Trader by Charles de Lint

Author:Charles de Lint [De Lint, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780613071277
Google: FlQ9Julvq_cC
Amazon: 0765302969
Barnesnoble: 0765302969
Goodreads: 186419
Publisher: Tor
Published: 1997-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

19 TANYA

Jilly was so easy to talk to that Tanya found herself telling her everything, from how she was feeling about Johnny and the stupid argument she’d had with Zeffy to the growing dissatisfaction she had for how her own life was going. They sat at a window table in The Black Bean Dream on Lee Street, nursing café lattes and sharing one of the café’s famous huge chocolate-chip cookies, while it all spilled out. She was sure that she sounded like the most hopeless, whining loser anybody’d ever heard, but once started, she couldn’t seem to stop, and Jilly gave no indication that she thought the same.

“So you don’t agree with Zeffy, then?” Jilly asked when Tanya circled back to start in again on Zeffy’s visit to Max Trader.

“What, about this guitar guy? I’ve no idea. I’ve never met him and I don’t know a thing about him except for what Zeffy’s told me. I just know there’s something seriously wrong with Johnny.”

“And you’re mad at Zeffy because she won’t take you seriously?”

“I suppose. That, and for not telling me how she’s been feeling about Johnny herself.”

“This is going to sound like I’m taking Zeffy’s side,” Jilly said, “but she hadn’t seen you all day. Telling you when she did was the first opportunity she had.”

“I know. But it’s like, when I was with him it was always, what’re you doing with that loser?, but now she’s interested in him and everything’s different. I’ve got bad judgment, but she’s been tricked.”

“Do you still care about him?”

Tanya shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know. Not like before.” She sighed. “How do you do it, Jilly?”

“Do what?”

“Live by yourself. Go through life without a regular boyfriend.”

Jilly gave her a rueful smile. “It’s not exactly out of choice. I’m just not really good with relationships. I get along really well with people, but whenever I’m with a guy and things become intimate, he either turns out to be married, or a jerk, or I get all screwed up and closed up inside and tend to blow it.”

“Really? You?”

“Really, me. Now you know my secret side. I’m actually Jilly, the Amazing Messed-Up Lady.”

“But how do you stand being alone?”

“Well, I’ve got my friends...”

“You know what I mean.”

Jilly nodded. She broke the last piece of the cookie in two and dipped the half she took in her coffee.

“It’s so unfair, when you think about it,” she said around a mouthful of cookie. “I mean, the warped way society looks at us. Single guys are called bachelors and there’s this whole mystique about them—you know, the older they get, the better they get and all that crap. We, on the other hand, get called spinsters or old maids and if we’re not married off, or at least a part of a couple before we’re thirty, it’s like we’re losers or something. We have no meaning, we’re defined only by the guy we’re with. Or not with.”

“But I like being with a guy,” Tanya said. “I like being in love.

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