Vanilla Frosting

“Samantha,” she answered.

She was getting drunk. She also knew she was being picked up. She was not the most beautiful girl in the room but she held her own up against an honest mirror. She wore drinking clothes- dark jeans that concealed spills and a bruised sweater that soaked up bar smoke. Her hair was straight and black, tied with an elastic to prevent loose strands from sousing her glass.

I like women with black hair. I like women with mint eyes that dance, eyes that say I’ve got more going on behind here than you want to know.

I always want to know.

At a party of twenty, Samantha was the only person I wanted to talk to. The others I spoke with out of obligation and good social grace. We exchanged job information and credit ratings, swapped living arrangements and neighbourhoods. Over sweet crantinis and cookie cutter appetizers, we were evaluating our prospects . He makes more... I could do better than her.... How did they end up together? If that is who you got stuck with, then I might be able to snag a decent looking girl. After all, I am nothing like you.

It was all the same. The teacher who wants to write, the drunk, and the rest of them. After five minutes, it was clear that the drunk and I didn’t belong. Maybe that was why I stuck out my hand and offered to buy her a drink, a dead joke in front of an open bar, but she’d had enough vodka to impart a genuine laugh.

“I’m Hartley” I said.

“Samantha,” she answered with a flicker of mischief.

Seizing a glass from the rack, I poured myself two fingers of scotch. I was determined to meet the female version of myself, the other person who wanted none of what the other people at the party wanted. All I wanted to do was write. All she wanted to do was drink.
“I’m going outside for a cigarette. Come join me,” she proposed.

I ignored the things I didn’t want to see about Samantha- rum wrinkles sprouting beside her eyes, fingernails chewed to the quick, the unlit cigarette twirling like a tiny baton between her fingers. She slurred her words. “Come outside with me.”

“I don’t smoke.”

~

Outside she smoked and I listened. It was still light, still warm, even for an early Sunday in April. The back yard was overrun with dead leaves and weeds. Soon, it too, would be restored. Manicured. The babble of conversation from inside was our running brook.

“I hate these parties,” Samantha confessed.

“Why did you come?”

“Because Monique wanted me to. And they have a bar.” She was unashamed of her ability to drink.

“I think you’ve had too much,” I tried. I sat on an abandoned iron chair, my weight burying its legs into the soft earth. I was telling Samantha things she already knew, but I didn’t know what else to tell her.

“These people...” she said but didn’t finish. Squeezing in beside me on the chair, she put an arm over my shoulder. “You’re nothing like them.” The fiery baton waved. “These people do nothing but talk and talk and buy and bye. They won’t even buy me a drink. Only you offered to buy me a drink. You’re so sweet.”

“You just met me.”

“Isn’t that exciting?” She laid a reckless head on my shoulder. “I just met you and already I like you. How often can you say that about someone?”

~

There were two more cigarettes outside and some mouth mashing which Samantha referred to as “a little kiss.” She wanted another drink.

Inside the house, the couples had overthrown the living room and the singles had taken refuge in the kitchen. The singles all behaved like couples.

“Hey, look at you two.” Tottering back inside, we met Monique emerging from the kitchen with a dish of lemon slices. “I had no idea you would hit it off.”

Samantha poured herself a full glass of gin. “He’s a dream. What’s his name?”

“Hartley.” Monique took my hand and pulled me back into the kitchen, inside the private confines of the stainless steel refrigerator. She searched for sour cream. “What are you doing?” she interrogated. “She’s loaded.”

“I like her.”

“She’s been to AA three times and failed every time.”

“Why did you invite her?”

“Because,” Monique sighed, “I thought she was sober. She started drinking the moment she got here.”

I left my hostess to uncover the sour cream and returned to Samantha who was leaning unsteadily on the bar. Someone was telling a Ritalin story in the other room. “Monique says you just started drinking again,” I put in her ear.

“That’s right.”

“Why?” I had to know.

“Because, I’m good at it.”

~

What began as an afternoon brunch turned into evening cocktails. Some people drifted away but others arrived. Samantha decided to go public with her art.

“Come and dance with me, lover,” she pouted. She behaved like a thirteen year old trying to seduce the boy next door with promises of chocolate bars. Her pout was lavish. Running fingers through what was left of my hair, she removed my glasses with one free hand and tucked them into my breast pocket. She didn’t really care if it was me who danced with her. I had put down my drinking glass an hour before and she just wanted to stop doing something all by herself.

“I don’t think it’s that kind of party,” I said. There was no dance music playing. Guests went on tours of the new house. They poked heads into the tiled bathroom, peered into the spare room. Who would stay in there tonight, they wondered? Would the host and hostess indulge in a quickie before lights out? What sounds would they make? The tourists inspected the thickness of the walls.

The men clattered down the stairs, admiring the polished banister. They wanted to know how it was finished. What varnish had Carlos used? What brand?

Samantha grabbed one of the banister inquirers. “Come dance with me,” she demanded. His girlfriend watched from the fireplace while Samantha raised a cardigan arm and pirouetted underneath it. “Someone turn up the music.”

“I don’t think it’s that kind of party.”

Samantha pointed me out. “That’s just what he said.” I felt ashamed. I was embarrassed by the things that came out of my mouth without any real thought. “What’s your name again?” she called, wrinkling her brow.

“Hartley.” But, I wish I’d said, “Hardly” or “The Heart.” All the guests at the party heard my name and took note. They wrote it subjectively underneath the unfolding title: The Drunk Chick Who Wanted To Dance.

