Dirty Little Freaks (17 page)

She starts crying harder, doesn’t answer and I hand the phone back to her. I don’t know what to say, but I have a creeping feeling that my life from this moment on will never be the same.

Finally the empathy part of my brain kicks in and I step towards her. I put my hand around her shoulder, she feels too thin and I wonder if she’s been eating properly. I lead her to the kitchen and sit her down, I start to make a pot of coffee, then worry that the caffeine will just ramp her up and add to her misery.

I decide on some caffeine free tea instead and set one down in front of her after the kettle heats up. “How did this happen?” I ask.

“I asked him if I could go along on the tour,” she replies, her voice shaky.

“And I take it he said no?”

“He did! That fucker, he said no because he wants some strange when he’s on the road.”

“What a fucking piece of shit, I’m sorry,” I say and sit down across from her. “I guess we both managed to find the shadiest assholes to fall for, hey?”

She manages a weak smile, takes a sip of tea and replies, “Yeah, right? I love him though. I really love him. This fucking sucks.” Tears slide out of her closed lids and slip down her cheeks. I wish there was something I could do for Eva, my best friend on the planet, but at this point I don’t even know how to help myself.

“What are you going to do? Did you break up with him?”

“I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know if I can,” she says. “I know how stupid that sounds, but we were planning our future together…” She trails off and we sit in silence, each in our misery, so similar but worlds apart. After a few moments she adds, “I need to make him choose, it’s me or the bitches he meets on the road. He’s got to choose me, right? After all we’ve talked about?”

She looks at me with such sadness and hope that I smile and lie to her, “Of course he’ll pick you, he’d be insane not to.”

Eva mopes around the apartment for a couple of days before she confronts Diesel. I’m not sure backing him into a corner is the right thing to do; I have a feeling he’s going to react badly.

I must be a fucking psychic, but I guess you don’t need a sixth sense to figure out that young punk rock lead singer dude isn’t exactly going to fall on his knees and propose when he’s given an ultimatum.

I get home from work a little late, it’s nine in the morning when I stagger in. I need sleep and I need to numb my head with just a small hit on my pipe. I’ve gotten this amazing weed from the Kootenays that helps put me to sleep like nobody’s business.

I head to my room and pack the bowl of my pipe. I’m about to spark it up when I hear screaming from Eva’s room.

I run to find her hunched on the floor, her face a red mask of rage. She’s holding her phone in her hand and she says, “I hate him, I fucking hate him so much,” and sobs.

I take the phone from her hand and read the last text from Diesel. It says, “Yo, just do what you need to do, I’m out. It wasn’t going anywhere anyhow. See you round.”

“This is his reaction to your talk?” I ask.

“Yes,” she wails and visibly tries to calm herself down. She manages to get out the rest of the story between sobs. “He came over last night, they’re leaving on tour in a few days. He told me he didn’t want to be monogamous while he was away. He basically told me to fuck who I wanted, because he was going to.”

“Son of a bitch, I wish I could cock punch him for you,” I say and hand her phone back. I can’t say much more, I’m lost in my own world of worry. Is this why Hush ran out on me? Is he out there somewhere fucking new pussy and laughing at the stupid bitch he left behind?

A couple of weeks after Diesel’s departure, life feels like it’s returned to normal. Maybe.

There were a few shitty nights where Eva would pace and cry about Diesel, but mostly she was fine about it. I think she mourned the loss of the idea of a relationship more than the actual relationship.

Work was the most pleasant consistent thing in my life. I felt like the old Looney Tunes cartoon with the two dogs trading shifts whenever I took over for Jag. Generally we barely say more than ten words to each other so it surprised me when today of all days he hangs around after I get there. He looks a little uncomfortable and I worry that he’s going to proposition me for a BJ or something. I have had very few men in my life that don’t try to fuck me, so he’s been more valuable than he could ever realize.

“Why are you doing this?” he asks as I settle in behind the register.

“Doing what? I’m getting ready to work.”

“Exactly,
this
, working here, doing nothing with your life?”

“Slow down,
Dad
,” I say, my voice dripping with sarcasm, “how do you know I’m doing nothing with my life?”

“You have the look of somebody doing nothing. You come in here night after night, mope for a few hours, sigh a hundred times a minute and constantly check your phone. What happened?”

Awe, how fucking sweet; Jag does care. I knew it! “I’m just doing what I do best, working hard and keeping my head down. I don’t really need to do much more.

“You are too intelligent to be wasting your life in this shit hole,” he keeps going. “I’ve watched you coming in like clockwork for three years now, and it’s time you made a change.”

“I’m too old for change,” I say, not really liking where this is going. I know what I want to do with my life, but I don’t want to want, not after everything I’ve learned in this life. Wanting lets me down, needing leaves me empty.

“Bullshit,” he guffaws. “You know that’s bullshit.”

The way he pronounces bullshit makes me chuckle, but seeing how Jag almost never swears, I do take what he says seriously. I pull back my knee jerk reaction to come out fighting and force myself to reply as kindly as possible, “Thanks for your input, but I honestly don’t know what I’d do without you, this job.”

He holds up a little bundle of papers and says, “I think you do. I found these in the drawer under the register. You want to get your GED, why? You don’t need it to work here.”

He’s got my study kit that the college sent me to prep for my test. Fuck, I knew I should have thrown it out when I ditched the test. “It was a whim, a passing fancy,” I say and clench my fists. I don’t like being backed into a corner like this but I don’t want to fight him. “I’m apparently not smart enough to take the exam anyways.”

