Snapped

I wave her over behind my desk and lean back, letting her type the URL into my computer. The Apples Are Tasty logo comes up. “Yeah, I’ve seen this,” I say, ignoring the screen. There are no DON’Ts walking the streets if one is to buy in to the Apples Are Tasty philosophy. Everyone is a DO in their own special way. Rid the world of negativity, embrace your individuality, pay fifty bucks to attend one of the parties we’re already being paid ten grand to throw, for another thousand one of the Apples Are Tasty crew will spend a day shopping with you. But getting your picture on the Apples Are Tasty Web site is the latest and greatest in hipster validation.

In two months, the site has gone from nothing to a very biggish deal. These party-planners-cum-DJingstyle-setters started getting attention and our clients started asking about them. At first we dismissed them as wannabes—we’ve dealt with copycats before—but when we tried to arrange access to one of their parties as a stop on the upcoming Trend Mecca Bootcamp Weekend we were rebuffed. That’s how Ted puts it—rebuffed—but what really happened was he lost it in an e-mail exchange with the Tasty ringleader when the guy refused to cough up comp party tickets for the Trend Mecca Bootcamp Weekend. Then he posted Ted’s tirade online and forwarded it to all the clients he knew we had and to every media outlet on the planet. That was two weeks ago. Things have calmed down, but Ted won’t talk about it. And he’s more determined than ever to ferret out whoever put that apple on his desk the day after the whole thing went down and fire their ass. We have security cameras everywhere now. It won’t happen again.

I tell Eva it’s important to know your competition and what they’re doing, but not to get too wrapped up, not to obsessively worry about where they’re going and what they’re doing. There’s room for all of us and we should appreciate each other’s differences because that’s what makes us all unique and wonderful. I’m a raving hypocrite, I know, and I don’t care. I’ve built my career taking pictures of unfortunate-looking people wearing unfortunate-looking outfits. Like Parrot Girl. Like Parrot Girl, who’s staring out at me from my computer, the same Parrot Girl who is the current Apples Are Tasty Look Girl.

Fuck me and stop the presses. But it’s too late—kill me now or let me fall on the sword I bought in Osaka, the one that I had to fill out reams of paperwork to get through customs. Let Parrot Girl’s parrot gnaw at my corpse.

They’re right, they’re right, I know they’re right. I hate Parrot Girl, but twenty-year-old urbanites and suburban scenesters don’t. Laminate my picture, doctor my birth date and make me sixty-five. I’ll eat tiny portions ordered from special menus in restaurants, shop for groceries on certain days and ride the Metro for cheap. Book me into a home where I can be with my kind: wrinkled rock stars and one-time starlets with puffy lips and faces that don’t move when they talk about the good old days, which is all anybody talks about. We talk and talk so we can remember when we knew something and weren’t old and disgusting and had better things to do than clip coupons and play bridge and wait to die.

I don’t want to die. I want to disappear. I want to press Rewind and give Eva a pop quiz. I want to be right. I want to care. I want to leave. I need to stop and I need to rest but the constant ping of my e-mail makes everything impossible. I rap the side of my computer with a curled knuckle. Eva’s still standing behind me, silent but for the quiet shuffle of her feet. I knock on the side of my computer again as a burst of ping-ping-pings signals the arrival of yet more e-mail undoubtedly demanding my resignation. But it hasn’t been twenty-five years: I won’t get a watch or a shitty roast beef dinner buffet at some economy motel that must have a discount rate for seniors.

I don’t need to knock on the computer again. I know they’re all inside. The place is packed with girls with shiny jackets and soccer socks. Their pet birds are shitting everywhere, but they don’t care as long as it’s not on their boots. It’s filthy and the girls are smoking and think it’s all so very funny. They’re talking about me but I can’t hear the words over the laughter. I creep on unnoticed and over the wires and microchips and bird shit until someone drops a lit cigarette on my head and I jerk up, screaming. They all stop and look, but nobody laughs. Someone helps me to the door but I can’t keep a grip on her arm because the satin jacket she’s wearing is so slippery. I stumble and land at the feet of the Skinny Pink Polo Shirt Boy with the mutton chops and the kilt. I get a flash up his skirt and he’s not wearing any underwear. His cock is thick and long and doesn’t have a mushroom head. I smile up at him, but his expression reads nothing but pity. The Slippery Girl gets me to the door and nudges me out. It’s all fine. I have to go anyhow. I have to make a call or have a meeting and buy clothes for my new job. Yes, I have to go. I have to go. I have to go.

