“Ha ha ha,” said Amanda.
“That’s disgusting,” said Carrie, but she reached into the sack anyway. “So, what is that, like a dollar twenty in cans?”
Megan shrugged.
“So, how have you been?” asked Amanda.
“Pretty good, pretty good,” said Carrie. “I have so many projects going on right now that my head is like,” she bugged her eyeballs and held her hands on either side of her head.
While they were talking about having too many interesting things to do, Randy and two of his friends walked up to their circle.
Randy whispered, “Can I have a beer?”
“Can I have a cigarette?”
They traded.
“You should try some of David’s growler,” said Randy.
Megan shook her head. “Never mix, never worry.”
“They’re both beer,” he said.
Megan turned to him and said very quietly, “This is killing me,” and then she walked out of the kitchen.
When it was time to wind things down, Megan was sitting on the couch with the guy from the bathroom line. Megan spotted Carrie and said, “Hey, Carrie! Come over here. Hey, this is the girl I was telling you about with the llama. Hey, Carrie, come show this guy the picture of you with the llama.”
“Um, I really have to go,” said Carrie.
“She’s got this picture of herself with a llama the size of a young woman trapped inside of an enormous stuffed llama,” said Megan. “And she’s embracing it with one arm and she’s smiling at the camera.” Megan mimicked Carrie unfavorably. She made a peace sign.
“That sounds cool,” said the guy.
“She and her boss got it off of an untouchable.” She whisper-yelled the word “untouchable.”
Carrie rolled her eyes and said, “Okay, bye, guys.” Megan said a few more things.
“Time to go home,” said Randy, helping her up from the couch.
“Why is everyone such a fucking asshole?” she asked.
“What do you mean? Who’s an asshole?”
“Why is everyone I said.” Megan’s knees buckled. She palmed the ground. “I hate Carrie. She repulses me.” Randy hoisted her up by the arm, the way people do with toddlers.
“Come on, she’s not repulsive. I can see how she might be kind of intimidating. She used to intimidate me a little.”
“I didn’t say intimidating, I said repulsive. Intimidating would imply that there was some reason I should feel inferior to her, but I don’t feel inferior because her life is a lie and she’s got no heart.”
Randy laughed a little. “Okay.”
“She’s got no heart!” she bellowed.
“Okay,” said Randy.
Megan straightened herself, rolled her eyes, chuckled, and said, “Soooo typical, sooo typical,” not knowing quite what she meant.
4
The next morning the alarm went off at seven-thirty. Randy pushed Megan to the edge of the bed with his foot.
“You know, I think it’s probably okay for me to get a few more hours of sleep. It might even be dangerous or unethical for me to go to work like this,” she said.
“Get up,” said Randy.
“The cruelty, the inhumanity,” Megan mumbled.
She swung her torso upright and pushed herself off the bed and walked to the bathroom, placed towels around the base of the claw-foot tub (all original!) to absorb the leaks, and then turned on the faucet.
In the shower, as soon as her muscles began to relax and as soon as she started to feel fresh and as if the bearing of the day might be fractionally possible, she heard that old familiar voice—possibly her own voice, it was so familiar—whisper something awful. This morning it whispered “llama” and she burst into tears as her amnesia was lifted. Megan groan-screamed and sputtered something about wishing to be put out of her misery, all while scrubbing her armpits with a teal-colored shower poof. The last mild dignity of her wailing was interrupted by a diarrhea feeling that usually followed a long night of drinking canned, watery beer.
“Oh, great.”
She scrubbed all of her dark, fetid cracks—ass, snatch, and toes—blew her nose in the direction of the drain, and then rinsed herself with cold water. She almost fell as she got out of the tub and was not surprised by this, in the same way she was not surprised by the bawling and the indigestion. She dried herself, flossed, put on lotion, and took the obligatory five minutes to comb through her hair (a new habit), then wrapped her hair in the towel. There were few more vulnerable feelings to Megan than taking a nasty shit while wet, cold, slimy, and naked. Under ideal conditions she would have put her pajamas back on before unleashing, but she had slept in her clothes.
It was always the smell of burning tires that rose from the bowl beneath her on these kinds of mornings. Better than vomiting, always, always better than vomiting, though. At least while shitting she had a chance to daydream. She flushed, rewashed her ass and crotch (also a new habit, preceded by a three-year yeast infection), washed her hands, put some Neosporin on the thick scab on her ass, shook her hair out of the towel, then wrapped the towel around her body.
“Hey, baby, you look cute,” said Randy.
“Yeah I feel fucking adorable, where are my tights?” He doesn’t know where my tights are, where the fuck are my fucking tights? she thought. She found them. She put them on with a skirt and a sweater because if she dressed well they might not notice. She blow-dried her hair.
The cigarette and the coffee and the bagel were carrots to lure her out of her apartment. Yeah, I’m like a little horsey, she thought. The cigarette went in her mouth as soon as she left her apartment building, and its smoke made her sick and almost made her swoon. She had smoked too many last night, but she had also not had a cigarette in about five hours. After a cup of coffee, she knew all of her body would clench and her mind would feel elevated (ah, yesyesyesyes, elevated) and her midday cigarette
