Snapped

My brain flips over and hurts. Get me a cold compress and a very soft pillow. Let me not care and play dead or pretend I’m a teacher, a strict schoolmarm. It’s a pop quiz for Eva: who’s a DO, who’s a DON’T? Pencils down in three minutes! I’ll check her work right away, taking my time—making her wait, making her nervous and possibly sweaty, though Eva seems likely to be one of those girls whose sweat smells like rosewater and never stains. Yes, a pop quiz could be fun, with Parrot Girl first up. No, second—I don’t need Eva to sense that I need her, and that I want her to spill every secret she knows.

I’m quite sure that Eva would tell me everything—anything—I wanted. She’d be happy, I’d be happy, we could do a dance around the living room because we’d know, we’d know, we’d know just what Parrot Girl is. We could revel and open more wine, make a toast to the most fabulous DO or DON’T of the week. I stare at the photo of Parrot Girl and her stupid fucking parrot and my mouth seals shut. I say nothing and there will be no pop quiz. I don’t need Eva, she holds no secrets I haven’t heard or told before. Parrot Girl is my problem, she’s a riddle, not a test, maybe even a joke.

I click through the photos and print them out. I spread them on the floor and Eva stands beside me as I decide which photos will make the column. Skinny Denim Shorts Man with the skeevy mustache is a DON’T. Skinny Pink Polo Shirt Man with the mutton chops and a kilt is a DO. Headband Girl is a DON’T. Babushka Girl is a DO. And so it goes until there is one more DON’T slot and one more DO. Parrot Girl is still on the floor. My confidence is sunk; it’s not too late for the pop quiz and this is no joke. I’ve made a Skinny Pink Polo Shirt Man with mutton chops and a kilt a DO. He looks absurd and he’s trying too hard but I know he’s a DO because the boys at Snap keep trying to grow mutton chops and half of them are in kilts—but never sarongs—and they really like pink and girls like Eva like them. And there are no fucking pets at all so it’s really not so complicated.

I look closer at the photo: it’s technically good. I have to use it. Eva shuffles her feet. She’s bored, she’s waiting, one second longer and she’ll know I’m a fraud. I pick up the photo and put it on the DON’T pile. I feel a rush of bravado and decide she’ll be the feature DON’T. Eva’s shuffling stops. Fuck Parrot Girl.

Jack calls. He’s home and safe. The flight was good. No snacks or bar service, but it was only an hour and he tells me he found a half-eaten protein bar in his jacket pocket. I’m drunk and I can’t believe I’m dating someone who eats protein bars. Eva’s sitting on the sofa wearing gloves and examining issues six and eight of Snap. She told me that she carries the gloves in her handbag at all times. She won’t read an important book or periodical without them, she said. Eva is odd. I slip into my bedroom and say this to Jack and he says,” You’re odd.” And he’s right, of course. I like her—Eva—and her oddness. I like that she carries gloves in her bag and wears panty hose and orthopedic shoes and has hair the color of a Francophone grandma. Jack tells me he loves me and that he misses me already. “I know you do, baby,” I say and as soon as that baby is out of my mouth I feel again like I want to vomit.

Eva is too drunk to drive so I tell her she can stay here. I make up the spare room that’s so rarely used. I lend her a black cotton camisole and a pair of boxer shorts printed with grinning flowers. They’re Japanese and they were free. They look cute on Eva. I rifle through my sleepwear options and decide on a long black silk chemise with lace trim and a matching robe. I keep my bra on so my breasts won’t flop around. I catch myself in the mirror. I look like a madam, but the silk feels cool and soft against my skin. At home, I’m usually in long johns and T-shirts, my hair tied back in a ponytail and my glasses on. I swipe a neutral gloss across my lips before heading back to the living room.