I reach into my desk and pull out a spare set of keys for the office front door, the back door, the Swag Shack. I can’t go. I don’t need to go. I have nowhere to go. I still have my keys. I hold them tightly in my hand until the metal edges dig into my skin—not enough to draw blood, but enough to hurt. My e-mail pings and pings and soon it’s the rhythm of an old techno song—no, early Chicago house, which I know is back and that my vinyl is worth maybe thousands to some know-it-all DJ with a cute face and a thousand girlfriends. But he loves Parrot Girl the most and is living in the suburbs with his parents to save enough money to impress her by giving her the rarest, most colorful parrot in the world—one that’s fully bilingual and shits in a toilet and knows how to use a bidet.

There is nothing worse than suburban scenesters who love girls with parrots who try too hard. I force myself to look at Parrot Girl’s photo on my screen. She’s standing in front of the brunch spot that now I’ll truly never, ever return to—and she’s smiling. We have a strict no-smile policy for our DOs and DON’Ts. Perhaps it’s time to revisit that. I make a note on a yellow sticky: Smiles? Eva says nothing, she hovers, frozen behind me.

“I guess people love birds,” I say, which is maybe the dumbest thing to come out of my mouth all day. “Hey, why don’t I make a couple of quick calls and we cut out early, do the streets and grab a couple of drinks before dinner?” This is maybe the smartest thing to come out of my mouth all day.

Eva heads back to her desk and I e-mail Ted that I’m heading out to do the streets, which means going trolling for unfortunate-looking people wearing unfortunate outfits, and call Jack in Toronto on his cell. He’s prepping a video for a New York electro-goth band all week. When he doesn’t pick up on the third ring I hang up and straighten the papers on my desk. A call comes through on my private line.

“Did you just call?” It’s Jack.

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you leave a message?”

“I don’t know.” We’ve had this conversation before.

“You could at least leave a message.”

“Next time I will, then.”

“You sound funny.”

“I am funny.”

“Seriously, Sara, are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I saw Parrot Girl on Apples Are Tasty.”

“Then why the hell didn’t you call?”

“I figured you would have seen it.”

“I just saw it now—Eva showed it to me.” Admitting this is torture. I’m humiliated and bruised. All the blood in my body feels like it’s rushing to my head. My eyes sting. I’m going to cry. “I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” I whisper into the phone. The tears come.

“Oh, baby, it’s gonna be okay. We all have off days.”

“This isn’t about an off day.” My voice is choking; I’m strangled by confession.

“Are you gonna be home later, sweetheart? We could talk more about this then. Now—it’s not a good time. But I really want to talk to you.”

“I have a dinner,” I say.

“Call me when you get in, okay, baby? It doesn’t matter how late.”

“Okay.” My voice is tiny. I am the crying girlfriend.

I hold the phone to my ear and face the back wall of my office long after I’ve said goodbye to Jack. I examine in a compact mirror the hot splotches on my face and my swollen eyes. A coat of moisturizer cools my skin and I reapply my eye makeup, all with the phone tucked between my shoulder and ear, listening again and again to the robot operator lady say, Please hang up and try your call again, first in French then in English. I want to call Genevieve, but every time I do she can’t talk, she’s too tired, or I get the feeling that what I want to talk about isn’t anything she wants to hear. I want to call Ted and he’s right next door, but he’s so stressed and serious these days the last thing he needs is me in his office bawling about Apples Are Fucking Tasty and Parrot Girl.

“You ready to go?” I ask Eva. She’s at her desk arranging the Trend Mecca Bootcamp Weekend files. She’s compiling dossiers for me about each of the participants. One of the men is not terribly discreet about his interest in rubber masks, ball gags and female domination. Eva shows me the online evidence, and scrunches up her face as if she’d discovered a turd in her breakfast cereal instead of a prize. “There’s always one,” I say. “Put it in the file.”

We park at my place and walk through the streets of the Plateau, then over to Saint-Laurent. It’s June and the tourists are starting to descend, making it prime DON’T season. Within seconds I spot no less than three socks-and-sandals men, but they’re boring so we move on. We walk east and along the way encounter a beefy man with a mullet. He’s wearing a mesh half-shirt and drawstring bouncer pants with a Mickey Mouse print. His sneakers have neon green laces and he’s got a thick gold chain around his neck. I approach him and ask to take his picture. I click away but he won’t stop smiling. I ask in my most polite voice for him to stop and he does, but the smile lingers in his eyes. His pride is like a sucker punch. Tears well up and sting. Eva has him sign the release and I quickly wipe my eyes.

