Love and Other Perishable Items Read online

  Chris looked from her green eyes to Stuart’s cruel ones and didn’t move. A couple of late-night customers had started to queue up at my register.

  “Go back to your register, Chris,” Kathy said, pulling service supervisor rank. “There are customers waiting.”

  Chris turned and walked back up to his register. He looked at me briefly, expressionlessly, as he passed. Stuart took care of the mouse. Somehow.

  So right now at the party, Stuart is playing pool and Kathy is smoking on the deck. I’m chatting to Sveta about school when Jeremy comes up to us carrying a bottle of white wine.

  “How’s the evening going, ladies?”

  He slots himself in between us and expertly pours three glasses of wine.

  Sveta doesn’t say anything. It’s up to me.

  “Fine. It’s going fine.”

  “Cigarette?” he asks, fishing in his pockets.

  “No!”

  He stops fishing. “Cheers then. To Bianca’s dad’s Christmas bonus.”

  Again, Sveta doesn’t say anything.

  “Cheers,” I say. We clink glasses and look out over the harbor.

  Maybe it’s the wine, which I’m not used to drinking, but I’m beginning to feel something resembling relaxation. If Sveta does kill men with her thighs, she certainly doesn’t talk about it at parties.

  It’s turning out that Jeremy is an okay sort. Prior to the party all I knew of him was that he was a junior at St. Pat’s and sold cigarettes to all the underage kids in the area when he worked at the service desk on Thursday nights. A lot of thin private school girls, I’d noticed. He does a roaring trade.

  I’m doing pretty well at small talk with him right now. At least, for a social retard like me. He’s a pretty nice guy. Cute in a hoodlumish kind of way. I ask him about his school.

  “Yeah. I don’t go a whole lot.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I just go when I have to.”

  “But … you have to go every day.”

  He laughs and refills my glass for me.

  The only interruption is when Chris comes over, takes the glass out of my hand and suggests quite pointedly that Jeremy fetch me a glass of water. He seems to glare in Jeremy’s direction, then leans down and says, “Ease down on the wine, Ripley, or you’ll get a bit messy.” Then he goes inside to talk to Ed.

  I notice Stuart and Chris briefly glower at each other across the pool table. Jeremy returns with my water and another bottle of wine.

  Around nine o’clock, I look round the deck and notice that Kathy is no longer on it. I peer inside to the pool room. Not there either. Hmm. Stuart, I notice, is also missing. Bianca has taken his place at the pool table. As soon as I fully absorb this information, my eyes seek out Chris. He has just come back out onto the deck carrying two strawberry daiquiris, fresh from the blender in one of the kitchens. He too is casting his eyes about the place, trying to find Kathy, then registering that both she and Stuart are missing. He sets the daiquiris down on a table, leans out over the deck railings and scans the garden and jetty below. Then he turns and walks quickly back into the house. The purpose in his stride and the uncharacteristic hardness of his mouth make me put my own drink down and rise to my feet. Jeremy stands up too and coaxes me to sit down again.

  “I’d better just go and see where Chris is …,” I begin, then grab hold of Jeremy’s arm to steady myself. I feel a bit wobbly. Maybe it’s the wine, or maybe I’ve just stood up too quickly and got a head rush.

  Jeremy sets his wine down and puts an arm around my shoulders to steady me.

  “Chris is fine,” he says. “He’ll be back in a minute.”

  I deliberate for a moment, then detach myself and weave my way across the room with uneven steps.

  “I’ll be right back,” I mumble over my shoulder.

  Bianca’s home is a bit of a maze, but after a search of downstairs I find a staircase. I take a deep breath before beginning the climb. I grip the banister firmly, definitely feeling a bit … something.…

  Hold up. Quick, angry footsteps are striding down from the landing above. Chris bursts into sight, his face like the sky before a hailstorm.

  “Hey—” I begin, but he leaps down the stairs two at a time, pushing past me so hard he’d have knocked me over were I not already clinging to the banister.

  “Chris!”

  Nothing. A door slamming.