As we finish the wine, Eva tells me all about how great and important and influential I am. Sometimes I ask her about herself. She grew up in Pointe-Claire with an Anglo mother and a French father, not far it turns out from Ted and Genevieve’s new house. I look up their address in my book and Eva knows the street, it’s about six blocks from her parents’ place. She’s living there now, just temporarily she says. She has a job, an office PA for a French film company, but the pay is shit. She hates it, says the producer is a prick who wears a fedora and a trench coat every day and does nothing except play video games and look at porn on his cell phone. I tell her I’ll take his picture and make him the featured DON’T one week. She laughs until her eyes tear and I do, too. Eva tells me she went to private school, with uniforms that she started altering at thirteen. She says she makes clothes she sometimes sells to friends, but mostly she’s a stylist and a writer—like me. Except when I was twenty-four no one knew what a stylist did and no one knew our names. I tell her this and she goes on about how it’s about time people—but mostly me—were recognized for our talent. We’re the ones who spot and set the trends, not the movie stars, not the pop stars. Eva is very passionate about this. I’m fading and my eyes are heavy, but Eva keeps talking, telling me how remarkable and inspiring I am. “Look at all you’ve accomplished—look at everything you’ve done. And you’re not even forty.” Eva says this and it’s better than sex, it’s better than a lullaby.

Swag

Red wine is crusted around the corners of my mouth and looks nearly black. I scrape it off with my fingernail and splash water on my face before pinning my hair up and stepping into the shower. Under the water I’m dizzy and hot. I feel like I’m sweating. I step out and wrap myself in an oversize towel and sit on the edge of the bathtub for a long time, still and silent. If I move my head I fear it may explode. I reach for my body cream and rub it in all over. It has a faint vanilla scent, but I can still smell the toxic odor of yesterday afternoon’s champagne and last night’s wine on my skin. I spritz myself with extra perfume. I spray my hair with a citrusy refresher that absorbs the smell of smoke, then I work it into two low pigtails. Ted will know I’m hungover. I always wear my hair in pigtails when I’m hungover. It used to be, even five years ago, that I’d often be asked for ID in bars, liquor stores, buying cigarettes at chain stores with signs declaring Anyone Who Looks Under 30 Will Be Asked For Identification. I examine my face. No one will be asking me for ID today.

My face sucks up the first layer of moisturizer in seconds, so I slather on another. It’s the eyes. The eyes are the biggest problem. It’s not so much the wrinkles, but the skin—it’s like the thinnest tissue paper, delicate and soft, never totally smooth, which makes concealer an issue. Applying it evenly on the puffy, papery skin is next to impossible and no matter how much blending and dabbing I do, it’s never perfect. Still, I grout the area around my eyes with concealer, set it with a light powder, then attack with an expensive moisturizing spray gel that I nabbed from the Swag Shack at the office. I feel my skin suck it in and I wait for the promised youthful, reenergizing glow that after five minutes doesn’t appear, so I give up and brush my teeth again. My tongue is still dark with wine. I brush it raw with my toothbrush, which looks too gross to ever use again, so I toss it in the trash and want to climb right in with it, but the pail is too small. I don’t have a garbage pail big enough anywhere in the apartment. I could probably fold myself into one of those black plastic jumbo bags I use to dump all bottles into after a party—the ones I leave around back of the building for the bottle-picker with the beard and the giant tricycle who I always try to smile at but can never quite look in the eye or say hello to. The jumbo bag is problematic, though. I’d need someone to twist-tie the top for me and get me to the Dumpster and Ted isn’t strong enough to lift me. Jack is, but he wouldn’t do it. I could ask Eva if she has any big-guy friends, but that might seem weird since we just met.

Eva’s not in the spare room, but I can tell she slept there because the bed is made just so, all crisp corners and symmetry. I find her in the kitchen slicing fresh bagels from the Fairmount Bakery, which is not close by, but she says it was no big deal to nip up there and back. She’s also picked up cut flowers and opened the blinds to the day.

“I have Mondays off,” she says between bagel bites. “We shoot Tuesday to Saturday.”

I remember now. She’s a film office PA. She lives in Pointe-Claire with her parents. There’s a guy with a hat and porn on his phone. “So what are your plans for today?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Just hang around, I guess. But should probably go home and change. I used your shower, though. I hope that’s okay.”

“Use whatever you want. And if you’re looking for something to wear, I’m sure you could find something at my office—we’ve got piles of stuff.” It is true. The Swag Shack is full of free stuff companies send us in hopes that we’ll write about it, put it on our IT LIST. Most of the stuff is crap that no one could possibly want, but sometimes it is such spectacular crap we put it on our ICK LIST. Then the publicists at the companies—the very people who sent us this crap stuff in the first place—call up whining and angry and we laugh at them and ask them if they’ve ever actually read Snap and they get all flustered and say yes, of course, but are suddenly nervous and polite and have a call they have to take on the other line, so goodbye.