“Are you all right, Sara?” Eva asks once Beefy Cartoon Pants Man has gone.

“Allergies,” I say.

“Gosh, that’s terrible. Is there anything I can do? There’s a pharmacy around the corner—I could get you some of those pills, those antihistamines.”

“That would be great, Eva. Thanks.” I park myself on a bus bench and fiddle with my camera in an effort to calm down while I wait for Eva to return. I have to shake off this psycho-spaz cry-baby thing. There’s a bar across the street, one of those crappy fake Irish pubs—no affected urbanites, no suburban scenesters, no Apples Are Tasty or Snap, no Sara B., take my picture! It’s exactly what I need. As I dart across the road, I call Eva on her cell and tell her to meet me there. My beer arrives just as she does. I rip into the box of allergy tablets and weasel two out their childproof packaging, then down them with my beer. I assure Eva that once the pills kick in my eyes will be just fine.

Mecca

Not everything French is chic, and Montreal isn’t the zenith of cool. Part of my job on this Trend Mecca Bootcamp Weekend is to ensure that none of the six participants figures this out. I’ve known them for half a day now and am confident this will not be a concern.

As we tour the myth of the city—the shops and cafés, the lairs of local designers—the überalphas emerge from the group of type-A corporate alpha dogs and as usual the advertising people rise to the top of the shit pile. They know it all. Everywhere we go, they jostle for position—who can get an I’ve heard about this out of their mouth faster? There’s a creative director from Chicago determined to harness the zeitgeist and one from Vancouver who’s all about the next big thing. Then there’s the woman from Baltimore who won’t shut up about how she has her finger on the pulse, though from the way she keeps ogling Zeitgeist from Chicago I think she wants her precious finger up his ass, and from the way Big Thing Vancouver keeps leering at her, it’s his ass that wants Precious Finger. I want to cut my veins open and hurl myself into the St. Lawrence River, but I can’t because I don’t have a knife or a razor blade and we’re not going to be near the waterfront until after lunch.

I thank God that Eva is such a small-talk enthusiast. She answers silly questions about the city and Snap and she sounds very authoritative. We’re lunching at a popular bistro on Saint-Laurent better known for its attractive staff than its food. I order a side of mayo for my fries, which is something Precious Finger cannot deal with—the fat, the calories, the cholesterol, your heart—so when it arrives, a goopy dollop in a small white bowl, I’m sure to pass it around for everyone at the table to try. I notice Zeitgeist watching the waitresses and Precious Finger watching him. He is momentarily distracted by my fries/mayo offering. After one bite he declares it genius. He’s chewing as he says this and I see tiny bits of salivamushed potato-and-mayo spray from his mouth.

It’s Precious Finger’s turn and I reckon she has no choice but to risk it all—her weight, her cholesterol, her heart—if she has any chance of impressing Zeitgeist, ardent supporter of genius fries-and-mayo and, more important, of getting a chance to shove a well-lubed finger up his ass. I am convinced that Zeitgeist is the kind of man who has a bottle of travel-size lube beside the bed in his hotel room if not in the fake army surplus bag he’s had slung across his chest all morning. Just because it’s green and burlap with numbers and patches on it doesn’t mean it’s not a purse.

Precious Finger closes her eyes and screws up her face as she brings the mayo-coated fry to her mouth. I watch Big Thing from Vancouver watch her, rapt and eyes glazed. Zeitgeist is still watching the waitresses. Precious Finger purses her lips and makes a face. She munches fast. Her mouth is tight but her cheeks move furtively. Her lipstick has been wiped clean by her lunch—mandarin-almond salad, vinaigrette on the side, one fry-and-mayo. She looks like a squinty squirrel. “Mmm, delicious! Genius,” she says.

Zeitgeist stops looking at the waitresses and turns his attention back to the table and briefly to Precious Finger. He points at a stray spot of mayonnaise on the side of her squirrelly mouth. She blushes and dabs it away with a napkin.

“Good, huh?” Zeitgeist says.

