The Same Woman (10 page)

“Ahhhh I have to go” Ruby completed her sentence by standing up and knocking a fork of the table in her dash for a quiet place.

“I think she's losing it,” Isi said matter-of-factly.

“Isi,” Octavia scolded, “don't say that.”

Ruby held the frantically vibrating machine in her hand, in the long skinny hallway by the bathrooms, and took a deep breath. She pressed SEND and passed the point of no return.

“Hello,” she tried to inject this single word with breezy nonchalance.

“Hello Ruby?”

“Yes.”

“It's Dan from the Squat, I'm calling to see if you'd like a job!”

“Well,” Ruby stared at the wood panelled wall, at the scum caught between the planks. Someone on the way to the bathroom wiggled past her.

“You haven't already found a job have you?”

“No,” Ruby refused this last Easy Out. She spoke as fast as she could, racing to beat logic and conscience. “I'll take it!”

“That's just great. We'd like you start on Friday, how does that work for you?”

“Friday is fine!” Her voice had gone all squeaky.

“Okay, see you then!”

After Dan hung up, Ruby clutched her phone in her hand. Pressing SEND again would connect her to the last number that called. It would take just a tiny tensing of her tiniest muscles to call Dan back and refuse the job. She covered the button with her thumb. She felt its textured surface. Ruby put the phone back in her pocket and returned to the table.

“Who was that?” Isi asked.

“I got a job!” Ruby said happily.

“That's so great! Where?”

“It's that club where I interviewed.”

“What did you say it was called?” Octavia asked. There's no going back now, Ruby thought.

“The Squat. Isn't that an unbelievable name?” Ruby didn't look at Octavia. She focused on Isi's earrings.

“Ruby,” Octavia was starting to say.

“Mm-hm?” Ruby burned holes into those earrings with her eyes. “Frankie works at the Squat.”

“What?” Ruby said, “what are you talking about?” Without thinking about it, Ruby began to lie.

“She works at the Squat.”

“She does not.”

“I know for a fact that she works there!”

“Oh no,” Isi said, “oh fucking fuck.”

“Well,” Ruby could feel her face turning red. “What should I do?”

“Are you going to work there?” Octavia could sometimes take on a very stern tone. Ruby started to breathe faster. She put her head in her hands. This charade was easy because it was half true.

“I don't feel like I have a choice.” The panic insects began to claw viciously into her stomach lining.

“What do you mean?”

“I've got, maybe, minus $200 in my bank account and I have to put down first and last month's rent on an apartment.”

“You can stay with me as long as you want, you know...”

“But, I don't want to do that! I want to have my own place.”

“Is it worth taking a job with Frankie?” Ruby rolled her eyes and didn't say anything.

“I could maybe help you to find a job at my work,” Octavia said. Ruby for a moment pictured herself pouring coffee for Aurelio and Frankie.

“No, I don't think that's a good idea.”

“Working with Frankie is?”

“Sometimes I think I should never have come home.” Isi covered Ruby's fists on the table with her hands.

“Everything will be fine,” Octavia said. “Soon you'll have your own nice place, you'll have a job to tide you over, and everything will start getting back to normal.”

“Yeah,” Ruby said, “you're right.” Her subconscious was weighing down her guilt, submerging it in the waters of her brain. The red shameful blood in her cheeks started to drain out. “I think that it might also be good for me to work with her.”

“What do you mean?” Isi asked. This was something Ruby had been thinking about for three days, turning a theory over and over in her mind until she was convinced it was true.

“There's no reason for me to be upset with her.”

“There isn't?” Octavia said.

“No. I mean, it wasn't her fault that everything happened the way that it did. I don't even know why it upsets me to see her. And I feel okay with what happened now, so I should act like I'm okay with it. It should be possible for me to be in a room with her, and not feel upset.” Ruby said this despite the fact that she couldn't even put into words what had happened.

“But there's a difference between being in a room with her, and working with her side by side.”

“Well, maybe I can ask not to be scheduled with her.”

