They keep saying food prices are on the rise, but I never thought I’d feel the pinch so soon. Times like these, I miss my old job, my old life. A dog groomer’s wage doesn’t cover much more than the rent.
I miss the little luxuries, like blueberries and Häagen-Dazs. After buying groceries for the week, the change in my pocket isn’t even enough to grab a coffee. Two quarters, one dime, three pennies. I feel them freezing my thigh through the cotton membrane of my jeans pocket. There was a time, not long ago, when I could afford cappuccinos with whipped cream and caramel drizzle.
But not anymore.
My face is a block of ice, even after I duck inside my threadbare scarf. Icicles form around my nose hairs where my breath freezes before it can escape. Pretty bloody sexy.
I need new mittens, too—I knitted these ones myself, and they’ve got big gaps where I slipped stitches. In all these years, I’ve never figured out how to fix my mistakes. Fixing mistakes requires more humility than I will ever, ever possess.
But life goes on.
God, what I wouldn’t give to hold something hot in my hands right now. The wind is howling, ghostly, cutting through my hat and burning my ears. There are three coffee shops between here and home, and I won’t be stopping at any of them. I cut down a residential street to avoid the temptation. The radio’s been saying gas prices are going up, too, every day in fact, but I don’t need to know that. I don’t own a car.
Adjusting my canvas shopping bags on my shoulders, I watch my winter boots step across thick sheets of ice on the sidewalk. Careful, careful. Don’t want to fall. Yesterday it was like spring. It rained for hours and the fashionistas wore their eighty-dollar galoshes to avoid these puddles that, overnight, turned to fields of ice. Flash freeze. Everything that was gushing and warm yesterday is frozen solid today. She’s unpredictable, that trickster Nature. Can’t count on anything when she’s in town.
I look up as I cross the street, and my heart freezes, too. The one part of me that isn’t affected by the weather does tend to clamp down in the face of subtler things. And Zarina is nothing if not subtle.
Fuck! I’m standing in the middle of the goddamn road, thanking my lucky stars there’s no traffic, and watching Zarina slide across the sidewalk like she’s got skate blades underneath her retro high-tops. In the eighties, she even wasn’t born yet. That thought weirds me out, but she acts so much older than her twenty-two years. Sometimes. And other times she behaves just like a child.
I can’t let her see me.
Rushing across the street, I do my damnedest to cut over to the next block. My feet are not cooperating, and I feel like a cartoon character, sliding and jumping, limbs flailing in every direction, oranges flying out of my bag and rolling down the sidewalk.
Sooner or later it was bound to happen, and apparently today’s the day.
My boots slide out from under me and I go down hard. My ass smacks the ice and my head gets cold cement. All I can do is lie there staring up at the bare branches, black against a grey-blue sky. Maybe it’ll snow later.
“Oh my god!”
I hear her voice, but I don’t think she knows it’s me. Not just yet.
“Oh my god, are you okay?”
I feel her footfalls as she runs up from behind me, tumbling to her knees at my side. She looks like a Persian princess. She’s got the widest dairy-cow eyes I’ve ever seen, which only grow wider with recognition.
“Lauren,” she says, gasping. “Oh my god, Lauren, are you okay?”
Her long black hair cascades over one shoulder. It’s one of the coldest days of the year and she isn’t wearing a hat. That almost makes me angry because I care for her so damn much. And that definitely makes me angry, because after what she did to me I don’t want to care for her at all.
I moan, trying to ease myself up off the concrete, but my head feels just as heavy. I try to convey that yes, I’m fine, but all that comes out is, “Ahhhh.”
“Can you move?” she asks. There’s panic in her eyes. “Should I call an ambulance?”
“No,” I grunt, forcing myself up. Once I’m sitting, I feel too dizzy to function. I let my head fall into her lap, which is the only place it ever really wanted to be, anyway.
“Lauren!” she shouts. “Oh my god, I’m calling 9-1-1.”
Summoning every ounce of strength my barely-conscious mind can generate, I sit up again and say, “No, I’m okay.”
The cold wind slaps me in the face and I feel...not better, but at least a little less sleepy. I want to throw up, but I don’t let myself. Not in front of her.
Slipping my arms out of my grocery bags, I force my legs to carry my weight, and they do, like a newborn giraffe. Zarina stands too, and I let my body sink into hers, chest to chest, our skin separated only by her pea coat, my bomber jacket, and a whole lot of sweaters.
Still, it’s the closest we’ve ever been.
I hook my chin around her shoulder and suddenly there are tears streaming down my face, freezing against my cheeks. Their warmth fresh from my eyes hurts more than their frigidity once they ice over, and I don’t know why I’m crying but I can’t seem to stop.
She says, “I think you have concussion.”