“Delicious. Genius. You were so right.” Precious Finger brushes her bangs off her forehead. “Actually, I’m thinking of ordering some more—if there’s time.” She looks at me. We can be late for the flea market in Old Montreal. Witnessing Precious Finger force-feed herself a plate of fries and mayo is an opportunity I refuse to pass up.

The fries come and I take out my camera. Precious Finger moves in closer to Zeitgeist, her head nearly resting on his shoulder. Big Thing scoots into frame. I coax Precious Finger to eat a fry while I snap a photo, but she won’t until Zeitgeist slathers one in mayo and feeds it to her. His face is smirky. Big Thing’s shoulders slump in defeat. I take the picture and Precious Finger excuses herself to use the washroom. I wait two minutes and follow her in. I don’t have to go, but I wash my hands. The sound of the water does nothing to drown out the sound of Precious Finger retching in a locked stall.

I’m back at the table before she is and am surprised to find Ted there, smiling and doling out handshakes all around. Ted never comes on the Trend Mecca Bootcamp Weekends.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“Nothing. Just thought I’d stop by, maybe tag along.”

“Sounds great.”

It is great that Ted is here. Between him and Eva they answer all the inane questions. I walk behind and take pictures that I’ll delete at home. No one bugs me when I have a camera in front of my face. We push through the crowded flea market, visit the studio of an artist friend, walk some more, shop a little and the three advertising alpha dogs talk and talk and talk while the three boring corporate types take notes and ask nerdy questions. We stop for drinks and dinner. Precious Finger sits beside Zeitgeist and forces another order of fries and mayo down her throat and then we’re off to see a band that Big Thing is particularly excited about. “They’re gonna break big this summer,” he announces like he’s the Casey Kasem of alterna-everything. We flag three taxis after the show and I’m stuck with him riding back to the Bootcampers’ boutique hotel. He won’t shut up about the Montreal scene, which is not what it was five years ago, let alone ten years ago, but he doesn’t need to know that. I want to strike him in the head with a giant mallet, but reconsider and think I’d rather use it on myself. I remember that I have a big wooden meat tenderizer in a drawer at home that I’ve never used.

The three boring corporate types go straight to their rooms and to bed, blathering about time zones and saying they have to call their wives or their boyfriends or their kids or their cats. If he doesn’t call his wife, one man says—the one with the shirt and tie and high-waisted no-name big-box-store blue jeans—there will be hell to pay.

Zeitgeist, it seems, has no fear of hell or paying. Each time he lifts his glass to drink, the gold of his wedding band reflects the candlelight. Precious Finger pets his leg and Big Thing abruptly excuses himself. He settles into a seat at the bar and two women I’ve seen here before sidle up to him. If Precious Finger doesn’t want him, he can always rent a lady friend for the night.

So it’s me and Eva and Ted and Zeitgeist and Precious Finger. Eva is trying to convince Ted that now is the time for Snap to expand its online presence. Precious Finger is pawing at Zeitgeist, who seems sufficiently drunk and has stopped looking at every other woman in the room. But this could well be because his eyes can no longer focus or because he’s now thinking seriously of Precious Finger’s lubed finger in his ass while her squirrelly mouth is wrapped around his cock, which I’ll bet is a stubby, skinny thing.

I stir my drink with a skinny straw that makes me think of Zeitgeist’s dick but longer. It’s unpleasant, so I take out my cell phone and check for messages I know aren’t there. I told Jack I’d be busy all weekend with the Bootcamp and that I’d call him Sunday if the whole thing hadn’t killed me and if not we’d talk sometime Monday. It’s Friday night and I’m annoyed he hasn’t called. I check my messages at home. Nothing. Well, a call from Genevieve that I can barely hear due to the noise in the bar and Olivier’s piercing screams. No wonder Ted is here. I dial Jack’s number but hang up before it rings or my number shows up on his call display and we have to have that stupid conversation again about me not leaving messages.

Zeitgeist and Precious Finger say their good-nights and stumble off together to the lobby. Eva and Ted are laughing. I lean forward and rest my elbow on the table and my head on my hand, like a girl playing jump rope with friends waiting for the right time to step into the game. I order another drink and scan the busy bar. I feel someone watching me but I don’t turn my head to look, afraid of the hipster boy-waif or nightmare suburban suit guy that I might find standing there. He moves closer and hovers behind me and to the left. I pretend the dodgy artwork on the wall to my right is interesting.

