Poison Shy (6 page)

“You kids should feel honoured,” he told us while delivering our fourth round of champagne whisky bombs. “I don't usually wait tables. I expect a big tip.”

“Do you believe that guy?” I said after he'd gone.

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know, he seems . . . I don't know.”

“Viktor's the best.”

“‘You kids should feel honoured.'
Kids
? Give me a break.”

“Who cares?”

“Okay, you're right. I'm sorry.”

“You get worked up when you drink, don't you?”

“Not usually.”

“It's okay.” She giggled. “It's kind of hot.”

“Really?”

“Fuck yeah.”

I didn't know what to say, so I kept drinking.

“I don't normally go on dates, you know,” she said. “Like, date dates.”

“No?”

“Nope. When I came to university, my policy was no relationships, just fun.”

“Is that why you wear that shirt?”

“No. I wear this shirt because it was a gift. From Viktor, actually.”

“I don't understand.”

“I went out with him once, a few months ago. It wasn't a date like this. Just a one-time thing.” She stared into the arctic portrait. “Good times.”

I didn't say anything for a while. She went on at length about the people she'd been out with the past two years: a guitarist in a punk band, one of her TAs, a hockey player with three testicles, a married man from Toronto who'd drive out to Frayne every second weekend. Even a Goth chick from her art history class.

“One thing I learned: I do
not
like the taste of pussy.”

As she went on and on, I took a look around at the bar's dwindling clientele. Turnip Head and his Rastafarian princess were still hanging around, along with a table of political science nerds sporting buttons that read
Pesticides Kill
.

I looked over at the bar, which had been empty only moments ago, and saw Darcy Sands sitting alone, staring at us, a sweating Molson in his hand.

My knees bashed the underside of the table.

“Nervous twitch much?” Melanie said.

I nodded toward the bar. “I think your friend's here to see you.”

She spun her head. “Hey homo! Quit staring.”

Darcy stood up and staggered to our booth. “I'm surprised — you're still here.” He thunked his beer on the table, missing my hand by inches. “Shouldn't you be face deep in each other's crotches by now?”

“You smell like ass,” Melanie said.

He scratched his chin whiskers with dirt-blackened fingernails. “I'm taking you home, Mel.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you're not, that's why.”

Darcy swayed and almost fell over. “Fine, I get it. I get it. Tell me. Are you gonna let him fuck you in the ass?”

I stood up. “All right, that's enough.”

“That's enough what?” He looked up into my face. His eyes were slits.

“Can you mind your own business?”

“Listen, you twat.” He jerked forward and grabbed the collar of my shirt. Pulled something out of his pocket and pressed it against my throat.

“Darcy!” Melanie yelled, like she was scolding him.

I grabbed his wrist and dragged his hand away. There was a small penknife in his hand.

He swung at me with the beer bottle in his other hand. It flew out of his grip and smashed against the wall.

I was frozen with shock. The bar went quiet.

“Take that bullshit outside, you hear me?” Lozowsky shouted.

“It's Darcy,” Melanie said. “He's being a dick.”

“All right d-bag, that's enough.” Lozowsky marched out from behind the bar and charged at him.

“I wasn't — hey! I wasn't doing . . . Let go of me, you tree-hugging warlock! I'm gonna sue your ass! Then what will you do, huh? Go back to drinking piss in some gutter in Warsaw?”

Darcy continued to hurl insults as Lozowsky threw him out onto the street.

“Holy shit,” I said. “What's his problem?”

Melanie shrugged. “He's just drunk, that's all. No big deal.”

“He pull that sort of thing all the time?”

“I guess. So, you got any booze at your place?”

“I think so. Why?”

“Because that's where we're going, dummy.”

She adjusted her breasts and headed for the door. I followed her, admiring the trail of creases the vinyl seats had left on the backs of her thighs.

We passed a lineup of taxis parked outside.

“Do we need a cab?” Melanie asked.

“We can walk.”

