Snapped (5 page)

“And you have all of those? Fifty years?” I would kill—well, maybe not kill, but certainly maim or pay handsomely for fifty years of those magazines.

“When I was a teenager I would make confirmation dresses for girls in the neighborhood. I spent every penny I made on magazines and material.”

Esther beams proudly at her friend. “Our Lila was quite the entrepreneur.”

“Sounds like it,” I say. I look at Lila. Her face is heart-shaped, her features are delicate and her cheekbones high and defined. Behind the mask of age and powder and blush she was probably quite beautiful.

“Perhaps you’d like to come for tea sometime and take a look,” Lila suggests.

“That would be awesome!” If my status as a complete retard was ever in question, it is in this moment that I irrefutably determine that I am. I scrawl my cell-phone number
on the back of my card and give it to Lila, who accepts it, probably out of pity for the softheaded thirty-nine-year-old who says
awesome
.

There are two taxis idling outside the hotel, but Esther insists on driving us—even suburban Ted—in her old Mercedes sedan. She’s only had one drink and though no one asks she makes a point of telling us that her eyesight is perfect.

“That’s because she had the laser surgery,” Lila whispers to me. “Used to be blind as a bat.”

I notice a copy of
Snap
from two weeks ago folded open to the MUST DOs page on the backseat. The address of the boutique hotel is circled in black ink. I pick it up and place it carefully on my lap and Ted, Eva and I slide in.

Eva is staying at my place for the weekend. With the Bootcamp schedule it’s more convenient than her driving to and from Pointe-Claire every day, and I like having her around.

It’s late and we should probably sleep, but my soft retard head is dancing with visions of midcentury fashion magazines, their pages filled with photographs by Avedon, Penn and Hiro. I open a bottle of wine and relax into my favorite chair. Eva sits with her legs curled up under her granny nightgown. It’s short, flannelette with long sleeves and a high lace-trimmed neck that looks itchy. I admire her unwavering commitment to personal style. I’m dressed in my black silk floor-length chemise again. I’m dying to take off my bra, but don’t want to scare Eva with the reality of thirty-nine-year-old breasts. I sit up straight, suck in my stomach and arch my back a little. I am a lady in repose.

I’m only half listening to Eva. She’s talking about online something and some Internet show that is either something
she wants Ted to watch or wants him to produce for
Snap
and I’m not sure which because I’m talking about Lila’s magazines and what I know is in them. I’m speculating about how much such a collection would be worth and I get up and log on to eBay and find that a single issue of
Vogue
from the fifties can go for more than twenty-five dollars. I try to do the math but it’s too much for my soft head. I debate the merits of
Vogue
versus
Bazaar
aloud and decide that it depends on the decade and on Diana Vreeland, and which magazine she was with at the time. Eva’s talking at the same time and I wish she’d shut up, but she keeps talking and so do I and we talk louder and faster and over each other until it’s all white noise and I have to go to bed.

It’s Eva who wakes me at eight-thirty. Bootcamp starts at nine. She tells me Ted called and that he’s on his way to pick up his car, which he left at the
Snap
building overnight, and he’ll meet us at the hotel at nine and we’ll take the Bootcampers for a bagels-and-lox breakfast. I must have been out so hard I didn’t hear the phone.

Eva’s dressed in a sixties day dress with tiny pink flowers running along the hem. As usual, this is topped with a cardigan and her red hair is coiffed and sprayed. I can see a hint of blond roots as she bends down to hand me a coffee and three Advil. “Let me know if you need anything else,” she says and skips out of my bedroom.

I heave myself up and wash the pills down with the coffee. My glamorous silk chemise is twisted up around my waist, exposing the ugly stretched-out panties I wear when Jack’s not here. I’m still wearing my bra and the straps have left deep red grooves on my shoulders. Eva is humming in the kitchen.

I shower then call Ted and tell him I’m running late and
to entertain the Bootcampers until Eva and I arrive. I like Ted-the-helpful-tagalong much better than Ted-the-angry-Apples-Are-Tasty-e-mailing ranter.

