Jowita Bydlowska - Guy

“I hate New Kids on the Block,” she says. Even though it’s impossible for her to sustain eye contact for more than a few seconds, we’re talking with our eyes again. I tell her that I find her beautiful. She says she doesn’t believe me. I tell her again, with my eyes. She, again, with hers says it can’t be true. I need to keep this going.

“What kind of music do you listen to?”

“Why do you ask?” she asks, and I like this little spark of defiance or flirtation, I’m not sure which.

“I’m in the music business. I find music talent,” I say.

“Would I know anybody you work with?” she asks.

“Sure. $isi and Charlie and before them some indie acts, like Ciraplex. Ciraplex is the name of an antidepressant. Clever, isn’t it?”

Her mouth forms an almost perfect O . “Are you serious?”

“Sure.” I bend down to pull the dog away from her – and to make physical contact for the first time. I let my fingers brush her arm very gently, just the tips of my fingers against her hot skin. “I can tell you more about my work if you’re curious. Would you like to go for a walk?” I ask, breaking eye contact.

She gets up. She’s not saying anything, probably trying to figure out what this is all about – me and my interest. A guy like me. It’s going to take her some time to figure it all out, maybe the rest of her youth. Or maybe the rest of her life. I’m sure she’s thinking that it’s just too suspicious. She might be thinking that I’m going to skin her alive, make a hat out of her or leave her by the side of the road to bleed to death for fun. But she likes books about bloody things; maybe she hopes I’m a vampire.

I smile at her and she smiles back. “I usually just walk to there and then go back, is that okay with you?”

“Yes,” she says, her voice small. She is perhaps imagining herself being bitten in the neck, perhaps picturing my face turning feline, fangs emerging from my mouth. We walk in silence for a while, just taking in the sights: the proudly jogging joggers, and the still-drunk-from-the-night-before teenage boys, and the guys in orange shirts with garbage bags who clean up the beach, and the young moms with uncombed hair sitting by their strollers or trying to contain their energetic toddlers, viciously smashing the sand.

I’m aware of Dolores through my body. My body reacts to her heat. I would like to put my nose in her hair, under her armpit, under her sweaty breast, but right now I’ll have to do with what comes my way via the air. I can make out a cheap, fruity shampoo. A deodorant that’s strong, so strong it must be a men’s deodorant, the way it dominates all the other smells – sharp, with a violent tang of minty freshness. Underneath all this, I imagine Dolores smells sour and a little sweet, a little like a baby.

“It’s beautiful, don’t you think?” I point to the beach, the way the water looks dark against the white from the now-blaring sun, like an overexposed photograph.

She nods.

I talk about coming here a few years ago and falling in love with the way the sky and water looked, the morning contrasts and the evening’s intense palate – both times of day so saturated with their own substance they seem heavy, velvet with colour.

I talk about how sometimes there is fog so strong it seems to linger on during the day. Even after the sun comes out, there are layers of haziness, like smoke.

I’m talking like I’m romantic. I’m better at talking like this than I am at making girls giggle.

Dolores finally gets the courage to ask me more about my work. I’m happy to oblige and tell her whatever I can about my temperamental muse, $isi. That’s who interests Dolores most. She wants to know what $isi is like, and I’m not sure what to tell her.

Not in real life, $isi is a bubbly, feisty-yet-approachable pop star with hits like “Friday Night” and “Brokenhearted.” Her favourite colour is red; she loves going to the movies; she’s too busy with her music to get a pet, but she would love to get a rabbit one day. She bought her mother a house outside Vancouver, where she’s originally from. She eats healthy, is not a night owl.

In real life, $isi is not a night owl because she’s usually passed out from drinking before midnight. She’s a smoker and a fucker of male groupies. She is trying to live up to her idol, Amy Winehouse. She hasn’t been to the movies in years. She’d probably prefer a rat to a rabbit, and she often talks about how she hates her mother. Privately, she says things like, “I want to pay someone to tell me how much I suck. Everyone says I’m so good. I’m surrounded by liars. I want to pay someone, like a dominatrix, to tell me I’m a worm.”

Dolores wants to know what $isi’s favourite food is.

I oblige: dark chocolate, ceviche (I explain ceviche), fruit (fermented fruit mostly, though I don’t add this detail).

“Where did $isi go to school?”

“Where did you go to school?” I ask Dolores.

“A Catholic school. St. Mary’s. My parents are Catholic, sort of. Well, my mother is, so I guess it was her idea. Now I’m at Brescia.”

I don’t know what Brescia is and Dolores explains that it’s an all-girls college in London, Ontario. She is studying psychology there because she’s interested in psychopaths, especially Paul Bernardo, who is Canadian, which is why it’s awesome that she goes to school in Canada. What made him that way?

She goes on, “It’s really frustrating because I can only take first-year courses, so that’s, like, only general psychology. It’s like they don’t trust people to make their own choices and force them to take all this unnecessary crap because of some bullshit about students coming out well rounded, and it –”

To keep myself awake, I perform a couple of amusing chronological mind twisters: I was Dolores’ age when Dolores was ten years old. That guy, Paul Bernardo, was my age when he killed a girl half his age. I was that girl’s age at the time she was murdered. I’m not sure what all this adds up to.

I have to call $isi. My phone keeps pinging as her texts come through. I have to answer emails about the latest video. I have to make some arrangements to go see her in Montreal, where she’s supposed to be doing a yoga retreat, but where she’ll probably end up snorting lines with a DJ. All of this before I’m going to let myself have my afternoon nap, and before that, actually, have lunch, which today will include ginger potatoes with firm tofu in soy-garlic sauce with olive oil and an egg-yolk-mustard dressing on a dandelion salad.

We walk to my beach house now. Dolores admires it without speaking.

“I’m so glad we ran into each other,” I say.

“Yeah. Me too. My book was really starting to depress me.” The skin on her cheeks is peeling a little. Tiny flecks of white I would love to pick ever-so-gently with my tongue and swallow.

“I hate depressing stories,” I say, even though I don’t have the time to read much. At least not books.

“Isn’t it the worst? Nobody can really be together like normal people. There’s this vampire guy in the story, Albert – I should be reading something smart, like Dostoyevsky or something.”

“Dostoyevsky is depressing. But you should give it a try.”

“You think?”

“Yes. It’s good to challenge yourself. Want to have dinner tonight? I’d like you to have dinner with me,” I say.

She says nothing.

“You’re quiet. Is that a no?”

“No. I mean, yes,” she says, her voice shaking a little. She’s trying to suspend any belief she’s ever had about the things that don’t happen to girls like her, things like meeting vampires or princes and living happily ever after. Magic.