She stepped on a crack in the sidewalk and stumbled. I caught her wrist and kept her from falling.

“Damn heels.” She plucked them off and continued walking in bare feet.

“You okay like that?”

“Why wouldn't I be?”

“I don't know. You could step on a rusty nail or a hypodermic needle.”

She laughed. “A hypodermic needle? You're such a loser.”

We walked along Dormant Street, the cobwebbed streetlamps lighting our way in glimmering orange patches. Splattered on the curb, beside the last taxi at the end of the block, was a soupy puddle of beige vomit.

“Gross,” Melanie said as she jumped to avoid it.

I looked back over my shoulder. It was hard to see through the tinted glass, but I thought I could make out a figure in the taxi's back seat, staring at us from somewhere behind my warped reflection.

If I am in a skull-cracking car accident and suffer amnesia, or if I develop Alzheimer's, or even if I die and there's no heaven, I will always remember that first night with Melanie Blaxley.

We got to my place just after two. I offered her a glass of wine from the bottle I'd opened earlier, but she refused.

“This place smells like candy canes. Where's your bathroom?”

I pointed to the wide-open door, right beside where she was standing, through which my toilet and sink were both visible. She went inside and slammed the door hard. I thought about the prostitute who'd puked in there just last week. It felt like eons ago.

The toilet flushed, then flushed again. I heard the scrape of my plastic garbage can across the tiles. The tap. The squeak of my medicine cabinet. Another flush.

“Everything okay in there?”

“Coming!”

The reality of the situation hit me: I was going to get laid. My saliva turned hot. I sat down. The door swung open.

“Sorry about that.” She skipped over and sat next to me on the couch. Crossed her legs. “Don't mind the pad in your garbage can. I'm on my rag.”

“Oh.”

She lunged forward and planted her lips on my cheek. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“Really? You seem younger.”

“Everyone tells me that.”

“I would have said twenty-three. At the oldest.”

“Nope.”

“Got any ID there, buddy?”

I tried to laugh.

She put her hand on my leg. “Why are you holding your hands like that? Don't tell me you're
praying
. Are you a virgin?”

“No, no. And I'm not praying.”

“Then why don't you touch my tits?”

“Huh?”

“Come on.” She ran her fingernail along the seam of my jeans. “You're so stiff. Are you sure you're not a virgin? You can admit it. I'm still gonna let you fuck me.”

“I thought you said you're on your period.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I . . .”

She threw her head back and laughed. “I've never fucked anyone so nice before.” She pulled off her T-shirt in one smooth motion. Her pale, small-nippled breasts were dusted with freckles. “Come on, let's get you hard.”

She got down onto her knees and scraped her nails up my legs to my zipper. I could feel my heartbeat in my neck.

A glistening dribble of saliva hung on her bottom lip. “What are you going to do to me, Brandon?”

It was the first time I'd heard her say my name. I looked up at my ceiling and mouthed a thank-you at the browned water stain in the corner.

But then something happened. I looked down at the orange mane bobbing between my legs, and the face that turned up to meet my gaze wasn't sprightly and freckled, not Melanie's face at all, but the smirking, wrinkled mug of Suzie the prostitute.

“Jesus!”

“What? What's wrong?” She was Melanie once again, startled and annoyed.

“I . . . I don't . . .”

“Give me a fucking break.” She stood up and stomped into the kitchen, the crease of her shorts wedged into her ass crack. She poured herself a mug of water from the tap and drank it with her back to me.

“Melanie, I'm sorry. I think I had too much to drink.”

She dropped the mug into the sink; it crashed against my unwashed plates. “So did I!”

I stared into my lap and fingered the crotch button on my boxer shorts.

“Where's that wine?” She opened the fridge, moved some things around, closed it. Stood on her toes and reached up to look through my cupboards, her naked breasts stretching out and flattening against her chest.

“Listen,” I said. “If you want to leave, I'll understand. I'm really sorry about this.”

