Fishbowl

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“Orange okay?”

“Fab. I’ll have a large, please.”

When the waitress delivers our fajitas and drinks simultaneously, I laugh at Allie’s huge glass of orange pulp. “What is it with you and juice? Don’t you ever have soft drinks?”

“No. Pop burns my mouth,” she explains, spreading at least a gallon of sour cream over the tortilla. Next, she carefully places the pieces of chicken on the cream, lays out another layer of sour cream, then the salsa, then the cheese, then another large glob of cream. Her meal looks like strawberry pudding. Jodine makes her fajita with a thin film of salsa, a few strategically placed pieces of chicken and a pound of lettuce. I try to keep the ingredients in proportion.

“What does that mean, soft drinks burn your mouth?” Jodine asks. “They’re supposed to be cold. You do know that, right?”

Allie giggles. “Yes, I know.”

I would have been offended by Jodine’s comment, but Allie doesn’t seem to care when Jodine talks to her like she’s missing a few keys on her keyboard.

“I don’t like the bubbles,” Allie says. “They burn.”

Jodine rolls her eyes. “You’re not supposed to gargle the pop,” she says. “You sip and swallow.”

“Sounds masochistic.” Giggle, giggle.

“You get used to it. You stop noticing the bubbles.”

“What about the first time you tried it?”

“The first time I tried pop? I can’t recall the first time I tried pop, Allie.” She takes a small bite out of her fajita. She eats everything in small bites. Eating takes her hours. “It’s like riding a bike,” she says. “Once you do it, it becomes habit.”

“I don’t know how to ride a bike.”

Both Jodine’s and my jaws drop in shock. “Unbelievable,” Jodine says.

“I don’t, really,” Allie repeats.

Jodine takes another sip of her Diet Coke. “Didn’t your father run behind you, pretending to hold the back of your seat, telling you he would never let go and then let go?”

My father never did that. He bought me a two-thousand-dollar bike and told me to figure it out. Bastard.

“My father tried to teach me, but I was afraid to take off the training wheels.”

Jodine looks at Allie with disbelief. “That’s absurd. I’ll teach you how to ride.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What uh-huh?”

“Everyone says they’re going to teach me when I tell them I don’t know how, but no one ever does.”

“Do you ever ask them about it again?”

“No.”

“Then don’t expect them to teach you. Your bike-riding skills aren’t everyone’s top priority. If you want me to teach you, then ask me. Biking is great exercise.”

Not exactly a selling point for Allie. While she seems to have an abundance of energy, she prefers to spend her free time lying in bed reading or watching TV. “Have you ever actually tried Coke?” I ask.

“I don’t think so.”

Impossible! “You’ve never tried Coke? What do you drink with your Jack Daniel’s? What do you have at barbecues?”

Allie stares at me blankly. “Uh, orange juice?”

“If there is no orange juice?”

She appears deep in thought. “Sometimes I pick an orange soda and wait for it to get flat. Then it tastes like that orange drink at McDonald’s. They call it a drink but it has no bubbles, did you know? I used to order the small orange juice cartons, but they cost a fortune and they’re not always included in the trio meals. Getting orange juice at movie theaters used to be a problem, too, but ever since the whole Snapple craze, they almost always sell juice, any flavor.”

Apparently an entire carbonated-free world exists that I am unaware of. Jodine meets my gaze across the table and we both start laughing. “Try it,” she says, pushing her glass toward Allie.

“Why? I know I won’t like it.”

“Just try it. I want to see.”

“See what?”

I reach over and take a sip from Jodine’s glass. “All the cool kids are doing it,” I say.

“Fine, I’ll try if it’ll amuse you. But, Jodine, you have to try a cigarette.”

I almost choke on the so-called offensive bubbles.

“Terrific,” Jodine says, squinting her eyes. “But why?”

“Just try one. I want to see.”

“But you don’t even smoke.”

“I’ll have one, too. We’ll all have a drink, and we’ll all have a smoke.”

“I feel left out,” I say. “What do I have to do?”

“You have to close the door the next time you’re in the main bathroom,” Jodine says, passing Allie her glass.

Allie puckers her lips and sips the Coke as if drinking a glass of straight tequila. And then the three of us crowd by the restaurant bar as I hand out cigarettes.

“You look like a freak, smoking,” Jodine says to Allie. “Are you on the Stair Master? Why are you breathing like that?”

Allie blows out the smoke she was holding in her mouth—the smoke she should have been inhaling but was keeping prisoner inside her cheeks—into Jodine’s face. “Can you teach us to French inhale?” she asks me.

“That’s why they call me Frenchy, you know.”

“Sure it is.”

“Who calls you Frenchy?” Jodine asks.

“No one.”

“It’s from Grease,” Allie explains.

“I’ve never seen it.”

Allie’s jaw drops. “No way! Didn’t you watch any fun movies growing up?”

“Yes,” I say defensively. “I saw The Wizard of Oz. And Annie. And Amadeus.

“I can make smoke circles. Wanna see?” I blow three consecutive Cheerios-shaped ovals into the air.

