Also By Georgia Toews

Hey, Good Luck Out There

Copyright © 2025 Georgia Toews

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law. Please note that no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.

Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Nobody asked for this: a novel / Georgia Toews.

Names: Toews, Georgia, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20240381335 | Canadiana (ebook) 20240394798 | ISBN 9780385700078 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385700085 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.

Classification: LCC PS8639.O386 N63 2025 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover art: Ginna Nebrig

Cover design: Emma Dolan

The authorized representative in the EU for product safety and compliance is Penguin Random House Ireland, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin D02 YH68, Ireland. https://eu-contact.penguin.ie

Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited,

320 Front Street West, Suite 1400,

Toronto, Ontario, M5V 3B6, Canada

www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

a_prh_7.1a_150715782_c0_r0

For Mark,

thanks for laughing at all my jokes,

and FVS

“Coping takes a fuck-ton more effort and energy
than thriving ever will.”

—Hannah Gadsby, Ten Steps to Nanette

CHAPTER 1

“You didn’t get me a coffee?” Haley asked me. She was coming out of the washroom while I was still taking off my jacket and boots, and now she stood there wrapped in her towel, squinting at my lone coffee on the kitchen counter. I thought I was being polite. Instead of forcing her out of the shower prematurely, I had run to Jimmy’s Coffee across the street and shit in their bathroom.

“The coffee was only to keep up appearances and to justify the use of their bathroom.”

“I know but it’s two dollars; you could’ve got two and we both would’ve had coffee.”

“Okay, but there’s coffee here.”

“But now it’s stupid to make a whole pot for one person!” She was genuinely upset; this was a real moment of suffering for her. All I could do was throw my hands up in the air and continue to stuff the arm of my coat with my hat and mitts.

“It would just be nice to have nice things done for me!”

She was almost yelling and beginning to tear up. Somehow I was the villain in this story when all I was trying to do was take a shit and not bother anyone.

“Okay, you want to split this?” I asked her.

“No, you have cream!”

“Then just make coffee! I will drink more from the pot!”

She held up a hand, the one that wasn’t clutching one of the towels that she stole from a gas station when we were seventeen. It had a mouse surfing on it for reasons I’ve never understood. We’d been on our way to a friend’s pool party and had forgotten to bring towels, so she tucked them under her baby-doll tank top while I paid for gas and our Slurpees. I remember her saying we were even, which to her meant she didn’t have to pay me back for her share of the gas or for her Slurpee because she got us these towels. She liked stealing things, especially gifts for other people, as if the element of personal risk gave the gift more value.

She clung to her stolen towel and continued to hold up her free hand towards me as she walked down the short hallway to her room, muttering under her breath that she wasn’t going to make me coffee.

I had ruined whatever good mood she was in. I would’ve gotten her a coffee except I had no idea how long she would be. It would’ve been frustrating getting her a small black coffee knowing it was getting cold as she exfoliated and shaved etc. Then she would’ve felt bad if her coffee went cold, which also would’ve ruined her good mood…probably. I’d become very good at justifying my rationale when I was made to feel guilty. It was a good survival technique since I always seemed to feel guilty about something.

The conversation felt unresolved, so I didn’t go to my room. Instead, I sat on the couch drinking my selfish coffee and picking at the dry bits of skin on my palms, waiting for Haley to come out of her room. I tore my hands a lot at my crossfit gym because I didn’t know when to let go of the barbell. The trainers said not to “death grip” the bar, but I always did. So the blisters that formed tore open and bled but eventually dried to hardened bits of skin that I really enjoyed picking at.

While I picked, Haley came out of her room and went to the kitchen to make coffee. I watched her reflection on the TV screen. She was leaning on the counter and staring at the toaster while her half pot of coffee was brewing. I couldn’t help but think she’d only made half a pot so I couldn’t have any extra coffee on top of my Jimmy’s, which defeated her entire argument that a whole pot was too much because she always had the option to make less, but I didn’t want to point this out because I needed her to be nice to me today. I was stressed out about my set at Comedy Bar that evening. I knew she wouldn’t come to the show because she never came to my shows. I got mad once or twice when she first moved in and said she would come and see me all the time, but never came. Now I was grateful for the separation, church and state. I could lie if I needed to, for my ego, tell her I did well when really I bombed. I didn’t need her to think I was funny, but I liked to remind her that other people did. I didn’t go to her birthday dinner last year because of a show but it was a big one (the show), and she’d have birthdays every year. Plus, she had her party on a Thursday, which was the day of her actual birthday, but it would’ve been easier for everyone if she had had it on the Friday or Saturday—then she wouldn’t have been so upset that most people left after dinner instead of going out dancing.

I knew I should complain less because truly that was all I did onstage, so why not just keep it there and spend the rest of my life at peace and unbothered and meditate if something was really getting to me? I got a free consultation with an online therapist who told me I should meditate to deal with all my stresses. I told this ChatGPT therapist (maybe it was a real person, I can’t be sure) that my stresses included lingering sadness about my dead mom and my fear of wasting my life being a modern-day clown and also my worry that I was an undiagnosed sociopath because Haley so often told me I had sociopathic tendencies (in a lighthearted way, but I was starting to believe her). Meditation—that was the computer therapist’s suggestion, so I figured therapy wasn’t for me.

Somewhere along the way it must have been funny, my cynicism, and now it probably wasn’t. Now it was probably the worst thing about me, except that I’d built a bit of a career off of it. I would have liked to think I was redeemable. I mean I wasn’t that bad, for a sociopath. I had asked Haley a while ago if I was mean, and she’d said, “No, just a robot,” which I countered with the fact that robots weren’t generally as sarcastic as I was, and then she changed her mind and said, “Right, okay, you’re mean.” Then she’d winked and said, “You’re always serving cunt,” which I think was a compliment—to be a mean cunt rather than a dull-witted robot. Though if we all lived with robots, I would bet human beings would be nicer to each other, except for the people who got weirdly attached to robots. I knew there were a bunch of real sick fucks just dying to fuck C-3PO.

Her coffee finished brewing just as she finished putting together her peanut butter and banana toast. She came and sat beside me on the couch, making a show of putting her breakfast on the coffee table in front of me like it was a real high-class meal.

I tried to apologize with words that didn’t include “sorry.”

“You don’t think about food when you have to shit,” I started, “but if I do, next time I’ll get us those breakfast sandwiches.”

“Wallace has better sandwiches,” she told me.

“Yeah, but I would’ve never made it in time.”

I felt like we could either argue or move on, and it would very much be dependent on whatever I said next. I didn’t move for a good two minutes, listening to her eat her breakfast.

“What would your death song be?” I asked her, not making eye contact.

“What do you mean?”

“Or…what would you like your death song to be? Like Paul Walker got that Charlie Puth song, Biggie got Diddy, Diana got Elton.”

“Say more,” she said between bites.

“What?”

“What are more death songs?”

“Avicii’s ‘Heaven’? Or ‘SOS’? Too soon?” I saw her crack a smile. She didn’t generally like my dark humour as much as my…I dunno, gossipy humour. But a terrible suicide joke about the young Swedish DJ got her.

“That one was actually sad.”

We both nodded, more for show that we weren’t terrible people. It was good to keep up appearances even in the privacy of your own home.

“I feel like more people who died should’ve got songs.” She furrowed her eyebrows. These days she looked much older than twenty-three. Her antidepressants had dried out her skin, causing her once-angular face to bloat, and the extra flesh spilled over her jawline and pointed chin, creating a skin scarf that she’d pull at in tears wondering if it was worth being less suicidal but, in her words, “hideous.” She wasn’t hideous; she wasn’t traditionally beautiful either, but there was a severity about her face that to me screamed, “So cool!” Especially when we first met at fourteen. She was lighting matches in the bathroom at school, not to smoke, but to melt down her Wet n Wild kohl eyeliner pencil, telling me burning it made it last longer before drawing thick rings around her eyes. I thought she was this Vivienne Westwood punk teen when really she was just self-conscious about her large nose and thought overlining her eyes would help draw attention away from it. She already had breasts and her body was still small and soft in that teenage way that balanced out the tiny lumps on her hips and the teeniest cushion on her belly. She was objectively more feminine than I was and her self-confidence was always so alarming. I was always wide, blocky, even when I lost weight while my mom was dying. I was three inches taller than her, and clothes hung off my broad shoulders like someone had tried to put a sweater on a window frame. I always took up more space. So I was so grateful to her for being my friend, as if she chose me and curated my high school experience all based on a charitable whim beginning in that bathroom. After my parents divorced, my mom and I moved to a new area in Oakville, so I didn’t know anyone at that high school. She brought me into her existing friend group, and together we all tried to mirror the fashion and dialects of the teens we watched on Laguna Beach reruns on MTV and navigate our formative years.

“I’m sure that Glee girl wrote a song about that Glee boy who OD’d.”

“She did.” She relaxed her face, focusing on her homemade coffee.

“That’s the worst kinda death song, I think. A musical number. It’s like an SNL skit. Like can you imagine all the Glee kids mashing up Sarah McLachlan’s ‘I Will Remember You’ and, like, Macklemore? On Fox?”

“He really died.” She eyed my Jimmy’s takeout cup after taking her first sip of coffee.

“Macklemore? No, he’s alive.”

“No, the Glee boy. Whatever his name was,” she said. “I forgot Macklemore was like a junkie. He’s still just like, ugh.”

“I know he’s ugh. That’s why you have to be so careful about your death song; otherwise you get Macklemored. This isn’t a bit, by the way.”

I always had to clarify that I wasn’t trying out a joke on her that I was thinking of delivering onstage. She was constantly accusing me of slipping in bits to see her reaction, as if her validation was the deciding factor of what would make it into a set. It had become second nature to me to end a lot of sentences with “not a bit.” “Not a bit” became its own bit in our apartment.

“No, I feel like you already know yours,” she said.

“My own death song? Not really. But it would be a banger for sure, though.” Now I was wondering if this could be a bit.

“A banger?”

“Heck, yeah. Rihanna and, like, Yellow Claw.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I feel like it would encompass me. Like we’re all vibing, dancing at the club stoked on life, but then there’s like that…just that little stone in your gut like, ‘Aw…right, she dead’ ” I said the last two words—“she dead”—with a southern twang, like a rancher observing the passing of an old workhorse.

She smiled. I’d finally managed to bring us back to a good place.

“Hell of a banger but she gone,” she said, mimicking the twang before finishing her toast.

“It’s a good time but always with a touch of sad.”

“That is so you,” Haley said. I watched her unglue her molars. Her mouth was full of peanut butter and banana.

“Thank you, love that self-awareness for me.”

“I’d want Elton. Oooh no, Frank Ocean,” she said after finally swallowing the gelatinous mixture.

“Shit, that’s good. All the tears.”

“Yes and very me. Like sexy sad. You’re like ironically sad. I want Lana Del Rey vibes. A sexy sad-girl song.”

“Well, all death songs that are happy automatically become ironic, right? Like if they played ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ at my funeral cause I loved that song it would be ironic cause it’s not sad but now everyone’s like, ‘Right, we’re at a funeral though.’ ”

“And it’s ironic cause you have no ass,” she said.

“Right. I kinda do though.”

“Mm, I just don’t want irony. Sexy sad.”

Haley shifted on the couch. She was wearing short shorts that were tucked deeply into her crotch and under the fold of her stomach, and her left breast was burgeoning on an escape from a worn tank top she’d bought at American Apparel before all the pervy stuff about the owner came to light. She had peanut butter in the corner of her lips and was picking at the skin around her fingernails. I remembered when we applied for part-time jobs at American Apparel when it opened up in our small city. We never got hired because we were two ordinary un-sexy teens, her with an overbite and me with my tiny teeth, and they only hired bored waifish hipsters with chest tattoos and septum piercings. We lied to everyone in our high school and told them that we got hired but the manager sucked so we quit. We kept that silly lie for each other and had sleepovers where we would wiggle into tube dresses and mock the hypersexual models on the billboards as if we weren’t jealous. For a while we even stopped shopping there when we were out with friends because it would “be so awkward if the manager saw us.” I tried to bring it up last year, reminding Haley what dorks we were in high school. She claimed that she was offered the job; she just didn’t take it because I never got an interview.

Now I was watching her drag her finger across her plate, dredging up the last smears of peanut butter to be sucked up by her mouth, already open in anticipation. I didn’t say another word. I wanted us to leave on a good note because it always made it easier to focus when we weren’t mad at each other. At least I thought so. I never asked her what she thought, worried that she wouldn’t feel the same, that she wouldn’t even notice a difference most days.

CHAPTER 2

I rarely drove in the city. Sometimes I’d drive to a show in the east end, but there was nothing worse than inevitably becoming the designated driver for a bunch of drunk comics. Being a drunk comic was one thing, but being forced to reckon with how obnoxious we all became by the end of the night (so much more obnoxious than onstage if one can believe that) was not something I generally enjoyed subjecting myself to. Besides, if I could walk somewhere in less than an hour, then to me it was a walkable distance. I wasn’t snobby about public transit—I took it when necessary—but I mostly operated in a world of evening shows or (hopefully) afternoon auditions somewhere within walking distance in the city. I always made sure to have time to walk everywhere, and thanks to climate change it wasn’t as icy as it used to be in mid-February. But I liked walking in the cold. Not to say I’d miss it once I left. I didn’t think I’d suddenly be more successful in LA, but I did have this feeling that I’d feel at ease in the sun and away from everything grey. Winter was much too grey in Toronto, and I felt like it had a subconscious effect on the audience, that they had to work harder to laugh, if they could even find the momentum to come out on a cold and dreary night. My own naive American dream. I didn’t like to think about it too much in case I jinxed my green card application, though my lawyer said it was likely a sure thing.

So I let myself dream a little while I took the same route I always took to Comedy Bar. Up Shaw all the way to Bloor. I’d learned from the true crime shows everyone my age was watching that taking the same route was a good way to get killed, but getting lost seemed like a waste of time. At this point I also felt I was much more likely to waste my own time than to get myself killed so I took my chances. While making my way up Shaw Street, I often saw the same people. There was a young man, blond with a small face tattoo, who always had a suitcase with him so I assumed he was coming from a shelter that kicked him out in the morning. We made eye contact a lot. One day, as I was running through a set in my head, I found myself accidentally smiling at him and now I think that’s upped our relationship to a nod. One time I found myself fantasizing that he might actually be suitable to date, but when I told Haley, she said I shouldn’t be so desperate. The thing is it was hard to date, because you should never date comedians, and yeah, I was one but I didn’t want to date another one. I had already dated (slept with a few times) a guy I met on a bus because I thought it would make for a cute story of how we met, but he turned out to be a serious alcoholic whose mother added me to Instagram so I could tag her in a homemade winemaking class I had taken. I brought over a bottle to their place once and she loved it. Now he and I no longer talked but she continued to like my posts and responded mostly with fire emojis. I knew I should try online dating, but part of me thought it made me cool to abscond from it all.

When I reached Bloor Street, I saw Jackie Halton just half a block ahead of me. She seemed to be at every audition I was at these days, and that made us quite competitive. She was small, cute most people would say, and had a great smile. She always looked like she was on the verge of it, smiling, except when she saw me at auditions. Then she didn’t do her usual warm natural smile but the obligatory raise of pursed lips and, like the young tattooed homeless boy, the nod. We always said “good luck” and “good set,” depending on when and where we ran into each other, but I wouldn’t hustle to catch up to her to chat beforehand. Neither of us had booked our last audition, which was for a money-loaning company where basically all we had to do was grimace like we were broke (that was the actual direction), and once we got our high-interest loan we were to breathe a sigh of relief and march confidently off-screen ready to make more shitty financial decisions.

That was almost the apex of success for a Canadian comedian, I thought—a commercial. That or a recurring role on a CBC sitcom. But that was the top. I signed on to a talent agency when my dad’s TV producer girlfriend turned TV producer fiancée hooked me up with a featured extra role when I was eighteen; after that I got small parts doing shitty Hallmark movies, but last year I didn’t book anything and started getting upset. But then I realized that getting upset over losing out on a supportive role in a Hallmark movie, where the biggest celebrity was the Property Brothers’ unfamous non-property-owning brother, would be pathetic. That was when I started the whole green card process. A few comedians I knew had done it already, and two of them were actually doing well down south. One kept posting about opening for Ali Wong, and the other showed up as a scumbag in some CBS cop show.

I hoped Jackie would go on before me. We were the only two women in the lineup so they’d spread us out to the beginning and end, and it always looked better to go closer to the end. When I started going to shows, before I was doing stand-up myself, I noticed there was this subconscious feeling that each comic must be better than the last. It wasn’t always the case, every now and then someone surprised you, but generally the lineups were stacked to build up to the best comic. Even on shows like tonight’s without a headliner, where every comic did a five-to-seven-minute set, whoever went last would feel like they were the funniest one. This wasn’t a written rule, so you couldn’t get mad at the host or whoever’d booked the show for how they’d organized it. You could only ask to go early if you were running to another mic afterwards or to close it out if you were coming from one. But it was always a nice surprise when you found yourself closer to the end, a wordless “atta boy” from your peers.

I watched Jackie hop down the stairs to Comedy Bar, and quickly checked my phone before I followed and inevitably lost service in Toronto’s little comedy dungeon.

The first thing I heard upon entering the venue was: “Virgil!”

Reed always called me Virgil and I always thought I’d sound like a bitch if I made a big deal about a stupid nickname, so I rolled my eyes when I heard him but he didn’t seem to care.

“Are you on tonight?” I asked him.

He was shorter than me by about four inches and he always made a big show of it, focusing on how tall I was versus the fact that he wasn’t clocking in at his preferred height. Lately that was a big part of his set—his height. He had a good-looking face. Great jawline, hair always cut nicely, and Hollywood cheekbones. But his head was really big; he was like a bobblehead. I don’t say that to insult the guy; he said it himself. He had a whole Boss Baby bit at some point. He couldn’t fully enjoy his facial attractiveness because he was obsessed with his height and his whole set was either that or riffing on weird facts. I felt like his way of joke-writing was flipping open The Guinness Book of World Records and pumping his fist every time he found a “winner.” He was kinda funny—he committed, I gave him that—but it seemed like he’d much rather be an actor because secretly he knew he wasn’t very funny but you had to start somewhere.

“Ah, I gotta talk to Matt to see if he can give me a quick five,” he said. “I have this one bit I’m trying to work out.”

“Oh right, are you showcasing?”

“Yeah, on the Thursday late show. I’ve got a solid fifteen, but if I can slide in another two or three minutes juuuust in case.”

“Can’t hurt.” I was looking past him at the bar. Generally that was where Matt hung out waiting for the comics. Matt was the keeper of our meagre take from the door and one free drink ticket. Jackie was pouring herself a water from one of the cloudy plastic pitchers set out on the bar by Natalie, the bartender. But other than Jackie and Natalie and a few early attendees sitting on the small couches in the lounge to the right of the bar, no one was there. Eventually, hopefully, some audience members would pull back the thick black curtain that served as the small auditorium “door” across from the bar and go in to take a seat in front of the stage, and we would perform like the good jesters we were.

“V!? You’re on this show?”

I looked up and saw Nia coming through the curtains and stomping over to me in three-inch heels, her curly brown hair thrown over one side of her head. Nia was probably my best comedian friend and my best friend aside from Haley. Maybe she was even my best friend more than Haley, except we had no history, Nia and I. We’d met just two years before and had only got close in the past year. But when we got drunk after a show (which was quite often), we did have a habit of dramatically professing our undying love to each other.

“Hiiiiiii!!!” I squealed as she jumped on me, wrapping her legs around my torso. I gently held her, bobbing her up and down as if she were a small child and not a noticeably long-limbed, full-grown woman.

“God, you’re strong. Just always hold me like this,” she ordered until she finally released her legs, realizing Reed was standing next to me.

“Hey Reed,” Nia said.

He kinda smiled and nodded.

“You’re being fucking weird cause we made out yesterday,” she told him.

“You guys made out?” I asked. Reed went bright red and Nia smiled.

“Yeah, we did, didn’t I text you? He loved it.” Nia was the perfect person to do stand-up because she didn’t ever feel embarrassed. She was a loud half-Italian half-Russian copywriter who seemed to be completely comfortable with her massive presence and husky voice. She had probably demanded that Reed make out with her for a laugh. It was actually weird that someone so self-assured did stand-up comedy. She was fucking hilarious.

“Why are you here?” I asked, changing the subject to save Reed any more embarrassment. He seemed to have lost the ability to speak.

“I’m not, I’m leaving. I thought I lost my fuckin’…whatever, like scarf thing. It’s a circle, it’s warm, it’s passé, whatever. But if you see it, grab it for me. Anyways I’m off to the east end, Addy asked me to fill in for whatever his name is, George? Some new kid bailed on her show. I was flattered but now I see you’re doing this show, which means you weren’t available so she asks me. Are you gonna come by after this? Come by, just for a drink.”

“It’s so cold, but maybe.” I was lying to her. I loved Nia but I wouldn’t get on transit for forty minutes to go have a beer at another dive bar when I could have one here for free and go home to bed.

“Don’t fucking lie to me. Come. Reed, you’re not invited, no weirdos, I’m kidding, but V you should come. Reed…I’ll see you around, kid.”

She hugged me again and punched Reed in the shoulder then took off as chaotically as she entered. Reed was still bright red and smiling at me. It felt like he was waiting for me to tell him it was okay to breathe again.

“Is he here? Matt?” I asked him.

“No, he messaged me he’s running late and that he wants to look at the lineup.”

“Hm…So you and Nia?”

He shook his head while he checked his phone. If he’d been a bit quicker on his feet, he would have made up some excuse to walk away but we both stayed planted, forcing each other to continue the conversation.

“Are you doing any shows for Yuk’s?” he asked me after a long pause.

“I had Vaughan last week and I’ll be in Vancouver beginning of March—”

“They’re flying you to Vancouver?”

“Definitely not. No, I’m there for a wedding—”

“Why?” Now that he had recovered from Nia, Reed couldn’t stop interrupting me. I always forgot how much he did that.

“They just don’t, or like if you book a whole west coast tour they’ll cover some gas,” I said. “I don’t know, I’m just already there.”

“Who’s getting married?” he asked, as if it were just as vital information as Yuk’s stingy travel budget.

“My dad and his fiancée.”

“Oooh, bet there’s some funny there. You jealous?” Reed really was a little creep.

“The fuck?”

“You know…daddy’s girl.”

I sighed with enough disgust that he knew to stop speaking, but neither one of us moved. I noticed he never really stopped smiling.

Finally, he said, “I saw you got Winnipeg in May. They flying you out?” He was talking about the Winnipeg Comedy Festival, which was becoming a bit of a notch on the proverbial comedy bedpost.

“Yup, just the one night.”

“Yeah, I submitted for that…”

“Well, probably next year,” I told him. Where the fuck was Matt?

Reed nodded then looked down at his notes. I could see that he’d written Boy with two tongues, cunnilingus?

“Oh shit, there’s our boy—” Reed turned away from me when he saw Matt.

Before I could approach him, Reed was off to bend his ear about squeezing in a five-minute set. I could see Matt trying to be kind. Matt was one of the nicest comedians but not a pushover. I doubted Reed would get any time, but Matt would be nice about it. He was a bit of a golden child, Matt, funny and generally easy to get along with, just a very neutral character. He booked a lot of shows because he looked like nothing. He was tall and slim with thick hair and a dopey grin. He seemed like the funny friend in high school you considered the “comedian” of the group but never thought he’d actually make a go of it. Wasn’t clean, wasn’t blue. Just charming enough to get a laugh when he needed to. I thought he should leave Canada. He’d been on MuchMusic enough times, did a weird set on etalk when they were trying to be like a late show, and had done two CBC specials. There was nothing left for him to do other than book Comedy Bar twice a month for a pro show and continue to audition for the role of leading man’s best friend. It would make me feel better if he did something, anything offensive. Make one joke that crossed some arbitrary line to prove he had the same fucked-up intrusive thoughts as the rest of us, that he was also human.

I got tired of waiting in the lounge so I went to the green room, which always smelled stale, a bit like a locker room. Marty was already there. The mirrored vanities reflected his bald head across the room. At the end of the room by the stage door there was a closet full of old costumes belonging to a disbanded sketch troupe. Now the only time they were used was when the odd young comic would rummage around and put on a silly hat or some shit.

I hadn’t taken a seat before Reed sauntered in.

“You get time?” I asked.

“Yeah, yeah, three-to-five.”

“Three-to-five or three?”

He waved me off to take a seat at one of the vanities and look at his notes. He kept looking up from his notebook to the mirror as if he was about to say something, then back down at his notes to make an addendum. It was one of the funnier things I’d seen him do. I locked eyes with Marty, who looked up from his phone briefly to witness Reed’s silent pre-show ritual, and we both turned to each other, hiding our sneers.

“You’re opening?” I asked Marty.

“Yeah, I gotta run to the east side after this and close out Puff Daddy’s.”

“Oooh, closing a stoner room.”

“I think I do my best work in front of cadavers. Best part is you can just roast ’em and they have no idea. This one time this dude’s just ripping farts in the front and so I’m, like, laying into him, just a disgusting piece of shit, can’t smell anything obviously, and the dude’s so happy about it, like he’s laughing along, no fucking idea he’s getting slaughtered, just a pig in shit.” Marty shook his head and cracked his fingers.

“Literally,” I said.

“I think he did shit himself at some point.”

“During your set?” I asked.

“No, after. I think once he clued in to the whole fart gag he tried to one up himself.”

“Gotta leave it to the professionals.”

Marty was about twenty years older than me and sober now that he had a kid on the way. He mainly wrote for some Crave Original, but every now and then he’d pop up at a pro-am show. I never knew him when he drank, but apparently he was a lot funnier then. Now he was funny with a sense of peace about him. Like he still tried his asshole shtick, but you could tell there was no malice; he was just really happy. Matt might be content but Marty really seemed happy. He didn’t smile and never laughed at your jokes, but he moved with a sort of weightlessness. He came in quietly, killed, thanked the audience, then went home. Maybe I was just happy when I was around him. He was like an otter, fluid and lovely. Not the best description of an otter and I knew they could be violent and rapey, but if you watched videos of otters swimming around, they moved with ease and seemed like a fun time minus the aforementioned terrible parts.

Jackie came in with Tomas, a Norwegian comic who was not unfunny, though most of his laughs came from his accent and naive observations about Canadian culture. Matt followed with Sam Lappano. Sam was a much bigger deal than Matt and Marty. Because he got out, went to LA, and even had a small role in some Kat Dennings sitcom. I think he got to make out with her. He was also part of a Netflix special featuring up-and-coming talent. Basically, he was a D (maybe C) list celebrity, but in this green room he was a giant.

“Okay, thanks guys for coming out. Everyone got their drink ticket? Marty, you get two club sodas and then you’re done!” Matt jokingly warned Marty.

“I’m drinking club and cran. I got a UTI!” Marty yelled back.

“Jesus Christ Marty, pull your shit together. You’re the fucking bullet! Then we got T man, J dog—I hate this, I’m gonna say your actual names—Jackie, Reed, Virrrrginia—god, how many letters are in your name?”

“You still working on your six-letter words, Matt?” I asked.

“I know how to read, just not how to spell. I’ve told you this!” Matt yelled back at me, never breaking character as the shysty comedy booker.

“Lappano, you’re coming in hot after V. Fuck man, I don’t wanna follow you, you wanna close it out?”

Lappano, or Sam—I’d never spoken to him so I’m not sure what I would call him—looked at me and winked. I was instantly embarrassed that someone may have noticed and was annoyed for a moment because I felt like a child. What a rude thing to do, to knowingly infantilize someone like that. Immediately I wanted to be close to him.

Sam and Matt had all the same nondescript features—tall, white, slim, brown hair—except Sam had a bigger nose. But now that I was looking at the two of them together, Matt’s nose seemed too small. Sam’s nose had character, dipping into a point above his top lip when he smiled, which he was doing now. He was wearing a big brown suede jacket that looked worn in enough to be soft at this point and I imagined him putting both of his hands on my face, nothing more, just his two hands cupping my cheeks with a sense of urgency. I couldn’t look at him anymore.

“Yeah, I’ll close ’er up for you, bud,” he said to Matt and the two embraced like lovers. They were good friends, by all accounts. Matt went to visit him in LA at least twice a year, judging from what I heard from other comics and saw on the internet.

“You’re a dream. Alright, Sam you’re after Virginia—nailed it—and uh…that’s the facking show. We good?” Matt rhetorically asked the room.

“O captain, my captain.” Marty saluted him with his club and cran. I really hoped he didn’t have a UTI. I just wanted the absolute best for Marty.

“Fuck you, Marty. I’ll be back.” Matt went out to the lounge, leaving Sam standing there. He moved towards me and Marty, standing between the two of us while he looked at himself in the mirror.

“What are you working on these days, Marty?” Sam asked.

“Step four, taking inventory. So far I’m fantastic. What are you working on, Sam?”

Sam smiled at him. Marty never talked about work. He could win an Academy Award and still show up and tip a hundred percent on his club soda and cran (which amounted to a toonie for the tip and drink because he wouldn’t take drink tickets).

“Nothing good. What about you, Virginia?”

I looked at his reflection in the mirror, trying my best to think of something impressive but instead I told the truth.

“I am hoping to secure the part of a paper towel roll for a nation-wide commercial for paper towels,” I said.

“Wow…a whole roll?”

“Whole fucking roll.”

“You could say it’s a roll of a lifetime!” Reed couldn’t help himself.

Sam looked over at him and smiled. “You’re quick, kid! Not funny, but you’re quick.”

Reed ignored the slight and finger-gunned back at Sam. Jackie was stuck between Tomas and Reed, and made eye contact with me in the mirror. Somehow I’d found myself talking to the funniest person there and I didn’t want to open the circle.

“What are you doing in Toronto?” I asked Sam, before Reed could think of something else to say.

“Ah, work, this guy—” Sam stopped mid-sentence when he saw Matt coming back in the green room. The two talked until it was time for the show to start. The green room got quieter. Marty didn’t make much conversation, and Jackie, Tomas, and Reed were joking around together, so I pretended to be very involved with my phone, looking over notes for my set until my name was called.

I listened to the end of Reed’s set before I went on.

“I think if Marvel movies have taught us anything it’s that we need to experiment on more people,” Reed said. “Except white men. We need to stop making white men super strong, stop experimenting on them and experiment on…Oooh you see where I’m going with this. This is starting to sound real…like I’m not racist! I’m trying to say give more power to the POCs. Give them the superpowers. Wakanda forever baby! But make it real…I know, I get it. It’s not a good look to say use them for human experiments. But…is it racist if we’re purely looking at risk versus reward?”

The audience wasn’t fully sold. It was tough to laugh at race jokes when a small Irish Canadian comic was telling them. It didn’t help that he’d opened with how much he loved Amazonian women. The joke had to do with the whole short thing, but it just seemed like he was fetishizing large Black women.

Matt finally took the mic from him.

“Thanks so much, Reed, and if anyone is interested, he’s like one Minion away from being a full-on supervillain. He’s the one person who read about MKUltra and was like…they were onto something there, huh? White men, ugh!”

The applause from the audience seemed like it was directed at Matt more than an acknowledgment of Reed’s performance. They’d loved Matt from the beginning of the show. Not just because he was funny but because he provided this sense of safety as their host, that whatever happened with us comics, he’d keep coming back and pulling the show together.

“I know it’s tired! It’s tired, we hate everyone! I’ve hated myself since I was kicked off little league soccer and put into softball. Not even hardball. I was eight! My uh, dad…ever since then, and of course, okay, telling my father I wanted to do stand-up, acting”—Matt whispered this part—“It’s just dress-up for boys! It wasn’t easy on him. He’s been disappointed for a while now. But he’s also like a young boomer dad, so he’s ‘woke’ enough…he’s too wise, too hip for blatant homophobia. And now I get it, I spent my entire high school career in the improv club and doing my little shows rather than chasing tail. His words. But I have a girlfriend now! Ha, I’m yelling at you all like I’m trying to convince you. She’s real, I tell ya! But good ol’ Frank—that’s his real name, I didn’t change it for effect—he still likes to test me. He’ll put out like a nice Riesling, which I do love, and maybe a Coors Light, and just give me the eye like, ‘Eh, which one, actor boy.’ So I like to fuck with him back. The other day we were all at dinner and I was like, ‘Hey Frank, there’s this great little bar I went to, and wouldn’t you know they have a fabulous olive tapenade.’ Now I’m not saying tapenade is a ‘gay’ word, I’m just going by Frank’s playbook. And I just see him start to get all red in the face, so I go on, I say, ‘Yeah, yeah, they have this tapenade and this delicate appy of prosciutto and sweet little peaches, but I actually had to take it to go because I had to meet a dame to get my dick suuuuucked!!’ ”

Matt began mimicking some young bro, miming the act of fellatio on the mic. The crowd loved it.

He continued, “It’s true, that part’s all true, and we all high-fived and none of us need therapy!…Fuck, that’s such a bad joke. You ever want to prove you’re not homophobic, just make fucking dick-sucking jokes!” The crowd continued to laugh and clap. “Fuck, okay, how do I transition here. I don’t…I’m leaving you on such a strange family dynamic, but our next comic is strange. Actually, she’s great. Please welcome Virginia Woolard. Light ’em up, V!”

The crowd was still cheering him on as I grabbed the mic. Matt gave them another wave before walking off the stage. I let it go totally silent. Nia told me to do that a couple months back. She said it was a power move—don’t start on another comic’s laugh. Plus, if the lights weren’t too bright, it gave you time to scan the audience. From what I could see, it was a full house, mostly a young crowd and a few older couples. A couple of younger comics were standing at the back, waiting for the open mic after. The room was small. Red velvet curtains hung by zip ties on exposed pipes, creating wings on either side of the stage, and the walls were painted black to make the spotlight glow. The shitty folding chairs had duct tape on most of the seats to keep the thin layer of foam inside the cushion. I rarely got nervous here; it was too comfortable, too known to me, like being onstage in a mini high school auditorium. Except with Sam here…yeah, it was different tonight. It felt as if by his small level of celebrity this stage belonged to him and we were, or I was—definitely Reed—just filler.

“I had a weird conversation with my roommate the other day,” I began. “I think it actually was like a fight. You ever fight with your roommates? Anyways, she was really upset that this teacher from our old high school…she kept going on about how hot he was. Man, he was hot—to her. These are her words, ‘hot teacher.’ Anyways apparently he was arrested for having sex with some of the students. Yeah, no…don’t laugh at that part, but don’t worry the pedophile joke gets funny. Yeah, if you didn’t like the racist stuff, don’t worry we’re covering alllll the topics nobody asked for.”

The audience was half on board. The older couples didn’t seem to enjoy pedophilia as much as dick-sucking jokes, but the young comics at the back were laughing.

“But her takeaway from all of this was What a shame we lost a hot one. Like, Oh no! One less fish in the sea. You don’t want that fish! You don’t want any fish! Fish have no frontal cortex. They’re sociopaths, all of them. They’re the Jeffrey Dahmers of the ocean! You want a non-pedophiliac land mammal. But she got so mad at me for making her feel bad for feeling attracted to the pedophile that somehow I ended up apologizing. Like she kept going on like she couldn’t help who she was attracted to…and maybe I pointed out the irony there…”

I’d never told that joke to Haley because it really happened. Except she’d just found an article about a teacher who she thought was hot, which made it better but that was too much to explain for a joke. Like she didn’t even know this person and yet was so attached, despite the headline. She didn’t talk to me for a few days after the whole hot pedophile debate. That was a while ago, back in October, when she was at her worst, and we were at our worst. Back then, she often stopped talking to me for several days. I had to stand outside her door to make sure I could hear the small noises an alive body makes. She would get mad whenever I asked her why, like, why she was so depressed, what happened, even if it wasn’t one thing what was the…straw.

Finally, I said I couldn’t keep living with her if she was going to be like this because it reminded me too much of my mom. Walking past her door as a teen, wondering if she was still alive in what was once her office and later her palliative care room. It was cruel to say because it wasn’t true. Despite the similarities, it didn’t feel the same at all. Haley got angry that I was making her depression about my trauma, something she said that at least I’d financially benefitted from. She made a valid point, but I remember being so thrilled that she was yelling so I kept fighting with her. I know at one point I told her, “You couldn’t handle my trauma,” like that was a flex. Her response was that I was never upset enough about my mom, and that…what was it? Now I lived this charmed life and only brought up my dead mom so people would feel bad for me. I told her to get out, and she told me she was going to kill herself. So we put on our coats and walked silently together for the two minutes to CAMH. Before we got to the hospital I grabbed her hand at the side of the busy street. It wasn’t that I thought she would run into traffic or something, I just did it. And she clung to me and cried. We still didn’t speak while we waited in the emergency room. When she finally saw a doctor, I was told to go home. A little while later, she came back to the apartment with a higher dosage of Lexapro and that was it. We never talked about that night. It all started with this stupid pedophile argument. And when it stopped making me angry, it seemed a bit funny.

The audience was kind to me and the rest of the set went well. I even got an applause break for this whole bit about lying to my doctor when I was fourteen about being sexually active so I could get a prescription for a high dose of birth control with enough estrogen to produce breasts. But she insisted on a Pap smear and tore my hymen. The joke was all about how as a young girl you don’t expect to lose your virginity to an older woman with a speculum and a headlamp. The punchline was when I said I met up with a friend after who wanted to get a Slurpee and I mimed taking a drag of a cigarette and saying, “Kid, I’m gonna need something stronger than that.”

When I went back to the green room, the other comics who stuck around gave me cursory nods to acknowledge that I’d had a good set. Sam wasn’t there, and I wondered if he’d even seen my set, but then he came barrelling in, beer in hand and mouthing at me, “Fucking hilarious.” I felt my face go red and mouthed silently back, “Yeah, thanks.” He grabbed my shoulder when he passed me to go out and wait in the wings.

He killed, as expected. The applause was still going when he came back to the green room. The sweat on his forehead gave him an alien glow from the lights around the vanity mirrors. He wiped the moisture into his hair and took the finishing swig of his pint, miming the movements of a pro athlete leaving the field.

“Great set,” I said.

“Yeah, you too.” He winked again. Maybe he just winked a lot.

Marty had already left for the show on the east side. We’d see him in another six months. Reed was reviewing his set already—he always had someone film it on his phone—diligently taking more notes next to his setlist. Matt, Jackie, and Tomas were measuring their comic cocks, making jokes about theoretical sequels to Sharknado and what the storyline would entail.

The open mic would start in thirty, and it was best to slip out of the green room while the audience was half leaving and half arriving so you didn’t get dragged into any conversations about how hard it was to go up onstage and perform and what lunatics we all were collectively but how that particular audience member also found themselves funny and would prove it by trying to be the most hilarious conversationalist you’d ever wanted to murder.

“You stickin’ around?” Sam asked me.

“I don’t know. I might have another beer, but I’m not sure I want to sit through amateur hour.”

“Oh god no, definitely not. Let’s have a beer.” He was interrupted by the amateur comics, the ones that only get on the late shows by bringing at least two willing “friends.” Bringer shows can be hit or miss, seeing as the amateurs generally like to drink a lot as do their friends in order to make the whole thing palatable. It was great for the bar, but the audience was often left disappointed after about twenty minutes of some nineteen-year-old comic thinking he’s the first person to list the weird things he’s masturbated to.

“Hey kids, have a great show!” He was obviously mocking them as they nervously took their places around us paid comics, not that we were much better than them. We’d just been doing it for so much longer we’d become numb to the idea of bombing and total humiliation, and I think that created a facade of confidence when really we were just punching the clock. The eight o’clock show at Comedy Bar on a Tuesday night wasn’t going to be our big break, so the stakes were low. But for these kids, this was Def Jam.

I followed Sam and Matt to the bar, and Sam bought me a beer while Matt graciously thanked the audience members from the first show who stuck around to see the open mic comics. A couple of other comics I knew, and Sam probably knew too, had shown up just to drink, but he squared his shoulders and turned his back to them, his eyes trained on me.

“You have no idea how badly I want to sing that ‘Country Roads’ song,” Sam told me.

“Oh yeah? You should. Drinking alone singing country songs is definitely a vibe.”

“A vibe.” He was mocking me. I’d forgotten how I had to speak with some comics. With Haley it was fine to speak in idioms mostly co-opted from Black and queer Twitter accounts, but in earnest. With comics, I had to acknowledge the somewhat obnoxious use of trendy slang that young people like myself used and only use it ironically, if ever.

“So, what’s your story, West Virginia?” he asked.

“My story? Uhhh, well. I’m a Libra rising—”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“No, I mean, just doing the comedy thing. You know how it is. Auditions for TV and commercials and Just For Laughs aaaand I don’t know. Just trying to reach some sort of—”

“Glass ceiling?”

“Yeah, once I get this paper towel gig.”

“Oh, then you gotta come to LA.”

I couldn’t help but smile at the assumption that I was important enough to him to offer an invitation.

There was a part of me that wanted to tell him my plans, just so someone else knew, other than my dad and my sort-of stepdad, Dale. It was easier to call him that than say the man my mom married but who never really took on a fatherly role, we just kinda all hung out. I had accidentally told Nia too, during one of our drunk post-show bonding sessions. I hadn’t told Haley, the main reason being that I wanted it to be solidified first, green card in hand. I didn’t want her to see me fail. But I wanted to tell Sam everything.

“You miss Canada?” I asked.

“No, well…the health care. I do miss the free health care.”

“Yeah, you can’t get sick down there.”

“No, no, fuck no. And they wear their shoes inside, like everywhere. Americans wear their shoes inside. And the racism.”

“Both good points. Canada’s racist too,” I said.

