The Big Dream (10 page)

“Oh, shut
up,
Martin. Who'da thought
you'd
be the racist one?” Danvir kinda cackled and popped his beer.

“I
ain't
the racist one.” Martin chewed.

Danvir slurped then chewed.

I noticed a guy who looked like the WWF come through the kitchen behind the couch where everybody else was eating and drinking and yelling.

“Why
wouldn't
I be the racist one, anyway? What kind of thing is that to say?”

It was, seriously, the muscliest guy I'd ever seen. His shirt wasn't even that tight and there wasn't much light in the kitchen, but I could see bulges in his shoulders, bulges in his chest, and his hair was shaved off so his head was like one giant shiny bulge.

“I dunno – ” Danvir was being all fake, like he does when he knows he's right on trivia night “ – you bein' a homosexual, I though you mighta learned a little tolerance.”

The guy in the kitchen put his hands on his waist and I saw it was really narrow, his top half actually triangling down into his pants. I thought about how I ought to join a gym a second before I remembered that I was unemployed.

Some food fell out of Wayne's mouth. I was only just now realizing how bad the light was in there as I tried to see if it was Jos Louis or pizza and I couldn't. Wayne turned and looked at Martin for a good long second, food still sitting on his shirt like a Remembrance Day poppy. “Yer a fag?”

Danvir hooted like he'd just bowled a strike. “
Practically best friends,
huh?”

The guy took a step into the living-room light, and I could see that he wasn't black, though he wasn't exactly white, either.

Martin flopped along the back of the couch until he was all the way lying down and Wayne had to squirm around to look at him, which knocked the pizza box to the floor. The pizza mainly stayed in even though the box didn't shut all the way.

“You are a
faggot
?”

The kitchen guy took another step.

“You knew that.” Martin tossed his hands in the air and then flopped them back on his belly. “Everybody knows that. How could you not know that?”

Wayne was twisting around to kneel backwards on the couch, no easy game for a guy his size. “
I
didn't know cuz
you
din't tell me. You don't say, Wayne, I am a homosexual, you don't try to make sweet love to me when I drop a pencil, I don't know you are gay. Simple.”

“I am glad,” said the man, stepping fully into the room and putting a hand on Martin's chest, “that you do not try to make love to strangers when they drop pencils.”

Martin jumped about a mile when the guy touched him, but he somehow managed not to fall off the couch. The guy didn't sound like a wrestler. He had an English accent and sounded like he should've been on TV explaining how an amoeba works.

“They aren't strangers, Lee,” Martin said, struggling to sit up without falling onto Wayne. “These guys are from Dream.”

“We're all
best
friends,” said Danvir, who had sat back down in his chair again. His voice was supposed to sound like he was
trying not to laugh, I guess, but it didn't really sound like he found much funny at all.

Wayne twisted back around and looked into space, only it was the space where I was sitting.

Martin stood up finally, next to Lee, also facing me but not really looking.

“So these are the people you work with,” said Lee very quietly.

“Yep, work with. Really not friends at all.”

There was more silence then, all of us just looking and thinking and breathing in pizza air. All those eyes on me, everyone so angry, and yet the day before, playing Hackey-Sack in the kitchen with that balled-up invoice, making fun of Patty Jacobson for calling Levis
designer jeans
, even just an hour ago talking about how the Iranian pizza place was ok and the Halal pepperoni was awesome. And then I realized it was over.

“No, we don't work together anymore,” I said. “That's all done with now.”

ON TUESDAY MORNING, Sarah kept her face under the itchy afghan long after the alarm had gone off, watching sunlight filter through the loops of pink and orange wool. She was drenched in sweat. Only when the phone rang and her mother shrieked, “
Sarah!”
did she pull her head out. The air in the room felt cool in her wet hair.

“Phone, Sarah! I mean it.”

The beige cordless on the nightstand was smudged with grey. “You up?”

“I'm up, yeah. What?” The bedside clock said eight-eleven, too late for a shower.

“I'm making sure you're up, Sar. If you're late again, Kief's gonna fuckin' make you into gravy.”

“I won't be late. I'm up.” Sarah scissor-kicked the blankets onto the floor, covering the clean laundry, the lamp, her grade 11 biology text.

“How are our fertile friends?”

“I don't know. She's still here, that's it.” She swung her legs over and sat up. Her head felt hot and heavy, filled with melted candlewax.

“Ok, one problem at a time. Get moving. You should be on the bus already.” There was a click, a moan of dial tone.

Sarah was tempted to put her uniform on over her T-shirt and shorts, to avoid being naked, but people – at least Kate – would
notice the lumps under her chef's jacket and white-and-black checked pants. She stripped down to her panties and bra, then dressed, shivering.

Everyone was at the kitchen table for some reason, drinking tea and eating whole-wheat bread out of the silver Wonder sack. Jeremy was reading job ads aloud in a voice like Jerry Seinfeld's, only not funny, and Margaret was retching quietly into an HMV bag. Sarah's mom sat blinking at the wall, drinking her tea. Her mother had to be at work at nine, too. “Who was on the phone?”

“. . . to transit freight to and from stations and hub facilities, as well as pickup and delivery of skidded freight . . . What,
skidded,
like, slipped?”

