The Big Dream (6 page)

His friend Tomas works at a jerk chicken place downtown. Grig can get free plantains and shoot the shit for a while, guaranteed, which gives the day a point, a bit.

Tomas is a big Brazilian guy with a tattoo of a spiderweb creeping out the collar of his shirt. They had autoshop together in school. “Grig,
que pasa
?” he yells when the door jingles. Grig just waves – he's tired of faking any language shit.

The gospel reggae is too crackling loud and the floor is sticky and all the customers are stupid. A little white paper bag of plantains slides across the table. “What's shakin'?” Tomas flops into a plastic chair, making it rock back and almost dump him.

“Not much.” Grig shoves a plaintain chunk in his mouth. When he bites, steam escapes and scalds his tongue. It hurts so bad he has to spit it out but there's no napkin or anything so he winds up with this hot slimy gob in the palm of his hand. He shouldn't have gone for it so fast. He should have had breakfast. The music swoops high.

“Jesus, man.” Tomas goes and gets him a napkin from the counter. With his long legs, the restaurant is barely one stride. He plonks back down and Grig wraps the dead food, smiling weakly.

His tongue feels raw, tastes like blood.

“Job all right? Ladies?”

“It's the same, right? Lad
ee
and job, same
.
”

“Yeah?” Tomas's heavy black eyebrow is like a cat arching its back.

“Serious. Because my lady is my boss, see? It's convenient.”

Tomas belly-laughs and, because
now
is the exact right moment, fishes the exact right piece of plantain out of the bag and
pops it into his mouth. Grig sighs – Tomas never does anything stupid, gets any pussy he wants. It's annoying. At least Tomas buys the story about Suyin – it's more fun to talk about her as if she's in the bag than to tell the truth. Although Tomas might have had some advice.

“She hawt?” Tomas crunches his food around his words. “Tell me ass, tell me tits, tell me . . . belly ring? I love those damn belly rings.”

“Not much ass, tits very nice, belly ring . . .” the details of even a simple lie always trip him up – would she? Her hair is so tidy, her nails so clean “. . . no piercings at all.”

“Woah, a goodie girl.”

Grig grins and dares to eat a plantain. “Yeah, but not totally tight, no. Not at all.”

They grin together, then chew. The plantain is the perfect temperature now, flaking hot and sweet on his tongue.

“She does yoga.” Mariska is always right about these things; it doesn't feel even like a lie. “She's streeeeettttttchy.” He throws his arms back, thrusts out his chest till it's as broad as Tomas's, wriggles his eyebrows.

Tomas smacks his hand on the table. “All
right
, brother.”

Vicki strides into the restaurant, to their table, and climbs onto Tomas's lap. She's not his girlfriend – Tomas bangs everyone – but she's around a lot. She's singing along with the music, “Don't let nobody come between you and your god . . . .” She sounds good.

“Grig's got hisself a wo
man
!” Tomas yells, sliding his palm under Vicki's baggy-denim thigh. “A yoga woman. Now that's hot. Why don't you do some yoga, Vicki?” He slaps her ass gently.

Vicki gives Grig a big-teeth smile. “Yoga is very healthy, very natural, very love-lee. You should get her to take me.”

Grig feels his eyelashes snap back, and imagines the two women together in a gym shower, Vicki all long lime-green nails
and round brown ass and squealing laughter, while tiny Suyin dances around her, her usually smooth hair soaked and tangled.

“I – she lives out by the airport, near work, so she's . . .”

“
Gawd,
the
sub
urbs. But you are, too! You can be happy together in the
sub
urbs.”

Tomas laughs, his stomach bouncing Vicki up and down. “Scarborough and Mississauga are different sides of the city, Vic, and different besides. Right, Griggy?”

He nods. Since the arrival of Vicki, Tomas has abandoned the plantains and Grig is ploughing through them, chewing rapidly now that they are cool.

“You must get this suburban girl a
pres
ent!” Vicki slaps the table.

“I gotta go back to work. Break's over.” Tomas starts to stand and Vicki leans her weight on her forearms on the table, standing on tiptoe, ass in the air, as he slips away.

She looks into Grig's eyes. Vicki has dark hair with thick-painted gold highlights, big dark eyes, and an unplaceable accent. In school, everyone wanted her. “I will help you find a present.”

Grig glances over Vicki's shoulder at her ass. “You don't must.”

“I
want
to shop and I got nothing to shop for. Let's go.” It's a whole subway stop to walk, and Vicki keeps singing about the work God wants them to do the whole way.

The mall is well enough lit but it always feels dark. Three guys bump into them. They all wear soft dark hoodies, loose jeans, big white shoes – they look just like Grig and Vicki, and when they pull back apologizing, all three seem to see the resemblance. One boy's “Sorry” stops at “suh” and sounds a lot like “suck,” but they nod respectfully at the rhinestone V lodged between Vicki's breasts (even in winter, she keeps her North Face jacket zipped only half), wander off, eyes downward.

Vicki crosses her arms and adjusts herself. They walk on, and Vicki keeps getting sexy looks. Grig gets envious ones. What is it with all these beautiful useless women that he is always surrounded by but can never fuck?

“Lululemon is the best for yoga things, someone told me that. It is all very sexy, but quality. Is she seriously into yoga?”

“Well she is . . . a serious girl,” Grig says carefully. He pictures Suyin's eyes, big and dark as she slid his performance warning towards him on the table.

