The girl is on the Skytrain again. Her red raincoat always pulls my gaze. She smiles through the window. Today her dark hair’s tied back. Her lashes are curled and her eyes are lined in black, catty. My fingers tighten around the handle of my briefcase. I swallow before I board.
“You’re wearing those pants again,” she calls. “I always thought they defined your package real nice.”
The other passengers look up. They look at her and then at me, at my black pressed slacks. My throat tightens. My gaze drops to the floor and I take a seat. I set my briefcase over my lap.
“Why don’t you sit over here?” the girl asks.
The train starts, its moan filling my ears. It always sounds like a ghost getting off. I lean back against my seat and stare out the window as the train passes through the city and the rain. Then the bells chime and the speaker announces the next stop.
The next station is New Westminster.
The girl gets up. She’s all legs under her raincoat. Her thighs are smooth and her calves are lean. Her platform heels click across the floor.
The bells chime again and the doors slide closed. The train starts. The moan continues.
“You never want to talk,” the girl says.
My fingers tense and I meet her gaze. “Look, I’m married, alright?”
“That’s okay,” she says.
“It’s not okay,” I say. “You’ve been bothering me all week. I’m just, I’m not interested.”
She puts her hand on her hip and her raincoat rides up, revealing the hem of her dress, floral fabric with blues and yellows, baby bedroom colours. She steps forward and straddles my leg. Her thighs rub against my slacks.
The next station is 22nd Street.
The girl leans forward and pushes her knee against my briefcase. The handle digs into my stomach. New passengers board the train, their eyes immediately on me.
“Maybe you should move your briefcase,” she says.
I shift and draw a breath, looking up. Her eyes glisten. She bites her lip.
The next station is Edmonds.
“There’s a war in your head, isn’t there?” She braces her hands over my shoulders, pushes me back against my seat. “It’s okay to admit it,” she says. “There’s a war in every man.”
The train slows and I turn my head. Outside, the rain patters against the glass.
“You get off at Commercial-Broadway, right?” She massages my shoulders, her grasp tight, kneading pressure, an ache in my head.
I tighten my fingers around my briefcase.
She leans in closer, her breath hot against my ear. “You wanna get off now, don’t you?”
At work, the reception area is decorated with balloons and banners. Everybody jumps out from behind front desk and they yell, “Surprise!”
I hold my briefcase in front of me like I’m still on the train.
Everybody sings “Happy Birthday” and they give me a card filled with handwritten jokes and sentiments about being over the hill. At lunch, they serve cake in the break room. I bring a slice back to my office but I eat my sandwich instead.
Dick walks past the open door. “Are you not going to eat that?” he asks, looking at the cake on my desk.
I shake my head and he takes the plate. He slices a fork through the red velvet and talks through mouthfuls. “Leslie have plans for you tonight?”
“I don’t think so. She’s been so preoccupied with that house lately.”
“The heritage Victorian on Fourth?”
“Yeah,” I say. “She showed it to some buyers who seemed interested. She’s been spending all her time working things out.”
“That’d be a nice present, hey? A big commission check.”
“What do you mean?”
“She must make more money than you, Jason. You can quit your job and live like a kept man.”
“That’s not funny,” I say.
He laughs anyway, and I look over at the phone, remembering how Leslie used to sound when she called, the need that registered in her voice after the failure to conceive, the IVF treatments, the miscarriages, the debt. She used to spend every day at home in her blue bathrobe. It used to be I’d have to spend every lunch hour in my office so she could call. Her voice always shook over the line.
Just tell me everything will be okay.
I look up but Dick’s already gone.
The crumbs of my sandwich fall on my lap.
The next station is 22nd Street.
The next station is New Westminster.
The next station is Columbia.
It’s dark by the time I get off the train. On my way back to the apartment, I walk past Leslie’s heritage Victorian. Her picture’s on the For Sale sign. She’s smiling, blonde hair curled, lips painted red, powerhouse.
My ears start to ache.
Leslie’s already asleep when I get home. She’s in her baby blue bathrobe, the bedsheets kicked around her feet. Her lamp’s still on. It’s almost like it used to be, except she’s got housing contracts on the nightstand instead of the stack of pregnancy books she used to read.
I crawl beside her and kiss her forehead, her cheek. Her hair smells like lavender. I wrap my arms around her. I press my lips to her ear.
“I love you,” I say.
She moans in her sleep. She nudges me with her elbow. She pushes me away.
I write strata notices over lunch. Dick walks in and stares at the crumbs on my ledger. “Jesus,” he says. “Can’t you give yourself a break? It’s depressing enough just looking at you.”
He drags me with him to the bar after work. He orders a round of Caesars. “If you’re man enough, you don’t give a shit that it’s a cocktail,” he says.
I stare at the glass, red thickness like clotted blood, test tube baby waste that goes down salty. Dick flags the waitress and orders us a second round. He looks her over when he orders a third, leans in too close when he orders a fourth. The taste of the Clamato juice settles in my gut.
“How’s Leslie?” he asks.
