The Ice Age (6 page)

We've stayed out of each other's hair for a few days. I was working anyway. Neil stopped by work a couple of times. We kept moving our make-out spots. I guess that made us feel like we were exercising at least some caution. On the second night he had me tinglier than I'd ever been before. And then he just unzipped my pants, pushed my undies to one side and stuck it in. I'd noticed him doing a lot of fumbling around down there; I didn't actually register that he had his dick out, ready to launch an attack. It fucking hurt, and it was all I could do to keep from screaming. I thought it might get easier with time (I'd heard that), so I gritted it out. But waiting for it to hurt less was making me tenser.

Finally I let out an involuntary whimper, about the same time as he put it back in his pants and said, ‘Aw, forget it.' Looked to me like he was already leaving, but he made a proper dash for it when we heard Dale coming in.

I made it to the counter in a flash, and stood face to face with Dale as the sound of the back exit slamming echoed through the store. I must have looked like hell. I had stuff running down the inside of my legs. This was just not a good time to have anyone staring at you.

He said, ‘You're under probation.'

I went home and took a long bath. Stephanie and I got takeaway Chinese food. I stayed up watching an old black and white vampire movie, which eventually got too boring even for a vampire freak like me.

The next morning I walked into the kitchen and said, ‘Steph, I wasn't gonna make a big fuss, but it's my birthday.'

I wasn't going to tell her, I didn't feel like drawing all that attention. But then I thought, ‘Why am I being such a loser?'

Stephanie got worked up fast. ‘What? Why didn't you tell me? I haven't—we could've—'

Ah, birthdays. Now I kind of did feel like doing something. Steph practically exploded, ‘You're eighteen!'

We sat down with a pot of coffee and some blueberry muffins I'd brought home from work a couple of nights before. She stuck a candle in mine. Now anyone can see Stephanie and I don't have much in common, what with her being flaky and arty, and me more…realistic. But I like her kooky gestures.

She said, ‘We'll do something later, OK?'

She has a new job teaching art to deaf people, or something like that. She's been at it a couple weeks now, a few days per week.

I said, ‘Yeah, cool.'

She told me to think of something I felt like doing.

I was still feeling pretty low key. I spent the morning doing not much, mostly on the couch. I don't know too many people in Steph's town. Truth be told, I don't feel like I live here at all. Naturally I feel like I belong back on the road with Gunther, back on track. After lunch I wandered down to the convenience store. Thought I might smooth things over with Dale, and look up Neil's number while I was there.

Dale looked pleasantly surprised to see me, and even more pleasantly surprised when I told him it was my birthday. I shuffled around and bought a few things. Then I asked if I could use the ‘employee washroom'. He said yeah, of course.

Dale keeps a notebook out back there on the shelf, sort of an employee Rolodex. I stood in the storeroom and rifled through this. Man, he has poor handwriting. He hadn't gotten rid of Neil yet. He'd left his page intact with name, phone number, and allocated shifts. But he had scratched the word ‘prick' across it, in his sprawling retarded script.

When I got home I dialed Neil. I thought it might be nice to get at least a couple of people together, to make an occasion of it, as me and Stephanie decided we would. I thought he might like to be included, now that we'd taken our relationship to the next level.

A husky voiced man answered, I assumed to be his dad. He bellowed through the house for Neil, who eventually answered.

‘Yeah?'

I said, ‘Hey.'

And he said, ‘Hey…Who is this?'

When he heard it was me he said, ‘Oh, hey' again.

‘It's my birthday,' I blurted.

He said, ‘Oh, well, happy—Have a good one.'

‘Thanks, if you want to come over me and Stephanie are—'

He cut me off. ‘No thanks.'

I said, ‘Uh, OK.' And then, ‘Why not?'

He started rambling a bit here. He said a few things, and then, ‘Look just forget it, all right? Just…'

I asked him what I was supposed to be forgetting.

‘You're not my
girlfriend
, all right,' he spat. ‘Just leave me alone.'

This surprised me, and I was still thinking of something to say to make us behave a little nicer to each other when he hung up.

