Catholic Guilt and the Joy of Hating Men (31 page)

It took less than a week for Kara to bring a client home to my place. He came in and she made him take a shower, both of us waiting on the couch and not really talking about what was going on.

I was trying to be open minded.

At first I’d thought it was an attempt to spice up our week-old love life, and I was flattered if a little confused. But after he came out of the shower the guy handed me a wad of cash and Kara told me to wait in the bathroom with her cat, and I tried to figure out if the heroin use would have been the right place to draw the line.

She did let me keep some of the money.

And despite it all, that she was a metalhead heroin addict, that she usually forgot to flush the toilet even after taking a dump, that she often had sex with strangers for money... despite it all, I was pretty sure I was falling in love.

It didn’t feel like the last time, when I’d bought a ring because I thought that’s what you did after two years of living together with someone you didn’t hate most of the time. With Kara it felt like some kind of tropical disease, where I just had to be around her and know everything about her. And hopefully not the kind of disease where my organs are cooked from the inside out.

It’s funny how falling in love can feel so different the second time.

Kara and I were married three weeks later at an eco-resort on Vancouver Island. Callum had suggested we all drive out to Kootenay Lake instead, but I’m pretty sure it was just another attempt for him to show me that house built from leftover bottles of embalming fluid.

He was my best man, which was no surprise after twelve years of friendship and always having each others’ back, close enough to be honest with each other but never quite crossing the line into a devil’s threesome. I don’t think there’s anything we wouldn’t do for one another; when you find a friend like that you keep him no matter what.

Kara made Ashley maid of honor with a little less ceremony, and I had the feeling that her friend was more a placeholder than anything else. But it gave Callum and Ashley the chance for a second regrettable fling together and saved us from buying them thank you gifts.

Kara let me stick with the ring I already had from before, telling me she wasn’t overly sentimental and that there was no reason to waste money on trinkets when there’d be plenty of black tar to pay for.

The wedding went well, and the day after the four of us went up to MacMillan Provincial Park and played hide and seek in the big trees. It didn’t take long for Ashley to get lost; Callum cheerfully advised us to just leave her out there and head back to the resort for dinner.

Kara eventually found her, quite a ways off the trail, in a hole in the trunk of a giant Douglas fir, one that was big enough to hold two or three junkies of average girth. She was heating a spoon with her cigarette lighter and wasn’t the least bit concerned about cleanliness.

Kara shook her head. “That girl’ll be dead soon,” she said. Her lips pursed into a strange sort of smile. “Sounds like a nice change of pace, actually.”

“That’s not funny,” I said. I grabbed her arm and squeezed. “You need to take care of yourself.”

“Don’t get all mushy, asshole.” She frenched me with extra tongue.

By that point Ashley had finished shooting up and it was time to join Callum in the task of dragging a decidedly fucked-up Ashley over to his Mitsubishi.

After we dropped her off at what she claimed was her parents’ house in North Vancouver, I never saw Ashley again. We didn’t mention her anymore and to be honest I’m not sure Kara ever gave her another thought; I guess to her Ashley seemed dead already.

I’m not sure why she decided it had to be that way.

Callum moved out of the apartment. He and I had argued briefly about who got to stay, but my argument was boosted by the fact that my name was the only one on the lease.

I found out quickly that I was allergic to Kara’s cat, but luckily she knew a guy who had suspiciously cheap allergy tablets for sale over in Fraserlands. I found with practice that every fifth tablet or so caused me to black out for a few hours, so I set my alarm to take them each morning at 3:30 in order to give myself a little wiggle room.

Things were great, mostly. Living together was great, the sex was great… but the drugs were becoming a problem.

I’d originally thought Kara needed heroin like I needed my Irish coffee, just a hit to get through the day. But she was using more and more often as time went by.

She started bringing home new clients, guys who looked like they couldn’t really afford the $350, guys so shady I became convinced that I should start bringing my tire iron in from the car. Pretty soon she wasn’t making enough money to cover the drugs, and after a month or so I was starting to have trouble making rent.

“I think it’s becoming a problem,” I told her after her scuzziest client yet had left, and as she grabbed her over-sized handbag from its drawer in the nightstand.

“I know,” she said.

“I think we need to get you some help.”

“I’ll handle it.”

She opened her purse, took out her spoon and began to swab it.

“How come you never ask me to join you?” I asked.

“You shouldn’t use drugs,” she said as she gingerly took out the sticky dark powder.

“Are you joking?”

“It’s not a joke.” She grabbed her syringe and squirted the water, and then gave the mix a little stir with the plunger. “I don’t ever want to see you using. There’s nothing good about this.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“My god you’re an idiot. It’s called being a drug addict, douchebag.”

I watched as she loaded up the needle and injected into the freshly swabbed skin on her arm. She took a deep breath and gave me a little smile.

“It’s a few hours of Jesus between my thighs,” she said. “After that it’s the worst thing a person can ever live through. You know... until they die.”

