Everybody Has Everything - By Katrina Onstad Page 0,7
cold. That apron is still fucking hilarious.”
He plugged his iPod in to the dock in the next room and returned mid-sentence, speaking over the music, telling Ana about the band, which included a tuba player. This enthusiasm reminded Ana of a time during their courtship when James would arrive at her apartment in the middle of the night – three or four a.m – just as the black crust of the sky was breaking. He had a key by then, and wouldn’t wake her, but would stand for a moment at the side of Ana’s bed. She would press her eyelids closed, feigning sleep. After a few minutes of heavy breathing, if he was still there, she would open her eyes. James never went out at night in those days without the paramedic’s shirt he’d bought at a second-hand store in Kensington market. It had blue crosses on the shoulders and a polyester sheen made day-glo by James’s sweat.
“How did it go?” Ana would ask, watching him vibrating with eagerness to tell her what had happened to him and what she had missed with her early hours, her morning-person status.
“Excellent,” he’d grin, his tongue broad with drink. “I got right to the front around midnight.”
James wore the shirt so he could cut through the crowd, calling: “Excuse me, excuse me! Paramedic coming through! Medical! Injured woman!” He did this when the lights were low, timing it perfectly so the music was just beginning, and the crowd was distracted but not drunk enough to be ugly. Oh, man, it was miraculous: the fans parted for this compassionate professional.
Ana was charmed when she heard the story the first time, and laughed. But later, she came to identify the gag as a piece of a bigger problem. James got older, but the great sense of entitlement stayed around: his stacks of unpaid parking tickets; his clear conscience over buying a shirt, wearing it, and then returning to the store a day later. He had many theories, rationalizations about Dada and culture jamming and upending a system that was inherently disadvantageous to … well, not him, maybe, but people who didn’t even recognize they were disadvantaged. Somehow, it was his duty to get the best of the world. After a while, Ana tuned out that particular strain of James, the yammering of the kid from the suburbs justifying why his hand was reaching for the last piece of cake.
But back in the beginning, it intoxicated her to be with someone who handled everything, everyone. This was new to Ana, who had paid her mother’s bills at nine, worked after school at the donut shop at thirteen, wiping the drink fridge clean of broken juice-bottle shards and bugs entombed in gelatinous substances.
In the beginning, she wanted to curl up inside James’s certainty. She loved him, she loved him, and how he fell into bed next to her those late nights. His slick skin, sweat and beer. The lean muscle of his thigh flung open on the sheets. She pulled him closer in his paramedic shirt.
From the window, Ana watched James outside in the yard. He stared up at the darkening sky, which was much too light for stars. But she took note of the fact that he looked anyway. He was hopeful. She felt something shift inside of her, as if, to make room for all this love, she would have to rearrange her insides. James was gigantic that way. When she wanted him, she wanted all of him. When she didn’t, he felt murderous, unstoppable. A superhero gone mad on a busy downtown street. It had been a while, Ana realized, since she had experienced the scope of her love.
Not wanting to linger on this absence, she turned to her vegetables. While James showered, Ana walked through the house, placing small glass pots of candles on the mantle, on ledges. She turned down the lights, put a single blood-red Gerbera in a white vase in the centre of the table. Her hand moved across the placemats and linen napkins. In the living room, as she half-lowered the blinds, a man walked by, his hair softly blowing, his spine curved, hands in pockets. He looked up, and their eyes locked. Ana marvelled that while he was a grown man, he was still far too young for her to romance, to have sex with, even to know. At thirty-nine, she was too old not just for boys but for full-fledged adults. A male temp at work