“But essentially you're saying that now, your strategy is not to get as far away from her as possible, but to get closer to her?”

“Exactly! The only way to get rid of your fears is to face them.”

“Ruby,” Isi said. “This is crazy talk.”

Ruby shrugged. “Different strokes for different folks,” she said glibly.

Ruby didn't lie to Tariq, she just didn't tell him the truth. She took the train with him, out to his aunt's far away house, watching the wall of trees that hid the tracks from the unbearably neat suburban neighbourhoods. It seemed like they were both avoiding the topic of Frankie, and what happened at the bar. Instead they pretended that they were just a regular couple who had no real problems. They made pita pizzas with bizarre toppings — chickpeas, tofu and spinach — and watched reruns of sit-coms.

Ruby and Tariq lived parallel lives of suitcase dwelling. After she had brushed her teeth and put on her pajamas, Ruby watched him patiently empty the pockets of his backpack, looking for his cheque book. He found it finally, crushed under a flashlight. She watched him write out a cheque to their new landlord in his round friendly script.

“So you can drop this off?” Tariq said.

“Yes,” she took it from him.

“What's wrong, glumbum?”

“I just feel bad that I have nothing to contribute to this. It's like the olden days. I should be getting you some scotch and your slippers.”

“Don't be silly buddy,” he said, “soon you'll be rolling in the dough.”

“I got a job,” she said. And then like a bandage that had to come off fast she said in a rush, “I got a job at the same bar as Frankie.”

Tariq went silent. When he was upset, the corners of his mouth drooped.

“If you don't want me to work there I won't work there.”

“Why would I tell you what to do?” was all he said. He got off the bed and began rolling up t-shirts and squishing them back into place, his mouth drooping off of his face. The sound of his clothing rubbing against the vinyl backpack skin seemed so loud in their silence. Ruby cursed herself for being even partially honest. He turned off the light and got into bed. She spooned him, pressing her knees into the backs of his thighs, wrapping her arm as tightly as possible around his belly, pressing her lips against the soft skin of his neck, with kisses like questions.

“I'm sorry buddy,” she said, her mouth muffled by his back. He was going to ask her what she was sorry for, but her voice was quivery and they had had such a nice day that he just let it go.

“Mmhm,” Dan said, circling little boxes with peoples' names printed in them. He used a red marker to do this. This marker was his prized possession, and he kept it clipped to his pocket at all times. When staff asked to use it he either said no, or had them dictate what they wanted to write and he wrote it for them. Dan scratched his manicured facial hair with the top of the pen, drawing out his moment of power. Ruby tried not to squirm childishly.

As soon as she had stepped off the subway she had felt like she was being haunted. She looked for her ghost constantly, hyper-aware of footsteps and doors, waiting for Frankie. Her eardrums felt like they were swelling. The anticipation was oppressive, and she babbled to break it, “I'm sorry to ask for this. I know it is unusual.”

“It's no problem,” Dan said. “It happens, and anyway, a little competition or, you know, hostility, is good for the business.” He grinned at her and she felt her heart tumble by a few ribs. “I'm just joking with you. I know these things are rough, I'm a sensitive guy. Ladies fight over me in my time,” he laughed and whacked the table. And then,
suddenly enough to put her on edge, he turned serious, “Though I have to tell you we won't always be able to accommodate you. For example, you are working together tonight, and twice next week.”

“Tonight?” Ruby said. She had tried to prepare herself for this. “I think I'm only working two shifts next week.”

“Really?” Dan said looking down at the schedule marked with his red shapes. “Right you are. Well, I'll bump someone and give you another shift just to make up for your ‘distress'.” He bounced two fingers on each hand like bunny ears to make quotation marks around “distress.”

“Oh, I don't want you to take someone else's shift away —”

“Don't worry, they'll appreciate the day off.” Did Dan intentionally try to foment hostility between his workers? Ruby's heart dropped two more ribs.