There is good stuff, too. Cute clothes, but it’s been ages since a pair of pants that fit me have come in and I could use new pants. The free-stuff publicists call up our market editors and ask about me, about Ted—favorite colors, hated colors, sizes. I haven’t gotten around to telling anyone that I’m not an eight, but a ten now, so none of the pants they send over fit. If they ask, I tell our market editors I don’t like the pants—any of them—even if I do. It’s better than sending some internal e-mail that’s sure to end up on someone’s goddamn blog announcing that my ass is fatter. Like they haven’t noticed. But skirts, if they’re A-line or pleated, they fit. My waist is still an eight—it’s my ass that’s a ten. And tops are fine. Shoes and handbags are the best. I don’t wear jewelry so I couldn’t care whether it’s free or not.

I take Eva to work with me. It’s exciting for her and I’m happy that she drives and that I don’t have to walk or contend with the Metro today. My legs are achy and my knee cracks as I cross it over the other in the passenger seat of Eva’s Saab. She presses a button and the top comes down. I’m grateful for this because I worry that the smell of my hangover has defeated that extra spray of perfume.

The Snap building is squat and two storeys, a former embroidery factory in the east end. The first floor is reception and production, there’s a fully equipped photo studio, and piled high to the ceiling in one corner there’s a heap of old Macs that looks like it could tumble down at any moment, but really they’re all superglued together and affixed to the wall. Sometimes when Ted and I are taking corporate clients though we tell them it’s art.

I spin Eva around through production, the studio, mumble a few introductions. She seems impressed and keeps saying, “Oh, my gosh.” Eva doesn’t swear, I’ve noticed. She says goodness and gosh, and I’m waiting for a golly-gee. This could annoy me, but it’s Eva so it doesn’t.

We take the freight elevator to the second floor. I can’t face the stairs even though I know my ass will never shrink riding an elevator. Today I’m a lazy bitch and I couldn’t care. I’ve brought a CD with the DOs and DON’Ts fashion photos for the week. I’ll give it to Layout, then show it to Ted, who will laugh and sign off and we’ll get proofs of the entire issue and mark it up one more time before six when it has to go to the printer. By noon tomorrow it’ll be in record stores and fashion boutiques and cafés in Montreal that we’ve personally approved. On Wednesday, it’ll be in more record stores and fashion boutiques and cafés across the country and in the States that I suppose someone at some point has visited and approved on our behalf, but that’s Ted’s responsibility, not mine.

My office, like Ted’s, is an actual office, with walls and windows and a door that locks. When we first moved into the building it was all open and chaos. Music blared and people smoked at their desks, although even back then it was against city bylaws. There’s still music and chaos and it’s fun to watch through the windows of my quiet, sound-proofed office, but I have to smoke on the roof.

Music and chaos is good for business, so we built the boardroom in the middle of it all and glassed it in. Ted’s in there meeting with our branding team. I wave and he nods. I lead Eva to my office and collapse immediately into the swiveling fuchsia chair I received as a gift from a boring furniture manufacturer that made a splash in the market by hiring a flamboyant women’s wear designer to create a line of equally flamboyant home and office furnishings that got lots of press but sold abysmally. Our research showed the price point was too high—there are only so many people who will pay eight thousand dollars for a polka-dot leather sofa and they don’t shop at the boring furniture manufacturer’s stores. So they can’t say we didn’t tell them so.

“I love your chair,” Eva says.

“Here—give it a try. It’s stylish and ergonomic.” Christ. I’m an infomercial. I muster all my strength and lift myself out of it, placing both hands on my desk in front of me for balance. I hear my knees crack—both of them this time. Beside my desk there’s an empty garbage pail. It’s larger than your average office garbage pail, but I know I can’t wedge my ass into that one, either.

Eva spins around in the fuchsia chair. “Mmm. Comfy.”

“Free,” I say. Like that explains anything. I think I may be retarded today, but I know enough to know I can’t say that because this isn’t junior high when Ted and I called everything gay and retarded and we called each other gaylord and retard. You can’t say that unless you created South Park and you’re saying it through those animated kids that are surprisingly still funny, because you never know who’s gay or has a retard in their family.

