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