“Well,” he said, writing her name in red, block letters on the top of a long, beige piece of card, “ready to rock?” He handed the card across the desk to her, and motioned at the punch-clock by the door. As she got up she was sure that he was watching her bum encased in tight black pants as she began her abusive relationship with her hourly wage.

Ruby dropped the long beige piece of card into the slot like a mouth on the top of the machine. Little gears inside the box seemed to suck it out of her hands. There was the unmistakable, profoundly depressing sound of the printer whirring, and then the card shot back up into her hands. She looked at her name written on the card, handcuffed to a date and time printed in analog-era type.

“You know,” he said, “I would say that you and Frankie have the exact same body type. You might be from the same gene pool. I see why your boyfriend liked her.”

Ruby smiled instead of saying, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Well, it's official! Welcome to the family!” Dan took her card and put it back in a locked cupboard. It was a mystery as to why he kept the time cards locked up. He thrust a till into her hands, the grubby coins clacking together.

“There's $200 there, make sure to count it since you're responsible if anything's missing! And away we go!” He'd begun speaking with perpetual exclamation marks.
The office door was like a portal to another world. The mouldy carpet and the tinny smell of filing cabinets melted away behind them. They stepped through the door into the main room where crystal seemed to run off the walls like tears and layers of purple gauzy curtains draped themselves everywhere, dangerously close to the hundreds of tealights in little glass balls that took the staff an hour to light. The perimeter of the club was divided into booths made out of designer garden latticework, and lounging benches, overflowing with velvet cushions. People reserved the booths weeks in advance. They all looked onto the main dance floor, where in a few hours people would shimmy in outfits that matched the décor, under what seemed like dozens of tiny, sparkling disco balls. The curtains worked like walls, splitting one big room into many tiny ones, making the space seem more intricate than it was. After every weekend the curtains were rearranged so that each time patrons returned, it seemed like a new club, and people once again got lost in the gauze maze and had accidental encounters with strangers.

“Isn't it beautiful?!” Dan said, as if he had not designed it himself. “I'm putting you in the eastern bar. And don't worry, Frankie works in the main bar so you'll be on the other side of the wall from her. But you might run into each other every now and then!” Dan giggled at their personal pain.

The eastern wall was shaped like a backwards L: . The main bar was on the vertical arm, in full view of the dazzling dance floor and rows and rows of booths. The eastern bar was on the horizontal arm and faced the long row of floor-to-ceiling windows onto the street. In the windows' reflection Ruby could see herself, crowned by the wall display of exorbitantly priced liquors and candles on pedestals dripping deep green wax. She and Frankie would work back to back. Dan pushed a gauze curtain to one side of the eastern bar to reveal a door. He punched in a code and the teeth inside the doorknob slipped into place and opened.

“We'll see how your first few weeks go,” Dan said, “before I give you the code.”

“What, do you mean you don't trust me?” Ruby joked, but Dan didn't smile. They were standing in a short unlit narrow corridor. On their right and their left was one door each, and at the end of the
corridor was another. An ice machine rumbled, taking up almost the whole width of the passage way.

“So this is backstage. Door on the right for the eastern bar, door straight ahead for the main bar, and door on the left for the bathrooms, but try not to go to bathroom during the shift. We prefer it if you don't.” He opened the right door and pushed her in.

“Welcome to your bar,” he said. “Ulli here will be your guide to the Squat underworld,” his eyes glittered at his own joke, “as well as your trusty bar back! And remember to have F-U-N!” He closed the door behind her and she realised it had shelves anchored to it, so that in the darkness of business hours it was hard to see the outline of the door, as if there was no entrance to the bar and the staff had just sprung fully formed from the non-slip mats on the floor.

“What an ass,” Ulli said, and then smiled and nodded when Dan reappeared on the other side of the passage.

Ruby and Ulli started on either end of the eight-foot long beer fridge, counting the icy bottles for inventory. The mat was infused with the smell of bleach and synthetic syrup. Ulli chatted with her as they knocked the necks of the bottles together with their counting fingers.