Pleased with my self-censoring restraint, I walk Eva to the Swag Shack. It’s the Swag Shack because that’s what’s burned into the plank of wood above the door. It’s a room, the office Ted and I were going to give to the fancy financial executive we never got around to hiring. Instead, we beefed up our in-house accounting staff and none of them are fancy enough for an office. But we may have to rethink this because they keep complaining about the chaos and the noise and someone quits what seems like every second day, but is actually more like every five months according to Ted, and Ted would know because they report to him.

The Swag Shack is jammed with racks and shelves. There’s free stuff everywhere. I let Eva loose and tell her to grab what she wants and come back to my office when she’s done. I think she’s going to freak—her eyes are all buggy and glazed, her mouth twisted in wonder. I’ve seen this look before—on girls the first time they enter the Swag Shack, on guys who are fucking me right before they come and on drummers, particularly the ones who are good.

“Sara, oh, my goodness! I don’t know where to start,” Eva says. She hugs me and I pat her shoulder. “Thank you!”

“Take as long as you want,” I say and lope back to my office.

My eyes swim across the page. I’m in the boardroom proofing with Ted and our art director, Brian. My head is throbbing and I’m out of Advil. I’m sticky and sweaty and if there was ever any doubt earlier in the day that I was toxic and stinky, it’s gone. I want to crawl under the giant kidney-shaped table, but it’s glass-tinted, completely see-through—and people will notice. I force myself to read each word, take in every photo cutline, check the folio at the bottom of the pages. I find a missing word and I’m very proud.

I get to the DOs and DON’Ts page and there’s Parrot Girl, looking disaffected, slouchy and numb. It’s not too late to move her to a DO, but I don’t because that will just make me feel more toxic and retarded. I sign off on the issue, as do Ted and Brian, who scrams at once, pressed to make the final changes before deadline. My work here is done and all I can think about is my bed.

“Who’s the redhead?” Ted asks as we’re clearing off the boardroom table.

“What?”

“Her.” Ted points to Eva, who is sitting in my office. It’s nearly four. I’ve forgotten all about her. I am retarded today and an asshole and a very poor host.

“That’s Eva.” Ted follows me out of the boardroom and to my office where I introduce him to her. She’s changed into a pair of skinny madras plaid golf pants that I’m quite sure are men’s, and a purple blouse with a fussy bow at the neck. She’s pinned a gaudy rhinestone brooch in the shape of a lizard above her left breast. Scrunched up knee-highs peek out of her orthopedic shoes. She’s a DO and I can tell Ted knows it, too.

“Eva, I’m so, so sorry for leaving you this long. You should have just grabbed me from the boardroom.”

“Please don’t worry about me, Sara. I’ve kept myself busy. As a matter of fact, I just finished.” Eva bites her lower lip and casts her eyes down. “I hope you guys won’t be mad, but I kind of did something.”

Jesus. This can’t be good. What’d she do? Break something? Wreck something? Spill something on my velvet chair? This must be what Genevieve means when she says she can’t let baby Olivier out of her sight for a second.

“Come here,” Eva says. She brushes past Ted and he smiles in that goofy way that all men do when an attractive girl touches them by accident. I notice Ted adjust his pants as he follows Eva out. It’s subtle and Ted’s no perv, but still. I flash on Ted with a hard-on when we were seventeen, his purple penis and its big mushroom head. I’m dizzy and nauseous. I haven’t eaten since this morning and the picture of Ted’s mushroom-head dick isn’t helping. He was a virgin. I wasn’t. We were drunk. He actually begged, so we fucked and we never talked about it again. I wonder if Genevieve knows, but I doubt it because she tells me all about sex with Ted—at least she did until the baby—and I figure if she knew she probably wouldn’t tell me so much. As I walk behind Ted, who’s walking behind Eva, I contemplate which is worse: hearing from Gen about how turned on she gets sucking Ted’s cock when I know that it’s a weird mushroom-head cock or hearing Gen describe how Olivier peed in her face when she was changing him and about how baby balls disappear up inside their little baby-boy bodies and how babies get teeny-tiny erections. I wonder if Olivier has a mini mushroom-head penis like his dad. Incarcerate me in a giant garbage pail under the boardroom table and slap me around. Put me out of my misery, I’m a fucked-up sicko.

“Surprise!” Eva swings open the door to the Swag Shack and I’m agog. It’s clean, orderly. The body and beauty products are grouped together. The men’s and women’s wear have been separated and, from what I can tell, organized according to style and color. Gadgets and toys have assigned spaces. CDs and books are alphabetized. I am speechless.

