Seeing Red (7 page)

THIRTEEN

When the mail arrives through the door slot there's a letter from the Faculty of Law at Queen's University, and I know by the size of the envelope that it's a rejection letter. When a school accepts you, they usually send a handbook, a catalogue or a big academic calender inside a large yellow envelope. This envelope is small and white. I tear it open and read:
We regret to inform you we can only offer enrolment to a certain number of applicants and your application for the fall semester was not accepted
. They encourage me to try again next year. More rejection letters will be coming soon—this is just the beginning. I rip the letter into several pieces and then toss it into the trash. I wouldn't make a good lawyer anyway. There's also a note from the superintendent reminding me that my rent from June is overdue. I'll have to put it on my credit card.

My phone vibrates and I check the display to see it's my friend Nikki calling. I met her through Craig a few months back and she often comes out drinking with us. Nikki has rich parents and lives in a loft downtown, so she doesn't have to worry about work or money. Instead, she spends most of her time cooking, blogging, taking theatre classes and studying to become an optician. I've never seen her wear the same thing twice and her outfit is always eccentric and colourful. She's attractive, but she only sleeps with men after they've dated her for several months, so my friends and I have given up on that endeavour. Now, we consider her a part of the group, a fifth member, one of the guys. I never saw her as a potential mate, anyway, because she's blonde—not that I have anything against blondes, mind you, but they, for whatever reason, never seem to have any interest in me. Not sure why. I've hooked up with at least fifty women in my life and I can't remember
one
that was blonde.

“Nikki, what's up?”

“Hey! How's it going?

“Real good,” I say sarcastically. “You?”

“I'm great. Sorry I couldn't hang out with you guys last night. I hear Silverchest
killed
!”

“Yeah, she beat those trash cans pretty
good. . . .”

“Cool! Okay. So. Listen. I'm meeting a friend of mine for drinks in about an hour and we're gonna be in your neck of the woods. Wanna come?”

“Hmm . . . I don't know. I'm supposed to meet up with Natalie tonight and I was hoping to be at least
somewhat
sober—”

“Forget that! Forget that ho! C'mon, you don't have to drink much. And my friend Charlotte is really cool. You'll like her.”

“Alright,” I sigh. “I'll make an appearance.”

“Cool! We're going to the Duke of Kent north of Yonge and Eglinton. Be there at four.”

The Duke of Kent markets itself as an English pub and it has all of the usual features: a wooden bar with golden pillars, yellow walls, red and green carpeting, soccer on the television and bangers and mash on the menu. They sell pints of draught beer primarily to an older, dedicated clientele, all of whom seem to know each other, so I feel right at home hunched over the counter on a plush red stool and sipping a gin-and-tonic while waiting for Nikki to arrive. They're even playing “Smokestack Lightning” by Howlin' Wolf over the speakers—a favourite blues song of mine. I sit there and drink and stare at the soccer game on the television mounted onto the wall and Germany is playing Uruguay and the score is tied. A large group of devoted, face-painted football fans have shown up to watch the match and they're hooting and hollering at the screen anytime a player does
anything
—passes, shoots, slide tackles, anything. I holler along with them on particularly egregious plays.

Beside me there's a man and a woman in their mid-thirties perched on stools ignoring the game. The woman is droning on incessantly, complaining about her ex-boyfriend while the guy looks longingly into her eyes with his chin cradled in the palm of his hand. She's loud and obnoxious and he's hanging on her every word, nodding and smiling at all the right moments, but I can tell by her body language that she has absolutely no interest in him: her feet are positioned away to the side, she's leaning back, she doesn't maintain eye contact or mirror any of his gestures and she barely looks at his face. I actually feel sorry for the guy: this poor bastard has probably been told his whole life that
all he has to do
is listen
to women and they'll instantly fall in love with him. It's a little more complicated than that. This particular woman is used to having everybody listen to her because she's pretty and overly talkative. Simply listening to her won't work. With somebody like that, you have to be energetic, spontaneous, keep the conversation moving equally in both directions. Stand out. Be confident. Rachael taught me that. It's the quiet, introverted ones that you really have to listen to. You should ask them questions and listen to the answers because they actually have something to say. Women are infinitely more interesting than men, but not this one, and this poor bastard doesn't have a prayer.

I'm so distracted by their one-way conversation and the unruly soccer fans in the background that I don't notice Nikki coming into the pub. She walks up behind me and squeezes me on the shoulders. “Hey there, cutie!” Her hair is slightly shorter and darker at the roots than the last time I saw her and it perfectly frames her face.

“What's up? Where's your friend?” I ask.

“She's on her way. Wanna grab a table?”

“Sure.”

When I tell the bartender I'm moving, she stops and does a double-take and then suddenly recognizes me. Her brow furrows and she asks me if I'm going to be “drinking a lot tonight” because apparently the last time I was in here I passed out in an alcove and they had to pour water on my face to wake me up. I apologize and leave her a good tip and then meet Nikki at a round table at the back of the pub. We've barely taken our seats, but she's already eager to tell me everything about Charlotte. “She's originally from Winnipeg, but now she goes to school at U of T. She's doing her undergrad in science. Biology, I think.”

“That's cool. I love science.”

“She hates chemistry though.”

