Cadillac Couches (5 page)

“Right. So, uh, listen, have you seen her lately?”

“We met up for a late breakfast.”

“Oh, did she . . . ?”

“Look, Finn, what can I tell ya—”

“Oh don't worry, I'm totally fine. Totally. I just . . . well, you know. I just really think she's great.” He smiled helplessly, and I wondered why he thought she was so great if she had just given him the boot.

Something didn't smell so good, a bit like parmesan cheese. I looked around at the food on people's tables wondering which one it was coming from. From the speakers Tom Waits growled some cacophony about a guy named Frank and some raining dogs and steaming gutters.

“You know you really shouldn't take it too personally. It's truly not about you. She's fickle, flirty, capricious, whatever you want to call it.”

“Ya she's like the wind . . . ‘Wild is the Wind,' you know that Bowie song?”

“I love Nina Simone's version too.”

“So I probably shouldn't call her, should I? I mean, I would just like to tell her I'm fine and maybe we could go for lunch.”

“I don't think—”

He got up quickly, his springy curls bouncing as he walked over to the payphone on the wall beside the condiments counter. I watched him plug in his quarter and prod the numbers enthusiastically. He tilted his head to the left and sandwiched the phone between his neck and shoulder. With his left hand he lit a cigarette. He had one hand free to gesticulate; he was one of those people who really talked with his hands. The call lasted about one single minute. He looked at the phone for a moment before hanging up. He slouched back over to the table, dragging his feet, defeat in his eyes. My stomach spasmed, the cinnamon roll sat uncomfortably in my guts. I remembered how it was when Sullivan left. That pure disbelief that he could actually just go. Be gone from me. All my privileges taken away.

“You know what . . . I . . . I'm fine. I'm glad I did that.”

There was no escaping this: he needed help. “Finn, what happened?”

“D'ya really wanna know?”

“Tell me everything.” I sighed quietly, knowing he needed to talk it out. “Let me get a beer first, do you want one?”

“Sure, whatever—”

I went to the counter and got two Heinekens from the cute bartender.

“So I'm sitting at Pizza Hut wondering what I'm doing there. They play boy-band music there, for Chrissakes. It's like a hockey-jock hangout. All these guys are there stuffing their faces with pepperoni and cheese pizzas. Chins everywhere glistening with grease, it's gross, know what I mean? Cheering for the Oilers, mooning the Flames. I can't figure out why Bella wants to meet here. It's part of her charm though, you know, mystery. So anyway, eventually she shows up looking ridiculously foxy, right?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, really
hot
. She's wearing this black dress with twelve buttons down the front. I counted them while she was standing at the salad bar, spooning out croutons and bacon bits. And go-go boots.”

“What?”

“She was wearing go-go dancer boots up to her thighs.”

“Right,” I said. I really would've preferred to go home, but Finn was definitely too messy to be left untended.

“So she sits down and asks me first if I remember that this was just supposed to be a casual fling, no strings. And I say yes. And she says, ‘So why are you calling me five times a night?' I didn't quite know what to say. It's just that so many things make me think of her, like I was watching
TV
and I saw this show on penguins and she likes penguins so I had to call her. And then I was making a cup of tea and I noticed that we both like the same kind of peppermint tea and that's cosmic so I called her . . . I know, in retrospect it was ridiculous. I was in way in over my head and I didn't even know it.”

I went up to the counter and got us each another beer. The bartender winked at me.

“You're a peach. Thanks for the beer . . . So the funny thing is I was thinkin' I was all casual like, just calling her a few times, but otherwise restraining myself, not getting too heavy, too intense. I limited myself to only two telephone calls a day. And I kept saying to myself: I'm fine. I can handle this. I'm cool. And so today after she told me that we had to stop hanging out I thought again: I'm fine. All the way out the door, I kept thinking how fine I was, I said goodbye, I paid the bill, I left Pizza Hut. I got in my car and I'm driving home down 99th Street, past Barb and Ernie's—you know the German restaurant where the guy wears lederhosen? And just then I vomited down the side of my leg. I vomited! I was surprised as hell because hey: I'm
fine
. I'm
great
. What am I doing puking on my leg? So I manage to pull into a bus stop and open the door, and I puke some more in the gutter! And so . . .”

My stomach heaved. “Oh God, it's not parmesan, it's you! I think maybe you should go put some more soap on that.”

Finn went to the men's room armed with Lysol from the bartender. I could feel my eyes starting to tear up, but I had no idea why.

He came out of the bathroom, smelling antiseptic. He was smiling, repeating to himself and me: “I'm fine, really, I'm fine.”

“Okay, Finn, listen to me. You are not fine now, but you are going to be fine. Get yourself some supplies. How about some Häagen-Dazs ice cream, pizza, whatever . . . Go home and listen to eight sad songs twice at least—songs like Costello's ‘I Want You,' and Brel's ‘Ne me Quittes Pas'; listen to Townes' Van Zandt, Nick Drake, whatever you gotta do—and then have a hot bath and cry yourself to sleep. The guys at Blackbyrd Myoozik shop coached me on The Listening Cure and gave me the Van Zandt tip and it's true, he's super sad.

“You'll wake up feeling purged. Drink lots of water, other­wise you're gonna get dehydrated. The night after that read some Sylvia Plath, then watch a couple of wrist-slashers like
Shadowlands
,
Steel Magnolias
,
The Champ
, and cry some more. Movies with lots of bereavement. Call me anytime. The main thing is to get it out of your system, cry it out. Think: Operation Purge. Then watch something like
The Commitments
to reboot yourself.”

“Don't you think there's any hope?”

“I wish there was, Finn. I'm trying to be honest. Go home. Do what I say. Call me if you need me. Anytime.”