  I hurry after him to the front door, fling it open and run out through the front yard into the street. I can see him stalking away up ahead.

  “Chris! Chris!” I run after him. At my second call he whirls around.

  “Fuck off, Amelia!”

  He means it. He has never, ever called me by my actual name. I stand there catching my breath and not daring to say anything else until he turns and keeps walking.

  I’m sucking back tears when I hear the sound of glass shattering at the end of the street, followed by a distant “Fuuuuck!” in Chris’s unmistakable voice.

  A hand drops onto my shoulder and I hear Jeremy’s voice saying, “He’ll be all right.”

  I blink back more tears and turn to face him.

  My head is a mess, whirring with questions, general disaffection and the hurt of being so rebuffed by Chris, who I’d walk across the Sahara for if it would do him any good. All of which immediately stops when Jeremy takes a firm hold of me around the waist and kisses me unflinchingly on the mouth.

  Didn’t see that one coming.

  I break away for a second and say with all the eloquence warranted by such an occasion as my first kiss, “Um?”

  Jeremy responds by kissing me again, very authoritatively.

  I think, in quick succession: What’s happening here?—I should go after Chris—That’s someone else’s spit in my mouth—That’s tongue!—Maybe I should stop this—Weird—Okay, that’s not bad—Not bad …

  Jeremy interlocks all of his fingers with mine, gently squeezes my hands and stops kissing me. I open my eyes and look up at him. I can feel his breath on my lips. The seconds that we have been kissing are the first seconds in six months that I have managed not to think about Chris. Intriguing. And a bit of a relief.

  “Come inside with me,” he says.

  “Okay.”

  He leads me back inside the front door by the hand. So this is what it feels like to hold hands with a boy, I think. Nice.

  Instead of taking me through the house to the back deck, where the party is, Jeremy makes a clean left sidestep into a formal dining room with a never-used feeling. A huge and ornate dark wood table stands in the center of the room, flanked by glass cabinets filled with expensive-looking crystal and china. On the sideboard is the remains of the second bottle of wine Jeremy and I had been drinking. But no glasses. He picks it up and drinks straight from the bottle, then motions for me to do the same. I swallow down a generous sip, fight off a sway, hand back the bottle and wait to see what will happen next.

  What happens next is quite mystifying for a girl who spends hours of every day staring hatefully into the mirror and down at the scales. Putting his hands on my hips, he gently shepherds me over to the edge of the table. Then he bends down, takes a gentle hold of me around the thighs, lifts me up and sits me on the edge of the table. My shoes swing above the carpet.

  More kissing—nice. Jeremy’s hands are on my hips, pushing me, ever so gently, along the shiny wood toward the center of the table and then onto my back. He is on the table too and kissing my neck. I open my eyes and look up at the plaster designs on the dining room ceiling.

  Interesting times, I think, a little foggily.

  “All right, kids, that’s enough for now.”

  It’s Ed’s voice and he’s pulling Jeremy roughly off me. Jeremy made some protest until Ed said, “Your girlfriend’s arrived, mate.” Whereupon he vanished.

  Oh crap.

  That leaves Ed and me alone in the dining room. I quietly get down from the table. My head is spinning.

  “Where’s
Chris?” I ask feebly, massaging my temples.

  “No idea. But I don’t think he’ll be back.”

  “And Kathy and Stuart?”

  Ed grimaces. “Still upstairs, I think.”

  “I feel sick,” I say in a very small voice, because suddenly I do.

  Ed finds a quiet place for me to lie down, then disappears to find someone to take me home.

  Disgrace

  I wake to my alarm the next morning, fully clothed on my bed and feeling absolutely wretched. It’s Monday. School today and then work tonight. Summoning everything I have, I haul up into a sitting position. Ahhhhgow.

  After a minute I stagger to my feet and stumble down the hall to the bathroom. My head pounds. My mouth is parched and foul-tasting. I struggle to remember the events of the previous evening.

  And then it comes back to me. More or less. Oh no. How did following Jeremy into that dining room seem like a good idea?