I think, ‘How would you know? What are you, a doctor now?’
And then I feel guilty for being mean to her, even just in my head.
“I think so too,” I reply, wishing my arms would wrap around her body like hers are wrapped around mine. My muscles won’t follow instructions. I’ve never felt so helpless in all my life.
Zarina picks up my grocery bags and flings them both over the same shoulder. Of course I think to offer my help, but I know I just can’t manage it. I’m not even sure I can walk.
“You still live on Isabella?” she asks.
She remembers where I live? “Yeah, the building on the corner.”
But of course she remembers. We walked home together enough times after work.
Work...ah, the halcyon office job days.
Our little firm handled immigration, primarily, but also family law and real estate to bring in cash. Zarina started there with a co-op placement in high school and they hired her as administrative assistant right after she graduated. Those were good years. I loved working there, until it all fell apart.
And it all fell apart because of Zarina.
I’m not exactly sure how we get from the street where her father lives back to my building, but she’s asking for my keys, so it must have happened somehow. I don’t feel cold anymore. Now I’m warm...too warm...and I’m afraid of what will happen when she leaves. She’s still lugging my groceries on one shoulder and lugging me on the other, my forehead resting against her woolly white scarf. She smells like springtime, and I wonder if that’s just my hope for a thaw as I follow her into the elevator.
“What floor are you on?” she asks. She’s never actually been inside my apartment.
“Sweet sixteen,” I mumble. It’s funnier in my head.
I don’t tell her that I had to move to a different suite after I left my office job. I couldn’t afford a one-bedroom anymore, not in this part of town, and not washing dogs for a living. The new one is a bachelor, but the southern view is spectacular. You can see all the way to the lake.
She drags me from the lift. I don’t know how I’m still standing. “Which one’s yours?”
I lead her to the threshold, hoping she’ll come through with me. She opens my door and I laugh my ass off when all I smell is wet dog. Laundry’s been piling up over the past week and I just couldn’t be bothered.
“Nobody’s seen this apartment but you,” I tell her as I fall to my knees in the entryway.
It feels so good to be home that I put my head down on the cream-coloured carpet and close my eyes. I’m floating now, with a light, fluffy cloud under my face, and I sigh with relief.
I hear Zarina whisper “Fuck” as she falls to her knees beside me. I can’t figure out why she’s so upset when I’m soaring so high. She unzips my coat and unwraps my scarf. My boots come off, and my hat, my homemade mittens...she takes off everything but my leggings and my undershirt. I smell worse than a wet dog, but I get the sense she doesn’t care. She’s muttering, and I hear what she’s saying but nothing registers except her concern.
She drags me by my armpits across the carpet, and when we get to my bed I say, “I can do it,” and crawl under the covers.
Nothing in the world has ever felt this good. I close my eyes and smile, and I’m so damn happy I don’t even care that every time I start to drift off Zarina shouts, “Lauren!” and flicks me on the forehead.
It feels like a game, and I laugh.
My head is heavy like a brick and it drags me down into the past, back to the old days. I wasn’t in the closet, but I wasn’t out at work. I’d always compartmentalized my life anyway, so I didn’t feel like who I favoured romantically had any bearing on my job performance.
There was a real estate agent, Phil, who brought in a lot of clients—a big part of my job as a paralegal was coordinating closings—and Phil was the kind of gay guy you could spot a mile away. His outness really put me at ease, because I’d never been good with guys. I know it sounds like a lesbian stereotype, but most men just rub me the wrong way. Even my boss, Fazil, bugged me when I first started working for him.
Then, over time, I observed how he interacted with Phil.
Nobody else seemed to notice, but I did, and I got more comfortable around him. We became friends, even. He was married, and he assured me he wasn’t interested in me “that way,” so I told him I was queer and I didn’t like him “that way” either. We became close friends. Intimate friends. And he admitted to me that he was having an affair with Phil. He’d enjoyed trysts with men before, but now he was falling in love.
Nobody else knew. It was our little secret.
I’m not one to judge because, shit, I’ve been there and then some. When I was young and naïve, I fell in love with a married woman, so I knew where Fazil was coming from. For a while, I even thought she’d leave her husband for me. When I realized that was never going to happen, I was shattered. I put my heart in the deep freeze, because that seemed the safest place for it. Maybe that’s why I focused so much of my energy on my job, and why I didn’t feel like being out at work was relevant. It’s not like I was dating anyone. I’d shut my heart down.
Until Zarina.
It wasn’t just that she was beautiful, or funny, or clever, or quirky. She was one of those genuinely kind people you don’t often encounter, certainly not in a law office. Though I was ten years older than her, I felt young when she was around. We all did, I think. She brought us music and style. She woke us up.
Everybody liked her.
