The Same Woman (9 page)

I hate her, Ruby thought, and the weight of this realisation both shocked her and liberated her. It was a relief to admit it. Ruby gave into the hatred and let it fill her fists with the density of blood. She was done with self-admonishment and the benefit of doubt.

“Hey you,” Isi wiggled her way to Ruby using her shoulders as weapons. “Where have you been? I've been looking everywhere for you! Did you see the drama?”

Ruby didn't know whether or not to lie to Isi. She didn't say anything. Isi was flushed an attractive pink with excitement and drink, and didn't seem to notice.

“Frankie got kicked out. I couldn't even believe she turned up. She knew you would be here. I can't believe what a freak she is. But I don't know why she got kicked out. Did you see that Yousuke the dreamboat kicked her out?”

“Isi,” Ruby began, “I did something bad.”

Isi's eyes widened gleefully. “What did you do? Did you kiss Yousuke?”

“No!” Ruby giggled, her nerves making her voice sound joyful when she really felt ill. “I got Frankie kicked out.”

“Oh my God,” Isi said, “that is awful!”

“I feel kinda bad, you think I should feel bad?” Ruby acted drunker than she felt.

“Oh whatever, she had it coming. But how did you do that? That's so un-you!” Isi was surprised, and thrilled, and approving. Ruby fell against her and screamed, “I know!” and they gasped and laughed and made a scene to show they were having a good time, even though her anger made Ruby feel more disgusting than she had in a long time. “Don't tell anyone,” Ruby hissed. “Our secret!”

“Unh huh girlfriend!” Isi declared in postmodernist imitation of TV show friendship.

“Let's do a shot!” Isi bought two tiny vessels of burning clear liquid. They took the whole volume in their mouthes at once and the glasses clinked against their teeth. Everything swirled red and brown and Ruby was grateful to be freed from herself again.

“Let's dance!” Isi commanded. Ruby let Isi order her around. They squealed their way to the dance floor, and knocked into other people with their gyrating hips. Everyone joined them. The DJ started to
play faster music and Ruby knew all the words to the songs. Even Tariq came and did the funky chicken in the middle of the floor. All of Ruby's friends were reminded of why they had liked him in the first place, and started to surrender their hostility.

Ruby shook her shoulders, pointed her fingers, swung her elbows, mouthed along with the words, cocked her hip, dipped her friends, stood on peoples' toes and spun around. She let the noise and the shots and dancing drown her guilt and her grief, and to her friends she had never looked so happy.

Ruby destested the wall. She loathed the slug-shaped chip in the plaster, she abhorred the piece of hair that had got stuck in the wall when some long ago tenant had taken it upon themselves to paint in slops of beige, she reviled the colour of the dawn that the wall took on at 5:43 a.m. when she had laid in bed since 11 p.m. the night before, and not slept.

For the 62
^nd
time that night Ruby turned on her back and took a deep breath. She took another and another and began to count each breath. She tried to let her respiration mesmerise her to sleep. She closed her eyes. Just don't open them, she told herself, whatever happens don't open them. Creeping fingers of itchiness seized the back of her head. Don't open them, don't open your eyes. Her head slowly ignited with itchy irritation. It's all in your mind. Then her pillow, which she hated most of all, began to contribute its cheap scratchiness to this torment. With the most muted scream — Octavia was sleeping soundly on the pull-out couch in the living room — Ruby gripped her pillow with both furious hands and whipped it, as hard as
she could, across the room. She had been aiming for the wall, but the pillow veered evilly off course, slammed into the side of a dresser and toppled a picture frame which fell over with a smack.

Ruby sat completely still in the quiet aftermath. She waited to hear movement in the next room, cringing, wishing she had not thrown the pillow, wishing she could just sleep. But Octavia didn't wake up and the torturous night went on.

“There has never been a time,” Ruby whispered to herself, “when I was not here. I have always been here. I will always be here.” In the dark sleeplessness she could feel herself going loopy. She turned back on her side, back to the malicious wall, and unsuccessfully tried to squeeze a few cathartic tears out of her wide awake eyes.