She found the wine on the counter next to the toaster oven and took a swig straight from the bottle. “And go back home to Darcy? No fucking way. I'm staying here whether you like it or not. If your dick decides to wake up, let me know. I'm going to bed.”

I scrambled off the couch and converted it to bed mode. Melanie stood behind me like a dominatrix, holding the bottle of wine by its neck. It swayed between her legs like a pendulum. I got the feeling she wasn't afraid to use it on me if necessary.

Once the bed was made, she shoved me aside and crawled under the sheets. She was out within seconds. I sat on the edge of the mattress and watched her sleep with the resigned composure of a born loser. Had I really been so naïve as to expect, or even hope for, a happy ending to the night?

I went for a pee, and returned to find Melanie sprawled out diagonally across the mattress, snoring like a moose on her drool-dampened pillow. I eased myself down onto the very edge, my shoulder pressed against the cold metal bar of the bed frame. I had no sheets, no room to move around and get comfortable.

After twenty restless minutes of shivering, I turned onto my stomach and blasted the night's disappointment into the hollow darkness of my apartment with one long, deflating fart. Sleep came a bit easier after that.

I dreamed I was wrapped in a cocoon sealed with a zipper. It was full of water, but somehow I was able to breathe. I was warm and comfortable, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right. Before long the water started to boil. I reached up to open the zipper but couldn't find the tag. The casing was sealed from the outside. My flesh started to blister. I tried to scream but no sound came out of my mouth.

In an instant the water evaporated. Something had landed on top of the cocoon, puncturing it with its weight. A kind of peace flowed through me. I had goosebumps. My crotch seemed to glow.

The zipper tore open and I was slurped back into waking life, though what I saw when I opened my eyes was more frightening than any dream.

Melanie sat on top of me, fully naked, eyes frosted like her vision had turned inward. Her face and body were covered with streaks and handprints of her own menstrual blood. She writhed on top of me like a serpent. Ran her blood-smeared hands through her hair, across her nipples, along my chest, marking me.

“What —”

She grasped at me and put me inside her. She was warm, extremely wet. I tried to look into her face but all I saw was a dark mask. She leaned forward, dug her nails into my scalp, held me down.

The realization that I wasn't wearing a condom hit me like a dart. I tried to pull myself out from under her but she slapped me hard across the face. Grunted. One of her nails broke off against my skull. She cried out and leaned backward, breasts to the sky, arms and shoulders loose. Her thighs squeezed my hips with every contraction.

I lay there, panting and swollen. There was blood everywhere. I could smell it.

“Melanie . . .”

She didn't move. She was frozen, like a human spider crab, in the most uncomfortable position I'd ever seen. If it weren't for the subtle rising and falling of her abdomen, I'd have thought her neck had snapped and she was dead.

“Melanie, you okay?”

Finally she collapsed onto the mattress. “Damn. I needed that.”

“So you
are
alive.”

“You too.” She turned and bent over the side of the bed in search of her underwear, her goosepimpled ass in my face. It, too, was smeared with blood.

“What just happened?”

She stood and slid her panties up her thighs. “Um, I just fucked you.”

“I mean, what's with the . . . I've never . . .”

She patted me on the cheek. “I'm female. I bleed once a month. It's a little something called biology.”

“Yeah, but —”

“Shove over, stud. I'm going back to sleep.”

“Like
that
?”

“I'm tired, okay? Send me your laundry bill. Now, shove over!”

I went to the bathroom to rinse myself off while she burrowed under the covers. Squinting into the mirror, I saw the face of a confused young man with a bloody handprint on his cheek. I coughed and spat into the sink. Told myself this was it. Now that I'd slept with her I could go back to my normal life, killing bugs in strangers' homes and drinking my face off with Chad. I could even get used to Farah being around. Maybe the three of us could go on a road trip to Montreal and see what Patricia was up to.

I wiped my chest and hands with a wet towel and went back to the pull-out. Melanie was asleep again, or pretending to be. She looked like a murder victim, something out of a movie.