He nodded, taking a long sip of his beer. “Yeah, Canada’s racist. But like, all of Canada is kinda racist, like we’re not but we are. Like in Cali you gotta identify upfront. Sam, he/him, ally, BLM, cops? fuck ’em, legalize it all, trans rights? yes fucking please, all while you’re rocking like a Stüssy tee and Carhartt jeans. It’s a mould. And here it’s like, yeah, for sure we should give the Indigenous people land back, I own a shirt that happens to be orange, for sure I’m outraged, but then in the same sentence it’s like…so Drake’s kinda fallen off, right?”

“Yeah, the indifference is kinda…” I didn’t know how to respond to his pseudo-political rant. I needed a minute to decide if he was trying some sort of bit on me, or if he was actually debating against progressivist posturing while sitting at the wood at Comedy Bar, close enough to hear Tomas loudly recount the latest fauxcest porn he’d watched.

“This is a bleak conversation,” he pointed out, picking up on my disinterest to engage with whatever point he was trying to make.

“Oh sorry…Do you like clowns?” I asked him. I wanted to keep talking to him, just about something I could confidently speak about without worrying I was accidentally coming across as a Joe Rogan fan. Clowns seemed apt.

“What the fuck?”

“I don’t know, it was the first fun thing I could think of.”

I wasn’t sure if it counted as flirting, but the evening went on that way, both of us pointing out how fucked up things were and how fucked up we were while drinking semi-flat basement beer. After a while, Matt interrupted to take Sam to another show, or somewhere cooler, I was projecting, because Sam seemed so cool. I figured Matt would want to impress him by taking him to some hidden speakeasy only minor Toronto celebrities knew about.

“Yeah, we can hit it. Can I grab your number?” he asked me.

He asked like he didn’t give a shit, and despite my eight years of experience having boys asking for my number his nonchalant attitude caught me off guard. I put it into his phone and he nodded without saying another word, while Matt and I fist-bumped each other goodbye. At that point I wanted to leave immediately but still had half a pint and couldn’t be sure they weren’t standing outside the venue while Matt watched Sam smoke. So I went and sat with Tomas and Reed for another twenty minutes while Reed grilled me on my fish facts.

CHAPTER 3

“Did you know that all three of my exes live alone and have cats?” I asked Haley from the couch as I watched her get ready for work. She looked over at me, uninterested, then back at the mirror at the end of the hallway to admire her outfit. She was wearing black pants with a button-down shirt and a knit vest. She studied herself meticulously, moving her hips back and leaning side to side.

“Not a bit!” I yelled at her, urging her to engage with me. We hadn’t spoken last night because her door was firmly shut when I got home, and I wanted to keep some sort of light dialogue going.

Since her breakdown I’d forced a lot of stupid conversations on her, just to fill the space with anything but talking about our feelings. It reminded me of trying to figure out what to say between the lunch bell ringing and our next classes beginning. When we first met, I tried being the kind of friend that I saw other girls being to one another so easily. I was scared she’d realize I was strange and couldn’t fulfill…I don’t know, some ideal version of sisterhood. I would tell her stupid things about my life or ask random questions I had pulled from newspapers or Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, hoping these unimportant facts we knew about one another would bring us closer together.

“I just don’t know what you’re saying this for.” She had taken off the vest in favour of a cardigan and now had to spend the same time admiring her reflection for a proper comparison.

“I’m just saying it! Like there’s something weird there, right? Like you know Justin, he has all the time and money to get a dog. Same with Ian and Tobin. Like…they are all living alone with cats. And posting about their cats. Like they all made a choice. And none of them chose dog.”

“So they’re not dog people.” She was finally somewhat satisfied with her outfit, but now she had to sigh into the fridge for about a minute before deciding on cereal just like the day before yesterday.

“But I don’t think that’s it,” I said. “I think they just wanted something submissive.”

“Cats aren’t submissive.”

“They aren’t in like the…like you can’t train them, but you can trap them in your house. And like…cats are kinda like…what I’m saying is I think they all knew no self-respecting dog would ever respect them back, so they all got these cats just so they still have some sort of life form to hold under their thumb but in a slightly more socially acceptable way than like…those old white men who date young Asian women.”

“You can’t compare animals to a minority group of women.” She was trying to fit a massive amount of milk-soaked Cheerios into her mouth, so she didn’t sound as put off as she wanted to.

“I know Asian women aren’t cats but when you see an old white dude with a very young foreign bride, it’s the same thing as a single white dude alone with a cat. That fucked-up power dynamic. Like, you know the stereotype? Creepy old white men fetishize young Asian women because of whatever, submissiveness? Like youth? I’m saying that’s the road map. The gateway to that is, first, getting a cat, a vulnerable living thing that is indebted to you because of what you provide but would like to not be touched by you for like ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time.”

She finished her bowl of Cheerios and put it on the counter and not in the sink. I was too worried that I would start a full-blown argument if I reminded her of the close proximity of the sink to the counter.

“I think everyone deserves companionship even if you think they’re a shitty dude,” she said adamantly.

“Are you fucked, of course they’re shitty dudes! Ian? Justin? Tobin was fine but like ugh.”

“It’s just not funny.”

“It’s not a bit! Okay, it was just a stupid thought that I was thinking about. The correlation or whatever. It’s not funny, I get it. I will not say it again, I won’t even think it. God forbid I become the fucking Michael Richards of Queen West.”

“Then don’t be racist.” She was still leaning on the counter by her cereal bowl. She’d rather argue with me than go to work.

“I’m not…It was stupid. I was trying to put thoughts together. They were bad thoughts.”

“You were trying a bit.”

“It was…musings of a bit, not a fucking…Anyways, I think I have a date tomorrow with a normal dude,” I said. I didn’t have the energy to fight, though part of me wanted to point out all the times she used to quote Sixteen Candles.

“Well, lead with that next time. Is he cute? I’m late but tell me if he’s cute.”

“He’s cute! Go to work. Or listen to how cute he is,” I said, grateful she seemed to have moved on from focusing on what a terrible person I was.

“K, sum it up. Like a Tinder thing—”

“No…okay, so he is technically a comedian—”

“No, V! You said no more!” She was jokingly admonishing me, but she was right. I did say I would never date (sleep with) another comedian.

“He’s low-key kinda famous though. Like not famous, but he’s been on American TV and Netflix! Cable and Netflix.”

“Has he gone viral?” she asked me.

“Um, I don’t know. I don’t think so. I didn’t follow him and obviously don’t want to start now—”

“I just feel like the good comedians are big on social,” she said. Her disdain of his lack of viral fame annoyed me.

“He doesn’t model for Fashion Nova…yet. But he is cute, and like a real Hollywood comedian. On TV.”

“Wait, why would you go out with a guy from Hollywood? He obviously just wants to fuck.” She was beginning to put on her coat, and I was tempted to tell her I was hoping to move to LA and marry Sam and we’d be famous together, a power couple. But that wasn’t at all true and she wasn’t an idiot. I stared at her, waiting for her to take it back.

“I’m joking, I can do comedy too. What, like it’s hard?” she said, coming back to the couch.

“Haley, I love him!” I was doing my best Ariel from The Little Mermaid impression.

She rolled her eyes. “No, you don’t love him, but do you have pictures?”

I began showing her clips of Sam on TV, Sam onstage, Sam’s public Instagram. I’d never been like this. Fangirling over a boy I liked. Haley held my hand as we swiped through photos, squeezing when we passed an especially attractive one. It brought me back to high school when Haley had convinced me to come out to a shitty hippie party because a boy she liked was going to be there. By “shitty hippie party” I mean a party of middle-class high schoolers obsessed with shopping at Urban Outfitters smoking weed in a park. We were drunk in the back of a cab, and she was crying because the boy rebuffed her, and I started crying because I was young and drunk and sad. My mother had been dead for about four months, and I made it about my dead mom and how I was justified in crying more than her.

“Can we just talk about my problems for once!?” Haley had yelled.

I didn’t blame her for wanting to cry about boys rather than think about this huge loss I had experienced. It was interesting, we were always happiest when we were discussing boys. As if maybe this new guy would “save” the other one of us, that there was this possibility of being closer to someone else than we were to each other, and that person could be our emotional caretaker. I got that you were supposed to be your own emotional caretaker, that was like growth or something, maturity. But I’d also seen a lot of those videos of super pregnant ladies sighing with relief when their partners lifted up their bellies to take the weight off for a minute or two. It looked like bliss.

I’d stopped crying in that cab because I realized that I would lose Haley if I continued to burden her with my sadness. But it made me mad when later she yelled at me that I used my dead mom to make people feel bad for me. It was the opposite; I found the magnitude of the loss of my mother embarrassing. I only told people to get ahead of it, so it didn’t have to feel like some terrible secret I was harbouring. I had tried once to make it a thing with this guy Josh. We were eighteen and had been on three dates. On the third date, I told him I was worried I was broken because of my dead mom. I was trying to be mysterious and sexy. He replied, “Yikes, that’s shit.” I was humiliated, but then he told me at fourteen he started smoking synthetic weed and watching beheading videos and almost killed himself once after a bad trip. I didn’t want to deal with that shit either, so I never spoke to him again.

“He is cute,” she confirmed after we’d scrolled almost two years back through his online presence. “Ugh, I just need someone to fuck me.”

“Call that young guy, that barback guy,” I said. “He was so nice. Remember he tried to bring you breakfast in bed. He put your scarf over the cutting board and jazzed it up.”

“Ew, see he was too young, like he was so thrilled at like SEX!”

“He was too pure for this world, sweet little whatever-his-name-was.” I shook my head, looking at her now splayed out on the couch, lusty and tired.

“K, go to work Haley. Rise and grind.”

“I think I’m gonna call in sick. I’m just cold and broke and tired—”

“And horny.”

“V, stop.” Haley sighed. “I’m honestly worried I have, like, Lyme disease.”

“Well, you haven’t hiked in the last six years…maybe you just need a banana.” We always mocked her mother for telling her in times of duress (secret hangovers in our teens) to have a banana.

Haley looked at me, unimpressed.

“Bami’s back,” she told me.

“Do not,” I warned her.

Bami was this forty-year-old dude she’d started dating last August, right after her parents called off their divorce. She was closer with her father, while her two older brothers sided with their mother, who favoured them with both money and affection. Her brothers had convinced their parents to buy them a house to flip, which they never did or seemed to be planning to do. Instead, they moved in with their girlfriends and lived rent-free while they all saved up to buy condos to rent out on Airbnb. According to Haley, their mom went over there a lot and sat with her sons’ girlfriends while she folded their laundry and they gabbed about having grandchildren. Haley’s parents didn’t buy her a house, which she brought up a lot, but they did pay for her university and housing in Toronto. After two years she dropped out, and then they paid for fifty hours of yoga teacher training, which she quit after ten because she met Bami who drove her around in his Mazda convertible. He came over too much and they’d hole up in her room, which led to me hanging out at Nia’s more often or going thrifting with Addy and helping her film skits for her comedy puppet show. Then his visa expired and he left in a kinda shitty way because before that he would always talk about how much he wanted to put a baby in Haley. She laughed it off, then a week before he was supposed to leave she told him she was too young. They didn’t speak that week and she was a wreck so she decided she could have a baby with him, if that’s what it took, and went to tell him but he refused to let her into his apartment complex. Then he was gone. That was August. By October, we were in the emerg at CAMH.

I grabbed her hand again. “Hales, he destroyed you. It’s not worth it. Move on, call the sweet tiny boy.”

“He didn’t destroy me!” she protested.

I didn’t know what to say. There she was, almost an hour late for her first job in months, staring wistfully out the window for this douchebag with a tiny convertible.

“Haley, he left and you got severely depressed. I feel like that’s a big thing.”

“He wasn’t the cause of my depression! It’s a chemical thing, it’s not a boy thing.”

“Okay yes, but…I mean, he was part of the whole sad combo. Like first get more undepressed and then maybe add back some toxicity.” My sardonic tone probably wasn’t helping my unwanted advice. She finally took her hand back in a huff.

“I am depressed for so many more reasons than a man,” she said, sitting up.

“Well…good.”

She got up, but not to get her jacket on. She was headed back to bed.

“Hales—”

“No, it just feels like shit when you don’t take this seriously. Like I don’t want to be like this, it’s a disease—”

“I know that!” I yelled in frustration. She turned her back to me, almost in tears. We’d had this conversation before. I calmed myself before I spoke again.

“I know that, Haley, and I’m sorry. I just think he is a part of the beforetimes, when things got bad. And now things are getting better, so why risk it. Like I honestly want the best for you, and if it’s just sex then just, like, get a dildo or something, have a whole dildo sex party, hopefully while I’m in Vancouver if you can wait—”

“V—”

“No, I am sorry. I just think there are safer ways for your brain and body to be happy and…satiated. Okay?”

“I know you’re saying it with love. You just don’t understand how hard it is for me sometimes.” She was fully tearing up now, and I felt my hand that was just holding hers ball up into a fist, I wanted this fight to be over, but in a way that was more permanent. I never wanted to fight with her again. I knew she was tired but I was exhausted too.

“I know that—I mean, I don’t but I get what you’re saying by me not knowing. I get that,” I lied.

“And sometimes I need to be in charge of my own safety and do things that will just make me happy, even if they’re not totally good for me,” she whispered and then shrugged before turning back to her fortress of solitude.

“Okay, well…there’s always heroin!” I yelled, but she had already shut her door.

“So I’ll see you after Dale’s. Love you!” I yelled again.

She didn’t answer.

I didn’t know if I got irrationally or rationally angry enough these days, moving around the apartment doing my normal activities while being hyper aware of this vibrating ball of sad snoring in Haley’s room.

I was angry because I thought it’d be nice to live loudly. My mother always had music playing; she liked to fill the house with a lot of sound until it was time to talk. Like when I would come down for breakfast after waking up to the Pixies, she would turn down the stereo and we would talk about nothing really. I remember one time specifically in the seventh grade. I had worked really hard on this Moby Dick book report and painted this big folder. I was really embarrassed at how proud I was, but my mom turned the music all the way off and got this shitty digital camera and started taking ridiculously posed photos of me holding this folder, like sitting on the table and standing in the doorway. Sometimes she would use music to threaten me jokingly. She would pretend to be an awards show host and try to play me off the end of her bed when she was tired and just wanted to lie there and listen to music. She didn’t talk to me as much as I talked to her. Maybe that’s a mom thing or maybe she knew a ten-year-old wouldn’t want to hear about her latest grant application to fund a movement camp for youth at risk. I was never that precocious. I didn’t know the woman, Carol, I just knew my mom. Sometimes when I’m feeling dramatic, I tell myself she was the only one who knew me.

CHAPTER 4

It was usually a forty-five-minute drive from my parking garage to the driveway. I didn’t know if I could call it anyone’s driveway, mine or Dale’s, since it was my mom’s house. I thought the house was big, but it was small compared to its neighbours because it was in the “rich area” of Oakville. She bought it after she split up with my dad when I was ten years old. I never knew she had so much money and my dad had so little. I guess it made sense seeing as how he owned the first house we lived in, and that place was a shithole. As far as I know they parted amicably, which is rare to say but it’s the truth. He took whatever he could get for his hovel and moved out west, and she kept everything else.

We lived in the new house, just my mom and me, until Dale moved in when I was twelve. It was tough for him because being almost a teenager I was sure that I wasn’t in need of parenting and he had no experience being a parent, so he mostly kept his distance for the first twelve months, which was hard on my mom. She would’ve liked it if we were all instantly closer, and it’s not that I didn’t like Dale. I did; it was impossible not to. He was very kind and somehow managed to never make me feel stupid. That may seem like the bare minimum, but as a teenage girl everything makes you feel stupid and he never once rolled his eyes at my dramatics or smirked at my questionable outfit of the day. He just took a lot of my mom’s time—time that used to be for me. They wouldn’t even do that much, just watch shows together, read books around each other. And they would always make a point of offering me the living room TV, but that meant they would go watch shows in their bedroom and I would be alone on the first floor for the whole evening. I didn’t like being alone, but I didn’t really want him around either because he was just this presence that never seemed fully whole. Almost like a ghost, even then, and certainly now the way he’s stuck around the house my mom died in six years ago, unable to move on.

When my mother realized she didn’t just have cancer but that she was dying from it, she created an ironclad will where I got everything, but with the stipulation that I couldn’t kick Dale out of the house even if I moved out. Dale paid the annual property taxes, utilities, and general maintenance, and I just lived off her money and investments. She didn’t leave Dale anything since he had a union job. He wasn’t mad about it. He never got mad about anything ever. Ever since my mom died, we had a standing biweekly dinner. We used to get together once a week, but we didn’t have much to talk about since, other than his job and my comedy, nothing that interesting happened to either of us in a week’s time. A month seemed too long in between visits and somewhat disrespectful to the relationship my mother wanted us to have in her absence, so we landed on biweekly, and it worked out pretty well.

Dale and I didn’t often talk about my mother or anything in the past at all. There wasn’t much to reflect upon—our transitional year when he moved in, getting to know one another, a few years of okayness when I was mostly preoccupied with my teenage life, and then the diagnosis. We didn’t have many funny memories, maybe one, when we kept misplacing my grandmother’s ashes. My grandmother died a month after my mom, and I don’t think either of us was equipped to deal with another death so soon. She was ninety-three when her heart gave out, on her way home from picking up her weekly litre of red wine, a bag of black licorice, and barbecue chips. So many of her friends from the community kept asking when the service would be, but we both kept losing the fucking ashes. We had so many boxes in the basement. My mother was dying for two years and with every new consequence of her disease more was packed away—clothes she would never wear again, old tax filings, abandoned cross-stitches. We would ask each other, “You seen Grandma lately?” It shouldn’t have become a joke, but we were both really tired. We had already been packing boxes and grieving for two years, watching my mother waste away. I never told anyone about Dale and me making that joke, and I never talked about my grandmother onstage. I did try once to talk about my mom. Dale was in the audience that night; he never brought it up.

I watched my mother die twice. First, a few months after the diagnosis, when she finally accepted death and gave up trying to deny it. She was still alive, but that part sucked the most. It was deathlier or whatever than her actually dying. I almost would’ve preferred to lose her to something quick or absurd, even violent. A car crash, or a giant crane falling over, a fucking stray bullet. We would’ve had someone else to blame, and she wouldn’t have had all that time to blame herself. Because she did. I got so mad sometimes, not at her but just at the amount she apologized. Not to Dale even, just to me. She was so sorry for committing this unforgivable act of sickness and dying. She was so sorry for me because she knew how much I loved her and it was just…Every time she apologized it was like she knew how much it was going to hurt. How much it already hurt and there’s nothing to say to that without sounding like the worst person in the world. No, it won’t hurt. Like she’s not shit? She shouldn’t be sorry? There’s nothing to say. It’s all sad, right? That’s nothing new about cancer stories—it’s all just sad. I never got mad at her, for the record. Not to her face.

Then she died a second, more permanent time. Dale and I went together to clean her because we could smell she had soiled herself pretty bad. We went about sponging off the shit and holding up her body while we changed the sheets. We were wearing rubber gloves, so we didn’t feel how rapidly her body was cooling. She hadn’t set into rigor mortis yet. I had avoided looking at her face the last few days she was alive; she always looked so sad. But sometimes when her eyes were closed, I’d stare at her for so long, hoping that BAM! her eyes would open, and she’d smile and say, “Gotcha.” She never did, but sometimes I’d make myself sick with guilt thinking that just after I’d left, she’d tried it.

It wasn’t until after I started applying cream to her feet to keep her skin from drying out from our sterile soaps that I looked at her face. Her lips were blue, and I realized she wasn’t breathing. It was all so weird, moisturizing my dead mother, that I forgot to cry.

That was the joke…that we participated in this live embalming of my mother. I can’t remember why I thought it was funny; I don’t think I ever found it funny. I just hoped maybe to others it would be and they would laugh and I wouldn’t have this memory that I was alone in feeling weird about. I would share the weirdness.

I apologized to the coroner when he came to get the body, sorry I had washed away any evidence.

“Evidence of what?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Anything left,” I said.

He asked me if I could move out of the way. Then they took her, and she was gone.

Dale and I were still wearing rubber gloves, and for some reason we had on matching grey sweatsuits. After, we took off the gloves and went in the yard, passing a bottle of cassis between us because it was hers. I guess it was a toast. We stood there until we finished the whole bottle, then Dale threw it in the recycling bin, the first and only thing belonging to my mother we’d thrown away.

—

By the time I pulled into the driveway, I was just a few minutes late. I had a key, but I always knocked and waited for him to let me in.

“It’s just pasta tonight,” Dale said, as he welcomed me into the house.

Not much had changed on the main floor since I’d left for Toronto. It still looked like a teenage girl lived there. The dusty DVD box collection of The O.C. I’d inherited from my older cousin Margaret when she moved was still in its spot on top of the Blu-ray player. I doubted Dale knew how to use that thing, if he even knew it existed. Each room was still styled by my mother. The house was chaotic in its colour scheme—bright cantaloupe walls in the dining room, two purple walls in the living room—and the bookshelves containing her little library were filled with extra adornments, jars of pens for crosswords and funny postcards she’d once taped to a white hallway wall to cover up its blandness. It was never messy, just full, and it remained that way.

Dale had changed. His grey hair had gotten thinner and his belly had gotten bigger. He was a tradesman, a plumber, so I always got the sense he was strong, but his arms and legs were thin and the sleeves of his T-shirt swallowed up his shoulders while barely covering his middle. He was handsome to my mom though, something about his crooked smile or big nose that made him look a little bit like Mario’s brother, Luigi. I wondered if anyone had made that comparison before.

“I love pasta. I’m permanently carb loading.”

“You still doing the gym thing?”

He asked about the gym a lot, with a bit of concern that I was going to hurt myself. I think he lived with a lot of pain, as do many aging men who use their bodies for work. I had no idea what a plumber did other than make leaks go away. He never complained about pain but I saw it when he stretched his hands after dinner or took a second to catch his breath before fully standing upright. I was just as concerned about him hurting himself too.

“Yeah, nothing too crazy though, just more tired these days. I think it’s the weather,” I told him.

He moved to take my jacket and hang it up. He’d never offered to put my jacket away, and that was when I noticed my mother’s old winter coat hanging beside his cracked leather bomber.

“Why’s this out?” I asked him.

He looked at the coat and sighed.

“Oh, I was going through some stuff and…I actually thought it might be mine,” he told me, embarrassed. The coat was a dusty light purple, which I guess could be mistaken for grey if Dale had the lights off like he usually did. He would never wear purple.

“Oh.” I was about to touch the coat before Dale stepped in front of me. It was odd for Dale to get in my way.

“I tried it on.” He seemed even more embarrassed now.

“Like for you to wear…Did you like it?”

“I got stuck.”

It was hard not to laugh. Imagining Dale in the dark, zipped up and stuck in my mother’s old winter coat, sweating from trying to get out. I did my best, though, because he was not laughing.

“How’d you get free?”

“Ahhh, V, I’m sorry. I ripped it a bit.”

He showed me the back. The seam in the middle was torn wide open, which just made it funnier to think of Dale hulking the lilac puffer off his back.

“That’s okay. I didn’t want it, or like…yeah, no, I honestly forgot about it. I have a coat. I have many coats.”

He breathed a sigh of relief and smiled at me, then looked back at the coat, tracing the ripped seam.

“We’ll just throw it out,” I told him and he shrugged. I wanted to tell him that we couldn’t attach meaning to every coat and box that was stored away. I didn’t know if that was how I actually felt or that I just wished I could convince myself that was the truth.

“Okay,” he said. He took the coat, which was still on the hanger, and walked past me, out the front door, down the driveway, and with a hint of fanfare opened the garbage bin and dunked it in.

“I was stuck in that fucking thing for ten minutes,” he said when he got back to the house.

It was rare to hear him swear and I knew he was doing it for effect. His comedic timing had gotten better. Sometimes I thought, in moments like these, that he and I could be related somehow. When he knew just what to say, but more importantly, that it was time to laugh.

I sat down at the dining room table to a ridiculously large portion of spaghetti and three baseball-sized meatballs. Dale put a block of cheddar cheese in front of me with a grater. He knew I preferred it to Parmesan. I grated a little mountain of orange onto my pasta while he was swirling noodles on his fork.

“How’s the business?” Dale asked, which was his way of asking how my comedy career was going.

“It’s good…It’s not, really. But I got a callback, which wasn’t anything, but it’s nice to make it to the second round at least. But comedy is good, good couple shows as of late. And my agent said that once I know when I’m moving she can try and connect me with a few people in LA to kinda like tether me to, I think that’s the word she used.”

“Sounds good. You have a date?” he asked between another mouthful of swirled spaghetti. Our cutlery seemed to be making a lot of noise in the moments between conversation.

“No, but soon I hope. Like I haven’t heard anything bad, so I think I’m just kinda waiting on all the proper channels of whatever green card people go through,” I told him. I didn’t really have any idea how it worked. I just threw money at this immigration lawyer I was told had a good track record of getting funny Torontonians into the States.

“And you’re all set for Vancouver?”

“Mhmm, yeah. You can still give me a ride to Pearson?”

“It’s on the calendar, yes.” He was concise, but he wasn’t cold.

“Thank you, good, yeah. No, it’ll be good, see the old man getting hitched—”

“Who is it again?”

“What?” I asked.

“Who’s his wife? To be?”

“Oh, Penny. She’s that producer, I feel like I’ve told you, like she’s actually a big deal—”

“Penny? Virginia, that’s a dog’s name.” He was pointing a piece of garlic bread at me. I didn’t know if he was trying to be funny but I had to laugh.

“Yeah, no, you’re not wrong.”

“He’s close to my age, right?” Dale asked, sopping up the last of the sauce with his bread.

“Yeah.”

After my mother died Dale never asked if I wanted to move to Vancouver with my father. I didn’t, not that I didn’t love my father. But I was seventeen. Why would I finish my final year at a new high school with no friends in a city susceptible to earthquakes? Nah. So I stayed with Dale. Two caretakers without a patient. We still did our daily rounds, nodding to each other over morning coffee and trading quips about newspaper headlines. Slowly dismantling the former patient’s room, returning medical equipment and a hospital bed. During this time, my dad flew out and tried to be of help, but he moved too quickly for Dale and me, so my job was mainly to keep him busy until he flew back home.

“Mm. Penny,” he repeated, as if to say men of their age should know better than to marry women with dog names. I caught him wincing as he got up out of his chair to clear his plate.

“Anything else you want to get rid of? Other than the coat?” he asked me, reaching for my plate.

“Other than the coat?”

“Yeah…anything else of your mom’s. Clothes or stuff you want or don’t want?”

It felt like he was trying very hard to speak casually about something that required more delicacy.

“Uh, I don’t know. I’d have to look at it all. Like is there stuff you want to get rid of—”

“No, no. It can all stay. It’s not my call.”

“Well, yeah, you don’t have to keep anything if you want the room or just to have it gone—”

“I’m fine with it all. It’s fine.” He disappeared for a moment, bringing our dirty dishes to the kitchen and returning with a plate of cookies.

“Maybe we could pick a day and go through some stuff. You can definitely like rearrange or, whatever, like paint more walls purple and orange,” I told him.

“Nah, just little things, I was thinking, to make it a bit more modern when you want to sell.”

“I don’t wanna sell. Markets are terrible—”

“They’re good right now,” he said, oblivious to my sarcasm and unable to look me in the eye.

“I was kidding. I don’t wanna sell the house. Do you wanna move?”

“No, I’m happy here.”

I was thrown off by the whole conversation. He’d never once asked me to go through my mother’s things or offered me furniture.

He grabbed a cookie and went to sit on the couch in the living room. Sometimes we watched a show together. This time I made us some coffee and we sat mostly in silence before I made my way back home.

—

When I got back to the apartment, all of the lights were on, but Haley was in her room playing some soft-synth girl-pop playlist she put on when she was in a mood.

“I’m home!” I yelled to the closed door.

“Ugh!” the voice behind the door yelled back.

“He made cookies!”

“Bring me one!”

I dutifully entered Haley’s room with my coat still on, holding the cookie package.

“How was your night?” I sat on the edge of her bed. Her room was a mess. Clothes were everywhere, paper towel was crumpled up on her small vanity, and a garbage bin was overflowing with makeup wipes.

“Ugh,” she grunted.

I stretched across the length of her bed holding my hands beneath the tinfoil as she tore open the top and removed two cookies. She huffed again, and I retracted my body back to the edge.

“Do you wanna hang out?” I asked her as she held the cookies, debating whether to eat them.

“Sure,” she sighed, handing me back the cookies while she gathered her blanket around her torso.

I followed her as she shuffled to the living room swaddled in her comforter, giving her back the cookies once she had hunkered down on the couch. I needed Haley to tell me anything about her evening even if it bugged me, so I could leave my evening in Oakville with Dale. If I told her that he’d brought up selling the house and let on that I was feeling minorly…wistful, she would lean into my melancholy and get nostalgic and probably even cry over my mother. Sure, we’d only met in high school, Haley and I, but we became so close, crashing at my house after a party or stopping by during spare periods and eating Kraft Dinner and ice cream and watching Jerry Springer until the end of the day.

It’s hard to believe she wasn’t there for my childhood. We’d seen every photo of each other and heard so many stories I think in a way she was. I can picture her in matching windbreakers with her brothers, and in junior high kissing a boy for the first time and not shutting up about it for weeks. I think we were each other’s hard drives. We each kept everything unknown to our parents and secrets from past friends in each other, versions of ourselves we liked to think were absolute truths. She never knew my mother before she got sick, but she had my memories stored within her and often recalled them when I brought up the house or Dale.

My story made her so sad that I often wondered if I’d somehow contributed to her depression by filling her up with so much of my mother, so much of her goodness, that the loss was great for her too. She sometimes said that “we” loved her so much. But she didn’t; she’d behaved how all my friends had. They were more polite than usual, with the understanding that forced kindness was a replacement for an apology to my mother for her imminent death. Quiet when she came into a room, as if loud noises would shock her into an even more premature death. We always went to the basement of my house, away from my mother, until it became too full with boxes reminding us of her condition. Then we tried to hang out in the living room, and everyone did their best not to acknowledge the room she lay in, the office-turned-hospice, other than to glance at the closed door when they were forced to use the bathroom across from it.

Sometimes I asked Haley why she loved my mother. If she couldn’t recall what I’d stored in her quickly enough, she’d respond that she must love my mother because so much of her was in me and she loved me. But my mother didn’t download into me. She gave me nothing past fourteen. I wish I would’ve known more about her; I wish she would’ve trusted me then, to keep all of her, so that I could carry her with me and recall her memories for Dale or anyone else who needed to be reminded.

I knew more about Haley and her windbreakers than I did about my mother. Sometimes I got angry at Haley for taking up so much more space than my mom. I had to remember it wasn’t her fault, and knowing less about Haley wouldn’t mean I’d get to know more about my mom. I’d just have less of anyone.

“Do you want to watch something?” she asked me.

“Sure, Netflix?” I finally took off my coat but was using it as a blanket, trying to mimic Haley’s coziness.

“How’s Dale?”

“Fine…He got stuck in my mom’s coat.”

“What? What coat?”

“I don’t know. I think his eyesight is getting fucked or whatever, doesn’t matter. Anyways, he just put it on, but like she was a small lady.”

“Yeah, how do you make that mistake?” She looked genuinely concerned for Dale.

I shrugged.

“I dunno. But he was telling me he got stuck for like ten minutes and had to like—” At this point I began miming the action of hulking off a jacket by rounding my back and flexing my arms while baring my bottom teeth.

“Did he tear it?” More concern from Haley.

“Yeah, he ripped it right down the back. I’m kinda impressed.”

“No, V, which coat?”

“Some purple one, a winter coat.”

“With the furry hood?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Nooooo, I feel like that was such a pretty coat. Like it could’ve been vintage.” Her concern turned to disappointment.

“Wellllll. Trash.”

“I would’ve liked that coat,” Haley said quietly, scrolling through the options on Netflix.

I couldn’t believe Haley was laying some sort of claim to the coat even though it didn’t belong to her in any capacity. I didn’t care about the coat an hour ago and now I wanted it just to wear in front of her. I wondered if that type of thinking meant I was also mentally unwell, or just averagely petty.

“Do you think Rachel’s ever gonna get married?” I asked her, changing the subject. Rachel was a friend of ours from high school who had been engaged since she was nineteen to a man fourteen years her senior and wouldn’t hear a bad word about him. She was super fun and part of my gym for a while. I thought we were going to become much better friends because we had a great routine of going for workouts and a coffee after, but then they moved out to Scarborough so we only saw her and him like once a year.

“I don’t know.” Haley seemed uninterested.

“Maybe she’s aged out of his ideal wife range. Or now that she’s older and he’s still mentally sixteen for the past how many years, she’s over it.”

“I wonder if she’s being financially abused.” Haley was back to being concerned.

“Doesn’t she work for Deloitte?”

“Yeah. We should do a girl’s brunch. Drag Brunch.”

“Sure, invite Anna and Mags. We’ll have a whole Rendale High reunion,” I told her.

She turned to me, excited. “I will. Oh my god, this will be really fun. Maybe next weekend? I’m gonna text them but don’t colonize the group chat.” She started furiously texting.

“How would I colonize a group chat?”

“Like don’t take it over being funny and dilute the plan.”

“I’m gonna give the group chat smallpox.”

She rolled her eyes. I watched trailers for Netflix original movies because she had the remote and was distracted now. I ignored my phone pinging with her group texts and sank into my jacket blanket.

CHAPTER 5

“I’m not sure how it’s possible, but I’ve become like twenty percent less attractive since yesterday,” I told Haley, while looking in the mirror at my chosen outfit for my date with Sam. He had texted me late last night, which didn’t make me feel great, but in our brief back and forth creating a plan, I decided he didn’t seem drunk and was probably just coming from a late show. I had put on dark blue high-waisted jeans and what I thought was a cute cropped beige sweater, but my lack of hips and extra-wide shoulders made me look like a pale letter Y.

Haley came out of her room wrapped in her blanket and surveyed the outfit.

“Why isn’t this working?” She wasn’t joking.

“I don’t know! I wear both of these things!”

“It’s the jeans. The jeans are weird,” she concluded.

“No, it’s my body. The whole thing is a mess.”

“I just don’t think you should wear high-waisted anything.”

“God fucking dammit.” I was ready to give up. I couldn’t remember how to wear clothes.

“What are you guys doing?” she asked, still shaking her head at my jeans.

“I don’t know. He was just like, ‘Does two p.m. work for day drinks?’ ”

“Day drinks, why?”

“I think he has a show later and, like, it’d be weird to have a date at a show. That’d be dumb. I assume we’ll just have a beer or two and then separate, coffee, nap, both hit the show after, and then a few more drinks aaand—”

“Fuck. Ooh, are you gonna bring him here?”

“I think I’d have to, I don’t know where he’s staying, Matt’s maybe. I honestly can’t get a read on him, like no idea if we’ll sleep together. We’ll probably just fall in love,” I told her as straight as possible. I had shed the first pair of jeans for a lighter blue pair that had a lower waistline.

She nodded in approval. “Better.”

“Right? Uggghhh, K, this is okay. Fuck. Okay, I hate being nervous, I feel like an idiot.”

“No, it’s cute.”

I flexed my arms and she rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, lead with that,” she said.

“Hey what’s up, Sam, flex on ’em.” I was doing my impression of every juiced-up gym bro trying to get his muscles to pop, flexing my arms and pumping my fists together while making a very intimidating facial expression. Quite similar to my impression of “hulking out.” It looked cool when professional athletes did it, but Haley wasn’t impressed.

“Does that work for you?” she asked.

“Never…I feel like an asshole.”

“You look like an asshole,” she agreed.

My phone went off. Sam was messaging me to say he was downstairs.

“Alright, game time—”

“No more sports! You’re a hobbyist crossfitter.”

“Fuck you, I’m an athlete!” I said. “This works? We’re good?”

“You look good. Just be normal and keep your expectations low.” She gave good advice for someone wearing a blanket cape and picking at the dry skin around her nostrils.

“I don’t even give a shit. K, bye.” I moved past her towards the door, trying to ignore the cold sweat that was already pooling in my armpits.

“Love you!” she yelled as I closed the door.

I barely felt the cold as I jogged the four feet from my building to where Sam was waiting in a beat-up old red Hyundai sedan. He smiled at me behind the glass like he knew exactly what I was thinking: What a piece of shit. He leaned over to unlock the passenger door from the inside so I could get in.

“Hi there, thanks for coming,” he said, as if he were welcoming me as a guest on a late-night talk show.

“Hi, thanks for having me in this…This is terrible,” I played along.

“Thank you. Yeah, this is Matt’s mother Dharma’s car. I believe it was originally a lease, but then she was feeling feisty and just went all in.”

“Wow, good for her, good for her. Is it a 2012?” I asked.

“A 2008, I believe.”

“Just awful.”

He smiled and the bit that was definitely a bit was over.

“You look nice,” he said sincerely.

“Thank you—”

“Are you warm?” he interrupted.

“Yeah no, I’m not cold. I’m comfy.”

“Are you dressed warmly?”

“Yes, I have my hat and gloves. You want to park and walk somewhere?”

“I was thinking something outdoorsy. It’s only like two degrees.”

I looked out the window as he started up the car. Dark grey clouds were hovering over a slightly brighter grey sky. It didn’t look like it was going to rain, but most people would opt to stay inside on a cold day at the tail end of February.

“Great.”

We started driving east on Lakeshore towards the Don Valley Parkway. When we passed the industrial wasteland of the Port Lands, I asked him, “Does this ever remind you of like an Irish cop show? Just kinda moorish, but in a grey Euro way?”

He shook his head at me like I was an idiot.

“You don’t come out east often? Aren’t there a few rooms out here still?” he asked as we passed Jarvis and came up to the shiny new car dealerships that I stared at from the weathered seat of Dharma’s Hyundai.

“Every now and then for a show, but it’s like a whole other city out here. I dunno, a while back I tried dating a guy who lived in Scarborough, but the commute and the fact that he would get drunk off of white rum and pre-workout, and yell, ‘Let’s go!’ when we made out—”

“That’s so embarrassing. I guess I forgot you’re still a kid.”

“No, I’m not—”

“I’m joking. You’re fine, Virginia.”

“No, I know—” It was hard to tell when he was joking.

We pulled off the highway and drove through the suburbs where all the houses looked the same. Between the identical houses, I counted four graveyards and felt really bad for everyone who died in the suburbs and was stuck there for eternity, sandwiched between unaffordable new housing developments.

“That Reed kid though, he’s a piece work, huh?” Sam asked me.

“Yeah, he’s fine. I mean, he really is a kid but he tries so hard—”

“He’s got that Napoleon complex. He’s gonna have to let that shit go.”

“Yeah, his brothers are all tall though, so I guess it’s just this constant thing.” I didn’t know why I was defending Reed or maybe not defending so much as just trying to ease Sam off him. It was like Reed was that younger brother only I could make fun of. I wanted to get back to the stupid jokes and flirting.

“Do you care about that stuff? Height? Shitty old cars?” he asked me as we pulled into the parking lot of an LCBO in a strip mall off of Kingston Road. There were two different dollar stores next to each other.

“Um, height no, not really, like…not…”

“You do!”

“No, that’s so—”

“It’s cliché, I know I know,” he said. The desired height of a cisgender male in a hetero relationship was such a played-out joke. I was surprised he’d even brought it up. Plus, he was tall. Tallish, maybe six feet. Maybe that did matter to me.

“Okay, cars then?” he continued, gesturing at the hood of the Hyundai. “Do cars matter?”

“I don’t hate the Hyundai. I don’t. I’m happy for Matt’s mom. Um, but no, really no. As long as it works, right? As long as there’s no fear of a blown-out tire or the engine exploding, it doesn’t really matter. I went on a road trip once with my ex and he blew out his A/C hose thingy—”

“You have to stop talking about your ex-boyfriends.” He was smiling, but still not joking.

“No, it was just, I hated that car because it was always hot. That’s what I was saying.”

He stared at me for a moment, and I wondered if I’d ruined everything.

“What’s your poison?” he asked, smiling at me again.

“Oh, this is the spot? The parking lot?”

“No, I just figured we’d grab some roadies and go for a walk or hit a park.”

“Yeah, no sure. Um, whatever cold beer they got. Like an amber? Kinda wintery.”

“You want beer?”

“No? I feel like you have an idea and I’m like, ‘What’s up, Sam?’ ” I was getting flustered. During the silence between sentences I could hear Dharma’s Hyundai struggling to keep the dry heat blasting.

“Why don’t I grab us a bottle. You like gin?” He was already opening the door while I answered yes, despite not liking gin very much at all. He shut the door and dropped out of sight. I leaned over and realized he was doing push-ups on the concrete beside the car. He got up after about ten, wiped his hands on his pants and went into the LCBO, not even looking back at me for acknowledgement. I looked around. There were two other people in the parking lot and they didn’t seem to be aware of what had just happened. I thought about texting Haley, but I looked around the strip mall instead and saw a little public library at the end. That made me feel better. I didn’t have any bad memories of the library, only nice ones; my mom would take me on Saturdays to sing and make crafts with those gold pins that punch through pieces of paper and the two little arms that spread apart to keep the papers together. You could make the hands of clocks and stuff out of paper. I wouldn’t tell Sam about that; he’d just call me a kid again. Plus, it seemed like he was only gone for a moment before he was back in the car, gently putting his—our—bottle of gin in the back seat and then pulling out of the parking space.

“Sorry, I could’ve come in with you and split it or something. Done a few push-ups.”

“You like that?” he asked.

“I’m just, is that a thing you do?”

“I like to keep people guessing. Oh, actually, you wanna hop over to the Dollarama and grab some chase?”

“Sure, yeah, I’ll be right back. Sorry, I should’ve just gone while you were in there—”

“We’re good, Virginia.”

“Yeah, alright, I’ll be right back. Sorry, what do you want?”

“Surprise me.” He smiled then looked at his phone.

