Maidenhead

But I needed to see them, I was lonely. It was 4 a.m. Lee wasn’t there, apparently she’d just left, and our silence continued.

‘I always wanted to be the prettiest person in a room,’ I began my story to Aaron and Wils, feeling desperate for their attention, like a runaway. Lee was prettier than me. She was a better girlfriend. ‘Or I always wanted to look like other girls, someone else, not myself, there was always someone who looked better and more beautiful than me.’

Aaron took a swig of rum. ‘I think you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,’ he said.

‘Once in Grade 8, listen to this, you guys: I slapped my best friend Jen across the face. She was the most popular, most good-looking girl in the school. I slapped her because she was laughing hysterically. She’d started laughing so hard at her own story about some guy, I don’t even remember what the story was, and her laughs became yaps, like hysterical air-swallowing. I just wanted her to shut up so badly that I slapped her. Her ponytail swung from side to side but even that didn’t stop her yapping for a second. You get what happened? I mean, right after I smacked her? She started really laughing after I slapped her cheek. My slapping had actually made things worse. I mean, she couldn’t stop that terrible laughing-crying-yapping for another ten minutes!’

Wils was smiling at my story but Aaron was grim.

‘It felt good to slap her,’ I said. ‘To slap the most beautiful girl to attempt to stop her self-destruction ... ’

‘Yeah, Myra? What’d she think? Did she like it too?’

I ignored Aaron’s spite. ‘We didn’t talk about it afterwards, I mean, after she finally calmed down. She was shocked, I think, but she wasn’t mad. Jen held her cheek and there were tears on her face, but she couldn’t stop staring at me in total relief. It was like she knew that she needed it. Maybe if she’d said anything afterwards it would’ve just been thank you. Thank you for slapping me into myself. Me and Jen were best friends for four years after that.’

‘That’s it,’ Wils said slowly. ‘That’s totally it. People don’t really know what other people need anymore.’

Aaron got up to go to the bathroom.

Smoke hovered in the room between me and Wils. I did not miss being friends with Jen.

I lay down on Aaron’s lumpy pillow and I looked up at Wils. ‘See, I guess Gayl knew what I needed when she slapped me.’

When Gayl slapped me, she shocked me out of a dream, my old way of thinking. My needs were bigger than my family’s needs. I needed Gayl, I needed her slap to crack out of my world.

Aaron staggered back into the room. Wils stood up to block him because both of us saw he was suddenly rabid. ‘I can’t take this, man, I can’t take her anymore. I can’t take your stories. I don’t want to see your face. Get the fuck out of here! You’re driving me to the abyss, Myra. Can you leave, man? Now. Jesus. I can’t see you ever again, I can’t see her for a while ... ’

Aaron’s two black eyes were fixated on me.

‘I think you should go,’ Wils whispered at me. He had his arm around Aaron, holding him up.

‘Yeah, go live your life or something. Go fuck a pole. You’re fucking me up.’

Aaron leaned his head on Wils’ shoulder. He took his book, his coverless bible – Weil’s Gravity and Grace – and whipped it across the room at me. The book hit the wall. Aaron closed his eyes. Wils was whispering to him.

I picked up the book and I left the room like the lone fucking wolf with a Bible in its teeth. I was off to tie Little Red Riding Hood to a tree.

LEE

: Watch her run, watch her run through the woods.

GAYL: Yeah, watch, we’re getting climactic.

§

By the time I got to Filmore’s, I was stoned in a bubble of Weil. ‘A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams.’

The pages were falling out of the book. I folded loose pages between other pages.

The door of their room was half-open. Gayl slept twisted up in her sheets. The other bed was empty. Quietly, I went to the bathroom. Elijah was there under fluorescent lights, eyes closed, his beard a maze of tiny black chains. His robe was half-off. His chest was a bull’s chest, slick with sweat. I felt dizzy at the doorway, like I should just leave. I didn’t know why he was sitting in there. Was he waiting for me? Elijah shivered and he opened his eyes.

‘I miss you when you’re with your family,’ he said.

He’d been waiting for me. ‘I miss you too,’ I said. I wanted to sit on his lap.

‘I missed you, Angel, from two thousand miles away.’

I felt a sluggish pulse in my throat and between my legs, the same slow throbs. It made me think I was in love. Me and Elijah were strangers in love. Maybe love like ours could be eternal.