Jowita Bydlowska - Guy

I check out the two Internet stations. The first one is occupied by a couple, probably in their early thirties, both dressed in khaki, both with the same dirty-blond hair. They are wearing rubber shoes. One day they will produce a plain child, maybe a girl. Maybe I will still be alive by the time she turns eighteen.

At the other station, there are two girls – one looks a bit like Dolores. As soon as I see her, I feel the anxiety clawing up from the bottom of my gut: What if the actual Dolores is here? But no, she wouldn’t be here, I remind myself: that bungalow got sold last year.

I count backwards from twenty. Neutral subjects. Nature, fashion. What to get for dinner tonight. I take a few deep breaths.

The second girl is one of those flawless beauties, with a cute nose and straight black hair that even in this humidity stays silky and flat. Her top is something that looks like a see-through skirt that she pulled up over her breasts to wear as a dress. Her thighs are long, smooth bars of chocolate. An Eight.

She catches me staring. Smile full of bright white teeth; it’s the well-oiled smile of someone who gets stared at often. With that, my desire falters and, despite my anxiety, I check out the Dolores look-alike again (noticing, too, the flicker of outrage in the pretty girl’s expression as I do).

I take in the clothes that don’t really fit Dolores-girl, the chinless, round face. She turns to me and blushes. Too close, too much alike. I look away.

I go outside to untie Dog. Maybe I should just stay in today with The Sopranos , which I am finally watching to see what all the fuss was about. Or I could try to tackle the new, complicated contracts Patrick drew up for the Ribbonheads. They are becoming more and more demanding and are threatening to leave. This is actually fine with me, as their job is done – the campaign was successful, and I’m not in the business of representing aspiring actresses.

“Hey,” someone shouts.

I turn around. It’s the bald girl who served me my smoothie, the zombie stoner. She’s walking toward me, quite gracefully for the undead. Her jaw is no longer falling off its hinges.

“Are you that actor?”

This happens from time to time. It hasn’t happened in a while, so it takes me a moment to remember that I’m used to it. I get used to it again by the time she catches up with me. “No, I’m definitely not him.”

“Are you sure? Aren’t you supposed to say no even if you are?”

“Good point. But yes, I’m sure.”

“Okay.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“No, that’s okay. Are you sure?”

“Yes. Very sure.”

“Alright. I believe you. What’s your name? I’m Bride,” is what I think she says – bride – as she thrusts her small hand forward, and I say, “Sorry?”

“My name is Bride. As in getting married . Bride. I know. My parents had a peculiar sense of humour. My childhood was quite traumatizing.”

“That’s funny,” I say and take a closer look at Bride.

She avoids my eyes, which is confusing: this aggressive introduction and then the coyness that follows it. She’s almost my height – very tall for a girl – with a thin, muscular body. She’s standing ridiculously straight, as if she wanted to further accentuate her almost complete lack of chest.

Her face is all nose, which is not what makes her so strange looking; it is the wide slash of lips that seems to throw her face off balance. She reminds me of someone, perhaps $isi before cancer and before she became $isi and had plastic surgery to make herself more acceptable-looking, cute enough for a magazine cover.

“Had enough?” she says. I can’t tell what number she is. Anything between Two and Seven.

“Of what?”

“Checking me out,” she says.

I laugh. “Sure. I wasn’t. You remind me of my friend’s daughter.”

“Ooh, pervy.”

“What?” What’s wrong with you , I want to add but don’t. This is probably just her clumsy way of flirting, saying offensive things to see if I’ll lose my cool. I smile and shake my head as if she were a silly child. She is a silly child.

“I’m just joking. Jokes! Sorry,” she says.

“No worries. I got it.”

“So. You never told me your name,” she says.

“Guy. As in that guy . My parents had a peculiar sense of humour too.”

“Wild.”

“You have beautiful eyes,” I say.

“Thanks,” she says, not at all surprised by this sudden change of gears, the compliment. I wonder if her confidence is actually just a cover-up for shyness and insecurity.

“Is this your dog?” she says.

I nod.

“Beautiful dog.”

She doesn’t bend down to pet him. Maybe she’s afraid of dogs. Maybe she got bitten by one as a child. An image of a grotesque scar, a swirl of valleys of flesh, pops into my head. I try to place it somewhere on her body, somewhere exciting – under her small breast, or the inside of her thigh.

“You can pet him,” I say. “Don’t be scared.”

“I’m not. I’m just not that crazy about pets. I like looking at them, but that’s about it.”

I wonder if being a dog owner makes me look sentimental to her, or worse, if it says something about me I’m not aware of – like that I wouldn’t say no to a placenta milkshake or a yoga retreat.

“No offence,” she says, possibly mistaking my silence for hurt.

“Don’t you have to go back?” I nod in the direction of the smoothie shack.

She blinks and gives a big toothy smile. “Yeah, I do. I just wanted to say hi, see if you were that actor. Sorry. Didn’t mean to bother you.”

“No bother at all,” I say and make my decision. “Listen,” I say.

“Yeah?” She doesn’t look away this time. She is nothing like Dolores. But she has that clarity, that sugar in those lovely mahogany eyes that make her look innocent, corruptible. And even though part of me thinks that I might not be the first to have noticed these eyes – that there might’ve been a boy before me, or even a man who had to perhaps lower his standards just to be able to look into them – I’m willing to take this risk because if that’s not the case (another man), then I would like to be the first.

“Would you like to hang out later on?”

She tilts her head and puffs out her cheeks. She says nothing. It’s obvious she’s trying to play some abridged version of hard-to-get so I help her out, pretend to plead with her. “I’m harmless, I promise.”

“Yeah? Too bad.”

“Too bad?”

“What’s the point of you then?” she says.

“I’ll make you laugh,” I reply.

“Yeah, don’t,” she says, and I laugh. I laugh because I’m suddenly nervous. She laughs too, then, but it seems out of politeness; it’s cut short.

I say, “See? It’s working.”

She rolls her eyes at me. She rubs herself on her shaved head once in that now-familiar gesture of girls enjoying the strangeness of their baldness, their hands surprised at not getting caught in hair.

“Maybe another time then. It was nice to meet you,” I say and start to turn around.

“Don’t be such a girl. Be here at seven, okay? Leave the dog at home,” she says, and I flinch at the insult, at the rudeness, at being given a command.

I let it go and say, “Great. Seven. See you then,” and I snap the leash. Dog jumps on me, places his paws around my waist. We wrestle for a moment, me trying to make him sit back down, him too excited to submit, both of us engaged in a brief, aggressive dance.

“Actually, eight is better,” Bride says.

“Sure. Eight,” I repeat, sounding a bit too hysterical.

“Okay. See ya then.” She walks away.