“She was asleep when I got home last night.”
He laughs. “You didn’t even get laid on your birthday?”
“Why would I care about that?”
“Hey, before Alice and I split, birthdays were about the only time we ever had sex.”
A Skytrain passes on the tracks outside the bar, its moan filling my ears.
“I don’t really think about things like that. I can’t.”
Dick looks over.
I shake my head and blink, lightheaded. “All that shit, you know, not being able to conceive. It’s kind of insulting. You just, you spend all that money to jack off into a bottle and then they just make a baby in a dish?” My throat tightens. I clear my throat. “Leslie painted the spare room blue and yellow. She always wanted a gender-neutral nursery.”
Dick lifts his glass and takes a drink.
Another train passes outside, going the opposite direction. Its ghostly echo haunts like Leslie’s voice when she called me at work the first time. She sounded so hollow, so dead.
Jason?
“She wasn’t even herself the second time.” My gaze drifts to the red mess in Dick’s glass. “She called me every day when it got worse, you know. Then I got home from work and she was hunched over the counter.”
Dick sets his glass down. He scratches his brow.
“Seeing her go through all that, I just, I did what I could.”
“She reinvented herself,” Dick says, staring down at the table, his fingers flinching. “You have to, after something like that.”
“Yeah.” I shake my head. “It’s just, she didn’t even tell me about becoming a Realtor until she got her license. She just said she was going to make the spare room her office. She painted the walls grey.”
I sway on the platform until the train arrives. The first thing I notice is the raincoat. The girl is slouched in her seat. She tugs at the zipper, opens her coat to reveal her tight dress, her figure. I avert my gaze and slump into the nearest seat, setting my briefcase on the floor. The train starts and the briefcase tips over. I pick it up and set it on the empty seat beside me.
The girl walks up. She pushes the case aside and sits down.
“You’re drunk,” she says.
“So what?”
The train is nearly empty, just a handful of students with headphones in their ears. I stare at the reflection in the window of me slouched in my seat, her beside me. She crosses her legs. Her skirt rides up. She’s wearing black panties. They’re lace.
“What were you drinking?” she asks.
My ears throb to the pace in chest.
“Caesars,” I say.
“That’s not a very manly drink.”
“So?”
She puts her hand on my thigh. “I like you better this way,” she says. “You’re a white flag.”
The taste of the Caesar lingers in my throat. “What do you want?” I ask.
Her fingers tighten. “Tell me something,” she says. “Tell me a secret. Drunk men always share secrets.”
My gaze drifts to my briefcase. “I turned forty this week.”
She draws a breath and her grasp moves from my leg to my hand. She touches the ring on my finger. “Did your wife give you birthday sex?”
“No.” I pull my hand away.
“Why not?” she asks. “Married men still like pussy.”
The train turns a bend, squealing on the tracks.
She leans in, her lips against my ear again, her voice a whisper. “How big is your dick?”
My head hurts too much to answer.
The next station is Columbia.
Her fingers trace along the crease Leslie ironed into my slacks. The train slows and the doors open. I reach for my briefcase.
“You’re losing,” she says.
“Losing what?” I ask, stumbling to a stand.
She glances at the briefcase. “You always look so miserable carrying that thing.”
I stagger out of the train before the doors close. She smiles through the window. The train pulls out of the station and I blink, trying to rid the stain of her raincoat from my gaze.
There’s a sticker on the sign in front of Leslie’s heritage house, sold written in bold block letters. She pounces on me when I get home.
“Baby, it finally happened!” she says.
She’s in black lace lingerie, but the dark overpowers her. She always looked better in baby blues. She claws at my chest, undoes the buttons on my shirt. The briefcase slips from my grasp. It hits the floor, the bang heavy in my ears.
Leslie shoves me against the wall.
You’re a white flag.
“I want to celebrate,” she says. Her lavender scent brings a headache.
In the bedroom, she climbs on top of me and writhes. She arches her back. She shakes the bed, moans in my ear, distorted sounds like the Skytrain.
Married men still like pussy.
My lungs ache when I inhale. My grasp tightens around her waist. She tilts her head back, braces her thighs around me. It’s the way it always is now, her hands on my chest, pushing me down. She groans when she comes.
“God, baby,” she says. “We never do this enough.”
She makes it worse.
The next station is Patterson.
The next station is Joyce-Collingwood.
The next station is 29th Avenue.
The girl isn’t on the train, but I leave my briefcase on my lap and I look out at every platform for her red raincoat, her bare legs.
The next station is Nanaimo.
The next station is Commercial-Broadway.
The train slows and I grip the nearby pole and stand, gravity
pulling me. The bells chime. The doors slide open. The rustle of people. The city’s busiest station, bodies and red all over.
You wanna get off now, don’t you?
There’s a dent on the side of my briefcase. It’s difficult to get open. The papers are scattered inside, a mess of tenant applications, noise complaints and rental contracts. I work through all of it. I call references. I set up appointments. I answer every complaint with sympathy.
I’m a joke of a property manager, eating lunch at my desk.