I slid out of my seat and ran into the Dollarama next to the Everything for a Dollar store and grabbed two bottles of blue Gatorade since he said “chase” and not “mix.” I realized that was a very clear distinction and I had this sinking feeling like I used to get when I would go out with Haley, Anna, and Mags, our little high school girl group, when my mom was still alive but sick. I didn’t like being far from her, or drunk, but the only way to get rid of that sinking feeling was to get very drunk and forget how far away I was. That was my fifteen-year-old logic at least.

“You like the Bluffs?” Sam asked when I got back in the car.

“Yeah, they’re kinda terrifying, disintegrating at rapid speed, it seems, but it’s pretty. I haven’t been in forever. We’re not swimming, are we?”

“Fuck yeah, polar bear dip! No, just figured it was a nice spot.”

The road to the Bluffs cut between two small motels, the Americana and the Cuban-themed Hav-a-Nap Motel, which I figured must be a play on “Havana” after we were past it. I mouthed out trying to combine “Havana” and “Have a Nap” as we drove down a winding tree-lined road surrounded by big houses on top of the hills. We got closer to where the marina was and I saw a small lane off the street marked “Escape Lane.” I had seen tsunami escape lanes when I went to visit my dad out west a few years back and he took me to Tofino. I couldn’t figure out why someone would be worried about Lake Ontario swelling up and needing to escape its non-threatening current.

“Escape lanes for flooding?” I asked Sam. We had already zipped past the sign.

“What? Probably for ice?” he said, looking at the empty parking lot ahead beside the entrance to the Bluffs. I felt very stupid.

There was only one other car in the parking lot. I looked at the sky, still grey and motionless, and the naked young trees beside us that were permanently bent from the wind. It almost felt as if we were in the eye of a hurricane, with clouds too heavy to move and the ground littered with branches and trash that had been left behind by tourists during a much warmer season.

I followed him out of the car. As we made our way down the walkway towards the water, he kept justifying why he wanted to feel the cold, that he wanted to do something more active since he spent most of his time in small dark bars. He offered his hand when we had to sidestep giant puddles of semi-frozen mud and hop over a little current so I wouldn’t slip. Regardless of where I stepped, I seemed to keep sinking along the path. My boots looked like they were caked in cement. Sam didn’t seem to notice. There were lots of beautiful little spotted birds that I wanted to point out, but he was walking with purpose and I wanted to keep up.

“It’s weirdly more private than a bar,” I said when we got to the barren beach. The waves were carrying frozen driftwood and crashing into the hardened mixture of snow and sand on the shore, which sounded like hail hitting glass. I half expected the banks to crack open and a furious gush of Lake Ontario to pour through and fill the beach in one breath then drag us back out in another.

Sam had dusted off a log and was patting it for me to sit beside him. I was already mourning our date before it had really begun. I’d wanted so much to come of it, and here we were alone at the Bluffs in February drinking out of a brown paper bag.

He opened the gin and Gatorade and passed them to me. “Get after it.”

I drank too much because I was cold and confused and so let down. I probably chugged three or four shots of lukewarm gin.

“Alright. It’s a party.” He took a big swig himself. I stared at the bottle and thought about Dharma’s car. How much hard liquor could this guy drink and still get me home? How long would I have to wait alone at the Bluffs for an Uber?

“It’s been a while since I drank in a public park. No, that’s a lie, I drink at Bellwoods all the time, generally during the summer months. Not because I’m a hipster. It’s obviously just the park across from my apartment.” I was talking too much.

“I know, sorry. Okay, I’ll tell ya, I just felt like this pressure, in a way, that I should do something different, or fun. I dunno, I was like a bar is just…We did the bar thing, so I thought, yeah, we’ll go somewhere nice to look at and talk. Are you miserable?”

“No, no. Not gonna lie it read a little murdery at first—just looking at the facts—but it’s nice. I feel like I’m sixteen again. It’s nice.”

“I promise I won’t murder you.”

“See thank you, definitely a good start.”

He took another small sip and handed the bottle back to me. When he smiled at me, I momentarily forgot about the cold and the cheap gin and was enamoured by his stupid plan for a special date. I took another large sip, trying to impress him and to keep the cold at bay. I thought about how that was the way so many people died—they got so drunk they passed out in the cold and died of hypothermia. He said he wouldn’t murder me though, and leaving me to die seemed akin to murder so…I felt safe.

“God, I wouldn’t want to be sixteen again. Or maybe for a second, now that I think I’m a bit funnier. Just eviscerate Yung Pai. Coolest Asian I’ve ever met. In Whitby. Hated me, but just a force,” he said.

“Is that true?” I liked joking with him, but I felt like if we were going to expedite this process of falling in love, we should say something of actual substance to one another.

“Nah, he wasn’t cool, I was. Sixteen was okay. Age is weird, man. Like I’m just getting hot. I’ve been doing this like almost twenty years—twenty years next year I’ll have been doing stand-up since I was eighteen. And everyone’s so excited now I got a couple shows. I got a special, right? I’m happy, but god I feel old. And it’s all happening now, so there’s this energy and I…I guess I wouldn’t have been ready at twenty though. When you think everything’s gonna happen for you after your first five at Yuk’s.”

I did the math quickly in my head. I hadn’t thought he was thirty-seven. He looked much younger—well, at least early thirties. I felt like there was a separate conversation in my head, two sides of my brain arguing, He’s handsome and funny but…a lot older than me but…he’s my peer and we get along but…it’s freezing and I hate being cold and my fingers are losing their ability to bend at will, and I couldn’t stop this conversation, so I just kinda nodded at Sam and when he smiled at me the voices in my head shut up for a second and I was back to hoping he’d hold my hands and warm them and it’d be okay.

“Luckily you don’t look old at all. And yeah, maybe the world wasn’t ready for you at twenty. But it’s good, it’s like, you’ve made it!” I said.

“I haven’t made it. This isn’t—I will though. I got a few things in the pipeline.”

“Is it a secret?”

He smiled again and just like that took my hands and shimmied them in between his. Then he kissed me.

“You still okay?” he asked and I nodded. “What about you, Virginia? What’s ‘making it’ to you?”

“I don’t know. I’d like to record an album, definitely just like, you know, get all my feathers in my cap. Just For Laughs, The Debaters, the festivals. I’m with Yuk’s now, and they were saying like it’d be a good idea to record an album once I have a solid full hour, so just getting that into place.”

“And that’s it?”

“No, just that’s the—”

“That’s Canada done right there.”

“Yeah.” He let go of my hands and was encouraging me to take the bottle again.

“So then just do the circuit like Marty and these old fucks?” he asked.

“No, I think I’d like to try the States, just trying to figure it out legally right, like obviously LA or New York—”

“You gotta be figuring that shit out now though and get that money together. You gotta be booking shows and flying out.”

I didn’t know when our date had turned into a mentoring session. I didn’t like being lectured. I looked into his eyes and followed the lines around them, which I must’ve missed in the basement bar two nights ago. I could’ve easily defended myself and told him about my dead mother and the money she left that was in my lawyer’s pocket, but instead I said, “Yeah, I get there, at least New York like once—”

“See, that’s the thing. That’s the problem I feel like—and fuck, I sound old—but every new comedian is just trying to do the social media game and no one’s fucking hungry. Like ready to just grind it out in the States. It’s brutal compared to Canada. Like Canada’s nice; you get your Yuk’s tours and then you go south and it’s like, okay, start over. You think you can start over? Alone, poor, grinding it out?”

“I think I’m very—” The alcohol was forcing me to slow down when I spoke, and he kept jumping at every opportunity to cut in.

“I don’t know, Virginia. I don’t know if you’re a killer. And I see it every day, these kids come out, get their album, get their showcase, and three years later they’re like managing a Jack Astor’s doing comedy twice a month when Yuk’s calls. You got anything else going on? You’re doing dance?”

“No, why would I do dance?”

“I thought you said that.” He took another small sip.

I stared out at the water. If I squinted, I could make the thick grey masses of sky and lake blend together. Or if I looked to my right, I could watch for signs that the bluffs were starting to buckle and cave in on themselves, but they too were just a solid mass, immovable. I couldn’t hear the pretty spotted birds, only the sludge of the lake rolling onto the sand and Sam clearing his throat and spitting in front of our feet. I was starting to feel sick and wanted to cry, but only because I wished I told him I was a dancer.

“I act too.”

“Yeah, it’s one and the same though. How you gonna get out?”

I wasn’t sure if he was testing me, and I was too drunk to come up with something that would sound like what he wanted to hear. So I changed my mind and told him, maybe not even to defend myself but just so he would be nice to me. Exploit my own tragedy. I was going to puke.

“Well, my mom died so I have her money now. I mean, it’s my money so…I’m not gonna manage a Jack Astor’s.”

“Shit, sorry.” He didn’t seem sorry for my loss. He seemed sorry he had offended me by suggesting I get into restaurant management. Like he was pissed off I had snapped back at him and disproved whatever point he was trying to make. He paused for a moment, and the wave of annoyance that had washed over him soon dissipated. He turned to me and grinned.

“You’re funny, though, I’ll give you that. You’re fucking funny. Beyond that ‘Oh you’re funny for a girl.’ Like you’re just funny. So, who knows, keep doing that.” He took my hand again and kissed my forehead, pulling me into him.

“You cold?” he asked as I petted his suede jacket.

“Yeah. Actually, I have to pee.” I hadn’t realized how badly I had to pee until that moment. My stomach felt warm and full, but once again I was on the verge of tears thinking about how I would unbutton my pants with my frozen fingers even if I did find a washroom.

“You wanna get going?” he asked.

“Yeah, to pee.”

He held me steady as we walked the muddy path back towards the car. I slipped a bit and felt humiliated because I was quite drunk. I thought that if I could pee and get in his warm car again, maybe that would sober me up and we could salvage this date or at least try again after a nap and thaw. We stopped at the parking lot; I thought I saw those birds again. He left me swaying in the wind while he ran towards the building marked “Bluffer’s Park West Washrooms.” I watched him pull at the locked door, then turn back to me, shrugging.

“No go.”

“In February!?” It was supposed to come off as funny, but my voice sounded pretty desperate. He gave me a sheepish grin as he ran back, which made me feel bad, but the fact remained I needed to pee.

“There’s gotta be an east washroom,” I said, looking beyond him, trying not to do that little hop and dance children do when they need to go to the bathroom.

“Why don’t we get warmed up and drive to a coffee shop or something, grab a cup and have a slash? Unless you wanna go feral and hit a bush.”

I nodded in his general direction, but it was hard to tell which one of my eyes was leading the charge vision-wise. He got into the driver’s seat and started the car while I waited for him to lean over and unlock my door. Then he got out and climbed into the back seat, pushing the back door open towards me, waving me in.

“Am I gonna lie here while you drive?” I asked, drunk and confused and barely containing my bladder.

“Nah, let’s warm up a bit first, eh?”

I got in next to him. He began to pull me closer to him and hold my body tight. I only felt how much I was shivering once I was up against his solid arms. He’d never struck me as someone that felt so sturdy; he gave the impression of being soft like I should melt into him, not be caged between his bicep and chest. I guessed it was all those push-ups he did.

“You feeling better?” He was trying to make eye contact but I was too embarrassed by my total inebriation so I burrowed into his chest nodding, hoping that meant yes, we can go now. Instead, he kissed the top of my head and only started to loosen his grip on my body to slide his hand under my sweater while the other one pulled my legs on top of him. The hand that was under my sweater retreated and he grabbed my hair into a ponytail, jerking my head back so he could kiss me. We both tasted like gin and the faint aftertaste of blue Gatorade, which didn’t age well, and I thought if I didn’t piss myself, I’d most likely throw up.

“Let’s just take, let’s take a sec—”

“You okay?” he asked me.

“Yeah—” I began and then he started unbuttoning my jeans and pulling them down from the waistband, which was made harder by the fact that I was clenching everything to control my bladder.

“I have to pee—”

“We’ll get you there.”

He still had one hand wrapped up in my hair, pulling me backwards as he shimmied on top of me in the back of Dharma’s Hyundai. Finally, he pulled my skinny jeans down towards my knees and jammed two fingers into my vagina.

“Wait one sec—” His cold fingers remained static in me while I tried to prop up my body with an elbow but then he kissed me again, slugging his tongue around my mouth while he started fingering me in the same way my first boyfriend did at fifteen—badly. He stopped after about a minute and I could feel my stomach shaking from being clenched in a crescent shape trying to fit in this stupid fucking car, and for a second I thought it was over and that maybe we’d both laugh and never speak of it again, but then he took out his dick just kinda overtop of his jeans.

I was looking at the roof of the car in a moment of stone-cold sobriety, wondering if he was going to kill me and how stupid that would be but also how I wasn’t going to fight because…I didn’t know why, I just wasn’t gonna.

“Can we stop for a second?” I asked him right before he buried his head into my neck while trying to put his penis in me. It was as if my arms had lost any strength and I was trying to propel my hips underneath him to bump him off me just enough to breathe.

“What’s that move?” he asked. I made the mistake of looking at him and he smiled, and there was the tongue again, gagging me from speaking, except for a few moments between breaths when I was sure I gasped “stop” in maybe not a defiant way, just a suggestive way, but then he was in me. Because I couldn’t be kissed by him anymore, I let him pull my head back till I could almost see out the top of the back window and felt his nose wet with cold snot on the nape of my neck, while he kept agreeing with himself and thrusting. It seemed useless to acknowledge the pain from holding my bladder, and even though he couldn’t see it or did and ignored it, I shook my head when I started to leak a bit of urine and he mistook that for my experiencing pleasure and that just spurred him on and made him say “yeah, yeah” again to which I know I said at least one audible “no.”

It was like the only time I understood meditation. Like my mind was empty not in a drunk way, just in like…sleep mode, like a computer, just taking a break for self-preservation. At the same time, it was like everything felt bigger than it should’ve been. The weird water stain on the ceiling, the feeling of the fabric seats and the pattern of the grey textiles that must’ve been the rage back in ’08 but reminded me of the seats on the 29 Dufferin bus. Looking at where the black rubber met the glass of the window and knowing that was the coldest part of the car and thinking about looking out of car windows and feeling that cold strip when I was kid and I was safe. And then feeling empty again because I couldn’t think about being a kid when I was having sex, and I couldn’t think about having sex or calling it having sex when it didn’t feel like…I just wouldn’t call it that. His thumbnail dug into my hip and I felt his belt buckle in my thigh, and all the reminders of my existence in the back seat of the car came and went in a cycle of being present and being very far away. Then he pulled his penis out and pulled my shirt up to below my bra line and ejaculated on my stomach. That was when it was hardest not to cry. His semen was warm and landed erratically, and I tried to keep my stomach from expanding or concaving so as not to disturb it.

“You good?” he asked as he reached towards the back of the car seat, looking for something to wipe up.

“Mmhmm.” By now he had dislodged his other hand from my hair, and I pushed my head against the window to try and feel that cold strip. He was cleaning up with some sort of light brown napkin situation and missed the cum that had pooled in my belly button. He pulled my shirt back down “for me,” and backed up out of the back seat pulling his pants up, leaving me lying with my vagina exposed while I tried to pull my jeans over my clammy bright red thighs and hips. Then he offered me his hand to help me get up and walked me back to the front passenger side, opening the door and saying, “M’lady.”

“Coffee?” he asked once we were both in the car.

I kept feeling the back of my head as if his hand had caused more harm pulling my hair than a hammer would to the back of the skull.

“Umm—”

“You have to pee.” We were heading out of the parking lot and my stomach began to cramp again.

“Mhmm.”

“Should I just get you home, jump on the Lakeshore to streamline this thing? Rather than look for a coffee shop and parking—”

“Yeah.”

“Are you mad I said stream?” He squeezed my thigh and I politely smiled, shaking my head.

“Are you drunk?” he asked me.

I nodded, staring straight ahead.

“Shit, I thought you lady comics could put ’em back a bit better. You’re out four, five nights a week and got no tolerance?” He was trying to be funny or trying to excuse himself. Instead of being angry, I was embarrassed.

“Usually I’ve had three meals, a snack—”

“Okay, okay. Next time we’ll wait till sundown.” He put on a song through his iPhone. I didn’t know what it was, which was weird because I knew most songs, the popular ones, but still no one listened to unpopular songs unless they were trying to prove something. He sang along while I tried to concentrate on not peeing myself and hoping he’d drive faster and faster and my mind would go back into sleep mode until I got home. But there was more small talk that he and I felt obligated to have in between songs.

“And here we are.” He pulled up to the wrong side of the street between the lights. I immediately got out.

“You need help?” he yelled from his seat. I wondered if instead of waiting for a break in traffic, I should just risk it.

“No, just gotta—” I was trying to do a bathroom motion without further humiliating myself.

“Come here.” I did as he said, and he pulled me through his open window to give me a kiss. “Be safe, I’ll see you later?”

I shrugged and smiled at him, and the only miracle of the day was that there was a break in traffic just then, so I ran.

—

By the time I Reached our apartment door, I had already started to pee my pants. I was trying to suppress any outcry from my drunken self, my hands were shaking while I searched for my key and some dexterity to open the door. I got in and ran to the washroom before I heard Haley yell at me.

“V?”

“Yeah! One sec!”

I was trying to balance over the toilet in vain, trying to contain whatever fluids were still falling out of me while peeling off my pants. The combination of hot urine on cold denim felt like I was tearing the skin off my legs. I finally threw them and my underwear in a corner of the bathroom, then sat on the toilet, folded over and exhausted. There was a soft knock on the door.

“How’d it go?”

“I’m shitting, Haley.”

I heard her walk away, but not back into her bedroom. She was waiting for me on the couch or somewhere close by.

I was trying to weigh my options. I couldn’t exactly walk out of the bathroom with her waiting there and me, pant-less and holding my piss-stained clothes, trying to explain myself. I could, but it’d be a whole thing. I opted for the shower. I hated showering drunk. I felt like the heat and alcohol would overwhelm me and I’d faint and die. I know that mostly happens in the bathtub, and with the additional presence of opioids, but something about hot water and booze seemed risky to me. I wished Haley would go to her room instead of waiting so eagerly for me to share the details with her. I took my time washing out the semen from my belly button and letting my extremities regain function. I even washed my hair and told myself I’d apply lotion afterwards to my shaved legs and I would feel better.

While I dried myself, I kept the shower on and threw my jeans over the drain to let the water pool over them and rinse the piss away. Then I rung them out carefully and hung them to dry. I hid my wet underwear under the folded-over section of my towel and opened the bathroom door.

“I fell in mud,” I told her.

Haley was leaning on the back of the couch. “What?”

“I fell in mud.” It should’ve been self-explanatory. I showered because I fell in mud. That’s why my pants were wet and there shouldn’t be follow-up questions.

“Where did you fall in mud?” she asked.

“We did this whole park thing, the flubs. Bluffs.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay?” She wasn’t doing anything wrong by asking, but I’d never wanted her to disappear more than now. To spontaneously combust.

“Yeah, I’m gonna get dressed.”

She was still waiting for me, and I didn’t want to keep prolonging the inevitable conversation she wanted to have so I put on loose pajamas and walked to the kitchen, got a glass of water and sat on the couch she was still leaning on, all while I felt her watching me, until I finally met her eyes and smiled like everything was just peachy fucking keen.

“What’s up?” I asked her.

“Did it go well?”

“I don’t know, Haley.”

“You seem fucked up.”

“That’s the alcohol, innit?” I thought talking with a British accent might help lighten things up.

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

“What?”

“From the fall?”

“No.”

She came over to sit beside me and I worried I was going to hit her. I wasn’t a violent person, and she wasn’t the type of person I would ever want to strike—her small hands and constant complaints of backaches made her bones seem soft. When we were in school we once dissolved chicken bones in vinegar to see what happened, so when someone described themselves as having bird bones, i.e., hollow bones, I thought of Haley and how somehow her bones were rubberized and hollow like the bones from grade ten biology.

“Virginia, I’m just worried you’re not okay.”

“Okay.”

“So can you tell me you are?”

“Haley, I am fan-fucking-tastic.”

“But what happened?”

“We went out, he bought a shitty bottle of gin, we went to the Bluffs—”

“The Bluffs? Outside?”

“Yuh.”

“Okay, and then?”

“Aaaaand then?” I started to quote the movie Dude, Where’s My Car?, hoping we’d fall into our routine of quoting terrible movies.

“V.”

“Then we drank the shitty gin. And uhhhh hooked up. In a car.”

“Was that—”

“Not great.” I couldn’t not tell her the truth, some version of it, but if she stopped asking questions, I doubted I would ever speak of it again. She knew that, though, the importance of time. Because she knew how I shut down when things got bad and became a disassociated robot incapable of telling a lie, but only able to tell the hard truth one step removed.

“Did you want to hook up?”

“Not so much.”

“Did you tell him that?”

I couldn’t look at her, but I could feel her shaking, her unblinking eyes ready to sob over my…I didn’t know what to call it. Thing.

“I did. I uh, yeah, I did. So. That’s a shame.” I realized I was the one shaking and couldn’t quite stomach the water I was holding so intuitively I passed it to Haley, and she took it carefully and placed it on the coffee table.

“V.”

“Win some, lose some.” I tried to smile at her as I said it, but then she hugged me so tightly and her rubber bones blanketed with warm flesh wrapped around me and I wondered when she got so strong that she could hold me without letting me escape until I found myself snorting back tears. She let go and went to get me a tissue. She was crying harder than I was, which generally I would be annoyed at, but I was so grateful we were two idiots crying midday together.

“So should we call someone?” she asked when she came back with tissue and tried to wipe my tears, which made me laugh. I took the tissue from her.

“I got it, thank you. No. I don’t know. Who do you wanna call, Haley?” I had stopped crying but she was still rubbing my back and I felt sick with embarrassment.

“The police?” She said it so seriously I had to laugh.

“Sting?! What are the police gonna say? ‘You got drunk and hooked up with a dude, got a ride home, made plans for later and now you’re fucking—’ ”

“A policeman wouldn’t swear at you.”

“You hate the cops!” I was mad at her again and hoped yelling would scare her small hand off my back.

“I do hate the cops.” She finally sat back and removed her hand. “I just feel so sad.”

“You feel sad?” I asked.

“Yeah. Like, what do we do?”

“Nothing. Move the fuck on. I’d like to eat.”

“Can you eat?”

“Nope, ha.” I started to cry again because I was so mad at being drunk and hungry but unable to consume anything. I was trying to calm myself down enough to not vomit.

“I’ll put on a show.” She turned on the TV and didn’t move after that, didn’t speak. She just sat there with me.

I kept wondering how to tell her thank you for sitting quietly beside me without drawing attention to the fact that I needed that so much. Just for her to sit there as an invisible prop so I didn’t liquefy and melt to the floor. She chose the movie Jackass, which was a brilliant choice on her part. It made it easier to stop crying and to forget about how to breathe. I didn’t do it, but I wanted so much to just squeeze her hand in some forceful act of saying I love you, I love you, I love you, thank you.

CHAPTER 6

In the three days post thing, I’d like to think I acted quite normal. Not so normal that Haley should just forget about it and treat it as a non-thing, but normal enough that in the twenty-four hours post thing she stopped gently asking how I was and trying to play therapist. I stayed in bed mostly. That’s not true; once I was sober enough, I went to Shoppers Drug Mart to buy Plan B and told myself I’d do all the right things like make a doctor’s appointment to make sure Sam hadn’t given me chlamydia. I went to the gym and made the usual small talk with my friends in class—how much we hated burpees, that we were relieved to be doing dumbbell snatches and not kettlebells. I kept telling myself everything felt heavy because I wasn’t eating enough protein, not because everything was just generally heavy. I waited, pretending to be asleep while Haley got ready for work. She’d rarely gone to work two days in a row since her breakdown, but I think it was less depressing for her to work retail than to try and not talk to me about my feelings. Once I was sure she’d gone I’d make coffee and sit for a long time. I learned a new word: murmuration, and I tried to make that word so much more important to me than one single word should be. But it sounded so nice in my mouth and described something so wonderful, I became obsessed with trying to use it in a sentence. For a few hours I thought I should try and write a poem about birds and movement and I stared at the sky and got really sad again because it was the same sky since and during the thing and it seemed really cruel that the sky should make me so sad. Something that’s always everywhere shouldn’t make a person sad. I thought of the boxes of my mother’s things ready to be sorted out; at least those were in a basement, not hanging outside of my window reminding me at some point I’d need to unpack it all and…What did I say to Haley? Move the fuck on. Next to the beginnings of a short poem about birds and their murmurations, I wrote that I’d discovered the key to not being depressed is to never leave your house ever. Just close all the curtains, block out all the light, and descend so deep into darkness and isolation that when you finally come out of it you’ll be so desperate for the world that you’ll forgive the sky and find joy in the birds and takeout coffee and everything else you once used to.

Sam didn’t text me the night of the thing to see if I was going to come out. Instead, he texted four days later to say, “Hi stranger!” I got the text when I was at the gym, my supposed “safe place” outside of my apartment. I felt so reachable, in a bad way. Here was this reminder that at any point, not just when I had steeled myself and sat comfortably in my bed, he could text me. It all seemed so senseless. Like he wasn’t dangerous but my first thought was Yeah, nowhere is safe from this guy. And then I kept fucking up my lifts because I was constantly looking over at my phone to see if it had lit up again, and it didn’t so I’d go back to the weights and my legs would start shaking and I’d sit back down again and look at my phone.

I wanted to answer him, say something interesting or funny or justify the way I was feeling about everything so that he would be like, Whoa, yeah, I fucked up incredibly and irrevocably, and somehow he would say the perfect thing that would make it okay. I responded, “You again?” and then Sam replied, “Haha, you going to the Danforth tonight? I’m gonna do a new ten.” I had to leave the gym because I was going to cry. I told the coach leading the class that my shoulder was off and I’d see him next week. I walked down Shaw Street tearing up and sweating, trying to catch my breath and looking incredulously at the sky like, What the fuck?

Haley was home because it was Monday and she always requested Mondays off wherever she worked because she thought it removed the pressure of the Sunday scaries. I burst into the apartment while she was sitting on the couch painting her nails with Drag Race on in the background.

“Home,” I told her, while I began taking off my jacket and boots. I had managed to stop crying and could chalk up the redness in my face to the cold and sweat.

“Did you lift the most weight?”

“Always. Dwayne the Rock who?” I said to her back, gulping down water in the kitchen.

“Would you sleep with him?”

“What?”

“Would you sleep with the Rock? He’s such a big movie star now, but is he actually like sexy? I don’t think so.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer. On the one hand, it wasn’t the worst question—I’d brought up the Rock and it was something to ponder on a Monday. On the other hand, it hadn’t been a week since the whole thing and I just felt like any sort of sex talk should be shelved. But then I wondered, Why? Like sex is sex, right? I don’t know. I still couldn’t catch my breath.

“No,” I told her.

“Right? Just not sexy.” She was blowing on her fingernails.

“Sam texted me,” I said, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

She turned to me. “Why? What did he say?” Her hands were clawed with her fingers wide apart so as to not upset the still-wet polish.

“Just hi and if I was going to a show tonight.”

“What the fuck? Did you tell him to fuck off?” the T. Rex asked me.

“No, I didn’t say anything. About the show. I promised the girls I’d meet them, Nia and Claire are running their showcase sets but…I dunno. Don’t really feel like grabbing a beer with him.”

“You have to tell someone, like the promoter or something, not to let him in.” She was blowing on her nails.

“Thought maybe I’d just do a bit about it, like, ‘So Sam Lappano raped me. That’s kinda weird, right? Anyone got a birthday out there?’ ”

Haley stared at me. It was the first time I had used the word “rape.” Not thing. Because was it a rape? By textbook definition didn’t I say no? But then it was like, it seemed so nothing. Not nothing, it was terrible and humiliating, but I kept going back to like whether in some way I had made it okay and if that was the case then was it…cause rape was such a finite word, right? If I thought of the “r” in murmuration, it was soft and wrapped around you with its comforting repetition of u’s and m’s. But in rape, the “r” demanded an aggressive clenching of the jaw, and the nasally “a” with the punch of the “p” was all so hardcore. You had to almost spit it out because otherwise the “a” would stick to your tongue and you’d be chewing on that word for days. Sexual assault moved up and down and gave you time to breathe in between the syllables. It wasn’t definitive; it didn’t put you into the one and only box that rape did. An onomatopoeia. A word that sounded like its meaning. The word “rape” was a good example by way of a real fucking shitty thing.

“You could.” She folded her hands gently one on top of the another, exposing all her nails.

“Yeah, I could do a lot of things.”

“Or text him and see if you can get something in writing?”

“Like a confession? Actually, no, I am gonna go to the show tonight wearing a wire. Entrap that man. Get Olivia Benson and the crew up from New York, have Ice-T lay a little SVU smack talk on Sam, cause he’ll act all cocky and then Ice-T will be like, ‘Let’s see if you’re still smiling in the pen—’ ”

“Virginia, I’m trying to help you! Stop making me feel like an idiot!”

“You are an idiot!”

We were silent again. I just wanted her to get mad back but instead she started to cry.

“You’re not an idiot,” I said.

“It’s like you don’t get the pressure that this whole place is right now. Like I’m finally starting to feel, not even okay, just manageable, and then it’s like this happens and you won’t do anything, so it’s like on me to…help you.” She was crying with her claws up again, how long did nail polish take to dry?

“I don’t want help. I’ll never talk about it again—”

“No, V, that’s not what I meant,” she said.

I sat down beside her. “I’m sorry.” I kinda meant it.

“We both have these traumas, and I can’t take yours on. I’m worried for you and myself, that like there are no boundaries.”

I exhaled for a long time, trying to figure out how to answer in a way that wasn’t malicious. I didn’t want to invalidate her traumas by asking what the fuck they were. I never understood how I could be so mean to someone in my head and so motivated to gain back their favour at the same time.

“I think you’re right,” I told her. “I just need outlets. And you can’t take this on, so let’s just like…put a pin in our respective stuff, and just try and find peace.”

“Okay, thank you for understanding and listening to me.”

“Yeah…it’s not my worst idea.”

“What?” she asked.

“Maybe not implicating Sam obviously, like being like Sam Lappano dun dun, but like doing a bit. This isn’t a bit, me talking about writing a bit. I’m saying me actually writing a bit about the whole thing.”

“It’s not funny.”

“Well, no. But that’s kinda my call, right? So fuck him, and I’m gonna do it. Rape comedy. It’s coming…with or without consent.” I tried to mime the ba dum dum chh drum sound.

“It’s not funny,” Haley repeated.

“It’ll get there,” I said. “I’m gonna shower. I’m gonna go support my friends, it’s my right, right? Are you going out tonight?”

“Yeah,” Haley said, motioning to her nails.

“Dope. Well, good.”

In the shower I got upset trying to revisit all of Haley’s traumas. Her brothers’ bullying when they were children, coupled with her mother’s indifference to it. Her first boyfriend becoming a conspiracy theorist. Bami. I don’t doubt it was hard, any of it. I just thought she was making her life out to be harder than it actually was. Because I knew her. She was brave and adaptable. I learned those skills from her. But then she wasn’t, and it was like she took one Intro to Psych class and…it was like confirmation bias for why she wasn’t where she was supposed to be. At twenty-two. And she leaned into her depression and compounded her frustration and disappointment with her life and here we were. I felt so fucking lonely.

—

I decided to drive to the Danforth, which would give me a good excuse not to drink or stay late, but it took so long to find parking I arrived late. It was a full room. Dylan was already onstage opening. He was a solid opener. He looked like John Belushi with the lovable idiot affect to match. I walked behind the pool table at the back of the room, where Addy, Claire, and Nia were standing at a tall table close to the bar. The back part of the room was sectioned off by a short partition behind the last row of chairs and was reserved for patrons not interested in comedy or live music, depending on the night. It was also reserved for the night’s comics who didn’t want to sit with the audience members and watch the same five minutes they’d seen everyone work on for the past four months.

Addy waved me over. I paused to make sure Sam wasn’t leaning against the bar or standing in the shadows at another tall table closer to the back and quickly beelined it to her table.

“Are you on tonight?” Addy asked at a full-volume whisper.

“No, just came out,” I mouthed to her.

She pushed a dark beer towards me. “This is gross. Do you want it?”

I laughed at her sales pitch.

“It’s too dark; it’s like blood,” she tried to justify.

“Sure.” I took her stout and she slid around me to get a lighter beer at the bar. I figured one beer would be good for appearances, casual like, nothing out of the ordinary.

Nia came and hugged me from behind, and Claire squeezed my hand. It wasn’t unusual for our schedules to keep us from seeing each other for a few weeks, but it felt like it had been ages and I missed them, even though I’d seen Nia a week ago. Haley didn’t really get along with my comic friends, so I kept them separate, my two worlds.

“Did you find your scarf?” I asked Nia. She was pulling a string of her curly mane away from her lip gloss. She looked exactly the same as she had when I saw her at Comedy Bar, with her heeled brown boots and tight vest over a puffy white shirt and blue skinny jeans.

“Fuck no, did you get Bounty?”

She always sounded like she had been screaming for the past seven years of her life but hadn’t completely lost her voice.

“No, not absorbent enough,” I responded.

Claire made a sad face at me. She and I were also close. She was one of the few people I enjoyed being silent around. She was a completely different person onstage, girlier, more illuminated; offstage she was almost shy. She had dyed red hair and dressed in impossibly cute patterns and high-waisted skirts and ballet flats, a look that lent shock value to very raunchy sets. Addy was raunchy both on- and offstage, she was often regaling us with some pegging story or make-out train at a Bat Mitzvah she had at fourteen with other kids her age. Claire and Addy were both very open about being gay, and Nia was very open about her distaste for her own vagina, let alone the vaginas of others, yet we worked well as a group and I couldn’t remember ever getting side texts from any of them complaining about the other. If we had a grievance, we would generally passively air it out after a few beers and after-show darts, and then kinda apologize through text the following morning.

“God, I’m never more depressed than when I’m ovulating,” Nia said.

“You’re always kinda depressed,” Addy told her, returning with a better beer.

“No, I’m always a bitch but I’m thrilled about it. It’s when I’m ovulating I have no gumption. I don’t wanna get up there and talk about fucking anything.” Nia cheersed Addy while watching Patrick, who had just got onstage to tell a story about how he lost a tooth during a threesome that quickly turned into an interrogation of who swallowed the tooth.

“Nia, you tall beautiful Italian stallion.” Matt had walked up to us. I hadn’t seen him come in and didn’t know if that meant Sam was close by, so I froze while he and Nia traded barbs.

“Shut the fuck up. What do you want?” Nia said, looking around the room. Nia rarely made eye contact; she was always looking for something or someone. You could have an entire lunch with her and not once meet her sightline. I was used to it, but it drove Claire crazy.

“You wanna do my show at the end of March?” Matt asked.

“Course I do. Wait, who’s on it? Am I headlining?” Nia took another drink and looked at the host, who was signalling she was up next.

“We could talk about that—” Matt was almost yelling to her back. She nodded towards the stage but it was really in response to Matt as if to say, “Yeah, I’m fucking headlining.”

Matt turned to me. “You had a good time, eh V?”

“What?”

“At my show? You killed.”

“Yeah, yeah, it was fun. She should headline though,” I told him, taking a swig of beer. The more I drank of Addy’s gross beer, the more I tasted the notes of blood from the iron-rich brew.

“She will. I had to give that last spot to Sam, you know. You guys hit it off, huh? Two peas in a pod?” he said, emphasizing a wink and feigning an elbowing of my side.

“Yeah, he’s funny.”

Matt smiled. “Plus you got to take a ride in Dharma’s Hyundai.”

He knew everything. Not everything—a version of everything that wasn’t true, and he would always know it about Sam and me no matter what I said next. I had never talked to Matt about anything other than comedy. Now, with his pointed remarks, I saw him differently. He was judging me. I was no longer his peer; I was a punchline.

“It’s a good car.” I wanted to punctuate that comment with another sip of beer, but I was afraid I would immediately hork it back up.

Nia was being introduced onstage. I saw Matt turn, and out of the corner of my eye I could see him wave at someone. I tried to force myself to focus on Nia, screaming laughter at each punchline as if my life depended on it.

“Alright, let me make this easy on a lot of you men and women who like women. Don’t talk to the lady you’d like to get intimate with in any other way but so fucking boringly normal. Because as soon as you think you’re being sexy, you think you’ve come up with a line that’s just chef’s kiss number one, panty-dropper password, you’ve already fucked up. Just talk fucking normal. I had a guy, he liked it rough…Yeah, yeah, I see you nodding front row, you fucking pervert…Yeah, he liked it rough and one night, he called me on the way over, said he wanted to get me all fired up. Fine. This guy said he was gonna grab me and drag me by the hair to the bedroom, and oh baby I was gonna be so excited I was gonna leave a snail trail…” Nia began.

I could feel Sam walking up to me, smell his brown suede coat, and hear him sniffing loudly to announce his presence.

I laughed, forcing myself to stay dialed in to Nia.

“That was the line—he was committed to that line! I had another guy, whole different guy—oh my god she’s a slut, pay attention—a whole other guy tell me he can’t wait to taste…all my juices. He did not say both juices, as in ass and pussy, but all. Like…all? All my juices? Like I’m a fucking winery and have different varietals to sample? Look, I’m a pretty easy lay but I’m not a mixed-berry punchbowl! You make your way down there and you get one juice, buddy. You get what you get and you don’t get upset. So I’m still single, hoarding my juices from these fucking clowns on the apps. But this year I was so fucking excited, you guys. I got this email Valentine from this unknown sender, and I know, I know, spam whatever. But the subject line was like, ‘I know it’s a hard day, let’s support each other.’ Which again, I know I know, hard…like is this just a dick? Is this another unsolicited penis? So I clicked cause I’m desperate, and you guys, it was an email from Assisted Endings. Which, if you don’t know what that is, it’s a company that helps you kill people who no longer have any sort of quality of life. Like this company, about a month back, they killed my grandma. It’s fine. You look sad over there, but she was old as shit and we asked them to do it! She was part of it too, very on board with the whole mercy kill. But on Valentine’s Day…they decided now would be the best time to ask if we—my family and I all received this email—could give them a shout-out or a glowing Yelp review.”

“Hey,” Sam whispered, interrupting my intense focus on Nia’s joke. Usually I loved this joke. It was old but she reworked it because we’d just passed Valentine’s Day. It really happened though. Sometimes it’s easy being a comedian when normal people just insert their absurdity into your life. Jokes write themselves. I smiled quickly at Sam. He would have to understand that I was watching Nia. I was a good audience member and friend, and he should fuck off and die. It was a very nuanced smile.

But Sam was there and it was killing me. I told myself this wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened to me. Then I thought about my mom, and wondered if we should’ve let her go earlier. If Dale and I were cruel in letting her expire slowly into a thin pale corpse. How in the moment when they were taking her body away and cleaning her room, Dale asked if we should tip the cleaners and I thought it was weirdly funny. When we went to check and confirmed the cleaners did do a good job, he then commented that there was no smell. And that was finally when I cried—because there wasn’t any smell. No chemicals or lemony reminder covering up the stench of human excrement and death. Just empty-room smell. I told Dale not to tip the cleaners because I was so mad the room didn’t smell like anything or anyone, and he said he already had and that he was sorry and I yelled at him that that was a stupid thing to have done. I’ve never felt so bad for yelling at anyone like I yelled at Dale. I didn’t think about that ever, calling him stupid, except now with Sam standing behind me and Nia talking in front of me about Yelp reviews, and I thought for a second I was losing my mind.

“Is a review really necessary?” Nia continued. “Like are there bad reviews out there that we didn’t know about that they’re trying to bury? They had one job—kill her. How many unsatisfied customers are out there who are just like…you know, They tried all sorts of ways but could not get the job done. The guy they sent ended up vomiting in the back, asking for a shot of whiskey to calm his nerves. Like do you really need a Yelp review to vouch for you? One job. Kill a person. Do it good. Hitmen have worked for years by word of mouth. Why do I, on the loneliest of days, having turned away snail and juice guys, have to go online and write, Yeah, they snuffed out Gram-Gram real good. No mess. Ten out of ten. Would hire again to kill more family members.”

“How you doing?” Sam leaned in closer and I felt his warm breath on my neck. His tone was sweet and sincere. I wanted to turn around and hug him and have him say sorry and we would be fine and I wouldn’t be sad about memories of Dharma’s Hyundai all because his tone invited me to relax and trust him again.

“Yeah” was all I could say.

“Yeah?” He smiled at me and for the first time since he’d arrived, I met his eyes and then it was like I knew he knew and he was still smiling at me and I’d never felt so small in my entire life. If I didn’t leave now I would fly into a fit of hysterics, screaming in tongues on the floor. So I just gave him another quick smile and left. I walked out of the bar and straight to my car like I was in some bad opening to a true crime procedural, certain there was someone—Sam?—right behind me, waiting to put his hand over my mouth. But no one followed me and I went on autopilot, driving straight home without any music or even remembering if I blew through any red lights. And then I was home, looking at my phone and the incoming text messages from my confused friends, and I heard Haley yell out from her room, “How was the show?”

“Sam was indeed there,” I yelled back. I didn’t want to have this conversation but couldn’t stop myself.

I heard her get up, and I stood in the entrance with my coat and shoes still on so she could witness me in all my fucked-up glory.

She opened her bedroom door. “Are you good?” she asked, leaning against the frame.

“No, I’m not good. And I know I said I wouldn’t talk about it, but like fuck. Fuck that sucked. I have no other words. It was just…like he was fine. He was just there chillin’, having a beer and fucking…just chill. And Matt knew—”

“Which one’s Matt?”

“He’s nice, I guess, I thought, unless Sam was like, ‘Hey Matt, I raped V in your mom’s car’ and he was like, ‘Oh cool cool, I’ll bring that up to her—’ ”

“Matt knows you were raped?” Haley asked.