“Who are you and what have you done with the Swag Shack? “ Ted says, shaking Eva by the shoulders. He can be such a cheese sometimes.

Eva blushes. “I hope you don’t mind. It just seemed like it would be so hard to find anything in here. I wanted to make it easier for you.”

I love her. I think I could, as my mother used to say, go gay. My mother didn’t believe a person could be born gay, but she didn’t think anyone would choose to be gay, either. Hence, her go gay theory. Much like being struck by a random bolt of lightning, she believed someone could be walking down the street and—poof! — they’d just go gay and that would be that. This could be somewhat embarrassing when I’d have my gay friends over and my mother would insist on asking them about their personal going-gay experience, but it was better than her being a bigoty homophobe like Ted’s nightmare all-Bible, all-the-time Catholic parents. I could totally go gay for Eva right now, but the sex would be trouble. I’d still have to have sex with men without bulbous mushroom-head penises. So maybe gay isn’t the best option for Eva and me. Maybe I’ll make her my assistant.

I’ve never had an assistant. Watching Ted burn through new assistants like Jack goes through his revolting protein bars has made me wary of both. The point of having an assistant as far as I can tell is to help you, but assistants from what I’ve seen are snaky whiners who spend more time trying to write some pathetic roman à clef than actually helping the bosses whom they so obviously hate. Eva doesn’t hate me. Eva loves me. And Eva’s smart and cute and she cleaned the Swag Shack.

Eva is my new assistant. It’s Tuesday morning and she’s at her desk tap-tapping away on her computer. She brought Fairmount bagels so everyone loves her already, except for one of the IT guys who’s allergic to wheat and gluten and sugar and everything else good. It’s a miracle he hasn’t killed himself.

I’m feeling much better, clean almost. I washed my hair this morning and my resolve to quit smoking is strong. Day one was a breeze—I couldn’t face a cigarette yesterday—and when I told Jack on the phone last night that I was done, he was pleased. He says I snore when I smoke too much. He smokes. He snores. I don’t make a big thing of it. Jack can really piss me off sometimes.

But Eva is perfect. We’re going out tonight to celebrate her new job at a new restaurant that has cordially invited me and a guest to wine and dine on the house. Genevieve was supposed to go with me, but sent a midnight e-mail bailing. Olivier is acting up, which is code for I can’t leave Ted alone with the baby. Olivier is nearly one and Gen has yet to leave him with Ted for more than five minutes. Occasionally she’ll entrust Prince Olivier’s care to one of her newfangled suburban mommy friends I’ve never met, but not Ted. I think that’s fucked up, but I’m smart enough to keep my mouth shut about things like mommy-baby codependency and mini mushroom-head penises.

I will take Eva to the restaurant. She bounced up and down on her chair when I asked if she’d like to go. She clapped her hands and said, “Goody!” I suspect it won’t be long before I get that golly-gee I’ve been waiting for.

Eva helps stuff the Trend Essentials swag bags we’ll be giving to the six participants in our Trend Mecca Bootcamp Weekend that starts Friday. I hate Trend Mecca Bootcamp weekends, but considering that each one of the corporate fucks that signs up pays ten thousand dollars to experience the street life and underground of trendsetting Montreal, I can hardly complain. No one wants to hear from a high-priced whore about the sultan who paid her a million dollars to fuck her up the ass for a weekend and no one wants to hear me gripe about the Trend Mecca Bootcamp Weekend. I don’t even want to know there is such a thing as a Trend Mecca Bootcamp Weekend, let alone lead it. Maybe I’ll take Eva this time. Maybe I’ll wear a wig. Maybe I’ll bring a rag soaked in chloroform to wipe the smirk off the face of anyone who sees me out with these guys and their pleated pants and patterned sweaters. The people who sign up for the Trend Mecca Bootcamp Weekend are almost always all guys.

Eva says she thinks it sounds fun and that she wants to learn everything she can about the business. She says she’ll carry my coffee or fetch drinks for the Bootcamp suits. Eva is my dream girl until about 2:00 p.m. when she knocks on my door and asks if she can come in. She looks nervous. She’s biting her lower lip again.

“What’s up, Eva? You’re not thinking about going back to that fedora porn guy are you?”

“No, no, nothing like that. It’s just that there’s this Web site—it’s not important, really, but you might want to see….”