  I clean my teeth thoroughly and gargle with a generous quantity of Listerine. The foulness in my mouth remains. I fumble in the cabinet for Tylenol and then run a hot shower.

  Leaning against the steamed-up glass shower recess, I wonder how Chris is faring. I’m going to have to see him tonight. And Jeremy. And Ed. But I can’t think about that now. I just have to concentrate on staying upright, not throwing up and getting off to school without anyone noticing I’m hungover. Hungover! Me! I perk up a bit at the thought of telling Penny that I made out with a boy and got a hangover. I suspect there will be squealing on both sides.

  Luckily there is an already ironed shirt in my wardrobe. With some effort I get dressed and pack up my school things and my work clothes. When I get downstairs, I can hear Mum remonstrating with Jess over some potty-related issue. I couldn’t possibly eat, so I don’t even bother to enter the kitchen.

  “I’m late.… I’m off,” I call to Mum.

  “Oh … Bye, Amelia.”

  “I want my Dorothy undies!” I hear Jess shouting as I head for the door.

  “They’re all in the wash, Jess; you’ll have to wear the stripy ones.”

  “No! Dorothy!”

  I pull the door shut behind me. Looks like I got away clean.

  My headache lasts for most of the morning, then subsides, leaving a general tiredness. I find that I am actually far from proud of the Jeremy thing, but I tell Penny about it anyway and skip immediately on to the Chris-Kathy-Stuart debacle. She takes it all in with a shake of her head and a big exhale, taking a cue, I think, from my general lack of animation. I sleep through the lunch period until Penny gently wakes me for science.

  When I arrive at work, Jeremy is behind the service desk. I stand right next to him to check the roster—he doesn’t look at me or speak to me and I’m not sure what, if anything, I should say.

  “Hey, do you know if Chris is here yet?” I venture.

  He looks at me for a microsecond, with what I’m pretty sure is a mixture of pity and distaste, and gives the briefest shake of his head. So that’s how it’s going to be.

  I head to the locker room to put my bag away, wondering whether Chris will be too upset about the Kathy thing to come to work. Wondering whether Ed will have told him about my … thing with Jeremy. Until a bolshie voice booms at me from the doorway.

  “You!”

  Uh-oh. I turn to face the object of my desire.

  “Hey,” I say. “How are you feeling—”

  “You!”

  “What?”

  He is still standing in the doorway. “You know what.”

  Holy crap.

  “Do you think, Youngster, do you think that’s any way to behave when you are a guest at someone else’s house?”

  “I—”

  “Didn’t your parents teach you any manners?”

  I hang my head and won’t look at him, although by now he is standing right next to me.

  “I should call them and tell them how out of control their daughter is. Drunk and disorderly at fifteen!”

  I abandon my contrite pose and bristle a little bit. “Look—”

  “Is this the real Youngster then? Look out, world, here she is, ready to polish all your dining room tables with her back. A lick and polish as they s—”

  “Hey!”

  He cups his hands around his mouth and shouts, “Look … out … world … the … Youngster … has … landed!”

  He’s enjoying this. He’s actually enjoying it.

  “I turn my back for five minutes,” he continues, “and you’re fucking young Jeremy on Bianca’s dining room table. They have to eat off that table, you know.”

  “I wasn’t …” I can’t bring myself to say fucking.

  “Well, no doubt you would have been if I hadn’t asked Ed to keep an eye on you.”

  I blush at the (hazy) memory of Ed’s intervention.

  “Jeremy fucking Horan of all people. I hate that guy.”

  “Well, don’t you kiss him then.”

  “You are in disgrace, Youngster. Do you hear me? Disgrace.”

  I concentrate very hard on putting on my scarf and don’t answer.

  “Do you hear me?” he booms.

  “Yes!”

  “What are you in?”

  “Disgrace.”

  “Qué?”

  “Disgrace!”

  “Damn right!”

  He seems pleased with this.

  “Did you know Jeremy had a girlfriend, the little shit that he is?”

  “No, no idea—”

  “How could you not? She hangs around the store all the time. The skinny one in the St. Lawrence uniform.”