“Why? What's wrong with chemistry?”

“She doesn't like it. So don't bring it up.”

“But what if I
have
to?”

She laughs. “Don't!”

“I was gonna ask her about bunsen burners and shit. . . .”

She laughs again. “Just don't!”

Moments later, Charlotte wanders in through the centre of the pub and Nikki sees her and waves at her and then we slide over and she takes a seat across from me. I introduce myself and shake her hand. She has a pretty round face, long brown hair and a bright purple top, but she seems a little shy. Nikki and Charlotte talk about their classes and mention a few mutual acquaintances, people I don't know, and then I ask her about where she's from and what she's doing in Toronto and she tells me about her program at school before eventually excusing herself to go to the washroom.

When she's out of sight, Nikki turns to me and says, “So! Whaddya think?”

“She seems nice.”

Nikki smiles and says coyly, “Cool.”

“Wait, are you trying to set us up or something?”

“Maybe . . .”

“'Cause that's the last thing I need right now.”

“It's exactly what you need, Ethan! It'll be good for her, too. She has a boyfriend, but I really don't like him—”

“She has a boyfriend?”

“Yeah, but I really don't like him.”

“It's not your call!”

“No, seriously, he's pretty weird. . . .”

“So, what, you want me to try to break them up?”

“No! I don't think they'll last much longer anyway.”

“Well, fingers crossed!” I say sarcastically. Then I take another sip of gin and loudly inhale before adding, “This is
kinda
fucked up.”

“You need a girlfriend, Ethan. I know you.
You're not like Craig or Jeff, no matter how much you might try to be. Don't get me wrong. I love those guys. But they're
assholes.
You're not an asshole.
You're the kinda guy who would rather stay at home and curl up on the couch and watch movies.
You should be in a relationship.”

“No, Nikki, I shouldn't. I need to get my shit together.”

“Ah, your shit's fine.”

“My shit sucks!”

Charlotte returns just in time to hear me shout that last line, but she doesn't say anything about it. She takes her seat and we order another round of drinks and then the conversation gradually veers toward me and what I've been up to lately. I tell her about my law school applications, how I'm between jobs at the moment because the economy is slow and businesses aren't hiring, and then I talk about my useless bachelor degree and how I probably should have studied something other than English and History. I use a joke I heard from Larry David about how my degree is “only good for solving crossword puzzles” and she laughs and in the corner of my eye I see Nikki flashing me a knowing smile, as if to say, “See?” But the sparks aren't exactly flying; I'm too hungover and thinking about Natalie and wondering if I'll actually get to see her again tonight.

About half an hour later I begin to feel bored and find myself daydreaming, glancing at the soccer game and pondering other things while they continue to converse. Suddenly, Charlotte asks me a question about my astrological sign and it catches me off guard.

“Huh? Oh, I'm a Libra.”

“Ah, a libra,” she repeats. Then she turns to Nikki and says, “They're all about balance.”

“Balance . . . that's me, alright.”

She doesn't detect the sarcasm.

“My boyfriend's a Scorpio,” Charlotte says, “which is great because I'm a Pisces and we're really compatible with Scorpios.”

“All the Scorpios I've met have been kinda weird,” Nikki mutters.

Astrology. They talk about it like it's a fact. I know I shouldn't debate the issue with someone I've just met, but I feel compelled to play the devil's advocate here—plus, I sense an opportunity to liven up the conversation. “Wait, you don't actually believe that shit, do you?”

“It's not shit,” Charlotte recoils. “It's true.”

“You think giant balls of gas millions of light-years away are gonna determine whether you and your boyfriend get along or not?”

Charlotte scoffs. “It's more complicated than that. It's about their position and relation to the earth relative to when you were born.”

“Do you believe in psychics too? Ghosts? Angels?”

“Yes?”

“What about unicorns?”

“Well, not unicorns—”

“Why not? What's the difference?”

“Ethan,” she says condescendingly, “there are some people who have been
proven
to be psychic.”

“Like who?”

“Lots of people. They help with police investigations.”

“Well, I've read about this guy named Randi who's been offering a million dollars to anyone who can prove they have
any
kind of psychic power for, like, thirty years, and not one person has been able to claim the prize.”

“So? That doesn't mean psychics don't exist.”

“Kinda odd though, don't ya think?”

“What about when you get déjà vu? Or when the phone rings and you know who's calling?”

“Déjà vu is caused by a glitch in the synapse of your brain—”

“No it isn't!”

“—and the phone thing is just intuition.”

“It isn't!”

“You're supposed to be a scientist!”

I notice Nikki is frowning and obviously irritated by the direction the conversation has taken; she tries to intervene and change the subject, but we ignore her.

“You study science,” I say. “You're supposed to look for evidence.”

“There
is
evidence!”

“No there isn't.”

“So, what, you don't believe in anything? You're an atheist?”

“I'm reserving judgement on that one.”

“Ah ha.”

“Let me put it this way: if there is a God, I'm pretty sure he doesn't give a shit about us.”

“He does. He does care. Listen, when my grandpa got lung cancer, my family and I prayed every single day. The doctors all said he would only live for, like, a couple months, and that was years ago. He's still alive and well today.”

“And you think a higher power had something to do with that?”

“Yes! Of course I do.”