“Hi, there. Can we help you?” Eva asks.

“Oh, yes, perhaps. We’d certainly appreciate it.” It’s a woman’s voice.

I turn to face her, relieved. I smile and look up and then down again, stirring my drink with the Zeitgeistskinny-dick straw. They’re ladies—old ladies, old ladies with orthopedic shoes and red hair the same shade as Eva’s.

“It’s so crowded and we noticed you weren’t using all of your seats. We don’t mean to impose, but—”

“Sit, sit, by all means, sit,” says Ted as he leaps from his chair to pull back two for the old ladies.

The old ladies thank us too many times and offer to buy us a round of drinks, which Ted refuses and instead says that he’d be honored to by them a round. Ted’s using his chuffy voice, which means he’s awfully proud of himself and I wonder why he’s here and not home helping his wife with their screaming child.

The old ladies’ names are Esther and Lila. Esther takes Ted’s hand in both of hers and shakes it. She does the same with Eva. Then it’s my turn. I tell them that my hands are really cold and Lila seems okay with this and backs away, but Esther grabs my hands anyway and now she knows I lied—my hands aren’t cold, I’m just not an old-people person.

I learn things about Esther and Lila I don’t want to know. Lila is divorced. Esther is seventy-five; she’s six years older than Lila, who I guess that would make sixty-nine, not that I could tell a day’s difference in their made-up wrinkly faces even if I could look at them for more than a second. Neither woman is married or has children. They do share an apartment, but Lila makes it clear that they’re not funny by which I assume she means lesbian. Esther is quick to add that there’s nothing wrong with being funny, she’s always simply preferred a man’s touch. She looks right at me when she says this. I look at my watch and grab my phone off the table. “I have to call my boyfriend,” I say. My voice is too loud but I can’t shove it back in my mouth so I clod off to the lobby to pretend to call Jack, but change my mind and go outside to smoke and pretend to call Jack.

I left my cigarettes in my bag at the table, so now there’s nothing to do except stand outside and play with the buttons on my phone. There’s a guy smoking a few feet away. I think about asking him for a cigarette, but he’s a hipster boy-waif, the kind I was afraid might be hovering behind me when it was really the old ladies. I weigh my options. I bum a smoke, he’ll want to talk—people always want to talk. He’ll ask me what I do and I’ll tell him the truth because I’m too tired to lie and I’m still smarting over being busted by old lady Esther for saying my hands were cold. I’ll tell the hipster waif-boy what I do and he’ll be impressed without saying so, like Parrot Girl was when I took her picture. Then I’ll be reminded of Parrot Girl and the goddamn Apples Are Tasty fiasco and the night—not that it’s been stellar or anything—will be unsalvageable.

“Would you like one?” It’s Esther. I didn’t hear her come up. Old people are quiet and sneaky.

She holds open a thin gold case filled with cigarettes. I take one. I can’t help myself. “Thanks.”

She lights it for me with a gold lighter that matches the case and I thank her again. “It’s a lovely night,” Esther says.

“Yup.”

“The young girl, Eva—is she your sister?”

I laugh. “No. She’s … “ What is Eva? “We work together.”

“You could be sisters.”

I’m flattered, I suppose, that someone, Esther even, thinks Eva and I could be related. “We really don’t look alike.”

“It’s not that. My sister and I looked nothing alike. It’s more your presence, your mannerisms.”

I shrug, not sure what to say, so we smoke in silence for a moment. “That Ted is such a pleasant young man. He said something about putting out that trendy magazine Lila and I pick up all the time, Snap?”

“We run it together.”

“Oh, my. Well, congratulations. That’s quite an accomplishment for two young people. Lila and I think it’s a hoot, by the way. Those DOs and DON’Ts always have us in stitches.”

“I do those.” I take a deep drag on my cigarette. It’s a hoot, they say, the old ladies are in stitches. A taxi peals up in front of the hotel and I consider throwing myself in front of it.

Lila breaks out into a coughing fit as Esther and I approach the table. It’s loud and audible above the trancy music. People are starting to stare. She doesn’t stop and I look at Ted in panic. Should we do something? Should we call an ambulance? Does anyone know CPR? Esther swats her friend playfully on the shoulder and the two women burst into giggles. “Oh, you,” Esther says and turns to me. “She does this every time I nip out for a ciggie. She hates it when I smoke.”