“No fuck, but he like insinuated he knew we hooked up in his mom’s car, so Sam obviously told him we did and now it’s like…oh, we just hooked up. Like great, I’m just some D-list comedy starfucker idiot, I dunno. Fuck. That’s it, right? He’s gonna go back to LA and it’ll be fine and I’m sorry for…interrupting—”

“I think you should go to the cops.” She was trying to sound stern. The voice of reason in her bright pink underwear with cut-outs at the hips and a thrifted T-shirt she was overly proud of because it had Sesame Street characters smoking a blunt on it.

“Part of me wants to get very drunk,” I told her, finally taking off my coat and boots. I was freezing. Maybe I was getting sick. My body’s response to constant adrenaline dumps.

“That’s not a good idea.”

“No? I feel like at this point like, is it enough now? I got through the mom thing, fine, whatever, but like, the rape? I feel like I’ve earned a biiiit of alcoholism. Like that would be understandable just to kinda fuck off and get real messed up for a bit. I’ll do meth even. Just get right into it. It’s just so sneaky, you know? These friggin’…”—I sang this part to fully avoid the weight of the actual word—“feeeeeelings.”

Haley stared at me for a moment, then went to pause her show that I could hear in the background. When she returned, she still didn’t move past her doorway.

“It’s just time to get a professional involved. Who can find him accountable. I can go with you tomorrow, or whenever, though I’m supposed to work tomorrow.”

“It’s fine. I’m good now, I had my rant. I know I seem psychotic but this is just how I live now, so it’s fine. I’m gonna do meth. I’m just gonna sit here and watch my stories and I’m going to write the most fire bit about that dude. Like ‘Oh Sam, you could hold me down for ten minutes but couldn’t even make me cum?’ There’s something there. Fuck him. I’m good. It’s go time, baby, I’m fired up.”

“V—”

“Honestly, we’ve done this, Haley. What are the cops gonna do? Take his statement, take mine, talk to Matt? He’ll say what Sam says. Talk to you, sure. Like are we gonna go to court? Am I gonna spend the next four years making this my fucking mission?”

“Maybe, if that’s what it takes. I don’t know the process—”

“Well, there should be like a flow chart. A rape flow chart. Like—” I was wildly physicalizing a flow chart with my hands, boxing them over my head so Haley could get the full picture. “Like assault, okay, and then like yes or no, over the shirt, under, and then it goes all the way up to full-blown rape, like vagina, butt, threat of death? And then it has like realistic pathways and things to know. Like oh you can file a complaint for this, and this is who you talk to, and this is what will blow back on you. Like if I had all the facts, it would be fine.”

“I’m sure a police officer could walk you through all that.”

“But it’s all just, like, pointless. Like once you talk to the cops they have to put it on the record, right? And you know they’re just sneaky fucks and it’ll be like oh, I got the make of the car wrong cause who gives a shit but now I’m a liar.”

Haley sighed and I went to the couch and turned on the TV. I could tell she was tired of me, and I didn’t want to convince her of anything anymore. I should’ve just come home. I shouldn’t have said anything because now I was putting more on her and would be blamed for creating a stressful evening.

“I think you would feel better if you could at least get some closure, or if he would be found accountable.” She nodded, confirming this was the end of the conversation. She had come to the most logical conclusion.

“It’s not even that. I don’t want him to like go to jail or whatever. It’s like I don’t want him to suffer cause that seems like I’m suffering and need this payback. I just want him to like go move to the mountains and take some remote work job doing data entry, where he’s not like happy or performing and his dreams don’t come true. But he’s not, he’s fine. He doesn’t have the best life but he makes it work. Eventually he meets someone who he is nice to because small-town living has humbled him and he just gets old and shitty and isn’t mean to anyone. He could like write me a letter years from now, finally apologizing, but I wouldn’t respond and he would get it and feel bad still, but he would just be far away and a nothing person.”

“If you cancel him, he probably will be a nothing person.”

“Cause everyone will believe me? Just hop on that ol’ #MeToo train and everyone just has to default to believing me?”

“Virginia, it’s not a default if you believe the victim.”

“Weren’t you going out? Go. It’s fine. I’m writing my rape comedy, just…I don’t care.”

“I’m too tired. And you’re not gonna be a bitch to me—” Haley was finally getting angry.

“I’M SORRY I BROUGHT IT UP. Okay? I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I am the bitch. I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Can you just…I’m working.”

She turned and slammed her door, and I gave the closed door the finger. No one should die, no one should suffer, but everyone needed to fuck off. Maybe that was the opening to my bit.

CHAPTER 7

Haley didn’t go to work Tuesday, or Wednesday, and other than an audition for a day player on Murdoch Mysteries, I had nothing going on either. The days were at a standstill. She stayed in her room, and I took over the living room and kitchen, trying to seem very busy writing and acting as though I was preparing for a part as a mourning relative of a dead octogenarian who also may have had a hand in his timely yet suspicious death.

Finally, on Thursday, she came out of her room before noon, looking dishevelled and as if she’d been crying. She said nothing to me when she went to get a cup of cold coffee and watched it heat up in the microwave.

“You alright?” I asked her, without showing too much interest.

“No,” she replied. Her voice was on the edge of breaking.

“What’s up?”

“You’re working, it’s fine.”

“I write jokes for no money. What’s up?” I asked again. I wondered if I was being selfish. If I supported her emotionally, it would make her inability or unwillingness to provide support to me pretty shitty. But then part of me was curious, if only to compare her sadness to mine and see which one held more water. Then the last part of me didn’t want her to cry at all and just wanted her to be happy.

“Just having a time,” she responded, opening the conversation up for me to lead.

“Depressed?”

“Yeah.”

“Did something like spur it on, or just the ebb and flow or…just not good?”

“Just not good. Nothing happened. Obviously it’s been tough since Monday.”

“I said I was sorry—”

“I know. But it’s just like…You’re working and unpredictable, but like you’re doing good and honestly, I don’t mean for this to be an argument, but like you make me feel bad about my depression and it makes it hard to come out here and get motivated to go to work—”

“How do I make you feel bad? You can be depressed—” I forgot how well she really did know me and wondered how obvious I had been without even knowing it.

“I know I can be depressed! But you make it like I’m not trying to get better. I don’t want to argue but—”

“How am I doing this though? You can’t just say I’m this shitty person and not tell me how.”

“It’s just a vibe,” she said, grabbing her coffee from the microwave and taking a sip. She felt good about that one.

“It’s a vibe?”

“You give me this vibe that you’re like disappointed in how I’m dealing with my depression.”

“Well, I’m not. I’m just trying to help and then I’m like, Oh maybe I’m being too pushy, so I pull back to just let you be depressed.”

“The book was not helpful.”

“Atomic Habits?” I asked. I’d only got through half of it, but I figured I got the gist and she could benefit from it. That was when she was even worse, though, so maybe the timing was bad.

“I need audiobooks. I’m not a reader.”

“Fair.”

“I’m just really not in a good place, and I need you to be aware of that and understand that it’s not my fault.”

“I do.”

“Okay, thank you. Cause it’s serious.”

“I know it’s serious.” I felt like a child being forced to apologize, just repeating what the adult was telling me to say in order to be allowed to play.

“I’m not suicidal, but I haven’t left my bed in two days. That should tell you something. It’s bad.”

“Yeah, it’s bad,” I agreed.

“It’s really bad.”

“Well…I’m here.”

“Thank you for actually listening.”

“You going back in?” I motioned to her room.

“I was.”

“We could watch daytime television,” I suggested. If she went back in her room now, I wouldn’t be able to work. I would be too distracted knowing without her saying it that my rape was making her depression worse. Even if it wasn’t, that was what it felt like and since she could accuse me based on her feelings it seemed only right to accuse her back. But if she stayed, if we could table it, I thought we’d both have a good day.

“Sure,” she said, joining me on the couch.

“Drag Brunch should be fun.”

“Yeah, I kind of wish we were having a messy night out,” she said, scrolling through her phone and ignoring the rerun of Maury I had put on.

“Anna’s gonna run off with her Uber driver again.” I laughed.

The last time we’d all got together was the summer before at this hybrid club/cowboy bar located on the east side, where we could drink a ridiculous amount of alcohol and none of us would run into anyone we knew. Anna had always had inside information from friends on her soccer team about parties across town thrown by someone from a random high school we’d never heard of. She was always bored with seeing the same crew every weekend, so our last year of high school we started hopping into cabs to drive thirty minutes to some random house. I tried to get us to create fake aliases. No one else went along with it but indulged me if I wore fake glasses or dressed up either super preppy, or emo, just because it felt a bit like a play. Haley didn’t like to fake anything because she was always hopeful her next crush would be at the party, so she would take forever lining and relining her eyes as Rachel and Mags laughed at me going over my character notes, trying to prep them in case someone asked, “Who’s the emo chick?” Anna would warn me not to be too weird.

After high school Anna moved to Montreal, then Vancouver, then Mexico for a few months before coming back to Toronto in the summer and working some government job where she was always busy except on weekends when she was always at some electronic music show. Mags stayed in Oakville but would drive down to the city if we gave her enough of a heads-up. She had gotten closer with the gang she bartended with, so we didn’t see her very often. Rachel was shacked up. Haley had been friends with all of these girls first; they knew each other in elementary school. It used to be a point of pride for me knowing I had outlasted them. Still, they felt like her friends more than my friends. I wouldn’t organize a Drag Brunch with the three of them without Haley, and if I cancelled the group dynamic between the four of them would go unchanged.

“I think she’s seeing someone now,” Haley said.

“That’s nice for Anna. I feel like she’s never had like an actual boyfriend.”

“She has. She dated that guy in Montreal for a few months.”

“Oh yeah, but he was psychotic. Ew,” I said, and then we both went back to staring at our phones while Maury revealed the results of the DNA tests.

“I didn’t text Bami.”

“Hey, your body your choice.”

“Don’t say that, because I know you have an opinion.” She was getting up off the couch. I wasn’t sure how I’d pissed her off this time.

“I don’t have an opinion. No, that’s not true. I think it’s good you didn’t text him back, but also like you don’t need my validation.”

“I know I don’t.” She was standing in her doorway and seemed annoyed with me.

“You don’t want to know if he’s the father? I can change it—”

“I don’t feel like watching anything. Are you around today?”

“No, I’ll probably go to the gym and meet up with the comedy goils later. Tomorrow I’m gonna go find something appropriate to wear to my father’s third wedding if you wanna come.”

“Yeah, I do. Text me in the morning.” And then she disappeared into her room.

“I’ll just knock on your door!” I yelled.

“No, text me!” her voice yelled back from behind the door.

—

I went to meet up with Nia, Addy, and Claire at the Elephant & Castle on King Street, not because it was a great spot but because one of the bartenders was an aspiring comedian and he usually sent over free shots if we laughed at a new joke he was trying out. It was finally March but felt like it was getting colder. My hands were almost numb by the time I power walked my way to the bar, but my chest was wet with sweat. No one was there yet so I took a seat and looked over the menu, hoping I wouldn’t have to talk to the aspiring comedian/bartender until the rest of the group got there. I forgot his name and I’d known him too long to ask.

“Virginia! What can I do ya for?” It was the aspiring comedian/bartender.

“Hey! You know what, shoot, I don’t know. I’m not in a super boozy mood.”

“Well, you are in the wrong place. Get out!” he mock-threatened.

“Ha, oh no, no, I think I’ll wait till the girls get here, thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah, so how’ve you been?” he asked, lingering.

“Good. Fine. You doing any shows—”

“No, no. I’m always here! I’m going to though, figuring it out on the schedule. Any tips?”

“Uh, for your first time?”

“Hey, I’m no virgin!” he said, smiling.

I hoped at least one of the girls would show up and take over the conversation.

“Actually, I think I’ll get a Stella.”

“You got it, Lady V.” He did a little bow and went back behind the bar.

The pub itself was pretty empty. It was near the theatre district, and since showtime had already started it must’ve just emptied out. I saw another patron sidle up to the bar so at least Mr. Bartender would be distracted for a few minutes. I saw the three of them at the front, doing their best Three Stooges routine, each of them pretending to pull the push door.

“V! V! V!” Addy cheered as they all joined me in the semi-circle booth I had chosen. Mr. Bartender was back with my Stella.

“What the fuck is that? Did you just bring her that, Will?” Nia asked Mr. Bartender, a.k.a Will.

“I ordered it, Ni. I just wanted a shitty beer.”

“The lady did indeed. Could I grab you lovely women something as well?”

“You know us, Will. We’re not lovely. I’ll have a bottle of Moosehead,” Addy ordered, unzipping her massive down coat. “Ni?”

“Why are you all drinking shitty beer?” Nia said. “What do you have again? I’ll get that Flying Monkey, the IPA.”

“I’ll do the same, thanks.” Claire smiled at Will. She was the kindest of us all. Another barfly had come in so he went to get our drinks.

“You feeling better, V?” Addy asked me, referring to my disappearance after the show in the east end.

“Yeah, I think it’s just the season,” I lied. “It’s like me and preschool children are constantly sick from November to March. You haven’t felt anything?”

“No, just fucking Larsa. My girlfriend is making me sick. Women are making me sick. I don’t know if it’s working, I can’t decide. I think I need a break from them. All of them, women, men. I need an entire new species that won’t give me a headache.” Addy stretched her arms around the top of the booth and rolled her head back. She was always having women and, for one brief month, men troubles.

“Weren’t you guys trying an open thing?” Claire asked.

“Nooo, don’t do it, that’s the end of days, I have never heard of that working, that sister-wife shit,” Nia said, and pointed at Claire, What a terrible suggestion.

“It’s not. Some people can make it work—” Claire began.

“No, no, it’s not even that,” Addy interrupted. “I just don’t wanna deal with any human being right now. I don’t wanna open up the circle! But I don’t want to stop having sex. Seriously, I need like a new alien life force. I will volunteer to be the one who fucks E.T., for science. Like I’d be happy with some big-head blue goober with at least two holes and what, like five hands. I think that’d do me.” Addy still had her head rolled back and was rubbing her temples.

“Isn’t that some Indian god?” I said.

“What like Hari Krishnu—” Nia started.

“Vishnu,” Claire corrected her.

“Yeah, if you’re working on something for the stage I’d suggest avoiding that you want to fuck a sacred Indian idol, you may alienate your audience,” I told Addy. She shrugged.

“I wasn’t talking about fucking an idol. I was talking about a semi-human octopus sex creature. I’ve already had a few self-proclaimed gods in the sack and it was a letdown.” Addy said.

“You should just masturbate more,” Claire told her.

“I should masturbate more? Claire, how many times a week do you masturbate?” Addy asked.

Claire looked up, counting. “Twice a day, three times…so twenty-one?”

Will returned with the drinks, carefully placing them on the table.

“No, you fucking don’t. Will, how many times a week do you masturbate?” Nia asked.

“Woaah, buy me a drink first, won’t ya?” Will responded. “You guys need anything else?”

Claire shook her head no for the group and Will quickly returned behind the bar.

“Motherfucker didn’t answer my question.” Nia kept her eyes on Will, shaking her head.

“That’s because you terrify the man. Claire, something is wrong with you. Nia, how many times do you?” Addy asked.

“I don’t know, two or three?” Nia said.

“See, that’s like me, that seems appropriate—” Addy was about to rant again before I interrupted her.

“Nia probably would a lot more, but I feel like you watch like really fucked-up porn and need, like, a few buffer days in between,” I told Nia.

“Ha! You’re not wrong. I disgust my fucking self.” Nia laughed and made us all cheers to being depraved young women. I loved them so much, these rude weirdos with little to no filter. Except for Claire, but she was the freakiest of us all.

I wanted to tell them so badly about Sam and have them make the meanest jokes about him and basically write my set for me. But I was too afraid to ruin the moment, the whole night. If ever I did tell them, I’d wait until after I had perfected my set, so they knew they could always make fun of me for it and they didn’t have to tiptoe around me like my experience with Sam was some sort of contagious disease. If we talked about it after, they wouldn’t be afraid of me, or pity me; they would give it all a moment of gravitas and then find a way to end on a laugh. The four of us would come back to laughter. We’d laugh so hard there would be tears in our eyes.

“But are you gonna break up?” I asked Addy, trying to stay on topic.

“I don’t know. I hate the conversation, you know? The breakup? I feel like, Claire, maybe you should take one for the team and seduce her?” Addy said.

“Oh, I’m doing fine, I don’t need your leftovers,” Claire replied. It was so sassy and off-brand for Claire, we couldn’t help but laugh.

“Claire! Yes, girl!” Nia yelled out.

“Then you take her, Nia!” Addy yelled back.

“God, I’m close. I’m this close to switching teams.”

“What, Reed wasn’t doing it for you?” I teased Nia.

“No, it’s just like every dude is the same. They’re all the same. You’re funny, guess you wanna fuck. Like why is it because I’m a comedian men think I’m desperate for attention?” Nia asked the group. We went silent for a moment.

“No, fuck you guys. Seriously. It’s a thing. No, no, I’m serious, it’s a thing. Most dudes think they’re doing female fucking comedians a favour by fucking them. And it’s the fucking opposite for—sorry Addy and Claire, you gotta listen to the heteros—but it’s the fucking opposite for dudes. Like the bar is so low for dudes. It’s like, Oh wow, he’s funny, fer sure he’s gonna fuck. For women it’s like, Oh, she’s funny? Well, she’s compensating for being a fucking dog. Bet she needs it.” I wondered if Nia was doing a bit that wasn’t a bit.

“Are you working on something?” I asked.

“Fucking life, Virginia. The fucking patriarchy.”

“Mmm. What do the lesbians think?” I turned to Claire and Addy.

“Gold star doesn’t get an opinion. Ask someone who’s been around!” Addy jokingly complained about Claire. Claire rolled her eyes and took a drink.

“It’s the cliché. It always is. Men are intimidated by funny women. So they either gotta dominate them and fuck ’em or give up and book ’em on their shows. That’s why funny gay women, we’re an even bigger threat,” Addy continued. “Why do you think there’s only ever one of us on a show? Or if it’s two, they split up the gays. Fucking terrified.”

“Can you imagine if we were all on the same night?” Nia laughed.

“It’s too much. It’s too much power. The evidence of their inferiority would be overwhelming,” Addy joked back.

“It’s good, though. It keeps us humble,” I told them, sarcastically.

“Thank god for men.” Nia made us cheers.

Claire and I left the bar early because she probably had to masturbate again, and I was exhausted and not in the mood to get hammered. We hugged each other after Nia and Addy yelled at us for being lightweights, and she held on a little longer than usual. The little freak always knew more than she let on; that was something I appreciated about her. She didn’t say much but she’d squeeze you tightly and forever if she could sense that you needed it, and she wouldn’t initiate any sort of conversation. We waved for a while walking backwards until we each finally turned and I began my power walk home.

—

Even at noon Haley was too tired to go shopping with me, so I went alone to find a dress to wear to my dad’s wedding. When I got back to the apartment, she asked me to show her what I bought but got upset when I wouldn’t try it on and just held it up for her to see.

“I feel bloated cause I got A&W on the way home,” I told her.

She said she understood then asked if I still wanted to hang out now that I was home, and I told her now I was too tired.

“We could have a nap?” Haley suggested.

I knew she meant both her and I could separately go and nap in our own bedrooms and once refreshed we could then go out. But she was also quoting herself back in high school, when I would go over to her house because I was having a hard time being in the same house as my dying mother and trying to be normal, and Haley would suggest we take a nap. Her parents thought it was odd, maybe like it was this sexual thing, but it wasn’t at all. We always stayed on either end of her basement couch, and I would press my body up against the back and bury my head in the corner, while Haley clung to the front edge.

I laughed it off and went back to my room to make a list of what to pack for Vancouver and to nap, alone, before going back out to the gym and for a bite with friends from the class after. I didn’t feel bad coming back later than I said I would in an unanswered text.

CHAPTER 8

I set my alarm early so I could finish packing before Drag Brunch. I was going to bus to Dale’s after so he could get me to the airport early the next morning, and I wasn’t super thrilled at the idea of putting on a ton of makeup only to have to wipe it all off. Dale wouldn’t notice if I was wearing a full face, but it would just seem weird to take the GO train with laminated eyebrows.

Haley was already up and had commandeered the washroom. I heard music coming from our cheap Bluetooth speaker while she bounced back and forth.

“Can I get in there for a minute?” I asked through the bathroom door.

“I’ll be like ten minutes!” she yelled back over Britney Spears’s “Work Bitch.”

“I have to pee!”

I heard the music stop, and then she sighed and opened the door.

“Can you wash your hands in the kitchen?” she asked, blocking the doorway.

“Haley, I have to pee.”

“V, please?”

“Yes, fine, move!” I pushed past her and closed the door, finally able to pee. I noticed her steaming straightener was perched precariously on the edge of the ceramic sink.

“Okay, you done?” I heard her ask from behind the door. I mouthed “fuck off” and sat for a moment longer before getting up and washing my hands.

“V!!”

“Fuck, sorry. I literally was on autopilot.”

I opened the door. She was clearly annoyed.

“Haley it’s fine—” I started to say before she went back into the bathroom with another sigh and restarted “Work Bitch” from the top.

She didn’t talk while we made our way to the Gladstone Hotel. I wanted to match her stubbornness and not speak to her either, but after one block I couldn’t help myself.

“Did you hear the raccoon fight last night? It was crazy, I thought we were gonna see carnage when we came out of the lobby,” I told her.

“No.”

“Oh, it was loud. Super loud. Like a gang of them.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“You’re lucky. It was really loud,” I repeated.

She nodded. She wasn’t going to give me anything. So for the next four blocks, I talked at her about the weather and other friends from high school, while she did her best to ignore me. When we got to the hotel restaurant, she ignored the hostess and charged right past her to where Anna and Maggie were already sitting, while I tried to mime to the hostess that our friends had already arrived.

“Hello!” Anna tried to jump up but got caught under the table while Maggie waved enthusiastically. Anna wrestled herself free and hugged us. Haley held onto her hug longer, and they swayed back and forth while I took the seat across from Mags. Haley and Anna finally sat down, Haley beside me and across from Anna.

“How are you guys?” Anna asked. She was already halfway through a mimosa and Maggie had a coffee going.

“Oh, you know, it’s been a time,” Haley said, smiling and shrugging her shoulders.

“Oh no, I wanna talk about that. And you, Virginia?” Anna asked me.

“Good, just grinding. I’m heading to Vancouver tomorrow and it’s apparently like plus ten so I’m stoked about that,” I told her.

Maggie was still smiling at me, and I wondered why she hadn’t spoken yet.

“Yesss, that west coast weather!” Anna almost screamed. She seemed pretty drunk already.

“How are you guys?” I asked.

Maggie just nodded and shrugged.

“Yeah, amazing,” Anna said. “Cliff and I are looking at condos and it’s crazy. This city. But it’s exciting—just so much paperwork—oh and here she is!” Anna stood to welcome Rachel, who was taking off her gloves when Anna bear-hugged her and beckoned her to sit at the head of the table between her and Haley.

“Hi guys,” Rachel said, still settling in as the waiter came by.

“Should we do a pitcher of mimosas? Like a bottle and carafe? Is that a French word—carafe?” Anna asked the table.

“Yes!” Haley said quickly.

“Uh, I can have like one. I have a long day ahead of me—” I said.

“Me too,” Rachel interjected.

Maggie shook her head, still speechless.

“Oh, we’ll finish it,” Haley said. She and Anna made knowing eye contact and sent the waiter on his way.

“Rachel, how are you? It’s been forever!” Haley said. Anna’s enthusiasm was rubbing off on her.

“Fine, just busy. I had no idea home ownership would be this full-time job, but it’s good. We got a dog so that’s nice for just getting out of the house.” Rachel trailed off and started looking over the menu. It seemed like she didn’t want to be here. We hadn’t even given each other the personal nod. She seemed distracted, looking around for our waiter as if she wanted to order her food as soon as possible, get this thing over with.

“Where are the drag queens?” Rachel asked.

“Oh, it’s like you eat and then there’s the show—” Anna said.

“It’s a whole thing, then?” Rachel sounded disappointed and began texting someone.

“Yes, Drag Brunch!” Haley was trying to get everyone pumped. She and Anna started swaying excitedly when the mimosas arrived.

After a short toast about friendship and distance we all cheersed, and I saw Maggie open her mouth just wide enough to take a sip. The four of them ordered overpriced poached eggs on avocado toast and chia bowls, and I got chicken and waffles, which everyone agreed was a good choice but too heavy for brunch. Anna continued to get more drunk while Haley caught up fast, and Rachel tried to seem interested in their conversation.

“So why is it a time, Hales?” Anna yelled across the table. The music was getting louder.

“Just life, right? Like I had a full-on mental breakdown—” Haley began.

“Oh no! Are you okay?” drunk Anna interjected.

“Yes, thank you, but it’s just been tough. Like depression is a bitch and honestly my manager was such a cunt about it I had to quit, for like a medical issue—” Haley was ranting.

“You quit your job?” I asked.

“Yes, I told you that—”

“No, you didn’t—”

“Well…” She rolled her eyes at me. To me it meant I didn’t have the chance since you were so upset about the whole thing with Sam and caught up in your trauma so where would I have had the space to tell you? It was a very pointed eyeroll.

“I think that’s great. You can just focus on you!” Anna was everyone’s hype-woman, even cheering on the waiter when he brought our food.

“Exactly! Like I need the time for appointments. I honestly think my hormones and just my lymphatic system is contributing to—”

“You should see a naturopath,” Anna interrupted, her mouth full of avocado toast.

“I know but it’s so crazy how expensive it is. Like it literally costs so much money to be depressed.” Haley shook her head.

They went on talking about medications and meditations and how they were all depressed and had ADHD and how Vyvanse was great for weight loss but made Rachel completely irritable and uninterested in sex and how Anna had tried SSRIs but really just felt it was more of an anxiety thing than depression. Rachel seemed to relax and open up once the conversation shifted to a shared suffering of mostly self-diagnosed ailments. I listened to them talk about breath work and self-care in the form of massages and facials, and gut health and the possibility that all three of them had chronic fatigue syndrome. I finally looked over at Maggie.

“Can you talk?”

She shook her head and then texted me.

“I lost my voice at a Morgan Wallen concert last night.”

I nodded. The text itself sounded like a country song.

“Was it fun?” I asked.

She nodded.

Finally, the show started. The queens came on and the three chronically fatigued members of our table started screaming and applauding, and Maggie tried her best to smile without showing her teeth and I wouldn’t say I was more depressed than Anna who had started drinking long before our 11 a.m. brunch or Rachel living in suburbia or even Haley who had secretly quit her job. I wouldn’t say that but at that moment I felt real close. I thought it would be darkly hilarious if I loudly stated, “Yes, well, I was raped recently.” Haley would cry and Rachel would suggest we cut brunch short and Maggie would text me “Oh no!” and Anna…yikes. Why would I even think to do that? I didn’t need to win Who is the most fucked up?

I felt like I was in high school again, going to a strange party and pretending to be someone else, except this time I was a previous version of myself who’d once loved these women. I had held on to these friendships because they were what my mother wanted for me when she left my dad and moved us to a new house and I went to a new school and had to make new friends. She was so excited when I brought them over. She had recently started chemo but still made everyone Pop-Tarts and they all thought that was a “punk rock” after-school snack. She told them the story of how when she first started as the artistic director for the Oakville Centre for the Performing Arts, they convinced Keanu Reeves to come out and do a two-week workshop and how he hit on her but she declined his advances because he was kind but a bit of a pothead and—what was the word she used?—too nomadic. From then on she was cool and so was I.

They’d left before dinner and she met me in the kitchen to hug me and say she was sorry for gossiping but they seemed like really nice girls. She was crying. I could only picture my mother like that. Not crying, but when she still looked healthy, when I was fourteen. I couldn’t even try to picture what she’d look like now, if her hair would’ve grown back, if she’d be stronger or still quite thin. If she was here now, she would want to know how these girls—my friends—were doing, and I felt this duty to report back. Except I was going to see Dale tonight and he wouldn’t remember anyone’s name and this loyalty I had to this hypothetical nostalgia seemed so futile.

I focused back on the show. One of the drag queens was almost eight feet tall in heels, and when she death dropped to the floor to a Rihanna song everyone cheered loudly while I was having trouble swallowing my chicken trying to not cry. There’s no crying at Drag Brunch.

Once the show was over, we all went to get our coats. Haley automatically reached for my arm to steady herself while adjusting her boots. I felt cold from the inside out. Once she’d steadied herself, Haley went to embrace Anna, laughing and promising to get together again soon. Rachel and I didn’t like hugs so we parted with a nod, and Anna forced a sloppy kiss on my cheek before I put her in an Uber with Maggie.

“You didn’t tell me you quit your job,” I said to Haley once we started walking back to the apartment.

“I did, actually.”

“No, I don’t care but—”

“Then why are you making it an issue?” she snapped as we waited for the light to change to cross the street.

“I’m not.” I had no fight in me, no will to prove her wrong, so I asked her, “Did you have fun?”

“I did. I needed that. It’s just so powerful, like this power of freedom and dance and expression, like it’s just mind-boggling—literally, literally!—mind-boggling how someone could have an issue with it.” She was drunker than I’d thought and I hooked my arm into hers since small frozen bits of snow were sticking to the sidewalks, making them icy.

“Yeah, I think it’s just a really easy group to pin those ignorant type of views on, right, cause everything is so over the top like—”

“But that’s not okay!” she shouted.

“No, I know, I’m saying it’s wrong cause it’s lazy, homophobic and lazy cause it’s like you may not have a problem with some boring gay dude in a button-down but all of sudden there’s eyeliner involved and it’s like, no, now we’re gonna raise hell cause now you’re making it hard to ignore you exist. You know what I mean?” I was freezing and whatever point I was trying to make wasn’t coming together as eloquently as I had hoped.

“It’s not even lazy though. Like you’re being so flippant. Like honestly, if you’re so scared of drag queens like you need help. You need chemical castration because you obviously cannot control your own dick—”

“Jesus Christ, Haley.”

“No, but you know what I’m saying, Virginia!”

“I don’t think either of us are policymakers. I just think like it’s hypocritical to go to violence. Then we’re just doing what the other side is afraid of or I don’t fucking know—”

“I don’t mean actually be violent!” Haley and I were still walking arm in arm, but she refused to look at me now. I was trying to move us more quickly back to the apartment so we could be free of each other.

“Yeah, I think we need to stop getting upset by our own opinions, you know? Like obviously we think we have the best morals cause we want everyone, drag queens included, to be happy so it kinda like justifies, whatever, even violence if people disagree. I mean, we always justify shit based on our opinions and because we’re on the ‘right side’ of things, but that’s how everyone thinks so it just keeps going on and on but it’s all based on fucking nothing. Like there’s no facts to anything we say,” I finished when we got to our building.

“That’s why you’re a fucking robot,” Haley said, finally taking her arm back as she opened the door.

“No, I’m not,” I said, pressing the elevator button. The door opened and we got in. “I’m just tired of over-performative bullshit.”

“Excuse me?” she yelled in the elevator.

“No, you’re not performing but it’s like a thing people do. I don’t know! I don’t know!” I began shouting. “I don’t want to be in this conversation! Like why can’t we leave anything alone without first determining who is bad or good? And it’s not just bad or good now. It’s fantastic or terrible or iconic or straight-up evil. It’s all—I just get tired of these hardcore labels. I’m just not in a place where I can wrap my head around it all right now. Or I’m not smart enough or I don’t know. I keep saying that cause I don’t. I know nothing. I am a silly little child and I’m sorry.”

The doors to the elevator opened and I put up my hands in retreat. She stared at me like I was an idiot.

“So you don’t think Sam should be labelled a bad guy?” Haley asked as we entered the apartment. I didn’t think she wanted to be hurting me as much as she actually was right now.

“Uh…yeah, kinda he should. He should be punished and there should be no question about it. But I just wonder if by exploring some grey option that maybe he can do terrible things but…this all-encompassing idea of strict punishment doesn’t seem to fit. And it’s not that I’m just so unaffected that I don’t care, and I’m not trying to hide my suffering to kinda even it out and say, Okay, since I’m not doing that bad he shouldn’t be punished that bad. It doesn’t fucking matter anyways because he won’t be punished at all.”

“I feel bad for you, Virginia. I do. I feel really sorry for you.”

“Sure, K, fine, whatever, Haley. Enjoy your hangover.”

“I don’t even think you’re a liberal. You’re not even a feminist.”

I didn’t say anything. I just walked past her and went to my room, furious at her for feeling sorry for me, for making me feel so stupid. It was like because I didn’t fight for myself in the way I was supposed to, that inherently meant I had failed—like I’d ever had a shot against Sam. Logically understanding a situation isn’t the same as being apathetic to it. One time she drunkenly told me she thought all female comedians were a bit self-loathing. I told her that self-loathing wasn’t gender-specific. But I didn’t know if I was a good righteous liberal anymore. I didn’t even get to decide how to move forward without my actions being completely indicative of who I was politically. Because I got raped and didn’t do anything about it meant I wasn’t anti-rape or an active ally for other women. So then yeah, what was I? And no one was actually enforcing these rules except they existed everywhere because of the internet and social media and Haley, who made me feel like something was wrong with me—something was wrong with us. We failed time and time again at loving each other the way we needed to be loved. It was too late, and I didn’t care to have that talk of how we could love each other better. I wanted to want to love each other easily, like a couple of gals in a tampon commercial. Not worried about leaks or sociological ideologies, just playing soccer in white pants, carefree. What I really wanted was to be fourteen again, when we loved each other right.

I grabbed my suitcase and headed back out. Haley was in the kitchen chugging a large glass of water. I didn’t say anything, just slammed the door on my way out. It was at least one palpable thing I’d done to say, “Okay, things are changing, then—let’s fucking go.”

CHAPTER 9

I spent the bus ride from Toronto to Oakville in another fight, albeit imaginary, with Haley. She was being much nastier to me so I could justify my cruelty, but even in my head I held back because I was afraid of hurting her. There was no way around it; I’d definitely be the asshole no matter what I could think of her saying to me. Then I tried to conjure up the same argument with Sam, except I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t picture what that confrontation would look like. I couldn’t envision him admitting to anything. It was like I was watching my imaginary self trying to be smart and strong, but I still kept thinking, God, she seems hysterical; she’s fucking nuts. I tried to imagine myself delivering a devastating set where I implicated him in such a skilful yet hilarious way. I could see it, miming the movements I knew my body would make onstage, timing the pauses to catch my breath, holding for applause. I had no idea what I’d actually say.

I’d left the apartment much earlier than I had originally planned. Still, I was surprised at how long it took Dale to answer the door. When he finally opened it, he stood for a second, as if he needed to remind himself of why I was there.

“Hi,” I said.

“Yeah, hi.”

He didn’t move to let me in. I may have woken him up from a nap. His hair was sticking up on one side and he hadn’t shaved, and he was always a pretty clean-shaven guy.

“You gotta girl in there?” I asked him.

“I wish,” he said.

He moved aside to let me in.

Dale was just getting the hang of it, knowing how to catch a joke when I lobbed one over his way and then finish it off. I think he’d probably been funnier when my mom was around, not in an obvious way, but I like to think he’d said and done things to make her laugh. He wouldn’t have been funny in the same way as my dad, who was always looking for the joke, aiming for the angle to strike, the spot to poke. I mostly remember him and my mom madly in love, laughing, playing. They often say that a child should never blame themselves for their parents’ divorce, but it was like as soon as I came to an age where I would need more consistent parenting and not just these incredibly goofy, loving caretakers—parents who had dinner on time and remembered practices and school events—my mother grew out of her playfulness and everything became a bit more serious. I think it was when I was around ten. And when my father had no space to play, he went elsewhere, and of course you couldn’t really come back from that. You went to Dale. Who was kind and loyal and could be mined for funny when you really needed it.

It really was an amicable divorce, even with the whole philandering of it all. At least that was how it was purely from my ten-year-old perspective. I told Haley why they’d divorced as soon as I met her and instantly regretted it. She’d never met my dad but hated him for betraying my mom. I didn’t and my mom didn’t, or she did but I didn’t notice. She only brought it up once or twice but never directly, only in a roundabout way and always with a certain nonchalance. She would tell me to say hi to him when I visited, and when she started getting sick she tried on a few occasions to convince me to leave her if it was too hard for me, that she would be fine with Dale if I would like to go live with my dad.

She never said she was hurt by the cheating, but I remember her getting so mad when he told us he was moving out west. I heard her yelling at him on the phone, furious that he was abandoning his only child. She felt a lot for me and I liked that she did that, fought these battles on my behalf, because then my dad and I never had to talk about it. On the other hand, it was good that he moved away. If my dad had been around while my mother was dying, I think I would’ve hated him. I don’t think his humour would have been well received, and in mourning her death, he probably would’ve overcorrected and become too sad, then made up his mind to get over it too quickly, and the second he returned to humour I would’ve resented him for pretending it was that easy, even if I was doing the same. Because he was the adult.

But Dale, dutiful Dale, he handled every new setback with grace and a quiet sadness but had the resolve to soldier through in polite contentedness. And that was the appropriate reaction. My dad didn’t know appropriate reactions. He knew high or low and the in-between made him anxious. My dad was good after my mom died, coming back to take care of me in his own way, with gallows humour, and I had Dale to be the voice of parental reason, the rock.

Once I settled in, Dale did the head tilt and started to ask if there was any news on the green card front.

“Haven’t heard anything so far, but it takes time. It’s so crazy how expensive it is with no guarantee. I feel kinda like if I went to the track with ten K, I could make a hundred and then just…I guess that still wouldn’t do anything.”

“Are you okay for money?” He looked concerned.

“Oh yeah, not desperate for a day job just yet. I’ll get paid for the shows in Vancouver so it’s not really costing me anything. I just try and break even every month and hope that 0.03 percent interest keeps adding up.”

“Do you have an RRSP?”

“Yeah, she set one up and all that. I really am good.” We paused for a second and I looked at Dale. He was growing his hair out, maybe to look a bit younger.

“Are you good for money?” I don’t know why I asked. I felt like a shitty privileged kid.

“I am very good, you can thank the unions for that.” He smiled and went to the kitchen to check on dinner.

“Sorry, I didn’t know if it was like a leading question or whatever.”

“No, no, I have been thinking, though, money-wise, planning for the future.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I think before you leave for LA, we should sell the house,” he told me.

I suddenly felt breathless. It wasn’t surprising, yet it was like…a huge thing to say. But once it was said…it was out there. Before, we would have never mentioned selling the house because it would’ve seemed too soon. Even though I thought it was weird how everything in the house was left mostly unchanged and how it was like a shrine to my mother, as soon as he mentioned the idea of strangers filling this place with life again I couldn’t breathe.

I started crying.

“Sorry, Virginia, it was just a thought—” he said quickly.

“No, no, it’s good, actually—it’s good. Fuck, what a weird—I think it was just like, what a day. It was a long day and there was just like this whoosh of ‘nooo, our house,’ but it’s not, right?” I started crying and became so mystified by my emotional outburst that I began laughing, which really freaked Dale the fuck out.

“We don’t have to sell ever, V, it’s your house and you can keep it—”

“I don’t want it! This”—I motioned to my face, red with salty moisture—“is a non-reaction. I’m really chill, and happy, overall with—no, we should, we should sell it. I mean, if you don’t want it? You don’t want to live here?” I stopped crying. I was just now coming to the conclusion that perhaps Dale was sick of being dutiful and that he did it for me.

“I was just thinking with Heather having the baby, it might be nice to be up in Huntsville. Get a condo.”

I nodded. Heather was his niece. His brother George and his wife lived in Muskoka and their kids were having kids. Sometimes I forgot Dale’s family lived just a few hours away. When my mom was around, we’d visit and I’d go swimming with Heather. I liked them a lot, but we stopped staying in touch after the whole death thing because it seemed like we were living in two different worlds. I was Dale’s dead girlfriend’s daughter in the city, and they were his happy family in Northern Ontario.

“I think that sounds really nice,” I told him.

“But there’s no rush.”

“No, I think it’s good. Have you seen any places you like?” I couldn’t look at him when he passed me a box of tissues and a glass of water. He had a way of taking care of me that wasn’t patronizing. He was just being dutiful Dale.

“Yeah, a few.”

“Wow.”

“I thought I’d get a two-bedroom. You don’t have to visit, but if you wanted, I could keep some stuff there for you. I know you can’t take everything to LA so if there’s some things you need to store and if you have a show in Toronto or are visiting friends…”

For a second I wanted to tell him, forget LA, we both should move to Huntsville and I’d babysit Heather’s kid and meet a nice boy and settle down and get a real job and we’d be this weird family and I’d have kids that would call Dale Grandpa so he wouldn’t be sad that he didn’t have a loving partner because he had grandkids who loved him so much. But really Dale would move and maybe I would visit once, maybe he would meet someone, and she would be older with her own kids and it would be weird after that because I would be this strange leftover kid with a backstory that everyone hoped we wouldn’t acknowledge when we explained how we knew each other. Maybe that would be okay though and we’d all move on, and that was best for everyone.

“I don’t need any stuff,” I told him, taking a sip of water. “I mean, the second bedroom thing is so nice. I would visit cottage country. I’m there. And I love Heather.”

“You don’t have to make a decision now.”

“Seriously, burn this motherfucker down,” I told him while he was in the kitchen plating dinner. “Take the money and run.”

“It’s your money, V. I will take the barbecue.”

“Like hell you will. I’ll see you in court.”

“Mm. There’s no rush,” he repeated.

“I’m fine, Dale. It was just like a weird shock. I think a lot of kids have to go through that like, Oh no, my childhood home. But Oakville sucks. I’m not gonna move back here, and I don’t wanna be a landlord. That’d be terrible for my image.”

“Well, whenever you want to have that conversation.”

“I think this is it. This is the conversation. If you wanna find a place or find a realtor or whatever, we can put this baby on the market. It’s a seller’s market, so it’s good.”

“It’s a seller’s market?” he asked.

“Yeah. A lot of people I know have become realtors. It’s kinda like the natural path from the restaurant industry to real estate. Just looking good and selling shit.”

