want to know what other people thought about it, least of all Carrie. When she'd arrived, one of the first things Emily did was to slide her small coil-bound notebook above one of the suspended tiles in the basement ceiling.

When Emily first arrived in Victoria and phoned her parents, her mother told her Steve had been calling. She managed to hold out for three full days before she called him back.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“I'm fine thanks, how are you?”

“Spare me. Did your mother give you the messages?”

“Yeah.”

“I almost drove to the airport to stop you, you know.”

“Why didn't you?” Emily imagined a movie scene, joyful tears and running down carpeted corridors.

“I don't know. I guess I was worried about what would happen next.

I miss you.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you dumped me.”

“I didn't dump you—stop fucking saying that! I just got freaked out. Maybe if you'd given me a chance instead of jumping on a plane, we could have talked about it.”

Emily sighed. Every conversation she had with Steve now made her feel queasy. “I got tired of talking. I wanted to do something for once.”

There was a silence. She could hear a siren on the other end of the line. “Listen, I have to tell you about something that happened.”

She could always tell when Steve was going to give her bad news; his voice dropped lower, just like it got higher when he was angry.

“Carrie and I, we, um, kind of…got together on the night you left.”

Emily hadn't known this, but hearing it, it made perfect sense. Steve had surely wanted to punish Emily by screwing someone. And who better to do it with than one of her own friends? As far as loyalty, Carrie had none when it came to guys. She'd always been hot for Steve anyway, sticking her boobs in his face all the time. Emily bit the skin around her nails. “So?”

“So? Is that all you're going to say? Okay, so, it was just a one-time thing. I was hammered and fucking depressed and it just happened and I wanted to tell you before you found out from someone else.”

“Really. Like who?”

“I dunno, I just didn't want one of your friends to tell you.”

Emily laughed. “It's okay, Steve. I don't have friends anymore. I had to move thousands of miles to get away from all my so-called friends. But guess what? It turns out that you and your stupid shit can transcend time and space.”

“Don't say that. I said I was sorry.”

No, you didn't
, thought Emily. “Why should I care, anyway? We were already broken up.”

“Just—look. Don't say anything to Carrie, okay? You know what she's like. She made me promise not to tell you and she was really upset about it after.”

“Yeah, I know what she's like.” Emily snorted. “I bet she was really hurting. I bet you two had a good cry about it. Right after you fucked.”

Silence. She imagined Steve smoking in his ugly brown chair in the corner of the apartment, with his legs tucked under him like some skinny kid.

“It wasn't like that. It was…let's just forget it, okay? Please? I miss you, Em. I really miss you.”

She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of saying it back.

Emily looked at the girl in the Denny's bathroom mirror. She'd moved across the country to change her life, and everything was still exactly the same. The same people, the same shit, the same Emily never saying what she really thought or felt about anything. What a joke. If she'd known nothing would get better, if she'd known she'd still be lonely and confused about everything, if she'd known she'd still be saddled with a best friend she wanted to choke half the time, she could have just stayed home. Now she was stuck here, because the only thing worse than staying would be to give up and go crawling back home. “God, you're a stupid bitch,” she said. The girl made a face and shook her new earrings to and fro.

On the ride home, Carrie slowed down and stopped in front of the big Catholic church. The doors were open and people in suits and dresses were filing inside. Carrie got off her bike and walked it over to the bike rack.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm going to church,” she said, taking her lock out of her backpack.

“Just like I have every other year with my family,” she said, giving Emily a wounded look.

“Um, aren't we a little weird-looking for church? Maybe? And a little high?” Emily felt a fist of panic clenching in her chest.

“Speak for yourself,” Carrie said haughtily. “I'm fine.”

“Okay, well…wouldn't you rather go to Guyland or something, see if anyone's there?”

Even the promise of boys wasn't going to work. “You go if you want.

I'm going to church. Do what you like.” Short sentences out of Carrie were always a bad sign.

“Well, I'm not letting you go in there alone,” Emily said.

“Fine. Just try not to fuck anything up. Do what I do.”

They stepped inside and Carrie dipped her fingers in the holy water and crossed herself. Emily did the same but couldn't remember the right order. Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch—but what side was for watch and what side was for wallet?

They slid into the end of a crowded pew near the back. Carrie wouldn't even look at her. Emily picked up a hymnal and tried to predict the order of events. She'd dated a Catholic guy in grade ten, and had been inside a Catholic church a few times, but most of it was a mystery.

