Lauren Holmes: Barbara the Slut and Other People

We left the store and walked down Greene Street. Beth grabbed my arm and took a couple of bouncy steps.

“If I lived in New York, I would live in SoHo,” she said.

“Oh really,” I said. “Do you even know how much apartments here are?”

“They’re expensive, huh?”

“They’re like four grand for a hundred square feet.” Sometimes Beth seemed to know nothing about how the world worked.

“Well I like it here, it’s my favorite neighborhood.”

“What other neighborhoods have you been to?”

“I don’t know.”

“You can’t even walk down the sidewalk, there are so many people. I like my neighborhood.”

“I like your neighborhood too. Calm down. I don’t not like your neighborhood. I just like this neighborhood too.”

“Fine,” I said. “Live here when you move to the city.”

“Maybe I will,” she said.

The sporting goods store didn’t really have any sporting goods. Unless you think stretchy clothes that cost more than a nice steak and a bottle of wine are sporting goods.

I looked at the men’s clothes. When I got to the back of the store Beth was freaking out about some underwear. The girl who was helping her was looking through a rack of bras and Beth was jumping up and down.

“These bras and shorts are special for hot yoga,” she said.

“Those are shorts?”

“Oh my god, I’m so excited.” She took a bunch of things back to the dressing room.

I sat in the most comfortable chair ever.

“What kind of chair is this?” I asked a different girl, who was putting hangers on clothes at a table.

“What?” When she turned around I realized she was gorgeous. She had huge blue eyes and she was tiny. She looked like a little elf but without pointy ears and with a really nice body. The stretchy clothes fit her like a dream.

“Never mind,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“What kind of chair is it? Do you want me to find out?” She had a killer smile, her teeth were perfect.

“No, that’s okay,” I said. “I don’t know why I said that. I don’t need a chair.” I smiled at her.

“Jason?” said Beth. “Do you want to see this stuff or not?”

“Uh,” I said.

“I love love love this stuff.” She opened the dressing room door and came out wearing a bra and the so-called shorts.

“Please tell me you don’t go to yoga like that,” I said.

Beth’s hair was coming out of the sides of the underwear. There was a lot of it. Once we reached the point where no amount of information was too much information, except any information about me having sex with Tiffany, Beth told me that the place she went to get waxed charged her extra. I mean I used to see her in underwear all the time. But now it was at eye level. It was not a good surprise. And it caused some involuntary stirring, which made everything worse.

“Of course I do.” She stuck her tongue out and let it hang there. She turned around and went back into the room.

“Tell your girlfriend I’ll be right back if she needs another size,” said the beautiful elf.

I started to say, “She’s not my girlfriend,” but only got as far as “Sh—”

“Thanks!” Beth said through the door.

Beth came out. Another girl came over to take the things she didn’t want. Beth handed her everything.

“What are you getting?” I said.

“I don’t think anything,” said Beth.

“What? Why not?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, I just don’t want to get anything.”

“Okay,” I said. On the way out I smiled at the elf. Beth rolled her eyes and said it was lame how I hit on her by asking about the chair.

“I wasn’t hitting on her,” I said.

“Oh please, Jason. I would recognize your lame moves through a brick wall.”

“I swear. I didn’t even see that she was hot until after I said the thing about the chair.”

“Whatever,” said Beth.

“Where do you want to go next?” I said.

“I think I’m fucking getting my period,” she said. “I need a cupcake or something.”

We went to a gourmet store where I once accidentally got a cup of yogurt and granola for eleven dollars before an interview.

“I think I want a cookie,” I said.

“Me too,” she said.

We decided to split one peanut butter and one ginger. After we paid we stood at the counter eating them. The peanut butter cookie was crunchy.

“Damn,” I said. “It looked like it was going to be soft.”

Beth took a bite of hers and chewed carefully. “It’s probably old.”

“What? Why would it be old?”

“Because it’s crunchy.”

“Crunchy cookies can be not old,” I said.

“I don’t think so,” said Beth. “No.”

• • •

Next we went to some special store that only had one kind of perfume. Beth’s friend ordered a sample and it never came, so Beth wanted to get it for her.

The girl handed Beth a tiny vial, and Beth said, “It’s fifteen dollars, right?”

“Wait, what?” I said.

“It’s complimentary,” said the girl.

“Oh my god, really?” said Beth. “Thank you so much.”

“Sure,” said the girl. “Have a good day.”

We left and Beth put the sample in her bag.

“Tell me you weren’t just going to pay fifteen dollars for that,” I said.

“Yeah I was,” said Beth.

“Beth, come on. They give those out at every store. Kelly has like a hundred in the bathroom.”

“I know, but this one was supposed to be fifteen dollars, Camille said so.”

“There’s no way,” I said. “Come on, please be smart about this stuff.”

“Well Camille really wanted it,” said Beth. “She waited for it to come in the mail for a month.”

Beth was really killing me. I couldn’t even look at her on the way to the grocery store. She didn’t notice. We had had moments like this before. But today I felt really out of patience and I didn’t know why. I was supposed to be Mr. Patient. I would wait for you to stop cheating on me for years and years if you needed me to. That’s how fucking patient I am. When we got to the grocery store Beth said she wasn’t that hungry, and I wasn’t really either.

We had a fight about whether to get rustic bread and cheddar cheese or white bread and American cheese, and finally Beth decided she wasn’t going to eat grilled cheese anyway. She only wanted to eat fruit for dinner. So I bought the white and American, frozen french fries, and a six-pack of sugar-free root beer for Kelly. Beth bought a fruit salad and at the last minute, some dumplings.

The subway didn’t come for a long time. Neither of us was over our fight about the grilled cheese yet. Beth pointed out the rats running around the tracks like she was glad to see them. I missed that about her. Right before Tiffany’s semester in Italy, Tiffany and I stayed on a houseboat in Berlin. It was full of spiders. There were ten or twenty spiders on every surface. The bunk beds. The table. The chairs. Our suitcases. Our shoes. At least two or three hundred total. I counted more than eighty as I threw them out the window. I was sliding them onto pieces of paper and brushing them off into the water. It seemed like as many as I was throwing out were coming back in through the open window and under the door. Tiffany sat on the top bunk, whimpering and flicking any she could see with her long nails. Until she saw the webs on the ceiling, only a foot or two from her head. Her scream shook the boat. If I had been a spider I would have jumped out the window voluntarily. Instead I caught her arm as she threw herself off the bed. I hugged her and kissed her. That night was the last time we had sex. Tiff gave me an amazing blow job. She said it was because I saved her from the spiders, but I think it was because she knew it was the last time.