He stares at me, shakes his head and says, “We both know that’s complete and utter bullshit. And I had a feeling you would say that, so I took the liberty to sign up for you.”

“What do you mean?” I demand. How dare he interfere in my life? Fuck I’m getting sick of people lately.

“I want you to do this, I don’t want to see you sitting here rotting away, doing nothing,” he tells me. “I’m going to fire you.”

The air leaves my lungs and I can’t breath. I don’t like change, and this has been the steadiest thing in my life, pretty much ever. “You can’t fire me, now
that’s
bullshit,” I yell at him. Fuck, what the fucking fuck is wrong with these fuckers lately? My life feels like it’s on shaky ground and I need something to hang on to. My brain instantly jumps to booze, drugs, sex, anything to make me feel sane again.

“I am going to fire you if you don’t promise me you’ll go take the test,” Jag says, his voice calm and forceful. “I’ve talked about this with my wife and she agrees, you need to do something with your life.”

“Your wife? What, your arranged marriage child bride?” I sneer. “What the fuck does a housewife know about this shit?” I’m instantly sorry for sounding like such a racist douche to the nicest man I know, but I can’t hold back. I’m frightened by his demands.

“Actually, my wife is a nurse, she insisted on getting her education before we were married,” he smiled, the love in his eyes as he speaks of her makes me feel even more like a gigantic douche. “That’s part of the reason I fell in love with her. And yes, it was highly suggested that we marry, but most arranged marriages are rather loving and happy.”

I know this; I mean I’m not really a racist, judgmental piece of shit, I just don’t know how to react when I feel like my buttons are being pushed. I just want to know that I can go to sleep in my comfy bed in my apartment, maybe read a book, rub one off, and get up to the same predictable day. I love the movie Groundhog Day; that kind of consistency is intoxicating to me. If I need to blow off some steam, I’ve got Eva and I’ve got my music, my clubs and drugs and anonymous sex. Hush ruined this for me, with his promise of a Plenty of Fish style fucking romance. I can’t handle Jag trying to ruin the delusion that I’m no better than the life of drudgery in a disgusting porn shop in a shady part of town.

“I know,” I reply, beaten. He’s serious and I don’t want to shove back in case he fires me on the spot.

He hands me the GED study guide and some assorted papers. “I’ve highlighted your test time, you can take four days off before so you can study,” he tells me, “with pay. I want you to do this.”

I nod and take them from him. I don’t know what to say so I say nothing. Saying thank you is not easy for me, but I don’t think Jag expects it, he knows what it means to me when I accept the arrangement.

He grabs his briefcase and shrugs his jacket on. He walks to the door and turns back as he leaves. “Have a good night Jade, and I know you can do this. I believe in you.”

I raise my hand and give him a little wave. At this point I definitely can’t tell him thank you, I can barely keep the tears down that are threatening to choke my speech.

He’s gone, so I sit down and open up the study guide. It’s all easy, stuff I knew years ago. The thing is, I know I’ll ace this test, I know everything they want me to know, I’ve just never wanted to do well before. The concept is foreign to me.

In third grade I was doing grade five work. I was bored amongst my peers, so for shits and giggles, my teacher Mrs. Lawson gave me some math and reading from a couple of grades ahead. I ate that shit up. Anything anyone told me stuck, it was in there forever no matter how much I tried to forget. Everything stuck, from mom screaming ‘you ugly little slut’ when she was on a bender, all the way to the Fermat’s last theorem. It all stuck.

By the by, I wasn’t a slut for the years I lived with my mother. I wasn’t a slut at birth. I came by it honestly but surprisingly didn’t lose my virginity until grade twelve. I was almost eighteen, I’d already dropped out of school and thought there was no harm letting some fucking poser from London take a stab at me with his five inches of thunder. It wasn’t bad though, the false sense of connection with another human being, so I became a slut. I was in control of my sexuality…until Hush came along.

Either way, everything I ever learned or heard or felt…it’s all in there, from age two to now. When Mrs. Lawson called my mom in for a meeting, I was spanked the night before. Mom assumed it was for something bad, in spite of my screaming protests.

When Mrs. Lawson suggested I skip a few grades and join the gifted students club after school, my mom had shut her down.

“I don’t want no kid of mine thinkin’ she’s all that,” mom had said. “It’s bad enough she’s such a judgmental little bitch already, you keep pumping her full of shit like this and she’ll start to think she’s better than me n’ her step dad.”

I wasn’t sure which step dad she had been referring to, she had been fucking two different men that time, both of them married to other people. I told you, mom was a piece of work.

“But Mrs. Daniels, she’s smart enough to move ahead, and she told me she has nothing to do after school,” Mrs. Lawson had told my mom. “It would free up some time for you, and I’ll make sure she gets fed.”

“Are you trying to tell me I can’t take care of my own fuckin’ kid?” mom had snarled. “This meeting’s over, she’s not going to your little nerd club, and she’s comin’ straight home after school whether you like it or not! Come on Jack, we’re goin’!”

I avoided looking Mrs. Lawson in the eye on their way out. I couldn’t bear seeing my beloved teacher’s pride turn to sympathy.

That night I got one fuck of a beating, first for being too smart, and second for being an ugly little slut. We moved a week or so after that, so I hadn’t had to suffer Mrs. Lawson’s sympathetic glances for too long.