Jowita Bydlowska - Guy

I’m alarmed by how much such a little thing disturbs me. It’s as if something has entered my home, a dark presence like a ghost. On the night of the emails, I am unable to sleep, so I leave my apartment and walk around the city with Dog for hours until we both get tired and go back and pass out on the couch.

Before passing out, I block Dolores’ email and send an email blast to my contacts about updating my address. I hire a more expensive Mexican assistant to monitor my email account.

I disable my Twitter and my Facebook page.

I book a weekend in Montreal to meet with $isi, who is back from rehab, which she, predictably, cut short because she was not allowed to use her new iPhone. I refuse to go to her hotel, and this puts her in a bad mood right away. I don’t justify my refusal with anything other than reminding her that this is a professional meeting, not a personal one. She snorts. “Of course it’s professional. My manager is coming.”

“Speaking of Mark, he’s gotten a little chubby, no?” I say.

$isi hangs up on me.

I send her a text with the hotel address and the time. She doesn’t text back.

Not texting me back is intentional. It makes me pace across the lobby until a conventionally pretty (symmetrical, straight-haired) girl in a slick black hotel uniform clicks across the marble floor and asks if I’d like to take a seat at the bar. I take a seat at the bar and order a drink.

$isi walks in alone. She’s always been small, but now she looks crushed under the weight of her massive sunglasses, the heavy-looking hardware that doubles as a necklace and the big white-and-black raccoon hair. She’s wobbly in Lucite stripper platforms. When she sits down at the bar, she shakes once, briefly, like an old lady – I want to put my hand on her shoulder to steady her, but I don’t want her to misread the signal.

She takes off her sunglasses to show me her makeup – a uniform black smudge across her face where her eyes are. “How is this even Montreal? I fucking hate that I can’t smoke in here,” she says.

“How are you?”

She looks at me, her green eyes electric against the black.

“I’m good,” I say. “Thanks for asking. Here’s the list with all the venues, times and dates, as well as some contact numbers and other information. I want you to look at this printout with me here so that I can actually witness you acknowledging it.”

“Whatever.”

“This has been going on for too long.”

She looks up. “You know what you are? You’re practically a pedophile. I’ve been reading about men like you. You sleep with young chicks like me because we won’t confront you and because we don’t know any better.”

I smile at the pretty hotel girl as she walks by. She smiles back.

“$isi, please.” I use the most caring yet detached tone I can manage. “If I hear a reference to our sleeping together ever again, I’m going to spread the word that you are consistently difficult. I know some people will still be eager to work with you, but I will also see to it that we release some of your demo tapes. You won’t need to pay a dominatrix anymore to tell you that you suck, that you’re a worm. So, be polite.”

Most of what I say is bullshit. $isi can easily find another good agent, but she’s young and stupid and weak right now, battling all her addictions, getting caught necking with pimply-faced groupies in skid row bathrooms, rolling and smoking joints and eating at McDonald’s. I know there’s an old video, too, of her smoking what looks like a glass pipe, and there’s a recording of a nasty message she left her assistant. I hope she recalls all of this as clearly as I do right now. “I hate being so harsh, $isi,” I say. “But like a good parent, I sometimes have to be. Tough love. I like the new look, by the way. The hair.”

“So you my daddy now?”

“Your hair really suits you.”

“It’s just hair.”

“It looks nice.”

$isi stretches her mouth into an unsuccessful smile. She looks like a demon. “Daddy. So. Are you still with that old lady?” she says.

I don’t answer. Gloria is coming back from Bali soon, and it would be nice to see her for a drama-free weekend when I feel like being around people again.

“Hello,” Mark says somewhere behind me. As always, he is sweating slightly, as if he ran here. Maybe he did run here. He can be calm on the phone, but he’s one of those people who looks like he’s got a live monkey attached to him, the way he’s always crumpled and bug-eyed.

He gives $isi a close squeeze, molesting her thin back for a second too long, and I wonder if they’ve slept together. Maybe to get back at me, hoping that I’d care. She doesn’t hug him back, and he stands awkwardly next to our bar stools until I suggest we all sit at one of the tables and move on with our meeting.

“You’ve lost some weight, Mark,” I say.

“Thanks,” he says. “I don’t think so.”

“No, definitely,” I say.

“Yoga,” he says, shyly.

“I love yoga,” I say.

As we walk away from the bar, $isi moves closer to me and quickly whispers in my ear, “I hate you so much,” which would be a great title for a new song she could write. I make a mental note to bring that up in our meeting. She leaves her vodka, untouched, on the bar.

$isi comes back to my hotel in the middle of the night. She rings me from the lobby. She’s sitting in a chair, and her face is small, makeup-free. She looks older and younger than herself, somehow, at the same time. I don’t know which drug did this to her, or if it’s just drunkenness.

She sees me and gets up, stumbling a bit. There it is again: that jerkiness to her movement, as if someone were pulling on strings. “I had some time to think about things.”

“Drink about things?”

“Now that’s a brilliant dad joke!”

“$isi, you’re tired. Let’s get you in bed.”

“Great idea. Let’s get me in bed.”

“Wait here.” I go up to the front desk to ask for a separate room for her. I don’t have any other ideas this late at night. I want to go back to bed.

“Is she okay? Would you like me to call someone?” the desk girl says. I don’t know if she’s the same girl as before. Same hair, same uniform. Same pretty.

“She’s very tired. She travelled and lost her luggage. We’re looking into it,” I say.

The girl smiles. I sign the bill. “Let me know if there’s anything else,” she says. Suck my dick. I smile and shake my head. “No, that’s all. Thank you.”

I pull $isi to her feet and we walk, slowly, jerkily, toward the elevator. “I’m firing you,” she says.

“Okay. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

We get on the elevator. Our image is a blur in the smoky glass. She looks like a thing someone squiggled. I drag-walk her to her room. She immediately curls up in the large reading chair.

I grab a blanket to put over her, but she pushes it down and mumbles something about being too hot. I walk back to my room.

I fall into my bed, fall asleep immediately and dream of being chased by a bear, then drowning in the pond where I try to hide from it.

THE NEXT MORNING, I ORDER ROOM SERVICE, AND A YOUNG man shows up wheeling a little cart with my breakfast on it. I’ve ordered a grapefruit and a Montreal bagel with cream cheese, and fresh orange juice and coffee. The bagel is too dry, the cream cheese cold and hard but with a film of grease.