The real problem was not the photo frame, the pillow, the itchy head, or even the wall. It was inside her chest, a clammy hand that wrapped itself around her heart and sent fits of panic into her spleen, her abdomen, her throat. This was the third night she had laid in bed in panic, feeling her organs swell, taking breaths that were never deep enough, waiting for her arm to go numb, because she was sure she was having a heart attack. Sometimes she was positive her arm had gone numb and dug her nails into her elbow for verification. But her elbow always stung with pain and she was forced to face the fact that her problems were emotional and indefinite, instead of physical and curable.

“Oh oh oh oh oh,” Ruby rolled around and around in bed, clothes and sheets and limbs tangling, and tried not to have any thoughts. And then for a moment she lay still, bound by the mussed bedsheets, and stared at the cell phone sitting on the table next to the bed. She meditated on its shape, and then slowly worked her arm out of its bind, pulled her hand free, and reached out to grasp the phone, leaving sweaty smudges on its smooth black surface. She opened it and examined its light-up display. The phone seemed to be working. She had performed this check countless times over the past three days. It would be unbearable to miss the call that had kept her up for nights, on account of a broken telephone.

Three days ago Ruby had met Nal's cousin in front of the Squat as the sun was setting and the bar was preparing itself for the night. She'd worn clothes that made her unrecognisable to herself — an old
work outfit that she had found in the bottom of a suitcase packed over a year ago — and even shaved her legs. The heels of her sexy sandals seemed to click too loudly in the opulent vestibule of the club, but no one else noticed. The owner looked out of place dressed like a mover and shaker, but in an office crammed with budget-store furniture and illuminated with harsh,ugly lights. There was no point in expensively outfitting the rooms that only staff saw.

Interviews for bar jobs were always the same. The owner looked only cursorily at her resume, but carefully at her, and she felt glad that her shirt was too low and her skirt too short, even though she felt like she was wearing a Halloween costume.

He spent a lot of time making jokes and pretending to be easy going, when it was clear from the size of his empire that he could not be. After the interview Nal's cousin, Ulli, insisted on giving her a tour of the bar. Ruby alternated between laughing loudly and talking softly, determined to appear fearless, if Frankie was in the building, and determined to be invisible, if Frankie was in the building.

Later, in the dank subway bathroom, Ruby hugged herself and cried because she had seen Frankie's name on the staff notice board in the office and the feeling of sickness it gave her never went away. Ruby tightened every one of her facial muscles at the same time until there were no cracks for tears to escape through. She wanted to be impenetrable. Through her clenched, cramped, contorted face, she asked herself where Frankie got the guts to be so bold. How could she order coffee from Octavia every day knowing who she was? How could she turn up at a bar where she knew her ex-lover and his real lover were? How could she tell everyone her sordid story? Ruby adopted the stock clichés of professional athletes gabbing into cameras and gangster caricatures in video games. If she can do it, I can do it. If she wants to play it that way, I'll play it that way.

Ruby stalked the phone. She sat next to it in the living room with her hands clutched across her chest. After a while she left the house but didn't get further than the back stoop, where she clung to the steps and mistook every tiny household sound for a ringing phone. The phone took on magical qualities. It was a talisman of the future. There is something intolerable about waiting for something, and not knowing when — or even if — it's ever going to arrive. In the vastness
of sleeplessness, panic, grief and vengeance, she convinced herself that she had no choice but to take the job if it was offered.

The weight of the night was starting to lift. Well rested birds called to each other and the colour of the wall became lighter. At 6:58 Ruby tumbled into sleep. At 9:00 Octavia's alarm clock woke her up.

“Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready?!” Octavia took a flying leap from the doorway and landed on Ruby.

“Oh my God,” Ruby's eyes were stinging from no sleep. “Ready for what?”

“Our date! Breakfast with Isi! If we don't leave in 20 minutes, the line-ups will be out the door! Come on Mister Heavyfoot!” Ruby had no real memory of the stumble from bed to restaurant, though her toe hurt from where she'd bashed it on the curb as Octavia dragged her through the suffocating heat which had made its triumphant, slothy return.