I went up to my room, lay down on my bed, and thought a while. It's always sad when people are jerks to you. But mostly I was sad that I hadn't located Baby Gunther after all. I had to go back to Plan A. I needed to find Gunther, or find a way to make him come back for me. I'd tried Vampire Prodigy Telepathy Mind Control. He didn't seem to get those messages.

I fantasized about being in some horrific accident, which would compel him to come back and sit by my hospital bed, filled with remorse. Maybe he would stroke my hand. Goodness knows he would fix those eyes on me.

Stephanie came home in kind of a state. I hoped it was just birthday excitement, but it was tinged with something else, a touch of the old raw Stephanie. And she had a bottle of Jim Beam in a brown paper bag.

She said, ‘You know what?'

‘What?'

‘Gunther used to smoke with you, didn't he?'

‘Yep.'

‘And you handled yourself OK, didn't you?'

I said, ‘Yep. Calmed me right down.'

‘Well, I think we should have a drink. It's my house and I make the rules…Eighteen. God I was
shitfaced
when I turned eighteen! What do ya say to
a birthday toast?'

I said, ‘Sure.'

We went into the kitchen and sorted ourselves out with ice and Diet Coke. Then we sat back down on the lounge, with ample supplies of cola and bourbon within easy reach on the coffee table.

Steph raised her glass so high her arm was straight above her head. ‘To birthdays,' she said. Then she added, ‘To your birthday,' and patted me on the knee.

‘Thanks,' I said, and clinked her glass way up there.

We had a few under our belts, and Steph was talking about stuff I had to do. Rites-of-passage sort of stuff. She'd been on the subject for a while, and I'd been pretty tight-lipped. But the drunker I got, the harder it was to withhold information; it became a crushing burden. The next time Steph came around to the subject of virginity I said, ‘Steph, it's already happened.'

She said, ‘What?'

I went, ‘Yeah, the other night.' And added perkily, ‘Someone just up and stuck it in.'

Steph yelled, ‘I didn't even know you had a boyfriend!'

I said, ‘Turns out I don't.'

We talked a little while about Neil, and I explained his similarities to Gunther.

She said, ‘But those are only skin deep.'

‘But he reminds me of him a lot.'

‘Yes, but only physically. Gunther would have never treated you, I mean anyone, that way.'

‘Not even in his hedonistic days?'

She paused and then smirked. ‘No, not even when he was a bit more…freewheeling. Hon, he was still Gunther. He was still a good person.'

We paused and considered this for a moment.

Then I said, ‘Jimmy.'

‘What?'

‘You know Jimmy.'

Steph said, ‘Yeah, what about him?'

I said, ‘I hate that dick.'

She looked pleased and amused.

Then I added, ‘He's a dick,' just in case the point needed more emphasis.

The doorbell rang and Steph yelled, ‘It's open!' And then jolted to attention and started hastily tidying our little table. By then we were both quite smashed, and it basically just involved herding the various pieces of incriminating evidence into a tighter, more symmetrical arrangement in the middle of the table. It reminded me of all the piles she had scattered around the house when we first got there.

A bunch of frumpy looking women marched into the room, all wearing prissy dresses, all looking completely appalled. It looked like someone had cloned a mother-in-law in various stages of development. The old ugly one front and center snorted, ‘Well, Stephanie! I just don't—what on earth do you call this?'

The younger one with red curly hair said, slightly more bashfully, ‘We thought it might be nice to drop in on you.'

‘Well, you could have called first.' Steph seemed kind of mad.

The old battleaxe was definitely mad. ‘I
did
call first.'

Steph withered a bit. ‘Oh, God, I totally forgot.'
And then, ‘Was that…when was that?'

I scooched closer to Stephanie on the couch, to make more room in case they wanted to sit down. That just made matters worse. Now I think they thought we were lesbians, because the old bitch took in the scene afresh and gasped, ‘Oh,
Stephanie
.'

I stayed put. Hell, I didn't care if they thought we were having some girl-on-girl action. I've never seen anything wrong in that. A lot of girls are damn pretty, I can see that. And apart from Gunther, a lot easier to talk to than boys. Not that I'm experienced or anything, I just don't have a problem with it. I don't have a problem with lots of things.