“It means on skids, those wooden flats that hold freight, Jeremy,” their mother said, then took a sip of tea. “Sarah, you gonna eat?”

Jeremy muttered through crumbs, “I . . . I guess I could do that. You don't have to lift them yourself, right? They let you use a . . . a . . .”

Margaret coughed, then spat.

“No.” Sarah sat down on the bench beside the door to do up her sneakers. They had once been white, but now they were gravy-coloured. “Just Kate.”

“At this hour?” Her mother reached into the bag. “Forklift, probably.” She handed a slice of bread to Sarah. It crumpled in her hand like a Kleenex.

“Good morning, Sarah,” Margaret said in a wavering voice. “I – I'm sorry, sorry, about all this.”

Jeremy put the paper down and patted Margaret's knee without looking at her. “Yeah, morning, Sar.”

Margaret looked so pathetic, sad and fat and clutching her sack of vomit, Sarah couldn't even answer.

Margaret wiped her mouth and tried to smile, but it went wobbly straightaway. Jeremy kept looking at the paper. Sarah's
mother raised her mug and tipped it against her lips before realizing it was empty. Sarah squashed the damp bread in her palm and fled.

Sarah had never seen Margaret's parents' house, but she was sure it had a lawn, two stories, shutters and eavestroughs painted to match. She was sure Margaret's family didn't eat dry bread for breakfast, not even the week before payday. When Margaret started dating Jeremy, she would tell Sarah about horses and manicures, and Sarah was happy enough to nod and smile and imagine. Now that Margaret had gotten pregnant and kicked out, nobody really talked to her anymore, barely even Jeremy.

Two blocks hot walk to the bus stop and a half-hour's ride west, until the roadside was mainly blank and the bus almost empty. The back of the cafeteria was still under construction though the place had been open a month. Staff had to pick their way through mud to the door, then down the long employees-only corridor where the lights were always shorting out. Between the walk-in fridge and freezer were the punch clock and a mirror hanging from a nail. Sarah stopped there, took a hairnet from her back pocket and started trying to push her hair in. She had a lot, and every time she seemed to get a good bunch in, she'd go to tuck in the last couple curls, and the whole fro would spring back out again. She could feel tears starting her throat.

“If you won't shave it, at least put it up in a bun. This is torture.”

Everything startled Sarah, but not Kate's voice. “I don't have the skull shape. I wouldn't look like you. I would look like a tall toddler.”

“Only hotter,” Kate said reflexively. It was what she always said when Sarah made fun of herself. “How you doing?”

“Oh, you know, bursting into tears every twenty minutes. You?”

Kate did look good, all cheekbone and jaw, just fuzz on her skull. She punched herself In, then Sarah.

“I'm not ready.” Sarah turned and more hair tumbled free. “Leave it.”

“Keif just notices what's on the card, not what you actually do. You gotta be on time on paper.”

“That's lying.” Sarah's voice was thin; she found it hard to even hear herself over the hum of the fridge and freezer. The hairnet slipped out of her hands, onto the onion-skin-strewn floor.

Kate sighed so deeply her belly puffed under the chef shirt. “C'mere, I'll do it.”

Sarah scrabbled on the floor. “I can do it, I just need – ”

Kate snatched the net and shook off the gunge with one hand. With the other, she took Sarah's hair and twisted it roughly into a bun. A few strands stretched, broke, but Sarah didn't say anything. The hairnet went on smoothly, more or less. Kate tapped Sarah on her spine. “You're done. You're on the clock. Get to work.”

Breakfast sandwiches sold out early, and the customers stuck with toast and jam grumbled. Then a coffee urn jammed, which meant it had to be dumped out and the valve dismantled. Plus Sarah and Kate had to make deli trays for lunch meetings, rolling glistening pink ham and white-freckled salami into cylinders.

It was 11:00 before Sarah could start on lunch specials. Kate was on ketchups, but after Sarah had only produced six chicken-avocado wraps in twenty minutes, Kief said condiments were less important than the food people paid for, and sent Kate to help.

“You're pissing him off, Sar. Next time, warn me you're fucking up so I can help
before
he sees. You know? Cause you're pissing him off.”

“I know. I gotta get my head in the game.” A piece of avocado squirted out the end of a wrap.

“You sound like Jeremy. You been talking to Jeremy?”

“Uh . . . no, not really.”

“Did you even ask how far along she is?” Kate dotted avocado pieces down the middle of a spinach tortilla.

“
How far along?
You sound like somebody's great aunt.”

“Riiightt . . . ok, but did you? Cause if she's gonna end it she's gotta do it before like, three months or something.”

“End it. Yeah. I dunno.” Kate's sandwich was a smooth green phallus while Sarah's was lumpy and leaking salsa. “I don't think me asking will decide much.”

“The whole situation is so fucked up. It sounds like no one's deciding.”

Sarah couldn't picture the abortion or the birth. Either way, a white hospital room: Margaret pale and serious under a sheet getting a whole other life pulled out of her. And now Margaret was drained of her powers, her straight-A grades and her smiles, her
Glamour
dog-eared to haircuts she thought might look good on her friends, even her ability to keep down her breakfast.