“Do you have any friends you like?”

“No,” I told him. “No, I don’t like any of my friends. That’s why I gotta get out of Dodge.” I could’ve clarified that I knew he meant do I have any friends that I like for selling the house, but I was being dramatic.

“I can look into it,” he said. He put a plate of perogies and farmer’s sausage in front of me and sat down across from me, nodding at me to begin.

After dinner, we watched Saturday Night Live, and he told me I was funnier than everyone on the show. Then he fell asleep on the couch, and I went back to my old bedroom, looking at all the things that were still on the shelves and the marker on the windowsill. Dale had moved a few things in at my insistence, like a shitty elliptical machine, and the closet was filled with boxes of photos and old tax returns and cables that were obsolete. I’d taken what I wanted when I moved out, books I knew she loved and some jewellery I never wore. Nothing material meant that much to my mom. I didn’t want her clothes because they weren’t my style, and she would have been so disappointed if I tried to mimic her style in some sad homage. She’d be happier to see me as me. And I had the photos I wanted, the memories I could handle. Everything I kept trying to remember—her encouraging phrases or our tender vulnerable moments—at some point got reduced to her physicality. I remembered the way she walked and her tone of voice, which I could hear sometimes in strangers. There were smells that sometimes brought up a watercolour wash of a place we’d once gone together. I remembered seeing this glass shelf in a friend’s bathroom that looked like sea glass and made me think of the back seat of this new car she’d bought and complained was too expensive. I didn’t get a choice. When that happened, when I was suddenly reminded of a thing that reminded me of a thing that reminded me of her, I tried to flood my brain with all the memories of her extraordinary love so I didn’t just remember the mundanity but also the length of her hugs and each I love you. And I reminded myself how lucky I was to hurt this much because it made every other hurt pale in comparison. Sam, Haley, nothing and nobody could hurt me more, and I couldn’t possibly let it because that wouldn’t be fair to her, to let any other thing be as hard as missing her.

I heard Dale get up from the couch and switch off the TV, which was playing some rerun of a blind-cop show. I listened to him walk around the house, turning off the lights and then heading to his room. Once I was sure I heard him snoring, I snuck out of my bedroom and went back to the living room. I stood still until my eyes adjusted to the dark and I could make out all the furniture. We had all sat on the couch, eaten at the table. But there was nothing of her, no heartbeat in this house.

—

The next morning, Dale was hauling my suitcase into the back of his truck cab as I stood on the sidewalk.

“When you prepare to sell the house, can you make sure to keep all the pictures, the hard copies, and just put them in your condo? Or send them to George in Muskoka? Or just have them ready and when I get back, I can take them?”

Dale closed the cab and we both walked to the front of the truck, getting in on either side.

“Yeah, I can do that,” he said.

“Is that a big ask? Are there a lot?”

“No, a box or two. I’ll have to see.”

“Okay, then everything else, I don’t care.”

“Virginia…” He was backtracking, I could tell.

“I thought about it and I’m really stoked. For real. I think it’s good to just sever everything. Not you, obviously—I’ll still see you and talk to you—but just like hee-uck!” I made the motion of driving an axe through a log, but he was focused on driving and I wasn’t sure if he caught it. “And that way I’m not like, ‘Oh the house, I gotta get back for stuff,’ right? And I can like invest in stuff, like divert my portfolio.”

“Okay. Do you mean diversify?”

“Sure, is that it? I dunno but you gotta trust me on this. It’s exciting. It’s all happening. If they let me into the States, of course. Even still! It’s good, I’m good, I’m happy you brought it to my attention.”

“Mhmm,” Dale kinda said and kinda grunted.

We didn’t speak for about twenty minutes. Then I decided he should hear the entire history of Addy’s dating life because she had just texted Claire, Nia, and me that she and her girlfriend broke up, and it was this whole thing that people thought Claire and Addy should date but I disagreed with the notion that just because they were both lesbians and friends they should date because they were not even each other’s types and worked really well as wing-women for each other. I was about to get into what their types were when he pulled up at the Air Canada drop-off.

“You try and enjoy yourself, okay? Have a good trip and say congratulations to those guys,” Dale said.

“Thank you, it’s gonna be a shitshow.”

“Well.” He nodded.

I leaned over and gave him a hug, which made it weird when we got out of the truck and he got my suitcase from the cab. So I gave him another hug.

“In case I die!” I said, justifying the second hug. “I’m kidding, I won’t die. We’re on the mainland so I think we’re good tsunami-wise.”

“Just have fun, and text me when you get there.” He went around the truck and got back in.

“I will!” I waved him off before walking towards the sliding doors. If I hadn’t hugged him the second time, he may have said I love you. We’d never said it before. I think he did love me, though.

CHAPTER 10

“There she is!” My father was waving excitedly at me as I was coming down the escalator. The exaggerated waving was my dad’s way of teasingly mocking me because when I was a kid, I would flap my hands uncontrollably when I got excited about something. He would do it whenever I had even a small interest in something.

I walked up to my father, and he pulled me into a hug. We both pulled away and studied each other for a moment, making sure neither had changed too much since we’d last seen each other in the summer. He wasn’t as tanned and his cheeks looked hollow without his usual short beard. He’d dyed his hair too dark to cover his greys. He looked a little bit like Billie Joe Armstrong, the way it was spiked up; usually he gelled his hair down in a kinda rockabilly coif.

“Hello! You shaved! You’re a baby,” I told him.

“I know, it’s really fucking itchy. Penny thought for the photos, you know, be on my model behaviour.” He struck a Zoolander pose then grabbed my suitcase, rolling it behind him as I followed.

“I assume Pen has a bridesmaid’s dress ready for me? I wasn’t invited to the bachelorette, which I’m quite grateful for, but still as her maid of honour,” I joked.

When they’d first told me they were getting married, Penny had sent a long email telling me how she felt so close to me but because of all the fittings it’d be difficult to have me in the wedding party. Then my dad followed up with another email making sure I got Penny’s email and that I’d responded appropriately.

“Oh, you’re a comedian, I forgot!”

“Barely. Okay, let’s get this third wedding party started!” I mocked him back as we started walking towards the parking lot.

My father always said his first marriage didn’t count. They were eighteen, met on acid, and decided they were soulmates. She was from the States and he married her in Canada so she could move in with him, and it was all horribly romantic until they realized that soberly they didn’t like each other all that much. She thought they should spend their summers in BC harvesting mushrooms and smuggling them back to the States and then at some point overthrow the government. He loved drugs and the idea of a decentralized government and socialism but not enough to be proactive about it. So they split up and he moved back to his parents’ place in Ontario. Then he met my mom, who was idealistic enough but didn’t try to force him to break the law or be politically active, other than attend the odd protest or rally once a year. That way he could feel like he was part of a movement but wouldn’t be legally responsible if there was a fallout.

“It didn’t count!” he jokingly protested, then added, “How was the flight?”

“Oh fine, long. It takes awhile to get here, eh?”

“Yeah, Canada, it’s vast.”

“What the fuck? Are you excited though?”

“I’m excited for Penny, and no, yeah, it’ll be nice to see everyone. But you know how these things are.”

“No, I don’t, Dad. I’m twenty-three and haven’t been married as much as you yet.”

“You little shit. It’s just a lot of planning and decisions, so I’m very excited to go to a beach and turn my brain off.”

“Where are you guys going again?” I asked.

“Oh, just Cancun, some adults-only resort so it’ll be quiet and romantic—”

“Disgusting. So you’re just letting Penny plan it all?”

“She’s good at it! And she likes it. I really think by this marriage I’ve figured out that the best thing for me to do is just, you know, do what I’m told.”

“You’re like a dog,” I told him.

He laughed. “Are you joking about your old man’s balls?”

“Ew, no. Fuck, you ruined it. I was gonna say I’m happy for you but the moment’s passed.” I smiled and looked out the window at the huge mountains with snowy peaks. No matter how many times I visited I was surprised by how close they appeared on the drive from the airport towards the city. I didn’t find it beautiful; I found it stressful that I couldn’t picture a clear escape route.

“No, I am, though. I like Penny. She’s a good egg.”

“She is, we’re very happy. Have you settled down and made an honest woman out of yourself yet, Virginia?”

“I’m gonna tuck and roll out of this car,” I said.

“Where are my grandbabies, Virginia?” My dad put on his old New York lady voice and tussled my hair.

“You really want a grandbaby?”

“No. Not that we wouldn’t be thrilled.”

“I feel like I barely made the cut.” I looked over at him. He was looking at the map on his phone for directions to the hotel.

“Huh? Oh yeah, you were a happy little mistake.”

“Thanks, Father, I should really visit more often. This is nice, really good for me and my self-esteem.”

“You were very wanted despite being a massive surprise and financial burden,” he said, reaching over to pat my knee.

We continued trading barbs, softly. We didn’t catch each other up on the last few months, just made jokes about pop singers being devastated my father was off the market, until he pulled into the roundabout of the Westin Bayshore hotel.

“Nice digs,” he said, peering into the lobby.

“Yeah, thank you for that.”

“Anything for my little accident.” He hopped out of the car to open my door and grab my suitcase, wheeling it over to me just like Dale had done ten hours prior.

“Okay, well, sorry we have this dinner thing, but we’ll see you tomorrow? You can come by any time after five. We’re about ten minutes that way.” He pointed in the direction opposite the water.

“Oh yeah, I think I can remember how to get around the area. I have a week to figure it out. But also I have Google Maps. Tell Penny I’m excited to be here,” I told his back as he waved without turning around. He wasn’t big on goodbyes.

—

It was the nicest hotel I’d ever stayed at, especially if I thought of it as a work trip. My dad had offered to pay for half the nights, and I justified using my entire cheque from Yuk’s to pay off the rest of the trip. It was important to me for reasons that were valid in my head, but not in real life, that I stay in a nice hotel. Reasons like if I moved to LA, I was going to live alone in a shitty apartment, and right now I lived with a roommate in an okay apartment so I should enjoy being alone to the fullest.

I didn’t have much planned for the week other than my two shows at Yuk’s, and possibly going to a few open mics that had been recommended to me. I spent the rest of the evening and the next day flipping through the eight channels on the hotel TV, drinking one small bottle of wine from the mini bar and taking a nap.

As I was getting ready to go to my dad’s place for dinner, Haley texted me asking if we had any more dishwasher pods and if so, where they’d be. After I told her she continued to text me, asking for photos of my room and calling me a rich bitch but also telling me she was happy I was treating myself and that I should spend more of my dad’s money on room service. I told her he hadn’t yet transferred me the money, and she was aghast. That was the tone—aghastment. Via text. Lots of “OMG” and what seemed like weird paranoia that I was spending too much money. Every now and then she was reminded of my financial situation, which put her in a weird mood.

I finally told Haley I had to go.

I tried my best to find my dad’s place by memory. His dark blue house was shrouded in trees and next to a few apartment complexes. While I was walking, I scrolled through my phone looking for a Monday night open mic at a pub on Granville.

My dad took me to a lot of comedy shows when he came back to Ontario after my mom died, hoping that it would cheer me up and he could drink at the same time. After the shows, we’d break down which jokes worked, which comedian wasn’t funny but sold it, and the redundancy of crowd work among the same spat of comedians. Then he started talking about how I should do comedy. He was projecting; he would’ve liked being a stand-up instead of a mid-level manager at Bell. So he told me I should do it, and I agreed at first, mostly because I thought that I should get something from my mother’s death. I mean, I got the house and the money, but I wanted some kind of identity transformation for the better. Like in that movie Save the Last Dance where Julia Stiles’s mom dies, and she becomes this cool hip-hop dancer (she doesn’t really, but for the sake of the example) and gets into Juilliard. Since I wasn’t going to channel my grief into a pop-and-lock routine, I thought, Yeah, what the hell. Comedy. That’ll be my thing.

Before my dad went back to Vancouver, I managed to get him and Dale to come to my first show downtown, where a woman name JoAnne offered to give me two minutes of stage time. I told a joke about the first time I had sex and it was with a boy named Lloyd and how I thought “Lloyd” was the most unromantic name I’d ever heard. People laughed, and it was such a relief after two years of people feeling bad for me. I wasn’t a victim of this great tragedy. I was an idiot with enough chutzpah to get up onstage and gab into a mic about bullshit. It was fucking fantastic. That was just five weeks after my mother died.

“Virginia!” Penny hugged me in the foyer before taking my coat and ushering me in. “Your dad’s just in the kitchen.”

She fussed with my coat as I walked down the hall to the kitchen. I held on to my purse but regretted it, realizing there was no good place to put it while we ate. Their home was so perfectly decorated my bag would become an instant eyesore if I threw it down on their white bouclé couch or green velvet armchair. It was the opposite of my mom’s house, which was all bright colours and patterns. The living room had a dark emerald accent wall and in the dining room the slate-grey walls were adorned with posters from Penny’s shows framed by neon lights.

Penny had become a producer for ABC after she tried to make it as an actress when she was younger. She denied her aging with fillers and Botox and enormous fake breasts that she covered up with Lululemon apparel or my dad’s flannels. She had bleached blond hair, and her roots were glowing a shade lighter having just been touched up before the wedding. She knew what Hollywood and Hollywood North wanted from their women, and she tried her best to look the part even though she had never inserted herself into any show or movie she was producing. She took pride in being a producer and often mentioned how hard she worked and spoke business to me as if I should understand. She’d helped me out in a huge way when she got me into a couple of Hallmark movies, but I always felt like she was pushing for me to join her on the producing side of things. Not because she wanted some sort of mentor/mentee relationship, but she would say things like, “These movies”—the Hallmark ones—“are fun for now.” Which to me implied that at some point I should stop having fun and start getting serious in a real career.

Today she had on a black camo set and her hair was braided and secured with a Prada barrette. Her eyebrows were microbladed but she wasn’t wearing any makeup other than a bright-pink lip gloss. Her face was attempting excitement, but the aforementioned Botox prevented her from fully committing to any sort of joyful expression.

“Can I do anything to help?” I asked my dad.

“No, I think I got it. You can take a seat if you want. You said you might do a show tonight?”

“Oh yeah, at like nine or something so there’s no huge rush.”

“I just love that discipline, Virginia. That’s so rare in people your age. This is cute, look at your little bosom flowers.” Penny pointed at my blouse and the extra satiny fabric at the bust meant to look like roses. She picked a stray hair off my shoulder, then guided the same shoulder towards the dining room table.

“Come, sit sit sit, I want to hear about your life. Your dad says—” She stopped when she saw my dad carrying a large pot of soup. “No, sweetheart, serve it in there. I left the bread too. Leave that and cut it up and then—hold on.” She got up and went back to the kitchen to cut the bread and arrange it on a platter. She yelled at me from behind the island.

“And your dad said you’re thinking about Los Angeles, wow! That’s a big move, and you’re so young. Have you thought more about it?” she asked, returning and putting the bread on the table.

“Yeah, I definitely have. I just think there’s only so much here—”

“There’s so much here. I mean, god, we’re always shooting. Toronto too, I’ve heard. What’s the new studio? That one Amazon bought up? You don’t want to try acting a bit more? Or is it just for comedy?”

“I think for a lot of things, yeah. I just think if I have this opportunity now, to do it, since I’m young and want to, right? I think it’s good.”

“Mmm, it’s going to be tough, it’s going to be very tough,” she said, picking at the inside of a piece of baguette.

“Yeah, that’s okay,” I said. I took a piece of bread and began to pick at it too.

Penny seemed to be waiting for me to say something, nodding at me and smiling. Finally, she sighed.

“I just think a rehearsal dinner is too much at my age, right? It’s too much. A couple of girls and I are just going to have some drinks, which you’re welcome to come to but I know you have more shows.” She reached out and grabbed my wrist, squeezing it and smiling.

“I do, yeah. And yeah, I mean, who needs to rehearse dinner? Isn’t that the line?”

“Mhmm, wow…we’re so happy you’re here for the wedding, and your dad says you’re doing a speech. That’s so fantastic!” Penny batted at my hands again while my dad brought in bowls of soup for the two of us.

“Honey, these aren’t the spoons. It’s a wider mouth. This is—” Penny held up what looked like an ordinary spoon to me and laughed.

“I don’t—what do I do with this?” She gave the spoon back to my dad, who rolled his eyes playfully though she was dead serious. He returned with three soup spoons and his own bowl.

“It’s great, though. I have a few industry friends coming, so really if you want to have some fun in the speech and show off a bit of comedy—nothing too Amy Schumer. I don’t want gross-out body jokes. Is that her shtick? She bugs me, I don’t know why. Does she bug you?”

“Um yeah, I’m not really a fan but I don’t even know if she’s still doing comedy, but also, ha, a speech. I didn’t…like at what point? During the wedding?” I asked.

Penny was confused and looked to my dad to clarify.

“No, I emailed you, V, when we were talking about the hotel—” he started.

“I must’ve…I don’t think so. I’m happy to though—”

“Yeah, you have a week, right? Something nice. Do you do stuff like dad and daughter jokes, family jokes?” Penny asked me, slurping her soup.

“Ooh, family jokes? Mostly just about my dead mother,” I told her and immediately regretted it when I saw her face and the slight fall of her upturned lips.

“Virginia,” my father warned, still not recognizing his own failure to inform me that I was expected to write a speech that impressed network friends and guests.

“Sorry, that’s a bad joke. I have good jokes, had to get that one out of the way. I do, yeah, like not necessarily so specific to us, but like in general family jokes, yeah, like the concept. I can work with that and create something for you, and us, the trio just forging a new path of love and family ties.”

Penny nodded and did her best to bring her eyebrows together in a show of concern.

“But it’ll be good and funny,” I continued. “Obviously appropriate for a wedding scenario—yours—and I’m touched really that I get to do this and I’m excited to toast to your love. I love love, parental love with a spouse and thus, group love.”

I didn’t know why I was getting so nervous. Even as a kid, I couldn’t remember my father using that tone with me. He didn’t discipline me then and to try now, as an adult…

“ ‘Love love.’ I know, it’s addictive. Are you seeing anyone?” Penny asked me.

“No.”

“No one?” Her tone meant shock, her face said comatose.

“Nope. The apps are terrible.”

“Oh, they are. Oh my god, my kids”—that’s what Penny called the actors on her TV show—“they’re in their twenties too. They’re all over them and I keep telling them, ‘You’re going to be famous so you can’t be meeting up with strangers and fucking them and god knows what.’ Because everything is so delicate these days, and privacy too, but then of course they all just fuck each other and that’s a whole other headache.”

“Yeah. So, just best to stay single for a bit.”

“Yeah…it’s just so much about fucking these days. Everyone’s fucking each other, girl, guy, trans—”

My father was stuffing bread into his mouth but stopped for a moment to interrupt.

“Do you have a transsexual on Ghost Creek?” he asked Penny.

“You say ‘transgender’ or just like, how they identify—” I started to say, and thought non-binary should be mentioned too but he was talking again.

“In public, yeah, but do you?”

“No, I wish. That’s how you win an Emmy. Look at Euphoria. Who’s that person?” Penny asked me.

“Hunter Schafer? She’s a girl.” I was trying to fill my mouth with the hot liquid, but it was burning the roof of my mouth.

“Yes, now, but you could never tell. She’s beautiful. Who did the casting for that show?” Penny looked at my father, who didn’t work in television, so he just shrugged.

“It’s just not for ABC. Not now, though hopefully times are changing. You just need to get them at a certain point,” she continued.

“The transition?” my father asked, nodding as he spoke as if confirming himself.

“Yeah, they have to be past that point, otherwise you just can’t sell it. It’s a terrible thing to say, it’s just not for ABC.”

A few years back there was a meme about families or friend groups that would always say, “Wow, we really need our own reality TV show.” Penny was a prime example of why this was a terrible idea. Not everyone’s conversations and hot takes should be broadcast for the world to hear. There was a joke in the comedy community that once you started a podcast you officially admitted you were a coward; you couldn’t hack the biz. You couldn’t actually get up onstage and take the time to craft a joke and risk embarrassment, but you still thought your opinion was valid enough for people to stream and take an hour of their time, so long as you didn’t have to witness their live reaction. Maybe podcasters just needed to marry each other, so they could validate each other and quit involving third parties like daughters and strangers on the internet. I wondered if that was the secret to a happy marriage—just finding someone who shared a few shitty opinions with you but also with enough social tact to wait till you got home to comment on the weirdo you saw rollerblading with a boombox down Cambie Street.

After we drank our dinner, my dad made us each a cocktail and we sat by his small outdoor firepit on the backyard balcony. It was only six thirty by that point and I didn’t want to get drunk on sidecars with him and Penny, so I made up an excuse to leave early.

“Well, I certainly hope it warms up by Saturday. Here I was counting on global warming. I do have a coat though, a wedding coat. Hon, do you think you’ll be warm enough in your suit or should you get a nice topcoat for the wedding?” Penny talked at both me and my dad as they walked me to the front door.

“I’ll be fine. It’s supposed to be a bit warmer by then,” my dad replied.

“I think it’ll be moody, kind of gothic sexy if it’s cold. Don’t you think, Virginia?”

“Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be fine, we’re all Canadians, right? We love the cold!” I said and went to shake her hand. She laughed and pulled me in for a hug.

“Ooooh Virginia, I’m so happy you’re here! And your speech, oh that’ll be fun. Are you going to practice tonight?” Penny said.

“Onstage?”

“Yeah, oooh wouldn’t that be fun. I wish we could come see you this week. It’s just such a busy time.” She shook her head in exasperation so I would know just how busy she was.

“Oh, that’s all good. I’m really just working on old stuff, trying to perfect it for this showcase so it’s all old—”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do stand-up, Virginia. Can you believe that? Hon, can you believe that? It’s just hitting me. You have to have a YouTube or something, but I really, no, I can’t think of anything—” Penny was standing at the door racking her brain and I was starting to feel very cold waiting on their front steps for the right moment to say goodbye.

“Yeah, you have. The last time you visited, didn’t you do a show, V? It was at a bar—” My dad tried to help her out, but I doubted he would remember because he hadn’t been to one of my shows in the last two years.

“No, no, because last time she was here I was working on…What was it, hm! The Act with Joey King. Did you see that one? God, she is so beautiful but you would never know. No, she’s not beautiful…well, in such an odd way. A really striking way. I don’t know, is she beautiful?”

“She’s got quite large breasts for such a small woman,” my dad added, trying to be piggish under the guise of fake duncery. Penny missed it.

“She does, and they’re real! Anyways, you have to go. Thank you again for coming!” Penny gave me another hug and walked back down the hall to the kitchen.

“Yeah, and let me know. It’s busy but I’m around if you want to grab a coffee or a pint somewhere along the way,” my dad told me, offering me his hand to fist-bump.

“Will do. Thank you for the soup.”

“No soup for you!” he yelled at me, quoting the Soup Nazi line from Seinfeld.

“That’s an apt quote, Dad.” I sardonically saluted goodbye and he scoffed at me, laughing while pretending to kick me down the stairs.

CHAPTER 11

I was nursing a light beer at the bar, waiting for the host to arrive at one of those faux Irish chain pubs where the staff had to wear kilts and green polos and the walls were covered in large posters of mischievous cartoon leprechauns taunting customers into having one more pint. I could tell early on the show was going to be a weird one. There was a designated stage area in one of the window bays and the pub was full, but the patrons weren’t there for the comedy. Before the show even started the host was chastising them for not seeing that there was a comedy show on the sandwich board outside and that they were going to be a part of it whether they liked it or not. I thought there was a consent joke in there—when did consent, or lack of it, become funny? Was it now, when there were six slightly buzzed comics pleading for validation? I could understand the desire to go out for a beer and not be yelled at or put in a position to have to pacify strangers onstage with fabricated joy.

I scanned the audience. My heart dropped for a second when I saw a man, close to the front, wearing a brown suede jacket. It wasn’t Sam, of course. If he were here he would be performing, not sitting in the front row for a comedy show. I knew all that but still, I had to take a second to calm my racing heart. I felt this sickness and also this feeling of Great, now I’ll show him what I can really do. Like I had to prove my talent to my rapist so maybe then he would respect me and that would be the fucking closure I needed. It was so sad. I wondered if everything would always make me this sad.

I was staring into the bottom of my light beer when I almost missed the host calling my name. I got up and walked to the stage, thanking him as he passed me the mic. I waited for the room to go silent, I didn’t even try to look at the man who owned the jacket; I kept my sightline towards the back of the bar.

“I know everyone talks a lot about cancel culture and the fuckery of the woke people and the right-wing loony-tunes and how we’re all a bit too precious about our beliefs because the glaring conclusion is that none of it fucking matters. Buuttttt can we just talk about redemption? Like everyone is so divisive these days—fuck her, fuck him, ten years ago he was fifteen and tweeted that his buddy was gay so he’s a homophobe? Because as a society we are actually so much more forgiving than we think. Look at Subway sandwiches. Their poster boy was a pedophile. But we still love Subway sandwiches, cause that’s not on them; that’s Jared’s deal. And that’s his truth. I mean, you could shoot him, that’s chill—”

The audience laughed and clapped at that part, it was easy to get away with suggesting capital punishment when it came to pedophilia.

“But no, then Subway came out and was like, Y’all we lied, we’ve been selling y’all footlongs and guess what? Fuck you, it might be ten, eleven inches depending on the day. You don’t know what you want so we picked up the fucking slack and sold you a dream based on a lie. Sue us. And we didn’t! We forgave Subway sandwiches yet again. We took that one on the chin and said, Yeah, you got us, Subway sandwiches, but goddammit you know us better than we know ourselves. Then finally, Subway sandwiches comes out and is like…Hey, so this tuna…Gaaaaaawd almighty, this one hurts us too, but…it’s not tuna. To be honest, we don’t know what the fuck it is, but we know you love it, and that’s our commitment to you—that YOU WILL TAKE WHAT WE GIVE YOU! WE’RE FUCKING SUBWAY SANDWICHES, YOU CAN’T STOP THIS MACHINE, WE GOT TWO LOCATIONS, ONE STRIP MALL, FUCK YOU, FIGHT ME!”

Acting out a toxic bro in the physicalizing of Subway sandwiches, flexing, lowering my voice and getting louder, was one of my favourite bits. It definitely got everyone’s attention, and a bigger laugh than I had thought it would, given the indifference they showed towards the host. I got quiet again.

“I’m Subway sandwiches. I am involved in all three tiers of government. I have a consistent smell that reminds you of lunch and depression. I don’t ask for much. I put up a giant poster of a tomato for you to remember to Eat Fresh—I did that for you. I make less to no profit bundling these Sun Chips up for you in a meal deal. I’m not saying I’m not flawed. I’m not saying me and Jared didn’t have our fun, he never did anything to me. I’m just saying I’m a work in progress, but I’m here and I’m willing to try…And you know what? We accepted that. We believed, as a society, in redemption, and we said, ‘Okay, Subway sandwiches, I believe in you.’ And if we…as a society can do that? If we can believe in something as shitty as Subway sandwiches? I think we’re all capable of redemption, of forgiveness…except the pedophiles and this one kid named Sev in my ethics class who picked his nails next to me every Tuesday. Fuck you, Sev! Thank you so much!”

A few people applauded, and when I finally looked down at the man with the suede coat he was laughing heartily. When I knew I was doing the Subway bit I always tried to look a little more, I dunno, girlish than usual? I found that people liked the contrast, pretty little girl gets mad—hilarious. I didn’t think of myself as very feminine usually. I liked being a woman, mostly, and I liked pretty things that I was too embarrassed to admit to for some reason. Small luxury lipsticks, shiny patent leather heels, feminine things I’d never wear. Once I tried to tell Haley that there was a part of me that really longed to have that whole soft-girl vanilla aesthetic, just wrapped in gauze and beige and oversized quality fabrics, consistently following a skin care regime, and effortlessly cool. Taking up space comfortably as an unknowable beautiful woman and not having to scream at unassuming pub patrons while posing as a sandwich chain. The idea of seeming delicate yet…internally strong versus what I was—externally strong and fucked-up inside. I’d never felt beautiful onstage, but when people laughed, I thought, Well, that’s a close second, and told myself being funny was better than being beautiful. Except if I was one of those soft girls, I wouldn’t have had the whole thing with Sam because he would’ve valued me more. I knew that was fucked up.

The bartender thought I was funny and gave me a free shot of tequila, and I was almost drunk and content by the time I got back to the hotel. Haley hadn’t texted me but Sam had. He was back in LA and told me to give him a shout if I ever made it out there. In that moment, I missed Haley. No, I missed the version of Haley I wanted, the one that I could text saying, “Holy fuck he texted me again!!” and she would respond, “He’s disgusting! Fuck him!” and that would be the end of it and it wouldn’t become a discussion about how I was feeling and what I could do to solve it. It would just be simple.

I didn’t write back to Sam. I didn’t even begin to, mostly because I didn’t want him seeing those three little dots that appeared when someone was texting you. Even that would seem like this connection between the two of us, if he saw it. I threw my phone to the other side of the bed. My hands were shaking, and for a moment I thought I might be having a panic attack, so I squeezed my fancy hotel pillow tight and told myself it was all okay. It would be okay if I moved to LA and he was there, because it was a big city. I wouldn’t text him, and I wouldn’t see him. It’d be okay even if I did see him, so long as it was on my terms. I thought about how Haley would never speak to me again once I moved or we’d naturally stop speaking and would only know each other through curated moments on Instagram. It would be okay.

—

The next day, I woke up late, thinking someone was knocking on my door before I realized it was the sound of the rain hitting the window. Rain didn’t stop Vancouverites from being outside. I, on the other hand, stayed inside all day and all evening too. I only left the room to run to a Wendy’s close by. The next evening, I forced myself to go to another show.

“Vancouver is an odd place, I’ve decided, which I know is typical coming from a Torontonian. People seem too content in Vancouver. They’ve accepted they’re trapped here, closed in by the mountains and living a Truman Show type of a life. It’s too idyllic. In Toronto you have to grind in this filthy little city with its lake and its dangerous levels of E. coli. The raccoons are mobilizing to take over, and no one can afford houses or nice cheeses so it creates this way of being that’s like survival mode. You can’t get anywhere quickly because the streetcars are always diverting and there’s not enough room on the shuttle bus. It’s faster to walk but the sidewalks are covered in police-horse shit, dog shit, and, around Queen and Sherbourne, human shit. But none of that will ever shake your unflappable pride in being a Torontonian. Toronto’s home because you’ve trauma-bonded with this city. It’s like when you hear people who get out of jail say they miss it a little bit. It’s too much out here, all your trees and ocean views, I need to be back in Dufferin Mall just watching my six in the food court. The devil you know, right?”

After my set I was feeling good, until I got in a stupid drunken fight with some comedian from Red Deer who’d been living in Vancouver for the past two years about how much better Toronto was than Vancouver.

“It’s not even a question, dude, you’re not even in the conversation,” Red Deer yelled at me while we were supposed to be listening to the closing act.

“It’s like why would Drake come back if Toronto wasn’t the better city? We have a baseball team, basketball—”

“Leafs suck!” he interrupted.

“Fuck yeah, they do, but as a city we’re just more realized. Like on the world stage Toronto is part of the conversation whereas Vancouver’s like this…afterthought.” At this point it didn’t matter who thought whose city was better, I really just wanted to insult him.

“That’s not fucking true. Toronto’s a fucking laughingstock, garbage city. Ask anyone. It’s like, ‘Oh, you’re from the city of garbage and shit.’ Vancouver’s actually getting shit done. And the Olympics.” He took his beer and looked like he was getting ready to walk away, as if he had clearly made the winning argument.

“Who says that? Go find someone at random and ask if they’ve ever called Toronto a garbage city?” I wouldn’t let him leave. He was a big guy but I wanted to fight him.

“You fuckin’ said it onstage, sweetheart.” He took another swig and smiled at me.

“It was a joke. Like you understand what we say up there isn’t real, right? Or are you the type to get all your medical advice off YouTube?”

“Dude, it’s just facts.” Now he sounded bored of me, like I was an idiot.

“How is it facts? I’m asking you to provide evidence and you can’t, and that’s the fucking bare minimum for a fact. Proof. Undeniable proof. You’ve got an opinion that doesn’t even fucking matter. Like who gives a shit what you think, Red Deer?” I would’ve said his name if I remembered it, but calling out someone from Red Deer as if that was a fucking problem on its own seemed semi-devastating.

“Yeah, yeah, no one cares what I have to say. You talked for four fucking minutes about your ex-boyfriends and ooh, I’m so weird and men are the worst. Ugghhhh.” He was doing a terrible impression of me.

“Sorry, I should talk about my dick more. Yeah shit, I should talk about everyone I’ve fucked—”

“Yeah definitely, slut.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself! Go fuck your mother!” I was raising my voice too much and my cheeks were burning. Red Deer was about to curse at me but saw the host approaching and started laughing and shrugging, miming She’s fucking crazy. I was ready for a cage match, I’d die fighting this useless Albertan fuck, but then the host asked me to chill, and all I could do was leave while trying to explain that Red Deer called me a slut and I wasn’t.

On the ride to the hotel, I started crying. The driver asked if I was okay, and I nodded and told him I was just at a comedy show and he nodded like he got it.

When I got back to the room, I remembered what had made me want a roommate in the first place: the shock of being alone in total silence. It wasn’t sad, it wasn’t lonely; it was just this void. The bed was so white and had been made up while I was gone. I had stopped crying but felt too tired to go back out for food. I stood for a long time and let hunger gnaw at me. I tried to tell myself not to be so dramatic, but I was turned inside out in a way that wasn’t rational and I was spiralling.

I stared at my phone, thinking about Haley, the version of her I wished still existed.

Instead, I texted Nia and told her all about my night. Being a third-gen Torontonian, she was already on Facebook saying “fuck you” to Red Deer and told me everyone from Vancouver could get fucked. It made me feel better. I texted Addy and Claire, who gave me more validation that this city was full of jerks and I was not a jerk even though I’d told Red Deer to go fuck his mother. Everyone kept saying it didn’t matter. That was the throughline—it didn’t matter. And in that moment, I knew why I couldn’t call Haley because the part of her that still genuinely loved me would tell me that it did matter, that the confrontation was a projection of my unaddressed anger but we couldn’t talk about it because it was too much for her.

I wanted to go back to Toronto.

CHAPTER 12

I spent all day Rotting in my hotel room again, telling myself I had a terrible hangover and that I couldn’t for any reason whatsoever get out of bed. I had to force myself out of the delusion long enough to look at the sparse notes I had made for my wedding toast. “Dad…I’m so happy for you. After a couple of test drives you found the one…made for the end of the road?” Puns weren’t my strength. I wasn’t sure what I could say that would be funny. I’d be fine with “Dad, I love you. Penny, you’re weird in a mostly dope way and you make my dad happy so that’s chill and I love you too in that sense.” But that wasn’t what they were hoping for. I tried looking through her Facebook to glean some sort of story or moment that I could twist into a joke. She didn’t have much, a few photos of her and my dad at dinners or at a screening. They always had polite smiles and posed out of obligation but neither looked natural.

“Dad, ye wee ol’ cunt, yer married!” I said to no one in a terrible Scottish/Irish accent. Better to trial and error here than at the wedding. “Oy Dad, yev gon’ and git yerself marrrrieehhd.” That was my attempt at an Australian accent, in case they wanted me to do an accent at their wedding. I often found that by going to the stupidest place in my brain first, I could only do better from there.

I continued to ach and ich my way through sincere clichés of matrimony and hope and love, hoping to discover some sort of usable nugget. I decided it would be better to binge The Bachelor and cobble together whatever stolen saccharine lines they used on each other for myself. I would’ve tried harder if I had had more time, or if I thought anything mattered more than it did or didn’t basically since my mother’s death. That was too much, that was so shitty to say, and I was just pitying myself and being a loser. Things mattered; this wedding mattered. I’d say something nice; I’d get there. I should’ve posted “trust the process” on my Instagram stories and revelled in the “amen” responses I got back from people I didn’t talk to in person.

I finally got up and took a shower, slapping some moisturizer on my dehydrated face because both tonight and tomorrow, Gavin from head office at Yuk’s had put me on as a middle, which was nice of him. Everyone said he was kinda mean and very sensitive, like if you were anything but grateful and accommodating to him he wouldn’t book you for another six months unless he was really desperate. I’d always been accommodating cause I generally didn’t have too much going on, so we’d never had an issue. I hadn’t been booked for Vancouver but told him a long time ago that I’d be available for this week, minus the Saturday because it was my father’s third wedding. Gavin’s father was a well-known politician who he hated, so I made it seem like it was a terrible burden to have to go to another one of my father’s weddings, but you know, appearances and familial obligation. He’d lol’d at my email. If Gavin from head office thought I hated my father and therefore that brought me closer to him and allowed me to make an extra four hundred dollars for twenty-eight minutes of work, I was okay with that. That’s showbiz, baby. I further justified it by reminding myself that Shia LaBeouf made a whole movie about how much he hated his father, so it was all relative.

I wasn’t worried about Red Deer showing up at Yuk’s because I knew the lineup and doubted some douchebag who had a joke about how he didn’t mind East Hastings because heroin addicts were mostly a lot more chill than the stoners he hung out with would be given a surprise spot based on a walk-in. The comics were nice. There was another Gavin. Maybe head office Gavin liked the name and only booked people he had things in common with. This Gavin was from Australia but had been living in Vancouver for a while. He was very good-looking but also knew it in the way he acted like he was humble but grinned after a beautiful and yeah, overweight woman complimented him and invited him to join her and her girlfriends at the bar. The way he grinned went from thanking them and relaying honest interest to a slight widening of his eyes on the turn to me that said, Absofuckinglutely not. He seemed almost offended from the way he shook his head and quickly pointed back at them with his thumb and laughed with another comic named Raphael.

Raphael mostly joked about being from an immigrant family, but when I brought up that maybe he could be a book translator because I thought he was bilingual, he said he didn’t speak Portuguese. His mom never taught him because she barely spoke it herself and his father was a white dude from Kelowna.

I didn’t feel nervous. For two nights my name was on the marquee, giving me permission to relax because I belonged there. I gave two solid performances. It was the happiest I’d been all week. I was good enough to be paid the same rate as the known local comics and share the same stage. It made me feel more hopeful about making it in LA. That I could chase that feeling, of being unknown, storyless, but still deserving of respect and stage time.

By some wedding miracle it wasn’t raining on Saturday, which was great because I knew Penny was determined to have an outdoor wedding, even though the weather was so unpredictable in early March. I had packed a simple navy, long-sleeved, backless, floor-length dress. I assumed it would be freezing, even though the weather was much milder on the west coast. I was going for Hilary Swank at the Oscars but I felt more like Trey Parker. I fought with the hotel blow-dryer for a few minutes then opted for a sleek ponytail and dramatic cat eye, just in case the humidity got the best of me. I enjoyed the act of putting on makeup. I didn’t wear too much onstage generally. Foundation, blush/bronzer, mascara, lip shit that didn’t do much of anything but pulled the look together. I kept trying to pull my “invisible” underwear over the soft bit of my lower stomach without pulling up the back too much to reveal my thong. As long as I sucked in my stomach for the next five to eight hours, it was passable.

I started to feel sick on the Uber ride to the venue, looking out at the highway, then the large houses surrounding the four-lane road, taking deep breaths every time we jolted to a stop or made a quick lane change. I was trying to stay off my phone so I wouldn’t make myself more car sick. I’d read stories about people who had these gut feelings that felt like sickness except they acted on them and saved someone’s life. This was like that—a physical premonition of something terrible to come. Not that I was going to do anything about it; I wasn’t about to scream at my Uber driver to turn the car around. I was creating this narrative. I knew that, but why I was, I had no idea. But I knew there was something in my subconscious making me feel sicker than I actually was, like I had this need to feel bad, maybe just so I would feel something.

We passed a botanical garden and drove towards the airport. I had the fleeting thought of just hopping out there, heading to the terminal and jumping on a plane back home. I felt so guilty thinking all these things. The wedding will be great, I told myself.

I felt a bit better by the time I was outside the venue, which was a massive fancy-looking boathouse structure. I could see a small congregation standing outside and I readied myself for small talk.

The first people I saw were my cousins, Margaret and Iman. They were both white, but their mom was doing missionary work in Congo when she gave birth to her youngest and was told by someone or inspired by her midwife—I wasn’t sure which since I’d heard the story a long time ago—to give her daughter the name Iman.

“Hiiii!” I grabbed the front of my dress so I wouldn’t trip and hobbled over, making a show of being terrible at walking in heels.

“You look so pretty!” Iman hugged me around her massive pregnant belly.

“So do you. Look at you, are you pregnant?” I joked.

She smiled and rolled her eyes. “I’m over it. Oh my god, Virginia, I’m so over it. Look at these though, aren’t they cute?” She held onto my arm and stuck out a swollen foot to show me her shoes. “They’re Tod’s. Do you even remember that brand? If you ever have fat feet, get these. They’re actually cute.”

“They are, yeah. Are you still working?”

“Oh my god, yes, yes, it’s terrible. I feel like I have to go remote soon, but there’s a lot of client-facing work because we’re an investment start-up so they really want us there in person.”

“What are they investing in?” I asked, as we moved into the venue.

“Well, you know crypto, right? Like those NFTs and bitcoin?”

“Yeah.”

“So yeah, it’s like that but also kinda reversed. Like it’s a lot of clients who’ve made their money in crypto and are now finding ways of kinda pulling their money out and needing it to go through the right channels of more…like established foundations and then back into their bank accounts.”

“Why does it sound like money laundering?” I joked.

She looked at me, serious. “It’s a legal grey area. I mean, it’s not illegal. It’s just finding ways around the…things you can’t do with crypto,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll go back after the baby, but then there’s just so much money out there still.”

“In the cloud?” I asked.

“No one uses the cloud,” she told me.

Margaret joined us after signing the guest book.

“Who doesn’t use the cloud?” Margaret asked as she hugged me. “Hi V!”