I want to wear my glasses and my baggy vintage men’s 501s that some crazy Japanese guy offered to buy off my ass on the spot at a gig last summer for four hundred American dollars, but I don’t. I shimmy into a cute summer wrap dress. I seal the plunging V-neck with a piece of the stickiest double-sided tape until it’s semi-respectable-looking and my tits aren’t entirely popping out. I make up my face and scrunch up my hair until it looks artfully tousled, but it’s lopsided. I want my ponytails. I strap on sandals with heels, but there’s no way my contacts are going in. I put on my prescription Ray-Bans and vow not to take them off until after sundown.

Every time Precious Finger laughs her shrill laugh at breakfast I feel like someone is stabbing an ice pick into my ears. Who knew such a sound could come out of a tiny, squirrelly woman? I can only imagine what kinds of offensive noises she was making last night, undoubtedly naked and writhing with her undoubtedly shaved pussy impaled on Zeitgeist’s skinny stub. I can imagine this but I don’t want to. What I want to do is throw up or lie on the floor or call Jack and tell him to get the next flight to Montreal so he can make me tea and pet my head.

I pick at my bagel and let Eva tell the group about the day’s itinerary: shopping, eating, music. “And tomorrow—” she’s getting them all worked up now “—we’ve arranged an exclusive tour of the
Snap
offices and a roundtable discussion with some great examples of the city’s most stylish DOs.”

This is news. Trend Mecca Bootcamp Sunday is usually
homework day, when I spend time with the participants arranging their photographs and notes into a sort of scrapbook that they can take back to their bosses as proof that the weekend was ten grand well spent. And it’s the day we hand out the goody bags, which is my favorite part because it means that shortly they’ll all be getting on airplanes and going home. Trend Mecca Bootcamp Sunday is not for
Snap
tours and roundtables. I glare at Ted from behind my sunglasses but he doesn’t notice so I kick him under the table. He points to Eva and gives me the thumbs-up sign. It takes all my willpower not to grab a serrated knife off the table, hold his hand down and saw off his fucking thumb.

“It was just an idea we came up with last night. I told her it was impossible, we could never assemble the right people in time for a Sunday roundtable, but she called this morning and said she’d taken care of it. What was I supposed to say? I thought she ran it by you.”

“She did not run it by me,” I hiss. We’re outside the bagel place. Eva is a few feet away chatting up the group while I smoke and bitch at Ted.

“Are you sure, Sara?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“You were pretty drunk last night.”

This is true, but I’m sure I would remember agreeing to something like this. It’s not the sort of thing I’d be likely to forget unless of course Eva was talking about it while I was talking about Lila’s magazines. Fuck me hard with Zeitgeist’s skinny-stub dick—I don’t know what to say. “Well, she told me about it, but I thought she meant for the
next
Bootcamp.”

Ted looks relieved. I am a lying dirtbag with possible blackout issues. No more hard liquor. No more drinking till
I’m drunk. Wine and beer only, and only with food. Ted and I join the others and walk up the street to our first shopping stop of the day. The straps of my high-heeled sandals rub against my feet and I can feel the blisters bubbling up.

By midafternoon I’m gimping behind the group like I have some kind of palsy. Women pass and either smile in empathy or sneer at my stupidity. The men—the straight men—are oblivious: they’re staring at my tits, which refused to be contained by the stickiest double-sided tape and are pushing out of my clingy wrap dress. I sit down once we reach the
Snap
store. I rarely come here—it’s too weird, all the staff know who I am and act skittish and extra friendly when I visit so I don’t except on Bootcamp weekends and that’s only because Ted reminds me that the Bootcampers always drop serious cash. It’s better to endure a stop at the
Snap
store than to contend with bitchy Ted, who inevitably shows up in my office the following Monday saying something like
I have a bee in my bonnet
or
I have a bone to pick with you
. He thinks this is funny but is never actually amused if the company store wasn’t on the tour.

This particular Bootcamp weekend I am delighted, ecstatic, positively
aglow
that we’ve stopped at the
Snap
store, as I can get off my fucking feet. I survey the shop and notice we are stocking an excellent selection of limited-edition sneakers, the sight of which make my feet throb more and I long for an axe and an epidural to numb my lower half so I won’t feel the pain when I lob off my swollen, blistery feet.