In fact, everybody seemed to like her the same way I did, and a year after coming on full time, she started dating our very own partner-by-age-thirty-five, a guy named Dennis. He was okay, or so I thought, but I really imagined there was something between Zarina and I, and my heart felt trampled when she chose him over me. Not that I ever made a move or offered any suggestion I was interested. In truth, of course, I was scared of being let down again.
Nobody likes to get hurt.
In the midst of my intense Zarina crush and the ensuing disappointment, I clung harder to Fazil for support. He had grown deeper in love with Phil, and there was no one else he could talk to about that relationship. On the days Zarina couldn’t walk me home because she was going out with Dennis, Fazil and I hung around at work, drinking in his office. Without him, I’d have drowned my sorrows alone, and I would have felt like the world’s biggest loser doing that. I loved him for the support he showed me. He was such a good friend.
And then the rumour started.
Fazil and I had chosen to hide our friendship, to a degree, because we knew how it would look. He wasn’t ready to stand up at work and say, “I’m in love with another man.” As it turned out, that would have helped my case immensely.
It’s strange to hear things about yourself and know they’re not true, but also know there’s no real way to dispute them. Fazil and Lauren are having an affair. That’s what everybody thought. I’d catch hints of whispers, titters, snarky comments coming from god-knows-where, and it made me so damn angry because who could I confront? How do you deal with something that’s floating in the air? Fazil was my boss and suddenly I felt awkward just walking into his office because I knew all eyes were on us.
“What are we going to do about this?” I asked him one day.
Fazil looked at me pleadingly, but he didn’t say anything.
I was reaching the end of my tether. “We have to do something. I get the feeling my job’s hanging by a thread, here. The partners keep finding fault in everything I do. It’s like they’re setting me up.”
Fazil shook his head, and then nodded for me to look out his door. Dennis strode across the expanse of the office, eyes dark, heading our way. Zarina stood behind her little desk, watching, on high alert. The second we made eye contact, she looked down, into a file folder, guilty as sin.
That’s when I knew who’d started the rumour.
It was Zarina.
The knife stuck in my back as I looked down at Fazil, who seemed so small in that moment. Scared. In about five seconds, something was going to crash, but I’d be damned if he came down with me.
Pushing past Dennis, I stepped up on my wobbly chair and stood on my desk in the office’s main space. Picking up my coffee cup and the spoon from my yogurt, I banged the one against the other like I was calling for a toast. This was it. I was throwing myself under the bus.
“Attention, attention! I’d like to make an announcement. I just want everybody to know that, contrary to popular belief, I am in fact a huge dyke. One-hundred-percent Grade-A lesbian, always have been, always will be, so all you assfaces who accused me of having an affair with my boss need to get your heads out of the toilet and start concentrating on your work. Whatever you’re paid, it’s too much if you spend your days gossiping about co-workers.”
I was still going on about how, “You could ruin people’s lives, and you don’t even give a fuck, do you?” when Dennis grabbed me by the arm and pulled me down from my desk. I landed with a less than graceful thud and let him drag me into his office, because I wasn’t done yet. If Zarina had started this rumour, surely he’d played his part. They were a couple, after all.
“Enough of this,” he said when the door was closed. I wouldn’t sit down. I felt like a high school kid in the principal’s office. If only I’d had a wad of gum to stick under his desk. “Look, you’re right about office gossip, but pretending to be something you’re not is pretty low. Just end it with Fazil and we’ll pretend this never happened.”
There were a lot of things I expected Dennis might say, but that was definitely not on the list. I was speechless, at first. I really didn’t know how to respond. “You think...I’m lying?”
He was so slick and easy as he tossed himself into the leather chair on the other side of his desk. “Come on, Lauren, I know you’re not gay.”
That word sounded bizarre. “I didn’t say I was gay, I said I was a lesbian.”
With a smug smile painted across his lips, he shook his head. “Look, I have no problem with gay people. You know that real estate guy, Phil? He’s gay and I think he’s great, but you can’t pretend to be gay to wriggle your way out of an accusation.”
I made a sound like, “Whaaaa?” but Dennis couldn’t cut the shit.
“I know lots of lesbians,” he claimed. “Aaaaand... they don’t look like you.”
The knot in my belly erupted, and I was halfway to my desk before I realized I was laughing. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes, but I wouldn’t let them spill just yet.
Pulling my purse from the bottom drawer, I yanked out a subdued shade of pink lipstick and scrawled I QUIT on the wall above my desk. When my lipstick broke, I grabbed a Sharpie and followed that up with go fuck yourselves hard.
It wasn’t clever, but I was angry and thinking on my feet.
I wished Fazil good luck as I stormed past his office—he was still seated slack-jawed behind his desk—and when I turned to push the door open with my back, my gaze locked with Zarina’s. She stood like an arrow outside Dennis’s office, her plump lips parted, her brow streaked with lines of disconcertion. I’d never seen those eyes so wide, until today.