The lights seem a bit brighter in Lululemon, but it could be just because the walls are green, blue, red. On the racks are shirts shaped like breasts, same as at any girl store. Peppy tiny girls flit between them. Vicki blends in, though she is bigger than the other girls and her shoulder bag bonks one of them in the face.

Another girl dances over to Vicki. “If you have any questions at all, just ask . . . .”

“Oh,
I
don't do yoga.” Vicki glances back at her ass as if she were smiling at a friend. “
He's
shopping for his girlfriend.”

If Suyin were his girlfriend, he would have to drop his elbow almost to his ribcage to put an arm around her. If Suyin were his girlfriend, she would help him at work without being mean, without him needing to ask or even knowing he was being helped – like magic, just by being there, talking to him, all the time in her perfect English.

“She does a lot of . . . yoga.” He's picturing Suyin doing the twisty sexy things in the pictures on the wall. This lie has been going on all day. Soon, he knows, he will forget the conversation with Mariska entirely.

The salesgirl asks him, “Here?”

“What?” He glances around – bins of pants, halters on mannequins, little women. He doesn't see anything that helps him. “What?”

“Does she know about our complimentary yoga on Sunday mornings? It's a really great treat for the mindbodysoul?” Her
unpainted nail points to the calendar on the wall. Every Sunday does read “Complimentary Yoga!!!”

When the woman drifts away, he asks Vicki what
complimentary
means.

“Free!” she whispers, as if the staff and other shoppers were listening.

“Oh, good.” He is fingering a pink halter top, imagining somehow mentioning complimentary yoga to Suyin and her somehow not knowing where the Eaton's Centre is, and him somehow going out to Mississauga to get her and take her here. He could hang out with Tomas while the class was on. No fucking way was he doing yoga.

He glances down at the pink fabric and sees the price label – $52.00CAD.

For a minute he forgets the whole lie, the fact that Suyin is probably not a yoga-doer, and certainly not his girlfriend. Suyin is suddenly a bratty big-shot, demanding presents he cannot afford. He almost says,
That bitch!
Actually he sorta does whisper it, but no one hears.

He puts down the shirt and walks further into the shop. $90 for black stretchy sweatpants like at Zellers. Even the T-shirts are more than twice what he's got in his wallet. Finally he finds a bin of small things, and small is cheaper. When Vicki gooses him from behind, he is looking for the price tag on a pink lace thong.

“Oh-ho, she's
that
kind.
I
see. Got yourself a yoga whore, eh, Grig?”

Then he's buying it – at the green-and-wood-paneled cashier's desk buying a lacy strand to go up the tiny ass of a girl he's never spoken to except about call times and scripts, all because he's a liar living in a porno fantasy. At least the panties only cost $14.

Owning them – the panties – makes things way weirder. He's got them jammed in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet he uses as a bureau, but all night in his room he thinks about them. Maybe he will take them out to look at, hold, rub against, but he doesn't. Maybe he'll return them, because even fourteen bucks plus tax would help with rent. He knows someone would be able to tell if he touches them too much.

It's also so weird looking at Suyin at work now, like seeing a girl from a porno site just walking down the street (this has never happened to Grig, but he has imagined it many times). He thinks her hips are probably narrower than the small-size he chose.

Mainly she doesn't even look at him. They only talk about his call times, logsheets, scripts. She aims her words at the wall behind his head. How serious does she think he takes this stupid job, that telling him he keystroked a credit-card number wrong is worth all her silly drama, her slanting eyes looked down, her cheeks blooming rose, saying it's going to be a dock in pay if it happens again – because it costs the company, because he needs to take her feedback seriously, because because.

He has to think about her in his off-hours, whether he wants to or not, because now too many people think they know about her. He made the mistake of asking Mariska if she thought the panties were cute, and now she won't stop asking why he's home watching
Sex Rehab
every night since he has a girlfriend. Finally he tells her that Suyin lives with her parents, and their relationship is a secret because he isn't – what is she? He momentarily panics, then says,
Chinese
.

Tomas says he's having a house party, which is fucked because Tomas don't even have a house, just a basement flat like Grig, only at least with no Mariska. On Grig's Facebook wall he writes, “Bring your girl!” He can't just write an excuse on Tomas's wall because that puts the lie in public. If someone from work sees Tomas's post and says, “I didn't know you had a girl,” he can say
Tomas is wrong, crazy, whatever. But if Grig writes, “Suyin is sick, can't come” or even, “My girl is sick,” then he can never take it back. The party is in a week. Grig stays up worrying, watching reruns of
Sex Rehab.

At work, at the end of his Thursday shift, he gets a call from a lady whose English is worse than his. It ends with her screaming that the postman never comes, the postman is garbage, GARBAGE. She sounds about one hundred and three but she sure can scream and he yells right back at her, “You don't fucking yell at me, bitch. I'm helping you.”

Then it's creepy because Suyin's voice breaks in and he knows that the threat to sometimes monitor them is true. Even as Suyin's smooth anywhere accent is calming the crazy lady down, he is realizing he's more fucked than he knew because he sometimes very quietly tells a caller that they don't know what they are talking about, the magazine will come tomorrow, that the order has already been corrected, the problem solved, all things back good. Just to get a moment's peace, to check Facebook on his phone, to go take a shit, just some peace.