  “They all look the same to me.”

  “He wears baseball caps backward! And you let him put his tongue in you!”

  Now that is altogether too frank for me. I want to tell him “Steady on now,” as my grandmother used to say.

  “Well, I don’t mind telling you that I’m frankly appalled, Youngster.”

  I don’t answer, which fires him up even more.

  “What am I?” he says, blocking the doorway that I had taken a step toward.

  “Appalled,” I say.

  “That’s right. I’m appalled.”

  “Well, good luck with that.” I push past him and go out to the registers, knowing that the perfect comeback will come to me later that night as I am ironing tomorrow’s school shirt.

  No doubt it was Ed who squealed on me—he and Chris are best friends after all. Chris continues to ride me about the “polished mahogany incident,” as he takes to calling it, for the rest of the week. I don’t see him once speak to Kathy, though.

  When I walk into work on Wednesday, Chris and Bianca are leaning against the service desk counter next to each other. I swear they both smirk when they see me.

  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the Youngster,” he calls as I scurry past. “Feeling all right there, sport?”

  I make for the locker room.

  “You’re still in disgrace, Youngster! Got it?”

  I studiously avoid making eye contact with anyone, especially Jeremy. I do glance toward the service desk, I hope in a subtle fashion, when this girlfriend of his is around. Chris was right—she needs a sandwich. And the cigarettes Jeremy slips her probably aren’t doing her any favors. Whatever, like I care.

  On Thursday at school, I bemoan the work situation to Penny. We are hovering at the edge of the grassed area, talking just to each other before we join the group. I don’t think she quite knows what to make of Chris, or what outcome to hope for.

  “He’s being a bit of a jerk,” she says warily.

  “Yeah,” I agree, and hurriedly add, “But he’s not like that all the time.”

  She shrugs. “Mum and Dad are still making noises about me changing schools. They want me to apply for some scholarships. And take some exam to get into private school.”

  Penny’s parents aren’t happy about her school performance. She’s not enthusiastic, they say. Her marks could be better, they say. She needs stronger
guidance, they say.

  If you ask me, Penny’s lack of enthusiasm is one of the most glorious things about her. Example: she hates PE. No, listen to me—haaaaaaates PE. I’m pretty underwhelmed by having to put on a cringe-worthy sports uniform in the middle of the day, run around under the harsh sun until I’m red and sweaty, then get changed back into my school tunic (no showers) and be sticky for the rest of the day. But I do it twice a week, as required. As do the other girls.

  Not Penny. She has never skipped PE, not even once. She shows up all right, with that unhurried, loping gait of hers, but instead of heading to the locker room with the rest of us, she slings her backpack down on the grass in the shade, sits down next to it, pulls out a book or magazine (always non-school-related) and starts reading. She doesn’t wheedle to the teacher about period cramps or headaches. She doesn’t forge notes from her mother. She just won’t do PE. Ever. It’s understood. Mrs. McGill never pulls her up on it and always marks her name off on the roll. It’s just the way Pen carries herself. Like I said, gloriously unenthusiastic. And her marks are perfectly decent. I don’t know why her parents are freaking out like this. Penny changing schools is a terrifying thought.

  Everyone is a bit quiet at lunch on Thursdays because there is a double math period right after. People silently try to psych themselves up for it, and when the bell rings, no one moves right away. Actually, they freeze—like animals caught in the headlights of the oncoming juggernaut of trigonometry.

  Sitting next to Penny in math, I notice that she now has two piercings in each ear, instead of one.

  “When did you get those done?” I ask, surprised that she hasn’t mentioned it.

  “Last weekend,” she replies, not looking up from her trigonometry.

  “Where’d you have it done?”

  “Did it myself.”

  “You WHAT?”

  “I did it myself. With ice and a needle.” She is still looking down at her bloody trig book, and I am flabbergasted.

  I splay my hand palm down in the middle of her exercise book. “Holy crap, Pen, you could have given yourself blood poisoning! Why didn’t you go to a pharmacy or something?”

  She shrugs. “I boiled the needle and everything.”