“Anyone, apparently. I’m learning so much. Jesus, you both are so pregnant. Is it a race?”

“We’re due a week apart.” Margaret smiled and rubbed her belly.

“Did you plan that?”

“Ew V, such a comedian.” Iman lightly slapped my shoulder.

“Sorry, no, that’s so great though! Cousin best friends!”

“Aw, like us!” Margaret looked like she was going to cry and pulled Iman and me into a group hug.

I was very close with Iman growing up, while Margaret was three years older, which is a lifetime when you’re a kid. Iman and I saw each other every weekend when we were younger. I still thought of her as a best friend, just not a close one. Like a built-in best friend that didn’t require maintenance because we were family and we both sucked at keeping in touch but got along so well and told each other enough secrets that we trusted one another, but not so many secrets that we felt emotionally burdened or had to revisit old wounds whenever we saw each other. I would have liked to have seen her more often, but soon after my dad moved to the west coast her family followed. Now she lived in Victoria.

“Yay, but really are you guys doing it all together, like birthing classes or Lamaze? I have no idea what you do to prepare. Building cribs and shit?” I said.

“I think we are. We have slightly different birthing plans, yeah. Like Iman is thinking tub and I’m thinking hospital,” Margaret said.

“Oooh, tub birth. That sounds semi-relaxing.”

“I hope so yeah, just more natural,” Iman said. “I have this amazing midwife—well, we share a midwife so hopefully we don’t give birth on the same day—”

“Oh my god, can you imagine and she has to choose?” Margaret was laughing but Iman looked worried.

“Well, you’re going to be at a hospital—” Iman said.

“I just want to make sure the placenta remains sterile. I’m having it made into pills—”

“A tub is just as sterile. It’s just me and everything that was in me,” Iman protested.

“Are you also eating the placenta, Iman?” I asked.

“Yeah, in pill form because it’s sterile,” she responded, looking pointedly at Margaret.

“My mom always told me I was born pooping and that actually led to like an issue cause the poop got in her and my little baby mouth and throat, so I mean, like, if the baby poops in the placenta, is it still sterile?” I didn’t know why I asked both of them this question. They seemed stunned, trying to come up with an answer.

I tried to recover. “I mean, I’m sure they could hose it off. Sorry, they could definitely hose off any like gross bits of body and stuff.”

“My feet are killing me, V. Do you mind if we go sit down? I can’t stand for long these days,” Margaret said and started to look around for her husband to lean on.

“I told you to get these flats—”

“I didn’t like them, Iman!” Margaret pouted. I waved over both their husbands to come take their wives to their seats.

“Hey, Virginia.” Francis, Iman’s husband, greeted me and passed Iman a bottle of water, while Margaret’s husband, Frank, smiled and drank from his bottle of beer.

“Hey guys, I think these ladies need to elevate their feet,” I told them.

“You didn’t get me a water?” Margaret asked her already red-faced husband.

“I’m gonna grab a drink and sign the guest book,” I said. “I’ll be two seconds, Marg, if you wanna sit. I’ll grab you one.”

“You’re an angel, V,” she said, shooting Frank an angry look. “We’ll meet you outside.”

I skipped signing the guest book because I couldn’t think of anything to say that I wanted permanently in writing, so I looked through my phone before getting Margaret a bottle of water and joining the four of them where they were seated on a dock overlooking the Fraser River. Small ornamental trees in big white urns lined the outer chairs and a large floral arch framed a single mic. I made a mental note to ask, when appropriate, not today, if the wired lettering of “Till Death” on top of the arch was supposed to be a joke or not. I looked at Iman and Margaret, who were holding their bellies, heads down, breathing slowly.

“Are you guys going into early labour?” I asked them.

They both shook their heads.

Francis answered for them. “They’re seasick.”

“It’s a river,” I corrected him. “They’re riversick.”

“It’s the dock of it all,” Francis told me, looking forward stoically while rubbing his wife’s back.

The dock of it all, I repeated in my head. My stomach began to cramp again. The dock filled up quickly and then I heard a bell tolling. It was time.

I looked out onto the river, mimicking my cousin’s slow breathing technique. Francis was coaching them: “In for three, out for three.” The music started up—“Baby I Need Your Loving.” My dad walked up the aisle to take his place on the right side of the mic. I felt like a child, trying to catch his eye—“Dad! Dad, I’m here!” But he was smiling at a few of Penny’s older family members in the front row. The music changed, cuing the bridesmaids and groomsmen. One of the bridesmaids was a quasi-famous actress about my age. Everyone couldn’t help but stare at her, and she smiled radiantly and started to laugh nervously when she was halfway down the aisle, arm in arm with one of my father’s friends, a now sober former raging depressive alcoholic previously married to a Playboy Bunny and proclaimed bestie of Quentin Tarantino. I used to call him my uncle, and he would show me photos of him and his wife. She would always be wearing sheer tops that exposed her nipples and I was super fascinated as a child as to why I was given access to these photos. It’s not like they were pornographic—it was the two of them at Comic-Con or at dinner or a club—but it was nipples every time. My mom thought he was okay until about five o’clock; then she sent him and my father out. She would roll her eyes when the two of them came back well past 3 a.m. singing classic rock and inevitably consoling each other because truthfully they were both desperately unhappy. This faux uncle was over the moon to be arm in arm with a celebrity, and he gave my dad a quick thumbs-up for the favour when he reached his side.

Another not-so-seamless music change, not the traditional wedding march but some stringed symphonic number. Penny walked out with her father, nodding at everyone while maintaining a tight grip on her dad. She looked beautiful, in her creamy white silk dress with a square neckline that exposed her massive fake breasts but in a flirty way. It had long sleeves and a silky train and was fitted to her body in a mermaid cut. Her hair was lightly wavy and half up, her makeup subtly bridal and not Instagram bridal.

I watched Penny survey the wedding guests, about a hundred of us, smiling placidly at her attendees sitting on the dock.

Something I’m not so proud of…I zoned out—if I’m being honest, purposefully—during the vows. I tried to pay close attention at first, but then it came to the part where they read each other all the promises of adoration “TILL DEATH.” To hear my father profess his love so…abundantly for Penny, in ways I couldn’t ever remember him doing publicly for my mother. My father was supposed to be so close to me, he was my blood, my family, and yet this giant thing that should bond us, my mom’s death…like if he didn’t love her anymore, what did that mean? You’d think that this shared experience of losing someone who we at least at some point loved so fucking deeply would ensure closeness forever. But as he went on and on about loving Penny above “anything” (which I took as anyone), I realized we just had my childhood to bond us and half of that I couldn’t remember. My dad never shared many memories. Maybe he left them behind in Oakville and has since forgotten those moments like in third grade when I dedicated a book to him and likened him to Homer Simpson. But that was all we had—love formed by childhood. And he had so many more memories than I did, but if he kept forgetting them and replacing them with new ones with Penny, we would only grow further apart, our bond reduced to calling each other every month out of a familial contract. He’s never changed, not much, to me. That person standing up there at the arch was my dad. But if I changed, if I wasn’t the child he was bonded to but some sort of new alien woman…I don’t know.

Penny was rambling on now. “They say you can’t hurry love, love is patient. Well, anyone who’s worked with me knows that patience is not my strong suit. I tried, for many years, to be patient, but the moment I met you I wasn’t going to wait another second—”

I played it off quite well that I was tearing up at the beauty of Penny’s speech and not because of my internal dialogue that Daddy didn’t love me anymore.

The minister pronounced them husband and wife. They shared an exceptionally passionate kiss, and I elbowed Francis and joked, “Now I’m gonna be sick,” to which he did not laugh, but Frank let out a hearty guffaw. Frank was a bit of a buffoon but an easy mark if I needed an audience.

Everyone clapped and my pregnant cousins stood up and held onto their husbands tightly, while Penny and my dad walked back down the aisle hand in hand. I didn’t try to wave to catch his eye as they passed, instead I watched Frank guzzle down the rest of his beer before going to help Margaret up the aisle to the reception hall.

“Are you the daughter?” A young, nervous-looking photographer approached me at the bar and pulled my elbow, which I thought was a bit forward.

“Of the groom, yeah?” I told him. “Yeah, I’m the daughter.”

“Can we get a quick photo of you two?” He was asking but already walking away so I followed him outside and down the dock to where he directed me towards my dad, who was standing alone on an empty patch of grass about three metres to the left of the dock. He was looking over the river to the other side where there were barren trees and brush. Penny was talking to an attractive young man who caught my eye, smiled, and rolled his eyes. I had no idea who he was but instantly I knew I’d found a friend, one who on first impression was as cynical as I was.

“You did good, kid,” I told my dad as I approached him, walking carefully in my wedge heels on the wet grass. It was starting to rain.

“Okay, we’re weather-dependent so we’re moving a bit quickly today,” the photographer said.

“Can we lose the jacket and the champagne?” he continued.

There wasn’t anywhere to put my jacket and the photographer was no help, so I just laid it on the ground out of frame, and my dad took my drink and finished it before handing the glass to the photographer, who let it fall on its side after carelessly putting it down on the grass.

“Is this the best part?” I joked, meaning the photos.

“Eh…I’m fucking starving,” he said and put on a smile for the photographer.

“Can you move your head a bit, try to find the light?” the photographer told me, and I looked at the overcast sky scanning for a break in the clouds, for a hint of sunlight.

“And we’re happy, good, beautiful. Can you, the daughter, can we have softer hands?” I had my hand on my hip, which I guess wasn’t soft.

“We’re not going for hand on Dad, just a soft hand down, light fingers, we want the chin up, we’re getting shadows on the nose, and smile. What a happy day, beautiful beautiful, keep the hands soft. Dad, you’re doing great, maybe a little more natural, Daughter, it’s a little picture day, soft eyes, there’s just that hair there in the gloss, and hands back down, that’s great, smile smile, soft eyes, gorgeous.”

I didn’t know if anything I was doing came off soft or light or natural, but I was happy it was over and less happy to put on my jacket, now damp from the moist grass and dirt but still warmer than nothing.

“Okay, Dad, we’re gonna do a few more, just you and the bride, and we’ll move to the other dock and then back inside. BRIDE! We’re moving!” The photographer was calling Penny, so I moved to leave but he yelled at me to stay.

“And we have our glass, we’re still guests. Dad, the next dock.” He meant for me to go pick up my champagne glass and I wanted to give him the look of like, Alright, asshole, but he was already holding Penny’s hand, hurrying her up to the next location.

“I think if we want cocaine, he’s our guy.” The attractive young man previously talking to Penny had approached me. As he got closer I could tell he must be my age, maybe a little older. He was skinny with long brown hair and pale in a fashionable way, like he owned many expensive creams. He had high cheekbones and puffy lips and was more beautiful than handsome the more I looked at him. I thought he might be some famous actor or musician, but I couldn’t place him.

“I don’t know, I think he hates me. Not soft enough for him,” I told the beautiful boy.

“Oh, he wanted soft from you? He kept asking me to get harder. I just had to get so hard for him,” the boy joked.

“Wow, for a wedding photo? That’s a choice.”

“Oh no, I think that’s for his private collection. I feel used, I’m not gonna lie.”

“Cause you got so hard for him?”

“Yeah. Unless he does have cocaine then that’s a fair trade. I’ve done worse for less.” The beautiful boy joked with an ease that inferred everything he was joking about came from the truth. I could feel my stomach cramping again from the fear of what this boy was capable of and what I was just as capable of, whatever chaos he dragged me into.

“I’m Virginia.”

“Ten.”

“Four? What?” I asked him.

“Tennessee.” He smiled again.

“Fuck off.”

“I’m serious. My name is Tennessee.”

“Why?” It was a dumb question; I wasn’t asking him so much as the universe. It made him laugh.

“Fucking parents.” He shook his head.

“That’s like the worst state right now. You’re so colonial.”

“I know—hey fuck, Virginia? What are you doing for gay rights?”

“I don’t know, not stripping them entirely?”

“Where does Virginia stand on all that?”

“The state?” I asked him.

“Well, and you.”

“I’m for the basic rights of all humans to, you know, live without fear of being killed for who they love or how they identify. The state…I honestly don’t know. I never hear about it,” I said.

“No, me neither.”

“I’m sure it’s not great.”

“That’s why I go by Ten. Do people call you Ginny?” he asked.

“Not unless they want to get punched. I don’t know why I said that. I haven’t punched anyone ever, but that’s a terrible name. I go by V.”

“T and V.”

“VT,” I said.

“It sounds like VD.” He grimaced.

“Probably best not to combine the names.”

“No.” He shook his head. I loved the way we smiled at each other in the silence. I couldn’t tell if I was attracted to him. I felt like his femininity made me more masculine than him, like his naturally dark long eyelashes compared to my mascara’d ones. I wanted to be him more than I wanted to fuck him, to possess such delicate features and pore-less porcelain skin. But since I couldn’t be him, I decided I wanted him, so much, to find me just as, if not more, attractive than a beautiful man like him should. I wanted this faerie god to worship me and by doing so suggest that I was just as beautiful and worthy of the same worship.

“After dinner, you want to set this thing on fire?” he asked me.

“Fuck, yeah.”

“Let’s do it.” He took my arm and walked me to my seat in the dining room, which was adjacent to the reception hall. Three walls were made of floor-to-ceiling windows, so I could see my father running after Penny with an umbrella over her head towards the building. Everything in the dining room was white, the chairs were covered in the same fabric as the tables, which were decorated with mini sparse trees in mini white urns next to the table number. My first thought was This would be a terrible time to get my period.

“What number are you?” he asked me.

“Ten. Wait, that’s you! Kidding, I’m table four.”

“Hm, table three. Got you beat, kid.”

He winked at me before taking his place on Penny’s side. I forgot to ask him how he knew Penny. He was probably one of her “kids” on the show.

I tried to avoid looking at Ten throughout dinner, but when I did he would raise his glass and cheers me, a not-so-subtle encouragement to binge drink tonight.

“Who else is up there? Do you know?” Iman asked me, referring to the head table where my dad and Penny sat, enjoying their fish.

“I think just buddies. I can’t remember if one of them is Penny’s sister. I think your dad’s the only family member,” I told Iman. Neither Penny nor my dad had any family photos up in their house. They wouldn’t fit with the dramatic minimalism.

“So weird. Oh well, I’m happy you’re sitting with us. I thought you were gonna be up there,” Iman said.

“Yeah, I think they knew I’d prefer to be with you guys.”

I snuck another glance at Ten. This time he wasn’t looking, so I focused back on my cousins.

“Also what are you guys having? Do you know? Did I just totally miss that announcement?” I asked.

Margaret piped up. “Both boys! Obviously for now, that’s not our call—”

“We’re having a boy,” Frank interrupted.

“I just don’t like to have any expectations. I didn’t want to find out, but then Iman found out—” Margaret started to say.

“Yeah, but you don’t have to do everything I do—”

“No, but it’s like our thing, because of the baby shower. Oh V, I hope you can come back for the baby shower. We were going to do it earlier but then Iman—”

“Stop, you’re making it seem like it’s my fault—”

“It’s not. We agreed it’s better to have the shower after they’re born so everyone can meet the babies,” Margaret concluded.

I smiled and looked back at Ten. He was staring at me, like he was waiting for me to once again cheers.

By the time we got to the speeches, I was drunk. I’d thought my crude plan of snack, water, glass of wine, nodding at lukewarm salmon, and agreeing it was fine with my cousins was foolproof. I had to walk very deliberately towards the mic as the MC for the evening, Adam, another friend of Penny’s, introduced me, commenting on my career choice, comedian, and warning the guests to strap in.

“Thank you, Adam, for that very daunting introduction. No pressure to be funny now, right? Um, hello, all of you, some of whom I know, some who I have the fantastic pleasure of not knowing. See…we’re just warming up, we’ll get the funny in.”

For someone who had done stand-up comedy sober, in empty bars, to disinterested patrons—even on a boat once, soundtracked by the subdued but very obvious sound of retching—I didn’t think I’d ever been more nervous. I could feel my dad watching, needing this to be good; same with Penny, as if this was her best effort at giving me a “shot.” She smiled encouragingly and lowered her chin into clasped hands, but I could feel she was just as stressed as I was. I knew Ten was staring, half smiling, bemused by my little party trick. Could I make these people laugh? Was I really funny enough to hang out with him and be his chosen partner in crime?

“This is the first wedding speech I’ve been asked to do, mostly I just focus on eulogies, kidding”—there was a small laugh I’m almost certain Ten was solely responsible for—“and obviously, this feels like the most important one I’m ever going to give. If I’m being brutally honest, when I first met Penny I was old enough to know better but young enough to still be a petulant little brat. And in my head, I fantasized that she would reinforce my late-teen and early twenties angst and be this kinda villainous character so I could justify being moody and misunderstood. Except she was freaking lovely. And not just lovely; she was funny and crass and smart and all of the things I aspired to be when I was not in my emo phase. She saw right through my, excuse my language, bullshit and in the first moment of meeting, yes, I was humbled, but immediately, wordlessly, she gave me a choice—continue to be a little asshole or welcome me into your family and enjoy because I am fantastic. I chose the latter, and I have never regretted it. I am so grateful that this is the woman in my father’s life, taking up the space that I believe was left vacant for her. There could be no one else. Now my father…that’s a different story.”

There was a bit of laughter. It was easier to get people to want to laugh when they liked you, so beginning with Penny allowed me to take a shot at my dad because I had already established what a sweet person I was.

“My dad is also funny and crass, and I would say smart except he was the one who encouraged his only child to pursue a career in the arts, so…hmm. Never even tried to push for like a doctor. Maybe that says more about me though. He did what he could. But, no, he uh, he is smart, you know. He proposed to Penny so that’s gotta be the smartest play in the book. And um, you know, he…he did, yeah, he told me to do stand-up comedy a while ago. I was going through some things—you’ll read about it in the memoir—but uh, he saw this thing in me, for me, that I never saw in myself. He saw a possibility, I guess. A possibility of moving forward and of creating joy and somehow he looked at me and said you can do that. That’s um, what he does—he sees the possibilities of every person and every moment. He saw it with Penny, the possibility of an amazing life, the possibility to be happy, and to love and be loved and he made it happen. Except when he tried to build me a swing set in second grade—that thing was a death trap. But no, um…he sees things in people. He believes in their power and I love him. I do. I love the both of you. I, uh, love love. Love that for you. It’s a comfort, yeah, to be with the ones you love, to be close to them and have them around, just knowing it’s, they, um are in another room…all this love, you can yell for it, and it comes running. And that’s really nice. So um…”

I had gone off script and was flailing. I wanted to end on a high note but I was about to start crying again.

“It’s not normal for stand-up comedians to cry when they have a mic, just a disclaimer, but uh, yeah, to your love and the endless possibilities!”

My dad and Penny both stood up clapping and shook my hands over their table. I tried to walk as upright as I could back to my seat. My cousins smiled supportively at me and nodded, hands over their hearts, and Francis poured me more wine.

“I also love love.” Ten softly mocked me after Penny and my father danced their first dance to “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” by Belinda Carlisle. People were shuffling onto the dance floor, but I decided to stay seated while I debated my next drink since the bar was officially open and serving libations beyond regional reds and whites.

“But do you live laugh love?” I asked him.

“Hmm, I think love laugh. Do I love live? Not lately.”

“Is it the economy?” I asked.

“That and the depression. The real hopelessness,” he replied, staring off in the distance.

“Well…two outta three ain’t bad.”

“You wanna grab a drink?”

“Yeah.”

We approached the bar, and I looked over the crafted cocktails for the night. They seemed very sweet, and I already could feel a terrible hangover waiting for me at the airport tomorrow morning. But I was living in the present, and I was here for a party and love and fun.

“You wanna dance?” he asked me after we finished our drinks.

I’d never wanted to dance with anyone, but I said yes because in my state I thought, Yeah, exercise will help the booze wear off. I tried not to look through the large bay windows because I also didn’t want to get riversick, but it still felt like the floor was moving on top of waves.

Ten and I danced for a while, and we talked to friends or not-friends, and we drank more and somehow time passed. I’d given up trying to be as cool as him because by now either he thought I was funny or he was too drunk to care.

“I’m gonna move to LA!” I yelled at him after another round.

“Wow. Awesome!” he said, not giving a shit.

“Yeah, fuck Canada!” I yelled again.

“Buy a gun!”

“They don’t even have fucking laws there. I’m gonna buy a giant tiger. Give that cat a gun.”

“You’ve really thought this through!”

“Yeah, I’m excited!” I was dead serious. In that moment, I was excited and happy. Let everything fall into Lake Ontario and the Fraser River and wash away into whatever ocean they drained into and settle at the bottom of the sea.

“I think it’s just life!” My inner thoughts had spilled out into my out-loud speech to Ten.

“What’s life?” he asked.

“Change. Like it just, we make such a big deal out of all these things when it’s like change is a good thing. You never wanna be like not changing,” I said, confident in my sage advice.

“You wanna go explore?” His dark eyes had a million bad ideas swimming around his irises, and I nodded and let him take my hand and lead me out of the reception hall towards the second floor, where a sign said it was closed to the public.

I looked at him. “Are we the public?”

“It’s a private event, so…”

“We are private people.”

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

I tripped up the stairs and he caught me, laughing.

He pushed open a door to some kind of classroom. There was a white projection screen and wood benches with leather seats kinda like a church.

“Oooh, boring,” he said.

I didn’t think this weird room was boring; it was actually interesting.

“No, come on.” I pulled him in, patting on a leather bench facing the screen.

“We should watch something,” I told him.

“I think we missed the matinee, babe.” He was being more kind than funny. Of course, my response was to kiss him, because this is what he wanted, to make out with me, fuck me, from the beginning, because why else would we be doing all this stupid shit together if not to just have sex and a fun romp and a story for our friends back at home.

“Do you want to have sex?” I asked him, reaching for his belt.

“Yeah, alright.” He was half laughing, as if he pitied me, but it was fine because I was about to blow his fucking mind and he would fall in love with me after the next ten minutes.

He took off his pants and I was flattered he was already hard and ready to go. It was also a relief because I was motivated to have sex but not so motivated to do more work by giving him a hand job or blow job to get there.

“Do you have a condom?” he asked me.

“No, but I’ve got that thing up my vagina and I just got tested—”

“Why did you just get tested?” For someone who was attempting to locate my thong underneath my floor-length dress, he seemed weirdly concerned.

“Because I’m moving to LA!” I told him. I felt like I sounded hysterical.

“Alright.”

Then I kissed him again in a way that I thought was passionate and we started having sex and it was fine, but then I started to feel like I needed to pee and completely lost my breath and almost felt like I was choking and wondered if I had broken something internally and whether I was going to have this feeling whenever I had sex from now on, but I wouldn’t know since I hadn’t had sex since Sam, but this was such different sex and I couldn’t start having a panic attack while this beautiful boy was fucking me—albeit badly—so I tried to recall Francis’s voice telling me to breathe in for three and breathe out for three.

“Yeah?” He asked me for confirmation that I was enjoying myself or at least present during the whole thumpery of this scene.

“It’s so nice.”

He put his head back down and got back to work, and I calmed down and drunkenly smiled, thinking of what a good person I was to have sex with this man who clearly wanted to have sex with me and how I was so great for being able to get over my trauma so quickly and how sex was so meaningless, and this was a non-thing and in this brief moment of reverie I patted him on the back to acknowledge his part in the mostly adequate fornication.

“What’s up?” He looked up at me again after the back pat.

“Oh no, I just like, didn’t know what to do with my hands.”

“I don’t know if I can cum,” he told me.

Suddenly he looked very scared, but he wasn’t stopping and it took everything in me not to laugh. He just looked so frightened, but his tenacity in the face of fear was inspiring.

“Well, that’s okay.” I couldn’t pat him on the back again, not now.

He stopped and pulled out, and defeatedly put his underwear and pants back on. I located my own underwear and slid them back on. We had moved to the floor for that unfortunate act of coitus and so we both half hunched and lifted ourselves back onto the bench.

“I have a really hard time cumming unless I’m like in love with the person. I have to have that connection.”

“Yeah, I’m not very connected.”

“No. Thanks, though,” he said and went to get up like he was going to leave without me.

But before he could there was a knock at the door, and one of the staff came in looking very disappointed in us. Behind him was my father and Penny, looking confused.

“Oh yeah, they’re with us,” my dad said.

“This area is not open to the public.” The staff member looked unimpressed as he held the door for us and we walked out, sheepish, my makeup a disaster and half-smeared on Ten’s collar and both of us slightly damp with alcoholic sweat. “You’ll have to return to the reception hall now.”

Tennessee and I silently followed Penny and my father down the stairs. They stopped at the mezzanine in front of the doors to the entrance.

“V, I got you a car. I thought maybe you’d wanna get some sleep before the flight.” My dad was holding my jacket. I took it from him wordlessly and nodded.

“And Ten, why don’t you go get cleaned up and we can…have a chat in a sec,” Penny told Tennessee, in a much too familiar tone.

“Yes, Mother,” he replied.

“What the fuck?” My drunk thoughts tumbled out in loud and confused profanities.

Penny looked at me. “That’s my son.”

I’d never seen anyone so fucking Stone Cold Steve Austin-furious. Like I had disgraced her beautiful little boy.

“Shit” was all I could say, looking down, all of us taking in the fact that I had just fucked my stepbrother.

“So the car’s just there.” My father tried to direct me out the door.

“Hey shit, sorry, I mean, congrats though, on the wedding. Ten, interesting way to meet—”

“That’s enough, V,” Dad interrupted.

“Yeah, yeah, just trying to close it out—” I looked at him. He was so fucking embarrassed by me.

“And congrats to you, Father. I love you.” I went to hug him. Maybe it was gross to hug him after what I’d just done, but I hugged him so tight until he had to at least, for a second, hug me back.

“Okay, you get back safe, alright? And we can talk soon,” he said.

“And I love you!” I told him again.

He sighed. I could feel Penny, still furious, and Ten just watching this whole pathetic send-off.

“I love you too, Virginia. Please get in the car,” he said as I hugged him again.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you…okay! I’m out!” I finally released him and made a point of doing another grand wave to my new incestuous family members before getting in the Uber and sobbing.

CHAPTER 13

Haley was waiting for me when I got back. It was 9 p.m. and I was starving so I ordered a pizza to the apartment while en route from the airport so I wouldn’t have to wait any longer than necessary to eat and go to bed, but not before performing a lobotomy on myself to try and wipe out the last week.

“Welcome back!” She seemed excited. The house smelled like cedar and orange.

“Wow, did you clean?” I asked her, dragging my suitcase in.

“I always clean.” She got up from the couch and pulled me into a hug.

“Yeah, it’s just very sanitary. It’s nice.” We were still hugging, but it didn’t feel familiar or intimate; it felt like we were leaning into each other because we both needed a crutch. We started pushing into each other playfully until we released.

“How was it all? I feel like we didn’t even talk.” She was getting a drink, and I noticed the fridge was stocked with fancy waters. She made her way back to the couch.

“I had…an experience.” I thought about that Jodi Foster monologue from the movie Contact, where she’s talking about meeting aliens or something. I never saw the movie, but two years ago I was given the monologue at a weekend workshop to improve my auditioning techniques. Everyone in the class got the same monologue, so for two hours we watched each other dramatically begin with “I had an experience.” So now every time I had an experience, which happened quite often in my fucked-up little life, I couldn’t help but to dramatically quote Ms. Foster. Except the monologue was about hope for humanity, not fucking your stepbrother.

“Okay—” I had Haley’s attention but then we heard the buzzer.

“Are you having someone over?” she asked.

“No, I was starving so I ordered a pizza on the way home.”

“Did you get me some?”

“I got a large so you can have some.”

“What kind did you get?”

“Deluxe.”

“Did you get dips?”

“Haley, there’s dips and pizza, and you can have like half of it!” I raised my voice a little and she went silent.

“I’m starving and just got off the plane and ordered a big pizza that was the deal of the day,” I told her. “Please have some.”

“I didn’t have dinner.”

While we shared the pizza, she told me about her week. She had stopped going to work before her last two weeks were up, but tried out a new yoga studio. She had also decided to look for managerial and senior positions because, she explained, part of why she was depressed was because she was having an identity crisis. She couldn’t work retail as a salesperson while knowing she was capable of more. She needed to step into her power as a boss bitch and work for someone who valued her while she was working on valuing herself more. It wasn’t total malarky, but it was also like, on paper that was nice, but you couldn’t just emblazon your cup with boss bitch rhinestones and have it be so. I didn’t say that part. I just nodded and told her it made sense.

“Wait, so tell me about the wedding.”

“I fucked my new stepbrother.”

“What?”

“Yeah, it was nice, the wedding, on the river. I gave a speech and it went fine—my dad says hi, by the way—and then I fucked my stepbrother,” I told her. I’d wanted to text her immediately when I got back to the hotel, but I was worried she would call and want to properly discuss and I was still crying. I needed to disassociate before we got into it.

“Who is your stepbrother? I’m so confused.” She was loving this.

“That’s the whole thing, okay. Penny has literally never mentioned having a son. Like never. It would be very normal to mention having a son when like your partner’s child is visiting, especially when your son is the same age or whatever, but nothing. Like I never knew she had a kid. And they barely spoke. I saw he was in some group family photos at the wedding or whatever when they were taking them, but there was no like—” I grabbed Haley’s wrist with two hands and squeezed it.

“What is that?”

“Maternal love,” I told her.

“That’s—”

“Whatever, there was nothing. And no speech! I did a whole fucking speech being like congrats Dad, and he never said a thing. We just partied and went off and…did the deed. Oh my god, but he didn’t finish. He was like…‘I can’t unless I love you.’ It was a fucking nightmare.”

“Was he super drunk?”

“No! Maybe, but not sloppy. He’s one of those beautiful androgynous male people that’s like, I don’t know—”

“He’s non-binary?”

“No, he’s like, no…He didn’t mention it, but I mean like maybe he’s pansexual but like more male-leaning and just thought, Wellll, if I just close my eyes and feel her shoulders it’s like…like together we have all the parts and features of a cisgender male and female but it’s like a Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head mess that we just mash together?”

“Oh my god.” She shook her head. Maybe what I’d said was offensive or the reality of the situation was sinking in like it had for my new family members in the sober post-sex moments.

“Yeah. It was so fucked up—”

“Especially if he knew! Like is that a crime? Isn’t that a crime in Iceland or something?” She was very concerned, and her reaction was making me laugh.

“No, it just happens all the time in Iceland. They have an app now to prevent this kinda sibling fuckery,” I said, still laughing.

“You should’ve got the app,” she told me. I was so happy that she didn’t think the whole thing was my fault and not in some victim way but in a way where this strange shit happened, a momentary slapstick situation we could share and move on from with a good night’s sleep.

“Ahhh, fuck. Well. So yeah. Honestly, I blame Clueless.”

“The movie?”

“She technically fucks her stepbrother. They full-on date while he has a weird semi-parental relationship with her father. That was my role model. Thanks, Alicia Silverstone.” I threw the rest of my crust down for effect. Haley laughed.

“That should be a bit. Not a bit, but a bit,” she told me.

“Ehhh, I think that one needs some time.”

“You were gonna write about the thing!” She was still joking around, adopting my flippant way of calling my sexual assault a thing.

“So you’re thinking incest over rape? Cause it’s one or the other. I just need to get a read of what’s trending more these days,” I told her.

I could see her balk at the word “rape.” I had pooped our party.

She sighed, also putting her crust down. “Seriously though, I’m proud of you for having sex. That’s a big deal, like that you can do that.” She tapped my foot; her broken little baby doll was all fixed up.

“Well…it’s not like I have to do anything to have sex. I just kinda have to been in the room, don’t I?”

“Virginia…if you’re not gonna take it seriously like how can I?” She looked angry at me now, sick of my bullshit, my bad jokes. I felt like I was this poison that made her sick, and then got angry with her for asking for space to recover.

“I do take it seriously. I just…saw an angle.” I shrugged.

“Just focus on the positive—”

“That I fucked a family member?” I wished I could talk in parallel lines, like as I was talking and saying this gross mean shit, I was also apologizing, telling Haley, I don’t hate you; this is just what it is now.

Haley just looked at me and got up to go to bed.

“You’re welcome for the pizza,” I told her back.

“Thanks.”

“Haley?”

“Yeah.” She turned to me at her doorway.

“Please don’t tell anyone. About the wedding.” I couldn’t look at her. It felt entirely selfish to ask anything of her when I was this grease-filled monster sitting on our couch spewing out venom.

“We both have so much going on, respectively, that I don’t think we need to have, like, another issue,” she said and then went into her room and closed the door.

I think that was her way of saying, “I got you,” or “fuck you,” or that I had met my quota on issues so the whole stepbrother-fucking would have to be tabled for now, until previous trauma was resolved.

—

The next morning, I woke up before Haley and instead of unpacking I decided to continue living as if I were leaving again. I had an appointment with my lawyer to discuss the whole green card goings-on. It felt weird to keep a secret so long, but the more time passed the more I figured I didn’t have a shot in hell at trying to convince some American bureaucrat that I was a well-paid (kinda) artist and that America should want my skills. After that I had a callback for a bank commercial that made getting a mortgage seem easy and attainable for twenty-three-year-olds like myself. Even babies are buying houses, why aren’t you, you asshole? I was pretty sure that was the tagline. I shouldn’t be so cynical, seeing as how I technically owned a house, for the next few months at least.

Before any of that I decided to go write…something. Any excuse to leave, get a coffee and shit at Jimmy’s, and be away from the sizable tension I’d have to experience with Haley.

I was trying an experiment on myself, priming myself for being alone. If I never spoke to my father again, fine. If Dale did in fact sell the house and never spoke to me again, that was fine too. If I moved to LA and never saw anyone but new people who could introduce me to newer people, yeah, I thought that would be fine. I would live in the world as an observer and comment hilariously and book some shitty sitcom and eventually, after becoming comfortably famous and successful, though not over-the-top famous and successful, I would try and have an emotional renaissance. And it would be easy because I could accept that people wanted to be my friend based on my position in life and I could welcome them and take what I needed, and we would be happy with that arrangement, because I’ve heard that happens in like…probably one percent of arranged marriages if everyone was being honest. Through this terrible arrangement, me and my friends would learn to have real feelings for each other. But that was all in the future. For now it was better to act as if everyone was disposable, even me.

I was kinda writing, kinda looking over old setlists, trying to remember what was old and what could be funnier and when to try out old bits in the remaining shows I had before the showcase. I saw a woman cop walk in, while her partner waited for her outside Jimmy’s. They were probably bike cops. I assumed they weren’t Toronto’s finest since they’d been assigned bike duty in March. There was no snow but still, even parking enforcement got a car. The female cop was smiling at my barista friend who wasn’t a friend, but we had a nice thing going.

Against my better judgment I followed the female cop outside, smiling at her and her partner. They both seemed suspicious of me, or the whole cop thing made me feel suspicious, even though I just wanted to ask a question.

“Hi, sorry to bug you, I’m just…I’m a bit out of my element here and I was wondering if I could ask a super quick question?” I was trying to be as law-abidingly sweet as possible.

“Okay,” the lady cop said.

“If like…someone was kinda, assaulted…in like a…sex way, but they didn’t necessarily want the person who did it to like go through all the rigmarole but also to like know that you can’t…do that to people…what’s like…what’s your policy on that?” I asked.

She stared at me for a second. I tried to look very serious and a little scared so maybe she would take pity on me.

“Are you trying to report a sexual assault?” she asked bluntly.

“Like if I did, I mean, for this guy—he doesn’t live here by the way, he lives in the States but if he was here—like is there a way he could get like a warning, like how you do when a dude beats up his girlfriend…like not…you don’t arrest him but it’s like ‘Don’t do that again,’ or do you give restraining orders for rape?” I surprised myself because I realized a restraining order, if done extremely secretively, would be fantastic. I could go to shows and he would enter and see me, sigh and roll his eyes and know he had to leave; I wouldn’t even see him most nights. There would be this little invisible barrier between us that he would never want to bring up and would have to make endless excuses for.

“Ma’am, if you want to make a legitimate complaint you have to go to your local precinct, and they’ll be able to direct you to someone who can help you,” the male cop said. He was ready to get back on his little bike and ticket jaywalkers and whatever else bike cops do. Yell at the homeless.

“Okay, but like…I don’t have anything to say other than like it happened—I had an experience—and he’s back in the States now so there’s not much like…Wouldn’t it just kinda be a non-thing?”

“That’s for the detectives to decide,” the male cop said, and started to walk away.

The lady cop nodded. She didn’t have anything to add.

“But realistically, can you say anything?” I asked the male cop.

“Ma’am, it seems like maybe you should talk to this guy, get some clarity on the issue, or try and come to an agreement before you do anything,” the male cop said, trying, with as much authority as a bike cop could have, to mount his steed.

“I should have a talk with the guy? Well, shoot, that’s terrible advice, thank you!”

“You have a good day, ma’am,” the lady cop said, getting on her bike.

They put their coffees in their little TPS cup holders and pedalled away, off to solve the housing crisis.

I went back inside, thought about packing up and rushing home to tell Haley. She would love this story; she would be so offended, and it would serve her ACAB narrative and she would delight in that. And I wanted to do that for her, to share in that delight, but then I remembered that I was no longer interested in any relationships at all, platonic, romantic, familial, sexual, or anything else.

I went back to comedy, trying to find the funny in all this grey matter, in this absence of joy. I lived in outrage at the absence of joy and blamed myself for not being able to find what had been stolen from me. How non-consensual all of it was, the sicknesses that took people away, the sicknesses that made people take things away and…isn’t that funny? How so much of ourselves could be taken away, no matter what types of authority figures we put on bikes with visors and reflective vests to stop it. That’s funny. I was so mad I couldn’t just create it—joy—but then…I guess I did, right? By telling jokes and making people laugh. Like the cop thing. If there’s a way to spin it, to touch lightly on the whole assault thing, it could be a good bit. I tried to think about what was funny about animals and coffee drinkers and whores and arborists and the invention of clap-on lights, of announcing your presence with thunder and lightning like you’re some Norse god. Now we just talked to our lights, the Alexas and Siris. There was something so sexual about both of those names now that we had been given free reign to dominate them. Why the fuck did we even have to give them these names? Or give them a fucking dude’s name. “DWAYNE, play me ‘Bohemian Rapsody’—softly, Dwayne, not too loud.” Someone had probably already riffed on that in a funnier way. I was beginning to feel like a twenty-first-century Rodney Dangerfield.

I felt good by the time I made my way to the audition and even better when my very straightforward but weirdly maternal Portuguese lawyer told me my green card would be arriving in thirty days. I was legally able to work and live in the United States of America. Only took about a year and fifteen thousand dollars. She shook my hand and was so pleased for me, saying it had been such a journey. Which was true, though when I started the whole process, it was a bit like a side project, a hobby to keep a dream alive, a pipe dream. I didn’t know if I’d ever believed it would happen. When it came to the people I had told—Dale, my father, my lover/stepbrother—I always thought I could make up some excuse as to why it fell through. I didn’t believe in spiritual shit or manifestation or the universe, but this was good news, the kind of life-changing news I needed.

I was excited and trying not to panic at the same time. I spiralled a bit when I asked my lawyer if anything could happen in the next thirty days that would somehow delay my green card (like if the cops I’d talked to somehow decided I’d been harassing them and issued me a citation or warrant or whatever), but she said it was just the time frame they gave for the documents to be mailed out.

“And then once I have it in hand, I can just cross the border and like…live and work there?” I said, incredulous.

“Yes, then you’re all set. You can legally live and work in the United States, and you will have to file income tax in both countries because you’re still a homeowner in Canada.”

“I’m gonna sell that house. But if I book Canadian shows or gigs, those have to be filed here?”

“Right.”

“That’s good to know.”

“Any other questions?”

I went through worst-case scenarios—the green card gets lost in the mail, I lose it, etc.—it all seemed fixable and unfuckupable in theory. Unless I committed a crime, she did remind me of that.

When I finally left, my papers in hand, instructed to wait patiently for my card, I remembered I was starving and should eat, but in a celebratory way. But a celebration for one was sad so I thought I should tell Haley because she would need time to find a new roommate or new apartment. This would be good for us. It would be good for her. It would spur her on to follow whatever dreams she had. I decided to take her out to dinner and promise her that once I made some impressive sum of money, I’d help her achieve her dreams, and once we’d removed the burdens of shitty jobs and no money and early adulthood stagnancy partnered with the urgency to live in extremes because that’s your early twenties, we’d find each other again. We’d be powerful women and we’d be friends again. When I thought of us, I realized we hadn’t known each other until we were fourteen but we’d formed a childlike friendship based on play and curiosity about the world, just open to experiencing it and not needing to come to any sort of conclusion. It was my fault that I’d forced Haley to live like an adult too young by dragging her into my mother’s death and being a witness to my suffering. I should never have told her my mom was sick or that she died or about Sam or any of it. She should’ve never told me about her father’s affair or her mother’s affair or the fact that her brothers once cut off all her hair because they wanted a third brother and she’d never felt safe in her own home. Or once she did tell me, I should’ve known better. I should’ve taken better care of her. She would’ve been fine if I had just taken better care of her as a kid. Haley would be happy to know that I was leaving because she wouldn’t have to feel like she had to take care of me anymore. I was hurting her every day by being around and by being the type of person I was.

CHAPTER 14

“Do you want to come to my show afterwards?” I asked Haley.

We were looking over the menu at our local Terroni.

“Maaaybe.” That meant no, but I really wanted her to come, so I pressed the issue.

“It’s gonna be a short one, and I’ll be trying out the set I’m gonna do for the showcase, so then you don’t have to come to the showcase cause that’ll be packed and I know you maybe wouldn’t wanna be in a crowded club.”

“Don’t you want people at the showcase more than a random show?” she asked.

“Yes and no. I find I actually do better when it’s all strangers, like it’s gonna be open to the public so I think it’s not just gonna be a friends and family type of deal.”

