Irvine Welsh - If You Liked School, You'll Love Work

— What’s kimchi ? asks Stacie, as Stephanie swallows a long gulp of air and drums her big nails on the table.

— Kimchi best-known Korean food. It is vegetable dish, highly seasoned with pepper, garlic, etcetera. Served with every kind of Korean meal. Stimulate appetite like pickles. Contains amounts of good nutritions such as vitamin C and fiber. Try, he commands, looking at Kendra.

Kendra spoons some up onto her plate, then takes a small forkful. — It’s very good, she nods in endorsement. Stephanie gratefully follows suit, as does Stacie.

The chef responds with a graceful bow. — Enjoy, he says, before retreating.

— I kind of like that chef, Stacie says as he departs, — that inscrutable oriental demeanor. It’s kind of neat. What do you think, Kennie?

Kendra is daydreaming. She is wondering if the rich developer guy, Clint his name is, will call her. — About what?

— Never mind, Stacie wearily sings, then changes her tack: — How’s Karla getting on?

— I can nat believe that the same sperm and egg sources that produced me provided the raw material to manufacture her , Kendra rants, aware that the Xanax she’s popped in the restroom is perhaps lifting her again. — She’s got one of those lame and passé tattoos above her ass that she thinks is sooo punk rock. It makes her look like a crack whore. And she must weigh over a hundred and thirty pounds.

— Ugh! Stephanie winces, then adds with concern, — Is she like, depressed or something?

— I don’t know what shit’s going down with her. Kendra shakes her head so emphatically she is moved to subsequently check that her hair is still secured back. — All I know is I had to intervene at my mom’s last weekend. I pulled her over to the full-length mirror and lifted up her tank top. I pointed at her stomach and said: ‘Care.’

— How did she react? Stephanie asks.

Kendra shrugs, taking in a long breath as she painfully watches a bum with a cart shuffle past the window, so gratified that he does not stop or turn to look in. Thank you . She nods tersely at Stephanie in shared relief. — The usual crappy defensive-offensive rhetoric about me being anorexic, you know how they lash out. She narrows her eyes. — You think I was wrong?

— No, not at all. I just think that the intervention could have been a little more structured , Stephanie offers.

Kendra considers this. Steph was pretty smart. Sometimes Kendra wishes she’d stayed on to do a masters at DePaul. Now Stephanie was almost a partner in that pet behavioralist practice on Clark, while she was stuck in real estate.

But she was making money .

— I ran into Monica Santiano yesterday, y’know from Highland Park. She’s moved into the city, Stephanie informs them. — You know what she said to me: ‘I really got to hang out with you guys.’ I was like, ugh, a total DNA situation! Stephanie and Kendra high-five each other.

— I thought she was kinda fun, Stacie says. — What’s DNA mean?

— Desperate and Needy Alert, they sing at her in unison. — Another one we added to our lexicon, I think it was in CJ’s on Wednesday, Kendra elaborates smugly. — Where were you, Stace?

Stacie looks a little forlorn as the conversation drifts back to work. — How’s the wonderful world of real estate? Stephanie asks Kendra.

— Still booming, and still lucrative, Kendra chirps, swinging into breezy professional mode, before something sours in her mouth. She hesitates for a second, then lets rip: — But that fat lesbo bitch Marilyn’s been on my case. She’s sooo disgusting, sitting there packing her face with Doritos all day and she doesn’t even have a college degree , she rasps.

— Loo-zir! Stephanie ticks, stretching out her fingers to examine her nail extensions. They were perhaps a bit long for the metal chopsticks.

— I see her looking at me sometimes in that creepy way, and then she breaks into that revolting smile of hers. And that horrible mole on her face. Yuk! Then sometimes she’ll go all girly and gross and make comments about straight girls wanting to experiment, Kendra winces. — It kinda makes me wanna puke!

— Gross, Stacie acknowledges.

— And bordering on sexual harassment. Stephanie’s head twists. — Somebody oughta stick a lawsuit on that bitch’s fat ass!

Kendra nods thoughtfully. Then she looks searchingly, imploringly, at Stephanie and Stacie. All suddenly raise imaginary rifles into the air, training and then firing them on invisible targets. — She’s so NRA, they scoff.

The girls exchange high-fives. — Not Really Awesome, they squeal in a delighted harmony. They catch the chef observing their antics, his dark eyes glimmering, and they raise embarrassed hands to mouths to stifle their nervous giggles.

It took Kendra a while to get ready for her run that evening. The gray DePaul sweatshirt and blue shorts were pulled on quickly enough, as were the Nike Air Zoom Moire trainers, a hundred bucks a throw and selected because their color matched the shirt, but the hair had to be off the face and the ponytail tied high. Most of all, the makeup needed to be just right . Too little was not an option, but too much indicated a lack of serious sporting edge, perhaps even hinting at sexual laziness or passivity. This stuff she used was subtle and didn’t run, not that Kendra intended to do much sweating.

Darkness is pressing down as she goes off at an even trot along Lakeshore Drive where it’s cooler, the air coming off Lake Michigan smelling slightly sour, tawny and feeble, like an elderly relative doused in a favored fragrance. After several yards, boredom and fatigue gnaw at her, and she feels self-conscious and ridiculous as an elderly man passes her with ease. No matter; the best part is the slow pretend-exhausted walk back around the neighborhood. Walking with Toto got lots of attention but the problem was that the male dog walkers were invariably gay. Jogging was different. Like the Lakeshore Athletic Club, it was a way of meeting straight guys. But it was not a good method of keeping your weight down; too much like hard work. Dieting was easier, except Friday lunch, which would set her up for the weekend. It was too hot for the sweatshirt but she worried that there might be a slight distension of her stomach after that lunch. It would take till Tuesday before she could be confident about just wearing the sports bra.

Kendra pulls up to a brisk walking speed in order to enjoy the night. Looming shadows emerging from the overhead trees herald little more than the chatter of lovers or more dog walkers — this is a safe neighborhood — and she notes there is a van parked outside her block. Two men are unloading furniture. There is a third in attendance whom she immediately recognizes as the Asian chef from Mystic East. It seems like he is moving in, to her apartment complex. — Hi… she simpers on approach. — Are you moving in, like here ?

The chef seems to take a while to recognize her. He squints in the darkness, holding a framed print, which he sets down on the granite curb. — Ah… yes. Hello. His smiling face expands.

— I’m on the second floor, Kendra explains, watching two movers engaged in a sweaty push-pull dance with one of the last of the stubbornly heavy boxes on the back of the van.

— I move into third floor, the chef tells her.

— Come and have some tea, Kendra offers, reasoning that it will do no harm to keep in with her favorite local restaurateur.

— You are very kind. Chef bows his big head slightly. Kendra holds open the doors of the apartment building as he carries the picture up the stairs. She follows him all the way up, taking in his shadowless, almost spectral form under the fluorescent stair and hall lighting. Then she hears a sniggering behind her. The moving guys. Leering at her ass. Fucking pigs . At the stair-bend she tugs the edge of the DePaul sweatshirt south, her only concession to their presence.