There’s take-out Indian food on the counter when I get home.
Leslie clears her housing contracts off the table. She lays out a white tablecloth and serves tikka masala over rice. The food burns my throat. I stare at the plate, wincing against my headache, the pressure.
There’s a war in your head, isn’t there?
My fingers flinch around my fork. I set it down, getting sauce on the tablecloth. “So, this is stupid,” I say. “There’s this, well, there’s this girl on the train sometimes.”
Leslie looks up.
“She just, she says things to me.”
“Like what?”
I shrug and shake my head. “Just how good my pants look. She asks me how big my dick is.”
“Seriously?” Leslie asks.
“It’s gone on all week,” I say. “It’s kind of degrading, really.”
“Oh, come on,” she says.
“Haven’t men ever made cat calls at you?”
“Just ignore her, Jason.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing?”
“She’s probably just teasing you.” Leslie buries her fork in the red on her plate. She slices through a piece of chicken. “Just take the compliment and move on,” she says, laughing.
At the bar, I empty the dregs from the beer pitcher into my glass.
“You know, the thing about Leslie?” I say. “She always gave terrible blow jobs.”
“You two have a fight or something?” Dick asks.
A SkyTrain passes outside, moaning.
“Are you having an affair?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
“Are you considering it?”
“No.” I finish my beer, hesitating. “I still love her.”
“Yeah, that’s what I told myself at first,” he says. “I spent years telling myself that, but with the kids grown up there was nothing to look forward to. I’d come home and Alice would have dinner ready. She’d ask me about work and I wouldn’t even want to have a conversation with her. The girl at Subway was more interesting to talk to.” He shrugs. “Things just happened. No sense in denying it. There was so much shit in my head.”
“What about when Alice found out?” I ask.
“Honestly, it was really just a relief,” he says, leaning back in his chair. He whistles at the waitress and holds up his empty glass. He thinks he’s a real man, but he ogles the waitress’s chest when he orders another Caesar.
The last train of the night arrives. The girl’s there, bare legs crossed, her raincoat undone. She’s wearing her yellow and blue dress. The fabric clings to her figure.
Just take the compliment and move on.
The doors slide closed behind me. The girl looks up. She smiles and my headache starts to ease. I stumble across the car, slipping into the seat beside her. I drop my briefcase on the floor.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
The train whirs to life.
“I like you drunk,” she says. She touches my leg, runs her fingers along the crease I had to iron in because Leslie never has the time. “You look so good in black slacks.”
She takes my hand. My fingers slip between hers.
“I like men like you,” she says. “I like your business wear and tear, the tortured look on your face. I like your briefcase. You always look so miserable and it makes me so wet.”
The next station is Royal Oak.
She parts her legs. Her thighs are pale and she runs her fingers up. She isn’t wearing panties. The train slows and she slides her fingers into her folds.
“What’s your name?” she asks.
“Jason,” I say.
The train starts again, its moan echoing.
The girl pulls my hand between her open legs. “Do you wanna know what I feel like?”
Her skin’s warm, soft. I slide my palm up her thigh and under her dress. She’s smooth, her inside an abyss, slick lips warming my fingers. I stare out the window at the passing blur of all the shitty apartments that I control.
She leans in. Her lips brush against my ear. “How big is your dick, Jason?”
The next station is Patterson.
“It’s six inches,” I say.
“Is that not big enough for your wife?”
My throat tightens. “It used to be.”
The train shakes as it slows. I slip against her. She smells like rainwater.
People board, their gazes falling toward her open legs. She clutches my hand before I can pull away.
“Let them look,” she says. “Let them think what they want. I just want you to do this for me.”
The train starts. My headache starts.
“Please,” she begs. “Please.”
She grinds herself against my palm. My thumb slips against her clit and she moans.
“Right there,” she says. Her breaths are heavy, just like Leslie’s when she used to call. She grips my hand. She’s shaking.
Just tell me everything will be okay.
I rub her harder, thumbing circles, pushing down, two fingers buried inside of her and she writhes in the seat. Her moan echoes with the Skytrain. I lean over her, feeling her breath against my neck. Her grasp tightens. She digs her nails into my wrist and she fills the train with her moan.
The next station is Columbia.
The train slows and I look up. The other passengers turn their heads.
The girl exhales, her chest heaving. “You’re so good,” she says. Her fingers loosen and I pull my hand away.
My palm’s still wet, smelling of her.
I bury my hand in my pocket, leaving the briefcase behind.
The sun streams in through the curtains and I roll out of bed with a new headache, the girl’s voice in my head.
How big is your dick, Jason?
Leslie’s in the bathroom, standing before the mirror in her baby blue robe, her blonde hair tied back.
“Jason?”
I stumble into the hallway and she turns and meets my gaze. Her eyes are bright, glistened with tears. She’s holding a pregnancy test and there are two red lines in the oval window.
“Can you read this?” she asks. “I need you to read this.” She gives me the test and the box, even though I don’t need it to tell me what the two lines mean.
I rub at the stubble on my face. My fingers still smell like pussy.