“Hmm.” The waitress brought our wine, and Haley and I both enthusiastically agreed to bread and asked for a few more minutes with the menu.

“I just thought it would be a well-rounded night.” I mimed a circle for her so she could get a clear idea of what “round” meant.

“I feel like I’ll want to after I have this wine,” she said, not cheersing me before taking a sip.

We focused on the menu and the waitress brought our bread.

“Thank you. Okay sorry, I’m ready. Are you ready?” I asked.

Haley nodded.

“Okay, thank you, yeah, I’m gonna have the butternut squash ravioli,” I said.

“Oh nice, yeah, I’m gonna get the gnocchi…Wait, yeah, the gnocchi—is it good?” Haley asked the waitress, who nodded emphatically.

“Awesome, thank you.” Haley handed both our menus to her.

“I’m surprised you got that ravioli,” she said, once the waitress left.

“Why?” I asked.

“There’s no meat in it. I thought you were all about your protein and iron and stuff.”

“Yeah, I just like it. The other ravioli is duck and I don’t like duck.”

“You don’t like duck? I thought you liked every meat.” She was pulling out her phone, half talking to me, half checking if she had any new texts.

“No, I’m pretty picky, I think. I really only like chicken and beef.”

“You like ham.” She put her phone face up on the table.

“Yeah, like a ham sandwich, the processed stuff, but not anything else.”

“You like pork belly,” she insisted.

“I don’t.”

She shrugged and drank more wine. I wondered if I should wait and try and ply her with more alcohol or just tell her my news and risk suffering a silent dinner.

“I really don’t. But…I do have some news,” I told her. An onslaught of nausea was quelled by a large gulp of wine that made my jaw feel tight.

“Okay?”

“I think I’m gonna be…moving on. Um, geographically. Not because of you or anything, obviously, um, but…career-wise. I think I’m going to move to LA. Like I want to and I can, and it’s all kinda happened in a weird way but I think that’s kinda my next step,” I rambled.

“What the fuck? When, what? I mean that’s great and wow, but can we backtrack? Did you get a job?”

“Well, Dale’s gonna sell the house, and I think it was helpful those, uh, Hallmark blockbusters—they weren’t but they did help with the green card application—and just the shows, cause I got a green card, so I think it’s just, you know, I should try it while I’m young and before I blow through all my money—”

“How much do you get for the house?” she interrupted.

“I don’t know. Like it’s paid off, so whatever it’s worth, I guess. Which is nice, because green cards aren’t cheap.”

“But that’s like a million dollars.”

“Uh yeah, yeah, probably, um maybe, I’m sure there’s fees. And like I think I’ll buy something down there, small, and just, you know if I just suck, that money will only get me so far, and the Canadian dollar is not thriving so…”

“So you’re just like winning the lottery and taking off?”

“In a sense, yeah…yeah.” I didn’t know what else to say so I ate some bread while she processed. I imagined her thinking about which parent she’d be fine losing to get a million dollars, even like $50K.

“I’m not sure what to say,” she finally said.

“Yeah, that’s fair…I’m not gonna leave just now. I think in about a month, depending on if I can find a place to stay and then look at some places and—”

“Sam’s in LA,” she said.

“Yeah, he is.”

“So why would you go there?” she asked.

I started laughing. “Because there’s like ten million people in the city. I doubt it’ll be a huge issue—”

“Except the comedy world is like super tiny—”

“No, it’s not. It’s spread out and everyone drives—”

“Okay, but I think it’s gonna be tough.” She was sounding a lot like Penny.

“Yeah, it will.”

“But you’ll have a million dollars.” She smiled as our food arrived and she picked at her gnocchi, opting for more wine instead.

“Again, the Canadian dollar is weak and I wasn’t planning on selling the house, but Dale wants to buy a condo in Huntsville—”

“So why sell? Why not just keep it and rent it out if you don’t need money?” She was getting angry.

“I don’t want to be a landlord.”

“They are scum.” She looked at me. I was scum.

“I think all in all it’s a good thing and just something I need to try. I think Toronto is just not feeling good for me these days.”

Haley started eating her gnocchi silently, while I finished my nine-ounce glass of wine.

“And I won’t just leave. Like I said, I’ll keep paying my share of the rent for sixty days so you’ll have a lot of time to find a new roomie or whatever, you know. Like, I dunno, didn’t you want to live alone for a bit?”

“I don’t have a job,” she said, looking down at her gnocchi.

“Well, if I’m paying for sixty days, you could find a roommate after thirty because I think I’ll leave in thirty and then you can just keep the extra rent money.”

“Sorry. I am happy for you, it’s just a big thing to process and I wish you’d just waited to tell me when we were home. I’m just not comfortable trying to deal with this in public.”

“Sorry, I thought it would be more of an exciting thing.”

“It is for you.”

The waitress came to check on us and Haley ordered another glass of wine.

“You can come visit. We can go surfing.” I tried to lighten the mood. I had to keep biting my tongue to stop myself from offering her money. I knew it would make her happy, offering to pay to fly her out or giving her six months’ rent, but when the time came to pay up, I knew I would be inexplicably angry.

“Sure.”

“Haley, it wasn’t supposed to be this bad surprise. I didn’t wanna say anything earlier and have it be a thing before the green card was approved, and Dale literally brought up selling the house like the day before I left for Vancouver, and obviously Vancouver was a bit of a shitshow so it was all just this flurry of shit and then it was like, okay, I got the green card and now it is a reality and now I have to just make decisions.”

“I am happy for you. The timing is tough because I’m not in a great place, in every way, but I am happy for you.”

“I’m not breaking up with you.”

“Well…” She mimicked an old Oprah clip we used to mock as teenagers.

“We can do long distance.”

“Eh.”

“We could get married, and you could live there too.”

“Oh my god, Virginia.” Her eyes lit up.

“Not actually, Hales—”

“No, but think about it! We honestly could. We live together already here and have photos together.”

“It’s a maybe.” I tried to laugh it off, but I could tell if I joked too much or backtracked, she would go back to being sullen.

“We should actually think about it.”

“What are you gonna do in LA?” I asked her.

“Work, same shit I do here. Or just be your trophy wife.”

“What would your mother say?”

“God, she’d just be happy I was married.” She smiled and drank more wine. She was becoming more intoxicated with the idea of marrying me and living in LA and agreed to go to my show. I was happy she agreed to go. Maybe she would be happier for me seeing me do what I did best and knowing I could do it in LA too. But also because I knew Nia and the girls weren’t coming, so she was a non-comic buffer, protection I could use to get away from other comics. What a fucking hypocrite I was. I gotta get away from Haley, and now I’m using her as a human shield. I’m sorry, Haley, if I were a better person, I would’ve never been your friend.

After dinner we Ubered over to the bar and met up with a few comic peers of mine. Jackie was there and after the nod turned her back to Haley and me. After that I introduced Haley to Steve, a gregarious fellow who was more of an asshole onstage and was extremely gentlemanly and sweet when he wanted to fuck someone offstage. I gave him a warning look when he offered to buy her a beer. Haley happily accepted, and I chatted with Mike and Winslow about their own showcases and how fucked the competition was this year and how we all missed SiriusXM’s Top Comic award because the comedians won cash versus just an okay paid spot in a comedy festival that put us at the bottom of the marketing poster anyways. You didn’t get booked at JFL and get your name next to Marc Maron. The pressure would crush many a young comic anyways.

“They gave Tessa a spot just for fucking Mark Breslin so I don’t trust Perry to book anything actually funny anymore,” Winslow said to me.

“Is that the rumour?” I asked him.

“She got booked like straight out of open mics, sits on the dude’s lap all through showcase, and now she’s got that…What’s her fucking show, some newsroom bullshit?” Winslow was looking at Mike to corroborate his story.

Winny had been in the game for much too long with too little success. He was respected because he never quit, even after younger comics surpassed him in headline gigs. Maybe “respected” wasn’t the right word. He was in his early forties and wore a Spiderman headband when he power walked to shows and only took it off once he caught his breath and had a cold beer in hand. He always wore a blazer on top of some Marvel-themed comic-book-guy T-shirt, which he called out, like Look what a loser I am. But also I’d run into him at the movies one time and he was wearing the same get-up while a much younger comic he was with seemed embarrassed I’d caught them together. He finished his look with Jordans, but only the special edition ones, mostly based off superheroes. I was told he lived in a basement bachelor apartment and that he still thought he possessed some of that comic charm that wooed young women into thinking he was more important than he was because he made a room of people laugh, and he’d ask if they wanted to take photos with him and invite them back to his place. And when I say young women, I mean like twenty-year-olds. He wasn’t a criminal, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if he was into some Armie Hammer fucked-up shit. Basically, I hated Winslow.

“I just think they’re adding more girls in general,” Mike responded, shrugging at me. “Not that there shouldn’t be more girls in the mix, it just seems like it’s really…They’re covering a lot of bases this year.” Mike cared just enough to try and be conscious of what he was saying without saying it.

“Diversity. Which by all fucking means, I gotta say honestly in the last probably two to three years the girls of Toronto have gotten exponentially funnier. It was periods and fuck men for fucking too long and now I’ve noticed on the whole, they’ve upped the ante. What’s that joke you have, V, the one about the…the…carnivores or what was it?” Winslow wasn’t so concerned with saying anything appropriate ever, so I rolled my eyes at him and went to find Haley and Steve.

“Are you gonna grab a beer?” Haley asked me when I approached them at the bar. She was acting as if I’d interrupted them and should let them be.

“No, I will after. I think I’m first up. Fucking Winslow, did he set the line?” I asked Steve.

“Oh yeah, I’m second because I asked him not to eat my French fries when I was up last week. Came back, five minutes, gone. Fucking asshole,” Steve said.

“Who’s Winslow?” Haley asked.

Steve and I motioned to the short rotund man in the blazer and Green Lantern T-shirt.

“Why are you working for him?” she asked.

“We’re not, he’s just hosting because he’s buddies with Carl, who usually hosts—”

“And is a goddamn gem,” Steve interrupted.

“That’s shitty.” Haley took a large drink of beer.

“Steve, are you doing the showcase?” I asked.

“Nope, not my year. I think I do too many jokes about how handsome and successful I am despite being a fat Arab. People don’t want to see me shine.” Steve sighed heavily, faking resignation at his terrible place in the comedic pecking order. “I did book The Debaters and a CBC gala though, sooooo fuck ’em?” He smiled at us.

“Oh shit, that’s amazing, congratulations! Don’t tell Winslow. He’s gonna tell you you’re a diversity hire.”

“Virginia!” Haley chastised me for my joke but smiled it off when she saw Steve laughing.

“Ah fuck, yeah thanks. You’re doing the showcase though, yeah?” he asked me.

“Yeaaaah, we’ll see. Like I am but I dunno, this year seems tough and I feel like I gotta burn it all down and build up a whole new fucking fifteen at least.”

“Why don’t you wait to do that after you move?” Haley said, re-inserting herself into the conversation.

“You’re moving?” Steve asked.

“Uh yeah, eventually. Still working out all the details, but yeah hoping to get it all sorted and land on the west coast.” I wasn’t ready to start telling the comics I was moving to LA, especially since I hadn’t told Nia, Addy, or Claire yet. I’d told them I’d been thinking about it. We’d been down there together last year, trying out open mics and dreaming of what it would be like to live there.

“Fuck, we’re losing all our funny people to LA. Not New York, no one’s going there,” Steve said.

“But you’re going in like a month, so if you get JFL how does that work?” Haley asked me. She was standing next to Steve as if they were a couple and I was a guest they had to entertain at a party.

“Oh, I’m gonna be back and forth and not just be like, fwhip! Gone. I’ll be around.”

“Hey, you can afford it.” Haley didn’t look at me when she said it. She just smiled at Steve, who picked up on the tension but seemed more amused by it than put off.

“Do you wanna grab a table, Haley?” I said. “I’m just gonna check in with Mr. Wonderful about when this whole thing’s gonna actually start.”

Haley and Steve made their way to a table. Once she was settled in, Steve came to join me listening to Winslow harp on comics in general for going over time and how he wanted a tight show, so he’d light us at five as a warning not to start a new bit and just wrap up and get off the stage. The stage was a black mat with a mic that faced about twelve high-top tables with barstools so the audience was more or less at eye level.

Winslow opened the show with his regular spiel and the audience loved him. He knew exactly what they were thinking and played into it—a forty-year-old, slightly overweight Marvel fan who probably smoked too much weed and didn’t have a retirement plan other than to die early. There was always that one drunk girl who likened him to a Canadian Jonah Hill, which was just enough to get her back to his place. We should have warned her, Don’t do it, don’t even talk to that dude, stay ten fucking feet away at all times but we never did. That’s just what happened. We just went and played darts or some shit and made fun of the two of them. By and large we weren’t the most morally upstanding bunch. We were comedians.

“Hello, hello, how are we doing?” I asked the audience.

I heard a supportive whoop from Steve.

“Thanks, other comic. I get it though, it’s the worst greeting. There’s no good way to start comedyherewefuckinggo! Yeah, you lost your privileges for the whole call-and-response thing. Welcome to your TED Talk from hell. You did this. This is weird, though. Usually the audience is lower than us, and I for one need that as a human being, that brief moment when I’m looking down on someone, and they like it! Here we’re all…we’re all equals. Fuck, some type of ‘We Are the World’ comedy show. Alright, it’s my thing, my control issues. Which I actually don’t think are that bad, you know? To want control as we spin uncontrollably into some black hole that some nerd named, like, Pacifica. Like it’d be dope if it’s like, oh we’re spinning into the black hole of Thrashpain—but no, it’s like we’re being sucked into the galaxy of mixed milk. Just a gentle void. Anyways I’m not a control freak unless it comes to naming black holes, and speaking of vacuous black holes I wanna talk about my ex-boyfriends. Yes, yes, it’s happening. But can I tell you something? All of them are still single—whatever, dating is fucking Thrashpain. But all of them now—all three, yeah, be impressed I got that many dudes to stick around for at least a month—psychos, all of them—now own cats. Not dogs. And I get it like, yeah, that’s fine, they’re lonely erectile dysfunctional men who I have nothing against other than them generally existing in the world. But if we deep dive, if you come along with me on this journey that nobody asked for, it’s weird.”

The audience laughed enough for me to know they were on board. My style of comedy didn’t usually leave a lot of room for laughing. I talked fast enough that I didn’t give them enough time to react. I was working on trying to slow down.

Haley wasn’t laughing. It was like she was studying me, trying to figure it all out, how I fooled everyone, and I wondered if she was annoyed that I’d lied to her when I told her earlier it wasn’t a bit, if she remembered.

“Because here’s the thing, and I’m not making this a gender thing or whatever. Dogs are boys, cats are girls. Like we were all led to believe this as children; you all thought it for a minute. Like I think I have a history of dating fucking cucks. Because you get a dog and you’re like, ‘I’m ready to enter in this relationship with you, I’m gonna meet you here, I’m gonna train you and then I’m gonna let you thrive.’ And you can’t do that with a romantic partner. You can’t train them. But it’s more of a consensual agreement between dog and owner like, ‘We’re gonna work together on this.’ Cats, these dudes all got cats being like, ‘You don’t have to be nice to me, you can literally hurt me and tell me to piss off, and I’ll clean your shit up with glee, you beautiful little pussycat.’ Like big sub energy. They’re getting dommed 24/7 by a five-pound tabby. Except the fucked-up part is like they all rescued these cats. They gave them a home and they gave them shelter and they know deep down that the cat is grateful and will never leave them. Can’t even leave them cause the door’s fucking locked. They’re not even allowed on the fucking balcony. And all three of these dudes are like, ‘Oh, look how sassy my cat is. Look at her as I flick this little feather up and down on a string, look at the playful little puss.’ When really, they’re thinking…‘Oh yeah, you’ll dance for me, cat, you’ll dance real nice.’ ”

I managed to pause for the audience to laugh and appreciate my pseudo Buffalo Bill impersonation.

“What I’m saying is barring these mental gymnastics I had to do to get to this conclusion, they are all freaks. You all make fun of cat ladies, no, no, it’s cat men. Cat men are terrifying. And did I purposefully omit the fact that I like to take my dog for walks in a baby stroller? No, cause it doesn’t matter cause cat men are the problem. And I had one ex who killed a woman but that’s…what I’m saying is—I’m kidding, she’s fine, we just can’t find her—but what I’m saying is it’s fine to want to control some things, just not pussy.” There was a brief applause break from the women in the crowd and a few men who didn’t cheer along with the women but clapped to signify their support for women’s autonomy.

“And men with fish…oh boy, they’ve just got their own little SeaWorld, don’t they? They don’t even bother bonding; they just like to admire their little prisoners. You remember that movie with Matt Damon, little sweetie Matt Damon, We Bought a Zoo? Like I’m convinced that’s just a prequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Where do you think Leatherface honed his taxidermist skills? This isn’t out of left field, the devolved men who’ve realized they can’t—to their dismay—control women all need some way to feel powerful and they take it out on the animal kingdom. Ask any of those dudes what type of wildlife they can fight, like start at bear, throw moose in there, a deer. They will look you in the eye and say they can fight them; they need a little time to prepare but they will best an apex predator. And they will go to lengths, great lengths, to convince you of their prowess…so then you ghost that guy cause after that he starts pointing out the good qualities of Jordan Peterson and texts you three days later like, ‘Ooooh, no tit pics for Johnny? Well, you’re obviously a cunt.’ See, she’s nodding, she knows. They’re everywhere! Cat men and aspiring cat men! Future serial killers!”

I told that joke because there were a lot of women in the crowd and I knew they would get all stoked and clap even though it wasn’t so much funny as it was a statement, but I wanted Haley to laugh and maybe convince her I was in fact a good feminist. She was still stone-faced.

“Thank you, thank you for experiencing that against your will. Now let me welcome back your host, Winslow Ender. Thanks so much!”

Winslow came back to the mic.

“Thanks so much, Virginia. She’s great and apparently single. Who would’ve guessed? It’s okay, it’s okay to be single. I’ve been single for ten years and look at me, the highlight of my week is hosting this comedy show that must be over by ten at a Shoeless Joe’s. Who needs companionship!?”

I heard the audience laugh half-sympathetically, half-knowingly; he was already wearing on them.

“I kid. I have my cats to keep me company. Judge away, Virginia! Next up, we have a great guy. They exist, ladies and gentlemen. This guy’s toured all over Canada and the States, just finished a terrific run at the Edinburgh Fringe, TV work includes playing a teenage terrorist killed by Enrico Colantoni on the beloved Flashpoint ten years ago, please welcome Steve Suleiman!”

Steve took the stage after giving me a high-five and I took a seat next to Haley. She gave me an attaboy leg pat and focused her attention back on Steve.

“Thanks, Winslow, you racist piece of shit. He’s not the worst of them, it’s fine to laugh at him a bit. There’s so many we gotta have a tiered section for racists, like who we’ll accept, who just makes those slightly inappropriate innuendos without saying it, to like…Kid Rock. I think we’ve all kind of forgotten how racist Kid Rock is now. Like we’re not surprised, and most people don’t think about Kid Rock day to day, but it is weird to think about someone named Kid Rock, this juvenile kinda silly nickname for a grown man who is pretty on board with lynching. Like, oh yeah, that Peter Piper who picked a peck of pickled peppers? Yeah, pedophile. We just say it so fast most people miss that part. We loved alliterations so much we were willing to overlook a bit of indiscretion…yeah, he’s racist. Most people are though, so we need a system to rank ’em. It doesn’t even bother me that much anymore, cause I’m also probably a bit racist by some standards. You want an example, huh? You all wanna feel a bit better about yourselves? If the minority says it’s okay, then it’s okay? Alright, fuck you, I’m a little bit racist because I only go to white barbers. Like those really hip ones where everyone’s man-pretty and high on cocaine? Those are the ones. Because those white Italian boys want so baaaad to put a nice fade on a brown-skin boy. They wanna put it on their Instagram, caption it, “I hooked my boy up today.” Oh yeah, I go to a Black barbershop and it’s nice, routine, I’m in and out, they’re talking to me, they’re talking to their buddy. I go to a white barbershop, and those boys listen. Cause they’re like, ‘Oh, we got a live one, boys. It’s time to learn some real hood lessons.’ And I’m just telling them like, ‘Oh yeah, I gotta pick up some scallions for my salad tonight cause I’m keeping it light with some salmon’ and they’re just cutting like, ‘Yup, true say, true say,’ like they’re clocking everything like, ‘Alright, okay, real motherfuckers eat clean, low carb. I got you, fam.’ ”

The crowd loved being called out for their mild and relatable racism and normalized cultural appropriation. What young white person didn’t want to be a part of “urban culture” without the consequences?

“Like you gotta exploit that,” Steve continued. “You gotta be a bit racist back to people who are a bit racist and then it’s fine, it’s a wash. That’s fucking it. I’ve solved it, world peace. We keep telling people no, be anti-racist, and maybe we just gotta like go shot for shot every now and then. I’m not saying it’s not a flawed plan but clearly our woke asses ain’t actually that awake. It’s still five a.m. and dark outside out here, we need some new tactics!”

Haley was whooping and laughing. As Steve continued, he strayed into a bad Chris Rock impression, which no one really seemed to mind even though he wasn’t Black, his parents were from Lebanon, and he grew up in the Beaches. Everyone else on the show was white and male, other than Jackie who was always at the same shows as me.

After Steve finished his set and came back to join us, Haley suggested she buy us a shot for doing so well, which Steve agreed to and I declined because I was pretty sure if I got too drunk I would do something stupid, start crying and call my dad, call Dale, fuck maybe I’d call Sam. I couldn’t get drunk and have fun, and I couldn’t have sex without it being rape or incest. Okay, I could. I was feeling more on edge, though, like some faucet had been opened and I could tend to the constant dripping of emotions if I were sober, but I couldn’t keep it up if I relaxed too much into a bottle of tequila.

Steve and Haley went to the bar while I stayed seated for the rest of the show. I went over to them as everyone was piling out. They were sitting very close at the very end of the bar and were clearly very drunk.

“Hey, good set again, Steve-O. I think I’m gonna head out. Are you ready, Haley, or are you—”

“I’m gonna finish my drink here,” she said, pointing to an almost-empty glass. Steve smiled at me, a polite fuck off.

“Alright welllll, well”—I was doing the Oprah voice again, hoping Haley would catch on, but she didn’t—“I’ll see y’all later. Enjoy the libations.”

I pretended to tip my hat and walked out onto the street, nodding graciously at the patrons who were waiting for their Ubers and who probably remembered I’d been first on, though they couldn’t remember any of my jokes to recall back to me but maintained that I was good, I was funny.

CHAPTER 15

I heard Haley and steve come in not long after I got home. I wished they’d waited a little bit longer, got a little bit drunker so I would’ve had time to fall asleep before they loudly entered, him making more jokes and laughing at hers, making her feel funnier than she was. She was pretending to be concerned that they would wake me up but then she was laughing and forgetting to whisper as they finished off an old bottle of Sailor Jerry someone had left in our freezer months ago. I put my AirPods in and tried to forget they were there, but they were being just loud enough that I could still hear where they were in the apartment. Once they moved to her bedroom, I turned the volume all the way up and moved to the corner of my room to be as far away from them as possible and started making a list of everything that was mine in the apartment and everything that Haley could take or throw away once I left.

I fell asleep sometime after 3:37 a.m., which was the last time I let myself look at the clock, and woke up at 8 a.m. I made it my mission to get up and take my time in the washroom, to make it clear that I was taking back this space.

“Good morning, Virginia.”

Steve was standing in Haley’s doorway, waiting for the bathroom when I finally came out.

“Oh shit, sorry, all yours.”

“I have to pee like a fucking racehorse.”

“You could’ve knocked.”

I walked past him and went into my room to get dressed. When I came out, he was in my kitchen getting the water I heard Haley yell for.

“Is this…okay?” He meant him and Haley.

“It’s fine, it’s water. Utilities are included.”

“Good.”

“You have fun?” I asked him.

He nodded. “You’re leaving?”

“Yeah, gonna go grab coffee and try and do some work. Lots of logistics to figure out.”

“You were funny last night. Is that part of your showcase?” he asked me, still holding the two glasses of water.

“Ah, I dunno. I don’t really know anything.”

“Haley was telling me she was trying to get you to do some new bit she thought was funny, like you fucked your stepbrother?”

I froze, stunned. “No. No, that’s not…I don’t know why she would say that.”

“Oh, well yeah, it sounds funny,” he said casually, though his tone betrayed judgment.

“Well.” I looked at him, then immediately turned and walked over to Haley’s room, pushing the door open. She sat up for a moment, letting her breasts hang down over her duvet before she realized it was me and pulled the blanket up.

“V, what?”

“Did you tell Steve about the whole wedding shit?” I was shaking and couldn’t control the volume of my voice.

“Not like the whole thing—”

“But yeah, the whole thing! The whole, oh, she fucked her stepbrother thing?” I was yelling.

Steve had come up behind me, still holding the water glasses and now incredibly uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry, Virginia,” he interrupted. “I don’t think…I don’t know any details. Haley was just saying maybe it’s something new—”

“But it’s not nothing, Haley, you knew that! Like I asked you one fucking thing!”

“Okay—” Steve was trying to mediate. Haley looked like she was going to cry and she held out her hands to Steve like a child for their mother.

“No, no, what else did you tell him, Hales? Did you tell him I was raped? Did you tell him that part? Cause that’s like a…catalyst in some psychotherapist’s mind for that type of bullshit behaviour!”

“Virginia!” Haley scolded me, and I looked at Steve who was now very pale and probably wanting to be anywhere else in the world.

“I was going through something, Steve! I was going through a fucking lot, and I had no idea that by marriage…like it was a compounding of shit, Steve! It was the compounding of fucking shit, Steve!” I was yelling at Steve now, who went from uncomfortable to downright terrified.

“You’re a fucking bitch!” I turned back to Haley who was now crying, keeled over naked and shaking.

“V, I’m really sorry—” Steve said.

“No, you aren’t! No, you’re not. I don’t care! Don’t be sorry but this is not—” I wasn’t sure what came over me, but I forcefully grabbed both water glasses from him and started walking back to the kitchen.

“This is not your fucking water. This is my apartment! All this shit is mine. This is not your water, Steve! You don’t even live here!” I slammed the glasses down in the kitchen sink then put on my jacket and boots, grabbed my laptop bag, and left. I kept muttering to myself on the way to the elevator, as if I was being interviewed on some late-night talk show: “Why’d you take the water?” “I don’t know, Conan! I don’t know.”

I stayed at Jimmy’s for as long as I could. I finished my coffee, had my coffee shit. I texted Dale, asking if I could stay over for a few days. I looked through Anthropologie’s website for home goods and then searched for cheaper dupes and apartments to rent and massive million-dollar homes for sale in LA. Mostly I did detective work. I started searching the shows Sam had tagged in his Instagram to get a feel for what area he was in, what type of shows he did, whether he booked pro shows or shitty open mics. I went so far as to click the location of each venue, writing it down then re-entering into Google Maps to see how far each one was from the other, hoping I could locate him somewhere in the middle, where he lived, where he bought groceries. I would just live as far away as possible, wherever that was, Compton, Long Beach, Inglewood. I could automatically hear Dr. Dre as I thought it.

I was sure I’d run into Sam at least once, and it would either send me into a tailspin, or not, or kinda—I’d recover quickly, but still, none of those options made me happy. I began miming this set where I talked about Sam. I’d tell a quick, funny personal anecdote about meeting him that would lead to the set-up: “And then he raped me.” But the punchline…I couldn’t think of a punchline. I looked at the map on Google, all the places he’d done comedy. Then I looked around Jimmy’s. I watched everyone else at work, or online shopping, or looking at their phones. Everything was so quiet in relation to this fucking noise in my head.

I thought back to when I met Sam, and one of his jokes. It was that all men, a little bit, need to feel like heroes. They loved their wounded birds, but he had dated this chick (bird pun intended) that was way out of his purview with all her issues, like avian hospice when he just wanted a wing in a sling. He just wanted a girl to fuck like she had daddy issues but was still able to split the bill.

I heard my phone and saw a text from Dale, who said I was always welcome to stay over. I looked at the time. I’d waited long enough and decided to go back to the apartment. I just wanted it to be finished, to have some sort of resolution with Haley. I wanted us both, cards on the table, to take a full account of what we’d done and where we were. I wanted so badly to hold her and say we tried in the way lovers do, because our friendship was so much more intimate than fucking. I got her a coffee and brownie baked into a cookie. That was the best I could do.

“Hey,” I said when I entered the apartment.

Her bedroom door was closed. I noticed Steve’s shoes were gone and the water glasses were still in the sink. What a coward. I leaned against the kitchen counter.

“Hey,” I said again.

I knew she was awake, curled up in bed. Her cheeks were probably still swollen and red from crying, but she’d be scrolling through Instagram and writing #truth on any posts defining the meaning of “gaslighting.”

“Okay, I think I’m gonna go to Dale’s. To the house. I think I’m gonna go for a little bit, sort out some moving stuff, stage it or something.” I was telling her door all of this without looking up from texting Dale the new plan in between breaks of speech and trying to catch my breath. This apartment, and everything in it, was never going to be the same. I could picture every part of it dissolving into nothingness and turning into some new beige complex belonging to some couple who worked in tech and who’d moved in from Woodbridge.

I looked at the living room wall where the tapestry I’d mocked Haley for buying for two hundred dollars hung. It had a quote by Rupi Kaur: “And here you are living despite it all.” Now it was mocking me. All my dreams were coming true. After death and rape and…after Haley. I was Haley’s all. I’d ruined that tapestry for her, I knew it. Sometimes I would look at it and tell her things like, “And here we are Ubering a Baskin-Robbins cake, despite your lactose intolerance.” “And here we are watching Netflix, despite the rising cost of subscriptions.” When did I ever tell her she was safe with me? Never. That would be so…stupid. She nailed that tapestry to the wall with such small nails we lost the heads within the fibres. I didn’t think she’d be able to take it with her.

“Yeah, so I gotta pack. It’ll just take me a minute, aaaaand then I’ll go. I’ll text you when I’m coming back.” I waited a moment, but she still didn’t respond. I tried to move as quietly as possible, packing the things I needed for a few days away.

Before I left, I looked back at her door one more time.

“Just a few days, then. Um, if anything happens…with the apartment or whatever, just let me know. There’s…” I wanted to keep talking, to ramble on to her about nothing, and say everything, say what I finally felt I had the courage to say—how much I had grown to resent her and how terrible it was to know that and lie to her about it because she was this part of me that I didn’t want to forget, this beautiful representation of youth and fun and possibility. We’d have to move on so we didn’t lose the last few fragments of each other we loved.

“There’s…food. And I brought you a coffee from Jimmy’s. It’s on the counter…so it’s here.”

I didn’t listen for her after I shut and locked our apartment door.

CHAPTER 16

By the time I Arrived, Dale still was at work, but I had my key and let myself in. The house was a mess. I’d figured, when Dale said he was “preparing the house,” it would be done in a much more methodical, Dale-like process. But this was chaos. All the boxes that were in the basement had been brought up and opened. Clothes were haphazardly strewn over the plastic tarp covering the furniture while the walls were being painted. Dale had stacked one armchair on top of the other and covered it in more plastic, and the living room carpet was rolled up and lying over three chairs in the dining room. The kitchen cupboards were open, and a few mugs were wrapped in paper. The remnants of Dale’s dishes from breakfast were on the counter and two large roasting pans were in the sink. I was comforted by the fact that maybe Dale was losing his mind too. I thought it would be funny to get us both some methamphetamines so we could just start tearing the walls down and hoarding shit.

I walked over to the dining room table, which was covered in photos that Dale had tried to organize in chronological order. I stood there, looking at the photos of my life, from birth to toddler to child of divorce to living alone with Mom until Dale came into our lives. There were just a few of me as a teenager. The ones of me and my Moby Dick project. I held my breath. I didn’t want to look at those too closely, as if I would see my proud mother in the reflection of my eyes. One was of me and Haley in costume for a school play. And that was it. It felt like the end of our wanting to remember, an active lack of recollection. I looked at the photos, then at the empty boxes beside them. These were all the photos we had, other than a few that were on the fridge.

I finally took the two of Haley and me and went to the sink and soaked them until they were nusht. That’s a word for glossy mush. (Not really.)

Then I threw the nusht into the garbage, pushing it under a container of yogurt so Dale wouldn’t know what I had done. I went back to the head of the table, not knowing where to look or what to do, exactly. This should be a moment, some big moment, I thought, where I keeled over and cried, looking over all the moments of this child who was so obliviously happy and loved, and missing it all so much it should kill me. I tried to stop myself from crying. When my throat stopped burning and I could finally move again, I took my bags to my old bedroom. Then I went outside and sat on the front steps of the house and called Dale. I spoke in a hollow, staccato way, trying to breathe and trying not to let my voice crack. Dale sensed something was off and said he’d come home immediately. I hung up the phone and smiled sadly at the sidewalk and just stayed waiting for him for the thirty or so minutes it would take for him to get back. I didn’t mind the cold. It helped me to stay focused on the passing cars, two blue, one red, mostly black. I’d lost count by the time Dale’s white truck turned into the driveway.

Dale got out of his car and approached me slowly. His work uniform made him look older. The dark blue pinstripes on his white coveralls reminded me of an old-timey baseball uniform.

“What’s going on, then?” he asked, trying to hide his confusion with a softness that didn’t come naturally to him.

“I think I’m having a hard time,” I told him.

“With the house?”

“It’s not the house as much as…everything in it.”

“Mhmm.” He paused for a second then sat beside me on the steps. I finally felt how cold it was outside next to his warmth. For the first time in years, he had closed this space between us and I couldn’t pull away.

“I’m a bit overwhelmed. I think I’m being—I know I’m being—like I’m making it worse for myself the more I’m thinking and giving these feelings power but I’m also like…I feel like I want something to break, and I just want to know that when it does, I’ll be okay. I just don’t want to do it alone and I’m sorry it’s you, that you have to be here. I’m really sorry, I just…I want it to be you. I hope that’s okay.”

“That’s okay, that’s okay, Virginia.” He put his arm around me and squeezed, and I had to laugh with gratitude.

“I’m sorry I made you leave work.”

“No, that’s fine. You want a coffee?”

“Yeah, okay.”

He pulled his arm away, got up, and opened the door, ushering me back inside. I felt all the chill quickly seep into my bones and started shivering. I sat at the table with my coat on, not daring to look at the photos. I watched as Dale moved around his mess to put on a pot of coffee in the kitchen.

“You’ve done so much already,” I told him.

“Yeah, the lady I talked to, she said because of the age and design of the house, and because we didn’t want to do any major renovations, best to just leave it as neutral as possible, and empty.”

“That makes sense. It’s easier for people to see the house’s potential.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you tell her there are ghosts?” I asked him.

“Hm?” He turned after pushing the button for the coffee to start, standing in the kitchen looking at me.

“I’m kidding, cause—” I waved in the general direction of the room where my mother had eroded into a cadaver.

“I did disclose that,” he said. “The history of the house.”

“Did you ever get angry, Dale?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“You got angry?”

“Yes, I did. I did get angry.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I was starting to cry again, wishing there were more photos of angry Dale screaming beside my mother’s dead body so later on I could remember I hadn’t been angry alone.

“You were young, and it didn’t serve a purpose.”

“Were you angry with her? Were you angry that she wasn’t trying harder? And that maybe that made her weak, that everyone was silently thinking that yeah, she was weak, that she just gave up and that we like…we enabled it? Did you ever think that, Dale?”

“No, I was never angry with her.” He stared at me, trying to promise me something with his eyes.

“You’re lying.”

“Nope. I was angry with the situation, the…yeah, the situation, the inevitability, but not with her.”

“I was really mad.” I tried to smile at him, as if I were setting up for a punchline. “I was really, really mad at her.”

He walked towards me and pulled up a chair, rubbing my back before grabbing a roll of toilet paper from the bathroom.

“That’s okay,” he said, passing me the toilet paper.

“No, it’s really not okay to be mad at someone who’s dying,” I said, blowing my nose. “I didn’t take care of her and it’s ironic, isn’t it? Cause that’s like the weak shit right there. And I’m so weak and shitty, and I don’t wanna be like this anymore. I don’t know what happened and it’s like I see all of this shit, these photos, and I’m like I don’t know what the fuck happened. I just don’t wanna be this version of me anymore. I can’t do it.”

“You’re alright, Virginia. You’re gonna be alright—”

“I know. I’m not like suicidal cause I like, I think about it, not doing it, but you think about it and it’s like when I think of dying, all I can think is that it’s so scary, and that’s so bad. That’s so bad that it’s scary because what is that? That means it was scary for her and I can’t go there, Dale—”

“You don’t have to—”

“I’m just so scared all the time. And I’m weak and I’m this thing now and I don’t wanna be this thing. I don’t even need to be happy. I just don’t wanna be this scared all the time like of all these fucking feelings. Cause it’s like, what about the damage?”

“What damage?”

“Like if I hadn’t dealt with it like I was supposed to. And so I do…like now. I deal with it and I let it sit and I feel it and what if it’s too much damage? And how stupid would I look after all this time like, falling apart? How do I make it stop hurting without letting it hurt? See, that’s stupid too.”

“Well, not everything stupid is…invalid.”

“Yeah?”

“If you need to talk to someone—”

“I don’t. I’m just saying I missed the boat. For outcry. For violent rapture. For everything I’m angry about and now it’s too late and it’s so embarrassing at this point to be angry at all. I feel like I’m crazy because I’ve done well. I’m getting everything I want. And I’ve done well.”

“You’ve done great, Virginia…and…you know…well, you’re loved.” Dale put his hand on my shoulder and I wrapped my arms around it until he pulled my head into the crook of his shoulder and chest.

“You’re alright, Virginia. It comes and goes.”

“Can I tell you the worst thing, Dale?” I asked him.

He sighed and nodded.

“Sometimes I try and make myself feel better by imagining she loved me less. Like she was happy to leave me; it was a relief for her. Like a joke, she was dying to get away from me. That way she didn’t die sad. And I didn’t lose anything, just, a child minder…or, fuck.”

I was sobbing into his armpit, and he moved back gently and handed me the toilet paper roll again. I nodded at him in thanks.

“Well,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re okay.”

“You don’t think I’m bad?”

“No, no, I don’t. You do what you can. You take cream for your coffee?” he asked.

“Yeah, do you have Splenda?”

“I have stevia. It’s natural,” he said, and went back to the kitchen to grab my coffee.

“You’re a hippie now, Dale?”

“Yup.”

“I can have these, Dale? The pictures?”

“Oh yeah, I have a few of us, the three of us, your mom and me, if that’s okay, but they’re doubles.”

“Okay, thank you,” I told him.

“Stevia,” he said, walking back and handing me the cup.

I smiled. Dale made no mention of going back to work that day; he just told me he was going to put on his “house clothes” and left me with my coffee while he went to change. I was happy I didn’t have to ask him to stay with me.

We spent the rest of the afternoon much like how we’d spent the days after my mother’s death: moving around each other, smiling at one another when we got close enough but didn’t want to speak. I packed up the photos and put them in a tin box Dale had set aside for me, a box I hadn’t seen before. I was touched, even though that wasn’t his intention. He only spoke a few times, when he held some object of possible desire up to me from across the room to say a quick “You sure you don’t want this?” I shook my head at him each time. Even if he didn’t understand why I wanted to donate my mother’s old clothes and her dishes, he didn’t make me feel like shit about it. I did that to myself. Dale just wanted to make sure I was happy. I tried not to look sad when I assured him I had everything I needed, so he would feel more confident in packing up my mother’s things and marking the boxes in permanent marker for Goodwill.

“This is actually making everything go a bit faster,” he said.

“You want me to paint too?”

“Eh, how much are you charging?”

“A hot meal and all your stevia,” I told him.

He smiled then started to box up the books beside the mantel and that was the only time I stopped him—to take two Roberto Bolaño novels.

“I want these,” I told him.

“Yeah, they’re good ones,” he replied.

“You’ve read ’em?”

“Mm, maybe, hard to remember books,” he said.

“He was Mom’s favourite author.”

“Yeah, a bit wordy for me. Yeah, no, I read those, most of them, I think.”

“Most of his stuff?”

“No, most of those two books, they’re wordy, so…I just kind of find my way through.”

“Do you get anything out of that?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, there’s a story in all that.”

“You just fill in the blanks?”

“I guess I do. He’s a good writer,” Dale said.

“I’ll give it a shot using your method,” I told him, holding the books against my chest.

“Or just read something you like?”

“I don’t know what I like.”

He looked at me, another pause, and then he said, “Memes.”

I burst out laughing. Dale was funnier than I’d ever be.

—

When we were done packing, we loaded up Dale’s car, and went back inside to order food. We spent the evening eating dinner and watching TV. We’d repacked the clothes on the plastic-covered couch, and now we ignored the squeaks when we moved or shifted our weight and carried on with our usual discussions about the actors he didn’t know and things I thought were interesting about them.

“Have you told your friends?” he asked me during a commercial break. Dale still had cable.

“Just a few. They’re mostly happy, I think.”

“It’s very exciting.”

“Haley’s not happy,” I told him.

“Change is hard. She’s a sensitive girl.”

“I don’t think we’re friends anymore.”

“That’s okay,” he said.

When the show came back on, we put our conversation on pause.