Zarina’s flicking my forehead now and I bat her hand away like a kitten. She smiles, but her eyes are still heavy with worry.
“I put your groceries away,” she says, “and the kettle just popped. Want some tea?”
“Do I want some hot chocolate?” I ask.
I’m less mature now than I was when we met, plus my body wants sugar.
She sighs as she slides off my bed, walking to the little kitchen nook. “I really think I should call a doctor. There’s something wrong with you.”
“It took you this long to figure that out?”
Turning from my cupboards, she gives me a smirk, and my whole body feels alive. While she searches unaided for mugs and hot chocolate mix, I gently remind myself why I don’t like her: she spread that rumour about me and Fazil, she never called me or stopped by after I quit even though she lives three streets down the block, and worst of all she’s dating the assface who didn’t believe I was a lesbian.
He’d be pleased with my appearance now, I’m sure. I cut my hair, pierced my eyebrow, I never wear skirts anymore, and I’ve got him to thank. Cheers for the complex, Dennis!
“How’s your boyfriend?” The words hurl themselves across my apartment like airborne venom. I hate myself for asking, but I blame the concussion.
Zarina turns from the kettle, and her expression tells me she has no idea what I’m talking about.
“Dennis,” I clarify, though I still feel like a jerk.
She laughs, and then groans. “Oh god, don’t remind me!” She picks up two mugs and wanders slowly toward the bed, spilling a little hot chocolate on my carpet. “Ooops. Sorry. I’ll clean that up.”
“Don’t worry,” I blurt, wanting to know, hoping, praying, wishing she might be available. “It’s okay, just...what happened?”
I sit up in bed and she hands me a mug, snuggling in next to my hip. I feel her warmth and her sweetness through the covers, and Zarina’s presence does more for me than the cocoa.
“I quit right after you left,” she tells me. “Everybody heard what Dennis said to you. He was a jerk. You know, he was the one who started that whole rumour about you and Fazil. His first wife cheated on him, and he was just really sensitive about that stuff. Not that I’m making excuses. It was so brave of you to come out like that, and he cut you right down.”
Sheepishly, I admit, “Well, I got a nice severance cheque in the mail. I guess they didn’t want the Ministry of Labour involved, or whatever.” But I feel awful, now, that I held a grudge all this time and it wasn’t Zarina at all. “I’m sorry you lost your job because of me.”
She pets my arm as I sip my hot chocolate. She’s already put her mug down on my night table, and she moves in closer, consoling me. “It wasn’t your fault. Fazil gave me a good reference, and I found a better job pretty quickly. I just got so mad. If he didn’t believe you, I knew he wouldn’t believe me, and he didn’t.”
“What do you mean?” I ask as she takes the mug from my hands and sets it down.
I think I know, but I want to be sure.
With a half shrug, Zarina sets her head down on my chest. All I feel is her warmth, and all I smell is the springtime in her hair. “I’ve always been more attracted to girls than guys. I dated Dennis, and I dated other boys before him, but I thought...” She chuckles, but there’s a wry quality to it. “I just thought that’s what women did: fell in love with other women, but dated men because... because we’re supposed to. I think I always believed that until...” She gazes up at me like a fawn, and my heart soars with her breath, though I can’t seem to breathe myself. “Until you quit, that day. It was one of those don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone things.”
My head is pounding, but I can’t conceive of a more perfect moment. I take that chance I don’t usually take, and ask, “You fell in love with a woman?”
Her bottom lip trembles, and tears soak her eyes as she falls across my chest. “I should have come after you when you left. I should have told you how I felt, but I was scared. I should have stopped Dennis from saying all those things about you. I knew in my heart you were different, and you weren’t having an affair with Fazil, and if you were going to have an affair with anyone it would be with...”
She sobs against my chest, and I want nothing more than to applaud the risk she’s taking. Now I’m the one doing the consoling, running my fingers through her long hair and whispering, “Shh, honey, it’s okay. It’s okay now.”
All at once, she stops and lifts her head, gazing into my eyes. “I should have done it a different way.”
“It’s not too late,” I tell her, feeling at once young and maternal. “You take care of me tonight, keep flicking my forehead and bringing me sweet drinks, and I’ll take care of you every night after. How about that?”
She smiles and then laughs, her cheeks streaked red but her eyes gleaming like diamonds. I can’t say I never expected to see her again, seeing as she lives three streets down, but I don’t think I anticipated falling on the ice trying to get away from her, only to be taken into her care.
It occurs to me that I might be dead, or in a coma, or dreaming, and a sudden panic makes my heart race. Then she leans in close and sets her lips against mine, and I know this moment is real.