How to Get Along with Women

Author:Elisabeth de Mariaffi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Invisible Publishing
Published: 2012-12-11T16:00:00+00:00

Super Carnicería

They floated into the morning on their backs, back and forth in the cloverleaf outdoor hot tub at the Water Tower Hotel. It was June 16. Anna had her eyes closed and when she squinted up it wasn’t night anymore. The sky flipped open. They weren’t floating: Aubrey had pulled two deck loungers off the side and set them up in the shallow water so they could lie there in the froth with less risk of drowning.

He was her captain. He took responsibilities seriously. They’d landed at two on a Saturday afternoon—forty-two passengers, one baby, no wheelchairs—but wouldn’t be out again until four on the Sunday. The cloverleaf hot tub in Sault Ste. Marie.

The thing about twenty-six hours on the ground is you have to do something. You can’t do nothing. They hadn’t done a fucking thing in New York, but the potential is there in a big city and the potential fills you up. Northern Ontario, you need something else to do that.

Anna’s brother was Zoran. She’d pulled a booklet of photographs out of her wallet the night before, hand-stapled and ordinary. Primary colours for background. Zoran, black-haired and with a cockeyed look, mouth open as though speaking to the camera, his grade one school picture. Happy-looking, but not smiling.

Loud-looking.

What do you mean? Anna said.

Looks like one of those kids who never shuts up, Aubrey said.

One photo a year for ten years. He always wore a red shirt for picture day. He couldn’t wear a collar, or shirts with tags. He couldn’t wear shoes without socks. If he didn’t wear socks he’d spend all day yelling about his feet, how bad they felt with no socks on them.

Sort of a retard? Aubrey said, but kindly. He meant no harm. A loud retard he could understand.

Sort of, Anna said, lying back on the hotel carpet. They were in his room, waiting for another flight crew to get in from the airport so the night could start up for real. The ceiling stucco-painted white, the curtains brown, the bedding burgundy, the carpet dry-feeling on the backs of her arms and neck. The kind of carpet that’s just for show: easy-clean, sanitized to prickling.

He was missing an enzyme, she said, and swooshed her arms and legs together and apart, together and apart. Making a carpet angel.

What’s that? Aubrey said, dropping to the floor with a bottle in one hand. He had a couple of cheap glasses from the bathroom, plastic-wrapped against dirt, and he tried to get his thumbs inside the plastic to break it off.

Pretty strong wrap. The wrangling just cracked the cups and Aubrey smiling like Fuck you motherfucker.

This was Anna’s first layover since the funeral.

They could have watched the Sault Aurora but instead they got drunk. They drank cheap beers and ate chicken and baked potatoes without sour cream but with salt and so much pepper the skins crackled in their teeth. In the Husky restaurant, ten minutes down the road from the hotel. After dinner

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