We didn’t talk too much before Dale started falling asleep, so we both went to our rooms and lay down. I could hear him snoring and branches hitting the window, sounding like hail. Dale kept the house colder than I kept my apartment, so I had to wear a hoodie and sweats. Despite being cold I got up as quietly as possible and went to the room where my mother died. There were more boxes, a small desk and chairs, and three bookshelves filled with more books and old clay sculptures I must have made as a child. There was still a cushy armchair in the corner next to the bed, where Dale and I had felt we needed to spend a certain amount of time sitting at her bedside, and a little table next to it. It would be incredibly convenient if my mother was a ghost and for her to appear at this very moment. To offer words of closure and support, and to let me know that in some ghostly realm she was both deliriously happy but also still involved. Like she could feel and receive love and give it back. I had a therapist once tell me I couldn’t keep ghosts in cages. I remember telling her she clearly hadn’t seen Ghostbusters. She rolled her eyes and said our time was up before I could tell her I was sorry for the joke but still disagreed. My ghosts needed to be locked up because how could I live knowing that they were moving freely around the world, popping up in empty cupboards at will, in late-night window reflections when I was alone.

I sat down in the chair, deciding whether it all felt different or the same. The thing was, nothing felt as it should or shouldn’t. Nothing felt like it possessed the gravitas I was trying to give it at that moment. I wasn’t taken back to those days of her dying. I was no longer sitting in the same chair; now it was just a chair. I looked at where my mother’s bed used to be. Her morphine drip would have been just behind my left shoulder. We’d kept her from feeling pain. We took it from her and replaced it with prescribed opiates. I tried to remember my own pain, of sitting in this chair and not knowing how or when to move my legs so they didn’t fall asleep. The pain of holding my breath and walking lighter when I passed this room on the way to the bathroom like she would hear me and wonder why I didn’t stop to say hi, and the pain of holding in my urine and shit so I didn’t have to pass the room to use the washroom at all. The pain of trying to fall asleep and wondering if I’d been nice enough and done enough that day to absolve me of guilt if she died overnight and the secondary guilt of thinking if I hadn’t…if I was just too tired to get up, then I just had to hope I’d have time to make it right tomorrow. I was having trouble remembering the physicality of the pain, the way the hurt sits in your skin like nerve damage. I thought about Sam, clenching my body trying to remember. The desperate need to pee, his hand in my hair, the way I’d been folded up in the back seat, his dick in me, feeling the buckle from his belt dig into my lower thigh every time I was thrust against the door and the itch and then burn from the fabric seats on the small of my back and the cool of the window, that fear of what next. It hadn’t been physical violence I was afraid of, just like I hadn’t been afraid of my mother dying after a certain point. It was that—What happens next? What would happen to me, who was I supposed to be after that moment, that made sense? Apparently, no bike cop or Haley or ghost of my mother could tell me, so I didn’t know.

—

I woke up to see my phone pinging with texts from Haley, asking when I was coming home. I thought about trying to joke with her, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to see her, talk to her. So I said in one word: tomorrow. I had two shows I wanted to prepare for and the showcase was on Saturday. Dale told me he would come to the showcase. He stayed home again, and we primed and painted over the cantaloupe-coloured walls of the dining room and the purples of the living room, all a very light taupe. Maybe it’s not taupe at all. Just another version of beige. I felt better turning the house into a stranger. I hoped the new owners ripped everything to the studs and rebuilt, adding in glass and tile backsplashes and open-concept cupboards or whatever HGTV was shilling these days.

Dale kept looking over at me while we painted to make sure I was okay, and for a minute I thought of trying to seem very wise and telling him something about painting over memories, but that was my brain trying to make more pain out of a paint job.

The next morning, Dale and I got up early and had coffee together before I went home and he went to work. The real estate agent would be by on Monday to do a walk-through. We were back to business as usual; I almost shook his hand before we got in our vehicles.

“Oh and you’re gonna drop that stuff off?” I asked him, motioning to the Goodwill boxes in his car.

“Yeah, that’s good?”

“That’s good. Thanks.”

He smiled and waved, driving off with a full back seat of ’80s and ’90s polyester and cotton. I was holding my box of photos, a duffle bag full of my own clothes, and the two Bolaño books. I didn’t check the house to see if I’d forgotten anything.

CHAPTER 17

The apartment was quiet and Haley’s door was shut. She could still be sleeping; it was only 9:30 a.m. I brought my stuff into my room and left my little box of photos on the bed, lying down next to it. Two shows tonight and the showcase tomorrow, then I had nothing booked for a while. Maybe I’d just go to LA already. Except I was paranoid they’d kick me out for not having my green card on hand and so no, I just had to wait. I would pack in anticipation. Live out of a suitcase. Find a place to stay.

I heard Haley get up to use the washroom. I got up and waited for her just outside the door.

“Hey.” I tried to act like I also needed to use the washroom as she was coming out.

“All yours.”

“You good?”

“No, Virginia.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not doing this now,” Haley told me. She stopped at her door.

“I’m not asking anything,” I told her.

“You’ve broken my heart.” She had her back turned to me, which was good because she would’ve seen me run my tongue along my teeth, trying to hold back from telling her to fuck off.

“Well. Okay.”

“But it’s not up for discussion right now.”

“Sure,” I said. I did have to pee at this point.

“But Virginia?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want you to worry. I have a support system.” Now she looked at me, her eyes puffy from crying.

“A whole bunch of people who think I’m an asshole?” I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders and widened her eyes, as if to say, Obviously.

“Hey Haley, fuck you. Tell them I said that.” I went into the bathroom and slammed the door.

I could hear her crying again. I started putting up fingers representing our mutual friends and dropping them with a click of my tongue whenever I knew they would side with her. Rachel, she would side with Haley, not because she would agree but because it was the path of least resistance. One finger down. Anna definitely would side with Haley; they were closer and could spend days getting drunk and talking shit about me. Another finger down. Maggie would go neutral, in theory, but tell Haley in confidence she was siding with her. The twins, I didn’t even think I followed them on socials, but Haley kept in touch. I looked at the hand that I was counting my old friends on, now balled up into a fist. I was happy.

—

I walked from the apartment towards Grace O’Malley’s, where I saw Nia outside smoking and yelling at someone on the phone. She hung up when she saw me. She was probably the only person who could make hanging up on an iPhone look cool. Nia was on both shows with me; Claire and Addy would meet us at the late show, good timing for friends when I had lost a few. Nia and I bombed the first show, mostly due to the fact that there were about seven college boys and two very drunk old women who showed their support for the two of us “lovely ladies” by yelling at the boys over our sets telling them to listen. Sometimes the audience was funnier than the comedians. It became even funnier once we retold the story at the second show to Claire and Addy. Claire made her moon face, widening her eyes and turning her mouth into a little circle and giggling, while Addy started saying, “That’s fucked,” and Nia agreed, “Very fucked” and they made a game of who could say “fucked” in the funniest way before someone broke.

Claire squeezed my hand. She was about to go onstage and tell the most perverse jokes.

“Missed you,” she said.

“I’ve been MIA.”

“Yeah, fuck you, Virginia. Where have you been? Other than Vancouver?” Nia piped up.

“Friends, it’s been a mess,” I told them, sipping my beer. We had five minutes before the host called Claire up.

“Are you alright?” Addy asked.

“Hm, like yeah? Haley and I aren’t friends anymore—”

“I didn’t like her,” Nia said.

“Fuck her,” Addy added.

Claire nodded.

“No, it’s fine. It’s yeah, it’s a war zone. And we’re selling the house. Dale’s moving on up to Muskoka, aaaaaand I am moving as well.”

“No, you’re not! Did you get it?” Nia looked at me, grinning from ear to ear. I forgot I had drunkenly told her about LA months ago, and she promised to follow me as soon as she could.

“Yeah, just waiting for the ol’ mailman, and yeah, off to Los Angeleees,” I told the trio. They all hugged me, while telling me they would not apologize for hugging me. They knew I hated hugs.

“You better get the sickest foldout couch, queen-sized. I’m gonna fuck all over it,” Nia said.

“Gross, but I will,” I promised her. She took my left hand and Claire was rubbing my back.

“I feel like we’re in A League of Their Own or something. What the hell.” Addy was holding my right hand, like I was royalty.

“You’re Rosie O’Donnell,” I told Addy.

“Fuck you!”

“Wait, so Haley’s mad that you’re moving?” Nia asked.

“She’s mad at me for existing, yeah. I mean, I kinda…She fucked Steve and told him this story…Fuck, I slept with this guy at my dad’s wedding who turned out to be his new wife’s son—adult son—but no one told me!”

“That’s amazing,” Claire piped up.

“Was it good?” Addy asked.

“The sex, god no, that’s—oh my god, I have to tell you about that after—but I was like…processing and she fucked Steve and then told him aaaaaand I…yeah, no, I kinda, we were on the edge to say the least, and then I told her I was moving, and pretty sure I yelled at both her and Steve.”

“Why would you yell at sweet baby Steve?” Addy asked, half joking.

“He honestly did not deserve it, I will tell you that.”

“That’s a lot though, just moving to LA and selling like your childhood home. That’s a lot,” Nia said and the women continued holding my hands and rubbing my back.

“Yeah and…I hate saying all this, but like…I don’t know, some fucked-up shit happened. It’s not really the time though. I dunno.”

I had just laundry-listed so many problems already to hit ’em with the rape card? I was instantly embarrassed and squeezed both Addy’s and Nia’s hands and shook my head.

“Sorry, I just like word-vomited. I never sleep, fucking Mercury retrograde or something. No, I’m good. Are you, uh, doing the blow job bit?” I asked Claire.

“Virginia, are you good?” Nia asked.

“Yeah, yeah, I just feel like, oooooh my problems aren’t real problems when I recap them. I feel better. I should’ve just done this mini therapy session like a week ago. I could’ve saved everyone a lot of time.”

“Alright. Cause we’ll kill someone for you,” Nia finished.

“I know. I’m not sure who to sic you on, but I have plans. Let me get to LA first, suss it out.”

“I’d be such a good fucking hitman,” Nia said.

Addy shook her head. “You’re a fucking giraffe in a balaclava. You’d be terrible.”

“I’m not gonna do the blow job bit,” Claire told me in an aside.

Then the host, Reed, who’d somehow got a hosting gig (how the fuck did he get a hosting gig?), welcomed her with an unfunny joke about women who loved sex.

After the show we parted ways since we’d see each other the next evening at the showcase and get ridiculously drunk afterwards, celebrating every laugh and dissecting every moment we fucked up or what we could do to be better. Nia and I shared an Uber since she lived just a bit further west of me.

“Are you guys talking at all?” she asked me.

“No, it’s very tense. I’m kinda hoping she leaves or goes somewhere. It’s kinda at a stalemate.”

“It’s like a breakup.”

“It’s the worst breakup I’ve ever had because she won’t leave. It’s endless. All our mutual friends hate me because she said I was a bitch.”

“Wow, you are? Shit, what would she say about me?” Nia asked.

“Hitler,” I said without thinking there was a stranger driving us who might be offended. Nia didn’t care.

“That tracks. Do you wanna get sip, sip, pffft—” Nia started stuttering on her words and gave up. We both burst out laughing.

“Do I wanna get what? Did you have a stroke?”

“Supper!” Nia finally exclaimed. I couldn’t tell you why it was so funny. Maybe it was the look of horrified surprise on her face when she glitched out the first time, accidentally combining supper and dinner and giving up when her mouth failed her.

“I don’t know, I don’t know if you’re okay,” I joked back.

“Tomorrow, before all the hullaballoo?” We were both trying not to laugh.

The Uber parked in front of my apartment building.

“Yes, I will have dinner with you tomorrow. It would be an honour,” I told her as she kissed her hand and placed it on my forehead.

“Until tomorrow, my grace.”

—

My smile faded by the time I reached the apartment door. I could hear loud music coming from inside. The familiar bops of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs—high school music—enveloped me when I entered the apartment. Haley was sitting on the couch looking through a magazine. It felt like she had staged herself to be like when we were teenagers and used to read magazines and listen to music.

“Hey,” I said over the music.

Haley pretended not to hear me. I went to the small Bluetooth speaker on the coffee table and turned the volume down.

“Hi,” I said again.

She looked at me like I was a monster for touching her speaker but didn’t say anything.

“Well, it’s after eleven,” I said.

“Oh no.”

“I’m gonna go to bed,” I told her.

She started to turn the music back up.

“I’m going to bed, Haley,” I yelled over the music. When she didn’t say anything, I said, “No, I’m fucking not actually. I’m gonna watch TV. This is my TV, right? So I’m gonna watch, fucking, the news. I’m gonna watch the news.”

I sat down beside her and felt her body stiffen. I turned on the TV loud enough to compete with her music. Then I felt her body start to shake. I turned both the speaker and the TV off.

“What, Haley? What do you wanna do?”

“I’ll watch the news,” she said, wiping away tears.

“Fine.” I sat back down beside her, and she leaned into me. I put my arm around her and put the news back on.

“How was your show?” she asked between segments about a teacher getting fired for giving birth to an eighth-grader’s baby and a dog that could smell cavities.

“They were good. I had two.”

“Big night.”

“Yeah, just trying to prepare.”

“Your showcase is tomorrow?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Are you going to talk about Sam?”

“Ha, no. No, that was a stupid idea.”

“I dunno. Maybe not.”

“Well.”

“Weeeeellll,” she said, imitating Oprah, the callback to our youth. If I broke her heart earlier, she broke mine just now.

“Mhmm. I should sleep though.” I gently got up, passing her the remote, which she used to turn off the TV and stood up with me.

“Do you need me to come?” she asked me.

“Ah, no. No, that’s fine.”

“Then I’ll just be home alone.” She looked so small standing there, her shorts tucked up into her crotch from sitting too long, her hair barely contained by a scrunchie, and her low tank top exposing her chest, exploding with new acne brought on by her meds.

“I don’t think you’d have a good time.”

“Are you going to talk about me?”

“No.”

“Then why don’t you want me to come?” She stamped her foot like a petulant child.

“It’s sold out.”

“I don’t think it’s good for my mental health to be alone.”

“Then go out.”

“Virginia—”

“Haley…Then just leave. Leave the apartment, go get a drink, go for a fucking walk. Call someone, go home, start a blog, take up fucking spinning. If you can’t be alone—even though you’ve been alone and that’s been fine—but now if this is some new layer of depression, if you’ve like levelled up, like I can’t—”

“This isn’t a joke.”

“I know! I know that. I know it’s big and everywhere, but it’s not…it’s not everything. Like everything I do can’t be a fucking trigger for you,” I told her.

She shrugged.

“Well, okay. Yeah, alright…sorry—or, okay, yeah. I’m going to bed, Haley. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

CHAPTER 18

Haley and I spent the next day avoiding each other, politely speaking only when necessary. I didn’t want her to see me getting ready to go out for dinner and then the show, so I waited until I thought she might be napping, slipped out, and sat in an Aroma café, trying to read Bolaño.

Nia invited both Addy and Claire to dinner, and we ate tacos on a heated patio while we talked about the extensive green card process. Addy said she was already looking into it because she had a cousin in WeHo she could live with for a while. She travelled a lot, the cousin. I told them they should plan a big trip to LA, book shows, and then we could go on a road trip to San Francisco or Las Vegas. We could made it an annual thing. They loved the idea. Suddenly, I wanted to tell them everything—about my mom, my dad, Sam, Haley—except it would ruin the moment.

“Wait, are you road-tripping out to LA?” Addy asked me.

“Oh god, no. I’d be killed immediately at some rest stop or motel,” I joked.

“What are you gonna do with your car?” Nia asked.

“Shit, I don’t know. I haven’t really thought anything through. Ever. Ha, I think I’ll sell it and lease something down there? I’ll have to get a licence and all that anyways. Just gotta sell that friggin’ house.”

“Is that happening soon?” Nia continued.

“Yeah, they’re gonna stage it, or start to on Monday. Then hopefully some beautiful little family claims it as their own.”

“Aw,” Claire added.

“Anyone wanna buy a car?” I asked.

They all shook their heads.

“I heard Matt was looking for a car. He posted something on his Instagram stories about looking for just like a used chill car. He didn’t say ‘chill’ but that was the vibe,” Addy said.

“Hm. Good tip,” I said, pushing away the thought of Matt and his mother’s car.

I told them my dad and Penny would be in LA in June, so I’d see them then. My dad had never paid me back for the hotel; he’d just sent me an email telling me his travel plans and ended with “Let me know if that works for you.”

When we finished dinner, we made our way to Comedy Bar. We were walking arm in arm up the sidewalk for a while.

“I feel like we’re in that movie Stand by Me,” I said, while we wobbled along the sidewalk.

“That’s the boy one! What’s the girl one?” Nia said, dragging Addy along.

“Now and Then!” Addy yelled. “Jesus, Nia, why did you wear heels?!” The height discrepancy was too much for Addy, who came up to Nia’s armpit.

“Wait, isn’t Rosie O’Donnell in that too?” I asked.

“Just because I’m a big-mouthed lesbian does not make me Rosie!” Addy let go of Nia and boffed my toque off me with a light slap upside the head. I laughed.

“Addy!” Claire stopped and reached for my toque, except our arms were still linked, so I was forced to bend with her and it made me feel like a conjoined twin. I couldn’t stop laughing.

By the time we made it to Comedy Bar, we were all a wreck from ping-ponging off each other during the walk. I tried to smooth Nia’s hair down before we went in. Addy was pulling her hair back into a bun while yelling at Nia that the ’80s called and wanted their perm back. My mom would’ve liked these friends even more.

I saw Dale standing against the wall across from the bar, holding a bottle of Bud Light.

“Hey Dale!” I went up to him and gave him a hug.

Nia, Addy, and Claire followed, and before he could even say hello, they hugged him with a familiarity he wasn’t prepared for.

“You got a seat yet, Dale?” Addy asked him.

“Uh, nope.” Dale looked to me. “Is it—I can pick my own?”

“You can sit with us! We’re on next week, me and this one,” Addy said, pointing at Claire. “Let me grab a beer first. You need another? What are you having? A Bud Light, we got an ally.” Addy didn’t give him a chance to decline and went to the bar with Claire.

Dale looked at me, a little helpless.

“They’re very nice,” I told him.

“Claire’s nice. Make sure Addy doesn’t slip you anything,” Nia warned him and smiled.

“Will do. Good luck.”

I waved bye to him and mouthed thank you to Addy for inviting Dale to sit with them.

In the green room, the mood was much more tense. A few of the comics were joking around. Hisham was the host, so he was already drinking a rum and Coke and dancing a bit while talking about his other plans for the weekend, while Mario nodded to the beat of the background music in a way that also said he was listening. Nia and I looked over our sets. The rest of them—Patrick, Danny, and Carter—were silent, looking over their notes. Patrick had his headphones on and almost looked as if he was meditating. Hisham tried to give us all a fist bump before he ran up onstage, quickly introducing Carter as the first act of the night. Most of the other comics continued to go over their sets but I preferred to watch the little monitor they had set up in the green room to see how he was doing.

“Yeah, I fought a cop, a lady cop. I’m not lying, I’m not lying,” Carter told the audience. “It wasn’t my fault, I’ll start with that. That’s believable, right? Like do I really look like a dude who you’d pick a confrontation with? Like I look like walking anemia, the type of guy that you’re just like, Wow, if he leans into a countertop he’ll probably bruise.”

Carter was very good at self-describing. He was about my height, or slightly shorter, with big lips that didn’t fully cover his long gums and even longer white teeth. His nose dove in and out like a diamond when you looked at him straight on, and the hollows below his massive eyes were always purple. He usually held the mic between two of his thin fingers, even though they shook, and used the other hand to fingerishly emphasize his words. I liked him because he just loved comedy so much. He had this respect for it.

“You have to believe that I tried a sit-up the other day and now you can tell exactly where each vertebra is by its indigo hue. I’m fine, thanks for asking. From the sit-up. Ruined my Saturday though. And then Sunday, I fought a lady cop.”

He talked like an exaggerated version of John Mulaney and whenever he’d lick his lips they’d glow red. “I fought this lady cop because she stole my frisbee. Okay, truth be told this is an old story because it’s March, right? So the last Sunday in August, this lady cop stole my frisbee…I know, the former Make-A-Wish kid? You already don’t like her, right—I wasn’t a Make-A-Wish kid; I’m low on iron, not white blood cells. Anyways, my friend and I, let’s call him Jeremy because I wish my name was Jeremy because let’s be honest Carter is too aggressive for someone mortally affected by inclement weather. Like Carter suggests with its hard ‘c’ and double ‘r’ that I’m tough. But I’ve never even had a pistachio because I’d rather save myself the embarrassment with those shells—‘Oh, Carter, just use an existing shell and jimmy the nut open.’ Well, that doesn’t work! They always just slip out of my delicate digits like butter…What, now I have still-full-shell pistachios on my floor that mock me? Jeremy wouldn’t be so foolish. So me and real Jeremy, we’re out having a beach day, and we’re throwing around the disc a bit because that’s the only type of sport I can handle, frisbee, the sport of children and malnourished men. We’re throwing the ’bee around—we shorten the word for fun’s sake—and we’re having a good time until it lands on this lady cop, who I didn’t know was a lady cop at the time. She didn’t identify herself so already it’s entrapment.”

I didn’t watch the end of his set because I was on second, which wasn’t my favourite spot but at least it wasn’t first and I’d be done early, and then I could enjoy the other sets and secretly hope everyone would do slightly worse than me.

I tried to focus on my set until I heard the audience clap for Carter. I smiled at him when he passed me in the doorway. He pretended to faint from exhaustion in the green room. My heart was beating fast when my name was called. I heard Addy whooping from the back. It was time to go.

“Hey, thank you, thank you all for coming out to this beautiful basement. I miss basement parties. Just you and all your friends smoking clove cigarettes and just fucking gut-punching each other. My adolescence was solely informed by Fight Club. Like there were four of us girls and we saw that movie and others—Million Dollar Baby, Mulan—and just decided yeah fighting. That’ll be our thing. Just like Carter—this whole evening is just about fist fights. They should’ve warned you on the way in. Interactive comedy! Welcome to fucking hell.” I went quiet. I was supposed to do that at the beginning, but my adrenaline was running too high. I looked around the crowd. There were a lot of comics and parents of comics, and my Dale sandwiched in between Addy and Claire. I let the audience become uncomfortable in the silence—not purposefully, I had forgotten what I was supposed to say.

“I had friends—I do have friends, but I had others that I fought…I guess it makes sense now why I put it in the past tense…” The joke was supposed to be about how me and these girls, girls from my old neighbourhood, got together one weekend and thought we should find out who was the strongest and fight each other, round robin-style. It had started out innocently enough. We were all laughing and trying to push each other over. Then this girl, Tash, threw this crazy right hook and hit me in the nose. It started bleeding. She thought she’d won but I refused to give in so I slammed her into a basement wall, and she dropped down, just for a moment, unconscious. I won; I was the strongest. I looked at Dale at the back, waiting for me to be funny. Not just for tonight, but for LA, for forever so he could relax and know he was right, that I was okay. Sometimes comedy wasn’t about making people laugh; sometimes it was just about making everyone comfortable enough to get through the next ten minutes.

“Good set,” Steve said after the show.

“Oh yeah, we’ll see. Sorry about the whole water thing, um, that was weird. That’s on me,” I said. Steve and I hadn’t interacted since I yelled at him in my apartment. “I dunno, I wasn’t planning on ever talking to you again but yeah, thanks for the compliment.”

“Yeah, that was fucking weird. But also, you know…I’m sorry too. I didn’t know—”

“No, no, I was like…All that I was saying, um, it’s just like—” I stopped, unable to finish a sentence.

“But we’re good. I hope Haley didn’t think it was like…She’s very nice—”

“Nah, she’ll just blame it on her crazy roommate.” I winked at him in a way that was not as cool as I hoped it would look.

“You’re not crazy, Virginia.” Steve was so fucking nice.

“You sure?”

He nodded at me and smiled. “We’re good.”

“Thanks, sorry, but yes, I’m good now. We’re good, so all gooood.” I made the rock and roll sign with my hands and waggled them around, and he smiled sweetly then walked away.

Nia shook her head at me from across the bar. We were like sitcom actors except we were very aware we were trying to be more interesting than the average non-comedian human being.

Addy dragged Dale over while Claire followed behind.

“My little freaks!” Addy embraced me and followed up with a hug for Nia. Claire hugged us both.

“Good show, ladies,” Dale said.

“Thanks, Dale!” Nia responded. Her own father would never come to a basement show.

“I’m up early, but that was good. I hope you…Do you win something?” Dale asked.

“No, we don’t win anything—” I started.

“Most of us lose money doing this, at the bar mostly,” Nia finished.

“But it’s for a showcase, for the Just For Laughs festival, to be asked to do it,” I said.

“Well, you were great. And I’ll speak to you Monday, after I know more.” Dale patted me on the shoulder, too embarrassed to embrace me or not willing to be forced into another group hug.

“I love him,” Nia said once he was up the stairs and out of sight. “Now let’s get really drunk.”

CHAPTER 19

By God’s beautiful, magnificent, wonderous grace, I didn’t do anything dumb that night, despite being so drunk—beyond goofy drunk, just Chris Farley on cocaine drunk—and loud and belly out to the world on the cab ride home, lusting over McDonald’s fries. The next day I was probably still a bit drunk or just so dehydrated I was experiencing mild psychosis. I was afraid to move. I lay horizontally, feeling like the alcohol was sitting in me like oil on top of water, and if I got up it would slosh around and erupt out of me.

Luckily, standing up was sobering and walking even more so. By the time I reached the toilet, I had a bit of my wits about me. I washed my hands and face, moisturized. I was more hungover than drunk and needed sustenance, so I went to the kitchen to scavenge for some breakfast food, but there was only cereal, cold cuts, and cheese.

I sat on the couch and Uber-Eated McDonald’s breakfast then lay down, waiting for the buzzer, hoping DEVO the delivery guy would be ultra-supersonic quick and appear at the door within seconds.

“Are you okay?” Haley asked.

I hadn’t heard her come out of her room. I opened my eyes. She was standing over the couch, looking concerned.

“I’m dying, but yeah.”

“How was the show?” she asked. She was dressed and looked too awake for a Sunday morning.

“Yeah, good,” I said in a German accent.

“I’m gonna start moving stuff out and go back to my parents’ for a bit. I think I need to realign.”

“Alright.”

“I don’t think I’m gonna come back here, though. I’m not going to, actually, so…It’ll just be yours till you leave.”

“Okay,” I said to the ceiling. She was waiting for me to ask about next month’s rent since she was giving me such short notice, but I didn’t care.

“My mom’s gonna be here soon, though, so do you think you could be in your room?” she asked.

“No, I’m waiting for my food.”

“I can bring it to you.”

“I don’t trust you not to poison it,” I told her.

“Virginia, can you just do this for me? Can you just go in your room while we load up?”

“Can’t, won’t, sorry.”

“Virginia! You’re literally a monster! Like this is embarrassing for you.”

“It’s not. I’m sooo much better than you, Haley. I’m so, so much better than you. Look at this, look at our lives. Look at how much better I am on paper. You know it and you hate me for it. You would kill your own mother for this…this fucking mess that I am. You’re so depressed that I have everything you want, because you don’t think I deserve one fucking ounce of it. You don’t think I’ve suffered enough, and don’t feel that I should, on paper, be so much better than you. And that’s why this doesn’t work anymore, right? Because when you just let it play and you let me lie and say I’m fine and let me tell you about my day, tell you all the cool shit I did and work I got done, then you can think, Oh, what a fucking liar, she’s not doing shit, she’s not better than me. But now the cards are on the table and I’m better than you. I’m better. I’m better at being depressed, let’s be honest. I kill that shit. I’m just, steady on, steady as she goes.”

“You’re a fucking cunt, you know that? You’re seriously the most fucked-up, meanest person I know. Just because all this shit happened you think you can be a fucking asshole and you like enjoy it.”

“Cause that’s comedy, baybay!” I was definitely still a bit drunk. I wanted to tell her to fuck off in a much more eloquent way, in a way that hurt her more, that wounded her, and the fact that that made her right made me start to cry.

“Go to your fucking room!”

“I need my MCGRIDDLE, HALEY!”

Now she was crying too, and DEVO was still seven minutes away.

“I’m going to have a panic attack.” Haley started clutching her chest, so I finally got off the couch.

“Lie the fuck down. I’ll go to my room. I swear to god, if you touch my food.”

“I hope you get fucking SARS,” Haley told me as she crumpled onto the couch still crying and starting to hyperventilate.

“Tell your mom I said hi.” I slammed my door without fully grasping why she wished SARS on me. What a weird thing to say. I was tempted to open the door and be like, “SARS?” and then watch Haley pop back up and laugh, and it was all a joke. We’d be laughing, confused and crying, and I’d help her pack and leave. But it’d be a good leave, a fine goodbye, with no pretense of ever being friends again.

My food arrived before her mother, and I went out to get it. Haley was still crying on the couch, so I went back to my room to eat and cry quietly into my McGriddle.

When her mother arrived, I pretended to be asleep and tried very hard not to listen to everything they were saying about me and picking apart what was true and what was Haley’s version that wasn’t not true but wasn’t totally true either. Thirty-eight minutes later, she was gone.

I thought that once Haley left, there would be a void in my life. But there wasn’t. I didn’t feel relief, either. Just small moments of sadness, brief little trip-ups as I went through the events of the morning.

I threw myself into packing and planning, and when I finally left my room I saw the mess Haley had left. The kitchen cabinets and drawers were half-open; presumably, Haley had been rummaging through them for anything that was hers. The tapestry was still hanging on the wall. She’d left her shampoo, I noticed that. And her bedroom was still adorned with photos of us, and posters, and there were a few pairs of sandals she had left in her closet. She’d left her pillows but taken her blanket. I puffed them up and put them back at the head of her bed. Then I took her sandals and the remaining hangers and placed them near the coffee table so they were easy to spot. I closed the cabinets and drawers in the kitchen then pushed her dresser and vanity into the middle of the living room, but not fully blocking the TV. Finally, I walked up to the Rupi Kaur tapestry and carefully pulled out each nail from the wall to try and salvage it, my only form of apology.

—

The next morning, I woke up feeling uneasy. I couldn’t get comfortable in all the space and aloneness. When I got up, I put some music on and turned the volume up through the TV. But after an hour or so I got tired of listening to the same songs and switched to some reality show to have the company of other idiots in their twenties thinking they were more interesting than they really were. Later, I went into her room, swept the floor, and opened the curtains to let the sun in.

When I found out I’d booked a CBC gala taping at the Winnipeg Comedy Festival, I didn’t think to call Haley. Instead, I asked the girls to come over and celebrate. Nia brought caution tape and pasted it across Haley’s door. After they left, I took it down.

I thought I’d appreciate Haley more once she’d left, but I just felt anxious, faced with her mountain of stuff and enclosed in silence. Out of pride, I made sure I did better, making detailed lists of what to take on the flight, what to sell, what to donate. Another life packed neatly into cardboard boxes. I tried to go to a show every night and work on material during the day at Jimmy’s, before the gym.

I kept coming back to this bit I was working on. I didn’t like working on bits with the comedy gals, and without Haley to lie to about a bit not being a bit, sometimes I’d practise it aloud in my empty apartment. “Do we really trust anyone in comedy these days? To tell the truth? Like here I am, telling you this fucked-up story and I make little asides and it’s funny cause it’s true and you guys like that, right?” That was when I mimed nodding to an invisible crowd. “Like I don’t trust comedians and I am one. I don’t think I should be given any responsibility. Don’t ask me to babysit because I’m gonna draw a moustache on your kid and talk to them like we’re a pair of old drunks cause that’s comedy! Yeah, but sometimes I do tell the truth; I sprinkle it in there. Bear with me, folks, I’m getting to the good part. I do like to tell the truth sometimes, like if I say, ‘Hey, you know this comic, this Sam Lappano guy? He’s cute. He also raped me.’ Ooooh, she made it dark. Should we believe her? He’s also a comedian, remember that, so if he says, ‘No, I didn’t!’ who do you believe? Whoever has the better joke about the whole thing? Like if he says, ‘Oh yeah, she’s just embarrassed cause she was a terrible lay’ and I say, ‘Yeah, obviously I was because I didn’t consent!’ I’m usually terrible at things I don’t like. Take golf, for instance. I hate it and should not be forced to do it just because all these old white men love it.”

I looked at the empty couch, the empty apartment. The audience of my creation didn’t find it funny. I promised myself I’d keep trying.

CHAPTER 20

Three days before I was set to leave, Addy and I “celebrated” not getting the showcase. Nia and Claire booked it, so the two of us, Addy and I, did mushrooms in her basement. Once I realized I was not a small child seeing the world through a giant, a wave of happiness came over me. I was not a giant but an adult child, and the couch that sat adjacent to the TV Addy’s parents had forced her to take was a beautiful bassinet that swaddled me as Addy sang along to Fleetwood Mac, and the world was magic. I’m not saying do drugs but that was a nice time.

I listened to more Fleetwood Mac on the drive up to Oakville, trying to chase that feeling of euphoria my trip had induced. There was something about Stevie Nicks that made a young woman feel powerful, something in her witchy passive-aggressive lyrics that I found calming as I prepared to sign off on my mother’s home.

“Hi Virginia, so nice to meet you. I don’t think we’ve had the chance to speak to each other yet. I’m really excited for you to see what we’ve done.” Kayley, the realtor, greeted me as soon as I pulled in and walked me to the front of the house. “We didn’t touch the lawn. We wanted to leave that open to the imagination. It’s pretty much an empty canvas,” she went on as we got to the front door. “And inside we just tried to go for a modern young family vibe, a little industrial but still warm.”

Kayley had moved out all our old furniture and put in a microfibre fabric couch that resembled some sort of beanbag chair and a teak dining room table with more microfibre and wrought-iron dining room chairs. The bookshelves were filled with Pier 1 cement Buddha statues instead of books. There was nothing on the walls. The kitchen was empty except for a white bowl filled with limes. I went to look at my mother’s old office. It was now made up to look like a young boy’s room with a twin bed covered in a blue blanket and a round baseball pillow. There was a small black desk and a copy of Home Game by Paul Quarrington on it. What had once been my bedroom was furnished with white bunk beds with two pink blankets hanging off the sides. I didn’t look in Dale’s bedroom, what was once their bedroom. It still seemed off-limits. The song “Once in a Lifetime” by Talking Heads got stuck in my brain.

I thanked Kayley a few thousand times and reassured her she’d done a great job. She waved both Dale and me off, saying she had to stay at the house to tidy up a few more things. We drove separately to what would be our last supper at Oliver & Bonacini at Oakville Place.

“You’re all ready to go?” he asked me over his chicken Caesar salad.

“Pretty much. I think I’m selling my car to a buddy of mine on Thursday—I am, actually—and then I’ll fly out on Saturday and sayonara!”

“Don’t take transit down there. You get a car right away. If you get a Honda, they’re still good cars and they’ll be a bit cheaper.”

I smiled, amused that it was just now that Dale decided to dole out fatherly advice.

“Toyota’s not bad,” he added.

“Yeah, I want something with a bit of space in the back in case I do like a road trip with some friends.”

“Then you have to take good care of the car,” he told me.

“Yeah. I’ll probably come back for a week or so after Winnipeg if you wanna plan a visit.”

“Anytime. I can pick you up from the airport.”

“That’s such a long drive. I think there’s a bus up there.” I nodded at the waiter who asked if we were still fine.

“I’ll be retired soon.” He put his fork down. He’d eaten most of the chicken but left a lot of the salad.

“I’m gonna miss this,” I told him.

He looked around the restaurant then looked back at me miming, Like, this place? Seriously?

“Well, don’t be a stranger. We can FaceTime,” he said.

“You can visit too.”

He made a face when I said that. It would be a bit weird for Dale to visit me in LA, crashing on my couch and enjoying the sun while I wrote in coffee shops. Still, I hoped he would take the invitation seriously.

“Okay, I might.”

“I just don’t want it to seem like a forever thing. Like I’ll just be gone.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Even if it is, like I don’t want to become just like a birthday card.” I had wanted our last supper to be fun, the beginning of a new track for Dale and me, so we didn’t leave everything hanging on whether I would have another breakdown the moment I was left to my own devices.

After the waiter cleared our plates, Dale grabbed my hand across the table.

“No, I don’t think so,” he repeated, much more sternly, like it was a rule, and I knew he meant it.

We both teared up a little with nothing left to say, and I knew with every fibre of my being he was about to tell me my mother would be proud, but instead he made a show of shaking my hand and telling me this was good, everything was good.

CHAPTER 21

“You brought cash?” I asked Matt, who had just handed me a manila folder with eight thousand dollars in it.

“Was that not the deal?” he asked.

We had met up in Roncesvalles, a bougie neighbourhood in the west end of Toronto. I was planning on walking home, but would’ve preferred to do so with a cheque over a wad of twenties.

“I was gonna walk home. Jeez, I gotta find a bank. Now they’re gonna think I’m a drug dealer.”

“That’s what she gave me,” he told me.

“Who?”

“My mom.”

“Your mom’s buying the car?” Dharma was just building a whole fleet of non-consensual fuck wagons, I guessed.

“Yeah, you know her car, obviously. Someone set it on fire,” he said, kinda laughing.

“Badly?”

“Yeah, they fucking torched the thing right in our driveway. The police think it was just a bunch of kids or whatever, but it’s still a bit scary.” He was empathizing with his mother and projecting her fear, but I was still angry with him for his earlier sentence.

“Well…it happens. Petty crime.”

“They really torched it. They used firecrackers,” he said.

I realized he was waiting on the papers and keys. I handed them to him.

“You take a picture?” Something in me wanted to see the car burnt and hollowed out.

He nodded and showed me his phone. I couldn’t hide my smile when I saw the obliterated car. He had a short video of the Hyundai, Dharma off-screen yelling at Matt, asking if they were safe in the house and if the fire department was close, and Matt saying “Uh-huh” as the car burned. I was laughing; it was beautiful. You could hear the firecrackers going off, popping violently before screaming into the sky. There was real fear in all their voices and the video cut off when Dharma was yelling at Matt to get away from the window because she thought they were being shot at.

“What an experience,” I told him, still laughing.

He looked kinda pissed off.

“Well, it’s gone now. Happy you got to enjoy it,” he said.

“I didn’t.”

“Well.”

“No, I didn’t. Your buddy…I mean, you know.” I looked at him, wondering if he knew what a monster Sam was, if he was a complicit witness to his misdoings and felony assaults, or even worse, an accomplice.

“Yeah…” He paused on the “yeah” for a moment too long, knowing and not knowing and not wanting to know. “Well, good luck in LA. Plan on getting out there soon myself.”

“Oh, I’ll be there,” I told him as I walked away.

—

Haley was late coming by to pick up the last of her things. The apartment was almost empty. I’d planned how this last conversation would go, from really going in on her to apologizing for at least the last month of awfulness. I planned on telling her that she deserved different. I couldn’t say “better,” but I could say “different.” Someone who would love the parts of her I couldn’t, who didn’t think she should have to change. I had planned on telling her that I was grateful we loved each other so deeply and that maybe it meant we shouldn’t hate each other completely, and maybe we could just be content with one another and I hoped she would find a way of living that worked for her. A real clichéd moment of closure and acceptance without apologizing or saying I’d done anything wrong. I wasn’t sorry, for any of it, and that was the truth. The funny part was that if she’d been the friend I wanted, I would’ve found a way to hate her anyways. I didn’t know why…She could be perfect, but she still wouldn’t be for me.

“Hey.” I welcomed her in and gestured towards the pile in the corner.

She walked over and took it in, picking at the last of her stuff a bit self-consciously.

“I’m gonna go to Jimmy’s and grab a coffee, so when you’re done just text and I’ll run back. Like you can leave the door unlocked. There’s nothing really to steal.”

“K, I’ll be like ten minutes,” she said, still staring at the mountain of stuff.

“Alright, see ya.” I closed the door behind me.

Haley never texted me. I wandered around our apartment building, but I didn’t see her. I tried to sit in Trinity Bellwoods but got too restless. I didn’t go far, and I didn’t get angry. I just waited, picturing what we would say for our last goodbye. I’d let her have the last word; I reminded myself to do that. And if she let me, maybe I’d squeeze her hand, gently. Two hours passed, and I hadn’t heard from her, so I went back to the apartment. She’d taken whatever remaining clothes, shoes, and old chargers she had forgotten. She’d left the shampoo, photos, and dresser and a note on the kitchen table saying, “Toss the rest.” She’d left the tapestry on top of the dresser, which made me smile. I took a moment, and then tried to lift her dresser to see if I could carry it to the sidewalk. I assumed it would be much heavier and accidentally tossed it on its back. The tapestry, which was still resting on top of it, went flying, and the dresser slammed down with a loud thud that reverberated around the empty apartment. If someone had been looking on, I think they would’ve thought it was kind of a funny scene.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A massive thank you to my family! To my mom, Mir, and my dad, Neal, thanks for suggesting I go to comedy school after dropping out of art school. Solid lateral move but helpful nonetheless! I love you both and you’ve done way more than that, but it fits the whole theme of the novel. To my brother, Owen, and sister, Chips, thanks for rolling your eyes/sending rolling-eyes emoji when I declare myself the funniest sibling every National Siblings Day in our text thread. I’m not, but I really need the validation. To Erik and MP, you guys put up with not only Mir and Neal, but also me as a pseudo stepdaughter; I love you for that. To Bronwyn, you answer my text messages much quicker than your partner, Owen (Owen, answer me), and have the best jokes about being a mother of two children who defy rational thought.

Of course, big thank you to the man who demanded I dedicate this book to him (kidding, love you Mark). Thanks for your endless patience with me trying bits on you and for lying to me that most of them were funny enough to be published. My eldest child can read, so Austin, I love you, thank you, you still can’t read this book until you’re twelve. Tyson, I love you, please stop biting me.

Lastly, thank you to everyone at Doubleday and to my wonderful editor, Janie Yoon, who delicately clarifies my run-on sentences. My agent, Jessica Bullock, you are amazing, and I thank you for never calling out how often I email you pretty obvious questions. I’d also like to thank Melanie Little, my copyeditor (sorry I didn’t understand your formatting queries, one day I’ll learn how to use Word), and Emma Dolan, who designed the beautiful cover!

I would also like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts and to acknowledge that this novel was produced with the support of the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council.