Gunther and I were on the subject once, and he called me ‘delightfully broad-minded', which he said is a great asset to me, as long as I keep my feet on the ground, or at least one foot on the ground. He gave me a happy iceberg-eyed shimmer. I said what about all those crazy times of his, and he said he was grounded. That riled me up. I'm grounded. I may muse about him being a vampire half the time, but how is he to know that? Unless he can read minds…

Back in the living room I was asked how old I was, and replied, ‘Twenty-three.'

Then the rough formation of disgusted women turned on their heels and left. Steph looked flat. Really flat.

She said, ‘My late husband's sister.' Then added, her voice breaking, ‘And some ladies from
church
.'

I said, ‘I didn't know you go to church.'

She said, ‘I don't. I didn't!'

‘Oh, Stephanie,' I just wanted to get our party going again. ‘You're entitled to live it up a little.'

She put her head in her hands and burst out sobbing. I gave her some weak pats on the shoulder. Then I got up and started to clear up, and realized I was too drunk. We both fell asleep there on the couch.

I woke up early, feeling like my head was a balloon about to pop. I'd thrown up on myself a little. Steph was still out cold. I got up and took a shower.

When I got back to the living room, with my wet hair and my clean clothes, feeling slightly less like shit, Steph was still there. She was just beginning to unfold herself from her curled-up position into a more vertical one. She moved a few bottles and things around on the coffee table, then she looked up at me and said, ‘Hair of the dog?'

I said, ‘Um…OK.'

I had been expecting her to swing back into Good Stephanie housewife mode. I thought having those angry broads crashing in on her might have given her a shock. Enough of one to send her back into the safe haven of decent living.

I think she was still drunk. We sat on the front porch with a couple of glasses and polished off the rest of the bourbon, which was mostly just backwash. Stephanie had started swigging from the bottle toward the end of the night.

Doing that, sitting there, was a good vantage point to survey all that suburban crispness. There was something satisfying about it. Everything else around us was afraid to stir. And when it did stir, it just let out a predictable little peep. A garage door opening and closing, a bird chirping. I felt like a couple of hillbillies. She was sitting in a rocking chair. At the same time, feeling like a blight on a landscape like that made me feel urbane and pretty cool.

We sat out there for a while, quietly and meaningfully sipping, although every swallow of lukewarm Jim Beam made my throat burn. It wasn't going down too easy, and I was strongly considering abandoning the attempt. But I have a bit of the old Gunther Shared Ritual in me, I think.

Then old Jimmy came crashing into his yard, thunderously revving his pick-up, bucking-bronco style, before skidding it to a dead stop directly in front of us. Stephanie, to complete the demure suburban cliché, lived in a cul de sac. We were right at the end, so her yard curved toward his. And naturally Jimmy drove a shiny black pick-up truck. What the hell else would he drive? Of course he parked it out on the front lawn. He shot us a filthy sideways glance and headed inside, screen door slamming behind him.

Stephanie cleaned herself up and went to work. I went to work. It seemed things were back to normal.

She was sitting on the couch watching TV, eating rice crackers, when I got home. She said she'd been out on a date. She met this guy at work, Phillip. He sounded nicer than Jimmy. Or at least I thought he should be, since she met him at a nice person's job, doing nice person things. Helping the underprivileged to enjoy themselves more, and suchlike.

I went to my room and thought about Gunther some more. I was certain he could feel our connection; how the distance between our minds formed a straight, unbreakable line between us. I knew he could feel me there, wherever he was, thinking about him. I couldn't entertain the thought that he didn't feel me, couldn't feel me; wasn't thinking of me at all. That was too terrifying. Did I mention he left me the typewriter? And a stack of grade-A recycled typing paper.

The next day I left for work early, and wandered around town. I passed a boy sitting in a doorway who gave me little puppy dog eyes. He was cute, and I knew he was giving me the green light. He was looking at me like I could help him fix a problem. Looked like he needed saving, or at least some friendly company. But I didn't even break stride.