“I want to help you.”

“I’m headed out to Granny’s Cave. Don’t wait up.”

“I want to come with you.”

“You’re bad for business,” she said.

“You’re not serious, Kara. You’re not going to solicit random guys at the bar.”

“And how did we meet?”

I tried to understand what she was going through, the opiates coursing through her body... but she was being such an asshole.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, straightening my spine like my therapist had once told me to do.

“Everybody pays... we’re just using the barter system.”

“Fuck you. That’s not what marriage is about.”

“Says the guy who’s only been married twice. Take it from me, Lanny… that’s all marriage is about.”

Kara turned and left the apartment, and I’m sure someone who didn’t know her would’ve never realized she was on something; hell, I hadn’t known she was high back on the night we first met.

I waited long enough to know she’d have already caught the Sixteen before I followed her downtown. By the time I found a place to park and walked the fifteen minutes to Granny’s I saw her near the front of the line. I stayed at the back so she wouldn’t notice me, and within ten minutes she was in.

I waited for almost an hour before my turn, not bad for synthpunk night. I checked the dance floor first but she wasn’t there.

I wandered through the rest of Granny’s but couldn’t find Kara anywhere. I did a second loop, hoping that maybe I’d missed her the first time, or maybe I’d see Ashley or maybe even Callum rehearsing his latest pickup line, but I didn’t find anyone I knew. Granny’s was just a sea of people cooler than me, grinding and bumping and ignoring my existence.

I checked the men’s bathroom, and then stood awkwardly outside the ladies’, asking a few of the less threatening women if they’d seen a spindly girl with thick black glasses and dark brown hair with a purple streak. That got me nowhere so I took a chance and shoved my way through the ladies room door.

And there she was, leaning up against the sink with her forehead touching the mirror. She was rolling her head against the glass. I couldn’t tell if she was having trouble pulling her head up or if she just liked the feeling of a scratched and lipstick-smeared bathroom mirror against her skin.

“Kara,” I said. “What’s going on?”

She didn’t answer. Some of the other women in the bathroom were staring, watching us like we were putting on a one-act play.

“Goddamn it!” I screamed. “Did anyone call an ambulance?”

They all looked away. I put both hands on her shoulders and tried to pull her up. She fell back against me and for a moment I thought I’d drop her.

I felt her body start to jerk, and I lowered her down to the floor. Her eyes were open but I wasn’t sure she was still with me.

“Kara,” I said. “What happened?”

She didn’t respond.

“Kara... I love you. Please...”

I fumbled with my cell phone, eventually fingering the numbers to 911, and as I waited for an operator Kara closed her eyes.

I knew she wasn’t going to make it.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. I looked around the women’s washroom, hoping that someone would know what to do, but by that point we were alone. I don’t think anyone bothered to tell the bouncers. And I guess no one wanted to be there when she died.

I told the operator who finally answered what I thought had happened, that we needed an ambulance, that I was pretty sure I was losing her.

I can’t describe how it felt, seeing her like that, knowing that she’d finally gone too far, that she’d put in too much junk for her body to take.

I stared into her eyes, hoping she’d come out of it.

But she wasn’t there. Kara was gone.

I felt a tickle of heat on her skin and I thought it was just some part of me trying to keep the warmth from leaving her. But then the skin started to smoke and then to burn, and I had to pull myself back from the heat.

I laid down a few feet away, watching as the fire grew, orange and white flames swallowing Kara and nothing else in that bathroom, the heat nearly searing my skin. The fire roared and then it stopped.

The smoke began to clear.

And Kara was still there, unburnt and completely bare, her clothes burned to nothing, but her beautiful eyes and her beautiful freckles were there, and her dark brown hair, looking soft and shiny, missing its purple streak.

And then she opened her eyes and looked at me.

“I’m okay, Lanny,” she said, reaching out to me with her hand. “But you look like shit.”

Nothing had happened to me but I could barely move.

She pulled off my shirt and dressed herself in it, trying to pull it down far enough to reach to her thighs.

Kara helped me back to the parking garage, my arm draped over her shoulder; my knees felt like they’d been shattered.

And then she drove us home. And as she steered the car down Hastings Street, she told me what she was.

She was like a phoenix, she said, only one of her in the entire world, born and reborn and never dying. I figured she’d feel like a god, but all she kept telling me was how the loneliness settles in for forever.

“I’ve been left behind more times than I can count,” she said. “Falling in love and always losing it. It leaves a mark.” She looked down at the floor. “So I guess it’s no wonder... I’ve shot up... I’ve filled up on gin and turpentine... I’ve mixed nightshade into my wine and spent the day seeing visions of Saint Jerome. I can never die, Lanny... do you know how terrible that is?”

“I can’t know... and I think it’ll be a while before they figure out a way for the rest of us to live forever,” I said. “I doubt I’ll be around long enough for that. Maybe that makes me lucky.”

“You
are
lucky,” she said, tears running down her face.