She found herself staring into the clouds of steam coasting serenely across the top of her coffee mug, just as the heat blanketed the sidewalks. Octavia and Isi left her in peace and chattered about the Isi's Ph.D proposal and Octavia's father. After a while Ruby became slightly indignant that they hadn't noticed her silence.

“What's going on over there in that mug?” Isi asked.

“Huh?”

“You've been staring into your coffee for ten minutes.”

“I was just thinking about jobs.” Really she had been thinking about nothing.

“Did you find one?” Now that both Octavia and Isi were paying attention to her, Ruby wished she could go back to her neglected coffee watching.

“I interviewed the other day.”

“Where?”

“A club downtown. A big one. Lots of money I think.” She was starting to wake up now. Panic woke up too, and Ruby unconsciously slid her hand under her t-shirt to try and muffle the insects starting to buzz again in her belly. With dread she thought of the food that was coming and the struggle there would be to eat it.

“What's it called?” Ruby stared out the window and didn't say anything. She wondered exactly how long a pause in a conversation could
last before it became uncomfortable. Two seconds? Five? Was it accurate to say that three seconds was acceptable, but anything beyond that was weird? Why was it that a single second could so powerfully change a conversation from friendly to awkward?

“Hello?” Octavia gently poked Ruby's side.

“Sorry. I just, I couldn't really sleep last night.”

“How come? Are you worried about something?”

“No, not really. I don't know why I couldn't sleep.” She fibbed automatically.

“So are you excited about the apartment you found?” Isi's limited attention span whisked Ruby's sleeping patterns from the spotlight.

“Yeah! Poor Tariq had to do all the work of finding it.”

Octavia listened quietly to this nice, meaningless conversation. Ruby was explaining the floor plan of their new apartment when Octavia cut in.

“I noticed you haven't spent much time together.”

“Yeah, I haven't really seen him since the other night, at your party.”

“How come?”

“I don't know. Work and stuff.” Octavia crossed her arms.

“What's going on?”

“Nothing. Nothing's going on. He's just busy I guess, or I am, or whatever. I think we're going to try and get together tonight.”

“Where are you going? Do you want me to clear out of the apartment?”

“Oh no, of course not! It's your place. We're going to go to his aunt's house. She's out of town and we're going to go over to her house and watch a movie or something.”

Octavia exchanged glances with Isi.

“What? Why are you looking at each other like that?”

“You don't think it's too fast to be moving in together?”

“What?” Ruby laughed, “We've been together for almost three years now.”

“Oh no, I just mean, after the, uh...”

“It's okay, you can say it. I won't disintegrate.” Ruby responded to sensitivity and insensitivity to her situation with equal hostility. “Well, there isn't really anyone else for me to move in with.”

“Is that really a good reason to move with someone?” Isi asked.

“Why are you on my case like this?” Ruby snapped, pre-emptively angry before there was even anything to be angry about.

“Sorry Ruby. I'm just, well, I, we don't want you to get hurt again.”

“I can handle it.” She lifted her coffee cup and used it like a barricade between her friends and herself.

They sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment as Isi and Octavia tried to think of neutral topics they could bring up without obviously appearing to change the subject. Ruby wondered how long she could hide behind her coffee cup. I am a horrible person, she thought, and the rim of her coffee cup caught one of the angry tears that had refused to come the night before.

Their food arrived, wobbly eggs and potatoes tinged with red Cajun spice. “Here, try some of this,” “Okay you take a potato,” “You have to have this melon slice.” They broke the tension with tiny gifts of food. They talked about Isi's shoes and Octavia's allergies, and the night Tariq drank too much and fell off the porch into the tomatoes. Ruby took tiny bites of everything, trying to take the meal one step at a time and focus on the conversation, not her anxiety.

As the server was clearing their plates, Ruby's phone buzzed in her pocket and she jumped. She grabbed at the phone, her fingers clumsy and dazed, the antenna catching on the lining of her pocket.