Because I'd seen so many of Isobel's victims in Finn's state, her mankilling had become a sad fact of the universe, like acid rain, so I couldn't really offer much in the way of solace or hope for reconciliation. I decided to hope that he was fine enough for me to leave him by himself, but I still felt guilty. I should've given him a heads-up ages ago. I should've, but I wanted the Dan Bern thing to happen. I sucked.

Later that night, in Isobel's apartment, I threw myself down on the plum-coloured couch. She handed me a bowl of popcorn and a glass for the red wine on the coffee table. She had a cozy apartment on the top floor of a three-storey walk-up. Her one-bedroom suite used to be basic, but she had transformed it into a loveshack extraordinaire. Arabian fabrics draped on the slanted wall. A beaded curtain hung in the bedroom doorway. There was a mosquito net sensually cocooning her bed, like in
Out of Africa
. Candles floated in water in glass vases around the apartment. A philodendron's vine circled the upper part of the four living room walls like a leafy green necklace. A Virgin Mary icon hung above the hallway arch. A priest she had tried to seduce had given it to her after she started showing up too regularly at church events.

“So j'arrive à Pizza Hut, which is terrible as you know, but I figure I'm relatively anonyme there. So he's all friendly and everything and I'm feeling mal, because it really is not fun being the dumper. The dumpee has no guilt whereas la dumper can barely walk with the load of feeling bad on her back. T'sais? Anyway, there Finn was, waiting patiently, doing his crossword puzzle. And so I smile and stuff a cigarette in my mouth so I don't have to keep fake smiling cause it's exhausting, and he starts in on our summer plans! The guy's fou totallement fou. I say casual sex, and he says let's go camping in the peach orchards in Penticton.”

“I think he just likes you an awful lot—”

“Bof ! The tablecloth was this 'orrible plastic red-and-white faux Italian gingham. I can't stand these franchise restaurants. Anyway, the other customers are cheering every two seconds because Gretzky keeps on scoring. Finn drank a Blue or Pilsner or—”

“I don't need all the details, really.” Isobel liked nothing better than to have a good old gossip about the minute events of her daily life.

“C'mon. Don't be like that, I'm trying to give you toute l'histoire. All right, here it is: I looked at him firmly, I didn't blink, and I said three things.” Isobel paused.

“What three things?”

“I said: Non. Non. And non. And with each non I pointed my finger at him to punctuate. 'Course he tried to break in:

“‘But—'

“‘Non.'

“‘But—'

“‘Noooo.' And then finally he got it.”

“So what did you tell him when he called you this afternoon?”

“I repeated the three nons. Apparently all great political speeches come in threes, three words, three slogans. Long Live Peace. We Will Triumph . . . Tu es fini.”

She said Finn had called her five times the night before, getting more ridiculous with each call, aiming for casual and landing desperate. It was probably a good thing she had cut him loose after all. She wasn't ready for anything more than a fling. Whenever we went to a movie or a play or got on a bus or plane, she always went straight for aisle seats, always positioned herself near exit signs. Her dad, whose advice on life consisted of sporting clichés, had told her long ago: the only way around the best offence is a good defence. She dumped first—dating survival of the fittest. “Treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen” was practically her mantra.

“You know Finn is a great guy, and he went way out of his way to get us that Dan Bern interview.”

“So, what, I'm supposed to commit myself for life to this guy? He wants to be a rock journalist anyway; it was a good experience for him too. I just can't deal with his needs. He's too open, too warm, too . . . goddamn eager.”

“Oh,” I said, realizing that's probably what Sullivan had thought of me. Too eager. To keep him. To have him stay. No matter how broken we were.

“You look a little funny, darling. You okay?” Isobel asked.

“The guy vomited on his pants. Finn was sick to his stomach,” I told her.

“He didn't?”

“He did, when he was driving home from Pizza Hut.”

“Oh,” she said, and then quoting
A Room with a View
: “‘I shall never forgive myself, never to my dying day.'”

She got up to open another bottle of wine.

side a, track 3

“I am writing

graffiti on your body,

I am drawing the story

of how hard we tried;

. . . your bones have been my bed frame,

and your flesh has been my pillow

. . . the old woman behind the pink curtains

and the closed door

on the first floor

she's listening through the air shaft

to see how long

our swan song can last . . .”

“Both Hands,” Ani DiFranco

Unplugged & Horizontal

The next day I stayed in bed way way too late. Late to the point of self-disgust. No one sleeps like the depressed. It was two in the afternoon when the doorbell rang. All I saw when I opened the door were flowers bursting with happy colour, and lots of them. And some guy's hairy legs under them. His face, hidden by the sheer mass of petals and stalks. They smelled gorgeous.

A delivery of twenty-four yellow-and-plum coloured tiger lilies. At last, I thought, at last. Romance! For me! My heartbeat sped up and my face warmed. I smiled bashfully as if I was at an awards ceremony. The delivery guy looked a bit nervous.

“Uh, I'm sorry, these are for the girl next door. She's not, uh, home. Would you mind keeping them for her?”

I took them in and put them in some water. Good karma, I thought. It really didn't help my mood though. I'd been lying in bed, thinking about Finn, Finn and Sullivan, me and Sullivan. Sullivan and the Amazon girlfriend. Sullivan and Isobel. Fixating in a vortex of Sullivan, I could feel myself going down that dark road, the one I know better than to go down. Sometimes, I can't resist the sick pleasure of it.

I related to Finn more than I wanted to—fellow underdogs of love and all. He was still in the throes of love angst, but I wanted to think I was well beyond all that—Sullivan was ancient news. But it was true that I still did, on dark days, spend hours and sometimes whole days pinned to the couch, mulling over our history.