When the Mass started, she tried to follow along with whatever everyone else was doing, feeling like a neon sign was flashing
SINNER
over her head. After a couple of hymns and prayers, people began filing towards the front for Communion. As Emily mentally composed a list of recent sins—lying to her parents, smoking, drinking, taking drugs, premarital sex, hating her friends, the occasional shoplifting, taking the Lord's name in vain—Carrie rose to her feet and tugged down the hem of her cut-offs with exaggerated dignity.

“What are you doing?” Emily whispered.

“I'm receiving Communion,” Carrie hissed, staring straight ahead.

Emily hoisted herself up, level with Carrie's shoulder. “But…don't you have to confess first?” Emily remembered from her old high-school boyfriend that you couldn't take Communion without making regular confessions—because he'd avoided both during their four months of frantic, furtive sex.

Carrie finally looked at Emily and her mouth was a hard thin line. “I don't have any sins to confess.” Then she turned and walked away.

Emily sat down. She could smell the sweet reek of Dewberry perfume left where Carrie had been sitting. She watched as her friend sashayed towards the altar in her fishnets and cutoffs and falling-down stripy arm warmers. Every face in the church followed her progression up the aisle. She held her head high, just as she had when she had walked into Emily's apartment with all her stuff, or when some guy on the street told her to suck his cock. The way she probably walked out of Steve's apartment the morning after she screwed him.

Emily was hot and cold and dizzy all at once, her guts turning to liquid. She clenched her teeth, lurched from the pew and made her way out the door. Outside, in the little strip of holly bushes beside the church, she dropped to her knees and threw up her Moons Over My Hammy and mushrooms and tea and Bailey's. It burned her throat and her nose. She wiped her mouth with an arm warmer and untangled her hair from the holly branches. She retched again, but nothing came out. Her insides felt pummeled and raw.

Emily turned away from her puke and sat on the pavement. She rubbed her muddy hands on her dress, and saw her tights were torn at the knee. She hoped no one would notice her. She thought about getting up and walking to her bike, but her legs were stiff and cold. She whispered, “Come on, just get your shit together, man.” Her voice sounded pathetic. She started to shiver, and reached up to pull her hair off her clammy neck. In one ear, she felt the cool weight of one silver beaded hoop. In the other, there was nothing. From inside the church, the congregation began to sing.

Blonde

B
LONDE WAS ALWAYS TRYING TO LET THE WIND OUT OF HIS
sails, take him down a peg or two in front of everyone in the store. She had little regard for his position, for his commitment to the customer service vision, for his stupid business diploma. Just a bag of hot air, she said, to anyone in earshot. The big blowhard was pushing for a job at head office, she said, climbing the corporate ladder on everyone's backs. Secretly, she stood close to him during their morning meetings to smell the nicotine on his skin, the smell of her father.

She accused him of cutting her hours, of shorting her cheques, of stealing her lunch. He raised his palms like a supplicant and asked if they could take their battles to the pool hall. Blonde laughed at him and went with him and hung her cleavage like a dare over the deep green felt. She never got good at the game, but when they played doubles, she created an amusing-enough distraction that was sometimes sufficient for them to win.

Theirs was an uneasy alliance, filled with defenses and imagined slights. He didn't want to be her boyfriend because it violated staff policy. Who'd want you for a boyfriend anyway? she asked, tongue out. But she found herself wishing for beauty that would render him defenseless. He could avoid her for an entire shift, then sneak up behind her at the time clock and squeeze her shoulders through her boxy polo shirt. Blonde would never admit that his indifference to her was the greatest aphrodisiac. She began smoking again, found herself borrowing from his crummy collection of old-man music. They sat for hours in his parked car outside her apartment and argued about romance. He kept his hands on the wheel, even then. He told her that his disease was the physical manifestation of an inability to love, but the way he watched her exhale, she thought he was just a good liar. She told him her disease was the physical manifestation of the world being a bad joke. Not sick, exactly, just not quite right. Her hair, impossibly glossy, rested nightly on a metal stand. The holy trinity of Blonde, Brunette, and Redhead completed on a row of styrofoam heads in the closet. You could tell a lot about a man by his colour preference, just like leg men were different from tit men. It didn't surprise her that Blonde was his favourite. She didn't like to talk about it, but she would have told him anything if it would break his self-imposed vows. Anything to be the one who had the power to ruin him.