“Again!” Allie demands, and I do it again. They try, and a few minutes later we’re all laughing, watching smoke circles stretch and evaporate into the air.

After lunch, I drive Jodine home so that she can prepare for her nondate and convince Allie to go shopping with me. What better way to spend a Saturday? Shopping and then a movie. Allie claims she doesn’t need anything but agrees to come along to keep me company. I drive us to Yorkdale Mall. At Mendocino, I charge three hundred dollars on a pair of pants and sweater. She tries on the same pants, but looks like a stuffed handmade pillow with the cotton balls spilling out.

“What do you think?” she asks, trying to see every angle of herself in the three-sided mirror.

She’s not a fat girl; she just shouldn’t be walking around in tight pants. Maybe I shouldn’t tell her that. Maybe I should tell her she has great legs and that she’d look better in a skirt. But then, won’t she know I’m lying? “What do you need to buy those for?” I say. “You can borrow mine.” Very good! A most sensitive and appropriate politically correct answer.

She could also use a haircut. She’s too short for hair that comes down past her tits. And a few highlights wouldn’t hurt. Make that many highlights.

After shopping, I climb back into bed for an afternoon siesta, and Allie climbs into her bed to read. When I wake up, the sun has already fallen below the house in front of ours, and the sky is tinted purple. The phone rings, and a minute later Allie bounces into my room, looking like she accidentally dropped my vibrator down her pants.

“Clint wants to go for a drink! Clint wants to go for a drink!” she says, clapping her hands in excitement.

“Clint? What kind of a name is Clint? Is he a cowboy?”

“Clint is a beautiful name. It’s the most beautiful name in the whole world.”

Snort. “You are such a cheese ball,” I say, laughing. “Does that mean you’re ditching me and the movie?” I try to feign indignation, but a bunch of my old school friends already invited me to meet them for a drink up at Yonge and Eglinton. But seriously—there’s someone a step higher than me on Allie’s pedestal? Can I take this Clint character?

“Oh. Uh-oh.” She looks like she’s about to cry. “Should I cancel? Do you want me to cancel? I’ll cancel if you want me to.” There is no way she’s not praying to herself that I won’t make her cancel. I can practically see her mouth moving.

“Don’t cancel,” I say, dismissing her with my hand.

She sighs with relief.

After she showers, I help her get ready. “No, Allie, you can’t wear the same top of mine that you wore last time…I know I said it looked very hot but he’s already seen you in it…. Yes, you can borrow something else.”

At one in the morning, when I get home from Yonge and Eglinton, Allie is sitting on the couch, looking miserable, watching the end of Saturday Night Live. She nudges her chin toward Jodine’s room. I can hear the faint sound of Marvin Gaye coming from behind the walls.

A black scrunchie is on the doorknob.

7

JODINE HOLDS THE BUTTER

JODINE

I am so angry, my hands are shaking. If I were a cartoon character, gray clouds of smoke would be steaming from my ears, and my face would be the color of Emma’s nails, cherry red. It’s 3:11 a.m. and someone is making popcorn. Popcorn! At 3:11 in the morning! Why would anyone make popcorn at 3:11 in the morning? It makes no sense.

Every night it’s something. Usually it’s the giggling. Too often, when I’m trying to fall asleep, Allie is giggling on the phone. I can’t decipher what she’s actually saying or to whom she is speaking. All I hear is that infernal giggling like a bad echo reverberating through the walls. I would buy earplugs, except that they present two immediate problems. First, how would I hear my alarm clock? And second, whenever earplugs are remotely near my body, I tense with stress. I wore them when I took the LSATs, and now whenever I think of them, my back tenses in an “I am about to sit still for the next three hours that will define my entire future” Pavlovian manner. Since falling asleep requires the absence of stress, I doubt that a stress-inducing object will succeed in blocking out nocturnal distractions.

The first time I heard the giggles I didn’t think anything of them, hoping the incident was a one-time thing. The second time, I couldn’t stand it. I attempted to ignore them; honestly, I did. I tried to fall asleep, despite the feeling that a pack of flies was buzzing around in my ears, but I ended up tossing and turning, turning and tossing, and eventually I slipped into my black-and-white-and-red Minnie Mouse slippers from Disney World, padded over to Allie’s room and knocked three times on the door.

“Come in!” she sang out, obviously unaware of the purpose of my visit. Did she think I was stopping by for a late-night girlie chat? Me? “Hold on, it’s one of my roomies,” she said into the phone. “Hi, Jay!”

These days, she has been calling me Jay. First she tried Jo, not believing me when I told her that I despised it. Then for some inexplicable reason she tried Jon. Jon? First of all, I despise all male names for females. You know, like Sidney or Michael. But no female has ever even tried using Jon before. I even dislike those ambiguous names that can go either way, like Robin. Although I must point out that I am in favor of names like Carol or Lynn; no matter how many males carry these identifiers, and no matter how they are spelled—Carol/Caroll, Lyn/Lynn—an extra consonant, in my book, does not legitimize the transsexual operation. To me, these names are strictly feminine.