We’re also selling pairs of hand-knit, mismatched argyle socks and this is most helpful—I’ll need something to cauterize my stumps before I shove them into a pair of three-hundred-dollar hip-hop-fantastic sneakers. I’ll be like one of those ladies I see walking to the Metro station in the morning,
dressed in a skirt suit with socks and sneakers, the practical pumps she’ll change into at the office stuffed in the plastic Gap bag she carries. I could be one of those ladies, but better, with good clothes and expensive sneakers and hand-knit mismatched argyle socks that the Gap-bag ladies don’t know they want yet but they will in about eight to twelve months. I could make myself a DO and parents everywhere would write me hateful letters because after seeing me as a
Snap
DO their kid bought in to the amputation-is-awesome hype and now there’s nothing they can do to get their child’s feet back. They’ll never be in the Olympics unless it’s the Special Olympics and that’s just not the same no matter what anyone says.

I’m trying to think of the closest axe store when my cell rings. I’m disappointed when the caller ID comes up as Genevieve and not Jack and then I’m sure I’m a dirtbag whose feet deserve to be chopped off without an epidural.

“Hey, Gen. What’s up?”

“You haven’t called me back.”

“Yeah, sorry. It’s Bootcamp weekend.” Gen called yesterday. I picked the message up at the bar but couldn’t hear a thing. I remember this with total clarity and it’s a gold-star moment on a dark and unforgiving day.

“I
know
it’s Bootcamp weekend. I don’t know why you need Ted there, but fine, whatever. It’s work, I know. But I need to know if you’re coming to the party.”

“Right. The party.” I have no idea what she’s talking about. And why is Ted telling her I need him here? “What’s the date again?”

“Next Saturday at eleven—
a.m.
”

“Of course, eleven a.m. It’s not like you’d have a party at eleven
p.m.,
” I say.

“We used to.” Gen’s voice is very small.

“Are you okay?”

“Of course. I’m fine. I’ll let you go.” She’s snuffling, but I have to go—the group is heading out the door.

“Are you sure? We can talk later if you want.”

In the background I hear Olivier shriek and I rip the phone away from my ear. After the initial shock dulls, I slowly bring it back toward my head. “I gotta go,” Gen says, her voice suddenly brusque. “We’ll talk soon.”

At dinner I see Eva approach a stylish couple sitting a few tables over. I can’t hear what she’s saying, but they’re all nodding and smiling. I see Eva hand them each what looks like a business card. Eva has cards? I get up and hobble over to Ted, who’s currently sandwiched between Precious Finger and Zeitgeist. Precious Finger has ordered fries and mayo again and seems to be angling for a replay of last night’s action with Zeitgeist, but he’s having none of it and saves his lechy grin for our leggy waitress. “Eva has cards?” I whisper in Ted’s ear.

“What?”

“Eva has business cards? Did you get her cards already?”

“What are you talking about, Sara?”

Maybe Ted’s the one who needs to wear a helmet and live in a house with no sharp edges. “I saw Eva giving those people cards and I wanted to know if you ordered her business cards.” I speak very, very slowly.

“They’re
your
cards,” he says. “She needed something with the
Snap
address and number so I gave her a stack of your cards so she can invite the right people to tomorrow’s roundtable.”

“Of course. The roundtable.”

“You don’t mind, do you? I’ll order her cards Monday.”

“Monday,” I repeat after Ted.

“Are you all right? You don’t look so good. Maybe you should go home and take it easy.”

“We still have the gig.”

“Eva and I can handle the gig.”

“But she’s staying at my place.”

“I can give her your spare key,” Ted says as he pulls his keys out of his briefcase that looks like an old-fashioned doctor’s bag and dangles them in front of me.

I’m hypnotized—not by the dangling but by thoughts of a bath, my bed and a pair of ugly panties. “Only if you’re sure,” I say.

As amusing as it would be to watch Precious Finger chase Zeitgeist and Big Thing chase Precious Finger and the boring ones try without success to find some semblance of rhythm at tonight’s gig, I’ve seen it before.

I didn’t hear Eva come in last night and this morning it’s my turn to wake her with coffee and Advil. She groans and reaches for her glasses. There are makeup smears on the pillowcase and she’s not wearing her flannelette granny nightie, but a tight
Snap
T-shirt and a lacy black thong.

“Nice shirt,” I say.

Eva covers her chest with her hands. “I found it in the Swag Shack,” she says. “I hope you don’t mind.”