Jowita Bydlowska - Guy

I watch the house, the lifeguard chair in front of it. I want to go and climb it and take in the beach right away, see if I can spot any of them, the actual girls. But then the front door opens and Jason steps out with his new girlfriend with messy tattoos up and down her arms. The ex he was thinking of bringing with him has disappeared. Number disconnected, no emails back. She’s probably busy modelling for Faces of Meth , or maybe she’s dead.

I am impressed with Jason finding a replacement so quickly. Perhaps those PUA meetings have helped him after all, but it was me, more likely, who provided the right inspiration.

Jason found the new girl while giving a workshop to a short-film class at a community college. Candace – Candi – waited for him after the workshop in order to show him a video she filmed in high school. It was about her aunt dying of cancer.

“It was extremely profound,” Jason said on the phone. There were long takes of the aunt napping. It was uncomfortable to watch her for that long. “Her face twisted, you could tell she was in pain.” He said he almost cried at the end of the film. He couldn’t wait to talk to Candi, tell her that she was a genius. He felt an incredible pull toward her, like she was his – like she belonged to him, he said. And it was strange, he said, because he hadn’t even touched her at that point. He was in love with her brain before he was in love with her body. Once, he ran into Candi shopping with her mother at the market. And even seeing the mother didn’t stop him, he said.

“What was wrong with her mother?”

“Everything. She was huge. But that’s the least of it.”

“Genetics. Well, you’re going fully into it then.”

“One of those haircuts, short on top. And she was rude. That was the worst. She acted like I was some asshole bothering her daughter. They both smoke. Candi and her.”

He only mentioned the mother so that I would remind him of genes. He was hoping that hearing it from me would make him reconsider what he already knew: he was about to embark on a miserable journey to a white-trash nirvana.

At the time of the film workshop, Candi had a boyfriend who was a filmmaker himself. It turned out later that both the aunt and the film were his. But at that point it didn’t matter. Jason loved Candi. Candi left her boyfriend. And now she is here, looking at me, eyes narrowing as if we had history – a complicated kind of history.

“So good to see you, buddy.” Jason trots over. “Meet Candace.”

“Hi, Candace. I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Candi. It’s Candi. What did he say?”

“Only good things.”

“Really,” she says. “I haven’t heard anything about you.”

She reminds me of someone. She starts chewing on her finger. There was a pretty girl in my high school, Melissa or Missy. She slept with everyone. I didn’t sleep with her.

“Yes, you have, baby,” Jason says. He’s speaking loudly, his enthusiasm put on. There must’ve been a fight before I showed up. “Candi, this is the guy I told you about. God’s gift to women, ha ha.”

Candi doesn’t smile. She propels herself off the door frame and slinks toward us. I stare back at her. I can’t figure out her stare, if it’s flirtatious, murderous, indifferent.

Jason meets her halfway and brushes something off her shirt. It’s a strangely pathetic gesture. I have an urge to pull him off of her and slap him once, hard, to snap him out of this shameful behaviour, but I know he’d never understand that it’s for his own good.

“God’s gift to women, eh?” Candi says, extending her tattooed hand: T-R-U-T-H on her knuckles. She winks at me. Jason laughs nervously again.

“Jason is a joker,” I say.

“He is?”

Jason fusses beside me, picking up and dropping my bags. He finally settles on a small suitcase, which he carries fussily into the house. I follow him. “Come, Candace,” I say.

“Candi,” she says.

I don’t look to see if she’s following me; she is.

Inside, the house is spotless, quiet – perfect, save for the ashtray filled with cigarette butts. The house doesn’t smell of cigarettes, so I don’t say anything, but I will never invite Jason to stay here ever again.

I don’t have a lot of energy left after my long drive. I’m hoping that the lovebirds will leave soon, but I politely sit through Jason’s detailed listing of everything that is or isn’t working in the house. “We had a lovely time. Got bitten by a wasp when we first got here, but she’s tough. She’s not allergic – right, Candi?”

“Glad you’re not allergic, Candace,” I say and she says nothing.

I try to imagine what it would be like to spend three weeks with her, with her overt scorn, those bloodshot eyes. I really don’t understand Jason at all. Perhaps he’s one of those people who like to be in pain so they know they’re alive. A masochist.

Jason prattles on. Candace stretches, her top rising to show another tattoo sneaking out of her cut-off shorts. Flowers or birds, hard to tell.

As they leave, I consider saying something to Jason about getting away from her. But I refuse to act extreme, especially when it comes to sentiments instead of facts. And he would never, anyway. He’s smitten.

My phone rings late in the evening.

“Hi,” Candi says on the other end.

“Hi.”

“He told me all kinds of stories about you,” she says.

“I can imagine.” There’s nothing more intriguing to a woman than finding out a guy is popular with other women. It’s a challenge. An opportunity for a woman to teach me a lesson because, of course, she is different than all of them. She is the one who will destroy me, who will make me fall.

“What can I help you with, Candi?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe there’s something?”

“You wouldn’t do that to a friend,” she says in a voice stretching like honey. Teasing.

“No, you’re right. I wouldn’t,” I say. I try to stifle a yawn, but it comes out anyway and when it does, I think how it’s a good thing. It will help things along.

“Do you want to meet at Neon?” she asks. “Jason has a headache. He doesn’t want to take me dancing. I feel like dancing.”

I picture myself going with her to Neon, a new beach bar that’s opened this year. Walking there, she is stumbling because she’s already had a lot to drink, and she smells of cigarettes.

We dance, or she dances – she’s grinding her skinny ass into me, aggressively; she’s laughing with her mouth opened monstrously wide. Soon, she attacks: a combination of aggressive flirting and mocking me for stealing her, my friend’s girlfriend. She’d say something crude: You’d do anything for a pretty pussy, wouldn’t you? Betray your best friend, would you?

And so on. I’ve never fallen for this kind of thing before. Why would I even bother? Why would I risk my friendship?

I think of Jason sitting in those PUA basements all those years, trying to learn to be an asshole and failing at it. Before Candi, the best part of his day was the part when he’d unwittingly touch himself in his sleep. Once, I saw him approach a set of two women, trying to manoeuvre his body so he’d block one of the girls, focus on the other, the less fat one.

I couldn’t hear his lines, but I watched the blocked girl – a hipster in big glasses with a curtain of dark hair desperately trying to cover her massive jaw – grow more and more indignant, her body shifting as if to tackle him. Her friend, a forty-year-old-looking blond-brunette in her twenties, folded her arms, one eyebrow pointed at Jason. He was oblivious. He reached out to touch her and she backed away with such disgust and force that he almost fell forward. He turned, looked at me, eyes big and hurt like a child’s.