“Samantha...” said Monique. Now they had a name. The Drunk Chick, Samantha, Who Wanted To Dance. Monique used a tone that begged for propriety. Take a look around you, girl. You don’t want to offend these people. Not these people.

“I’m bored of drinking.” Samantha went to the stereo and turned up the music. It was John Coltrane- merely thoughtful, not danceable. “No one is talking to me and I’m bored of drinking. If I drink any more I’ll pass out, and I don’t want to do that yet. So, dance everybody. Boogie down.”

It was a public spectacle and Samantha gave a gutsy performance, tough to top on any stage. She put her arm around the waist of her man. She pressed her hips up tight against his, thrusting to Coltrane’s sax. Dirty dancing. She gave me the look.

Watch me work.

“You’re drunk.” The fireplace girlfriend, pointy nosed and perfumed, shoehorned herself in between Samantha and her man before the Trane could sneak another breath. “Get off him, you wet bitch.” There was disgust in her voice. Anger, fear and disgust.

I hoped Samantha might slug her and start a real Hollywood fight scene where black hat cowboys shoot wranglers in the back and chairs get broken over the heads of poker playing sheriffs. I thought of Hemingway and Sinatra. How would they handle a gal who told them to take their mitts off a Sunday night fling?

My imagination was unnecessary. Samantha backed away from the couple and went back to the bar without a word. Someone turned the music down and new conversations began in whispers.

“You should go lie down,” I suggested. If Samantha went upstairs, I’d go up and check on her. I’d put a cold facecloth on her forehead and stroke her long, black hair while she slept.

“Too predictable.” She rattled the remaining bottles, looking for something special to celebrate her performance. “I should just leave so everyone can pretend I don’t exist.”

Monique clacked down the stairs and began stowing bottles safely under the bar. “Yes, maybe you should leave,” she agreed with salt. Rum, rye, gin and vodka. It all disappeared.

“Can I at least have a beer?” Samantha pouted once more.

“If you promise to go.”

We followed Monique to the kitchen to liberate a beer for the road.

“Really, why do you drink so much?” I asked her.

“I’m thirsty. It was all that dancing.”

~

She couldn’t find her shoes and she came asking me for help. “There’s a big jumble of shoes by the door. Black and brown. Doesn’t anybody wear gold shoes anymore?” She leaned on me and let loose cherry lip fumes that would have ignited with a spark. “What’s your name again?”

“Hartley.”

“Hartley, help me find my shoes, will you? I’m seeing double.” She waved a small hand in front of my face. “Shush. I’m trying to catch the other one of you.” She squeezed her own nose. “Got it.”

~

In the hallway, I abandoned the troubled writer act and became the teacher once more. I sat Samantha down at the foot of the stairs and played shoe concentration with her.

“Are these them?”

“No. More black.”

“How about these.”

“That’s close.”

Eventually, at the bottom of the pile I found the left shoe. I spent another minute locating its twin. Samantha slid out her legs and I slipped the shoes onto her feet. For a drunk, she had very petite features.

“Why thank you, Prince Charming. I guess this means you get to take me bowling.”

Monique came to the door carrying Tupperware leftovers. I waited for her to offer them to Samantha, something to soak up all the booze. But, she didn’t. She simply stood in the hallway, passing judgment while she held the sealed container.

“You should check into AA again, Sam.”

“I just got out, Monster dear.”

Monique bristled at being called Monster. It was a nickname often used, but to hear Samantha bestow it in the doorway dug out the underpinnings of the endearment.

Monster.

“How can you expect us to be friends if you’re going to behave like this?” lectured Monique. She forced a smile. “I like you. We’ve been friends since the very first day of university. You got me through English lit. You drove my car into a tree.”

“I wasn’t drunk.”

“You’ve changed, Samantha. This drinking hag routine has made you into someone else.”

“A monster?”

Monique didn’t catch the joke. “Go. Go.” She clutched her Tupperware.

Samantha stumbled off the bottom step but caught herself with a quick hand on the polished banister. “We all changed, honey. For good or for bad, we all changed.” She threw open the door and plunged out into the night. It was the exit of an experienced drama queen. I caught her under the streetlight, guzzling her last beer. “Come on, Harley,” she called.

“I’ll just go with her to the corner,” I said to my hostess. I found my shoes. “Just to make sure she finds a cab.”

~

“Get in.” Samantha held open the taxi door while I stood shivering on the curb. Abruptly, the evening had drawn cold.

“I have to stay. My coat is in there.”

The cabbie let his car idle. He was Iranian, accustomed to drunker people having more heated debates with his cab door open. He paid no attention to us.

“Get in the cab,” she said.

“I can’t leave now... I...”

She reached out and put her hand on mine. Her touch said, Get in the cab and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.

The Arab dropped his foot down on the gas.

~

There was a bar on the west side of the city, near where she lived. The Gate. Samantha was a regular there. She paid the cab fare from a bundle of large bills stuffed into her purse. She didn’t wait for change. She didn’t even look at the meter.

“I come here sometimes,” she told me, cutting her way through the small room choked with smoke. A feed trough served as a bar at the front of the room. There were raw tables and a small TV baited from the ceiling on which hockey players circled like hungry sharks.

“Sam. Hey, what’s up?” Greetings resounded from corners of the room, but none expected a response. Instead, they warded her off like a curse.

“Tequila,” she told the bartender, an exhumed string of a girl. Samantha patted the barstool beside her. “Sit.” I watched as she expertly propped her black jeans up on the free stool. She was a show jumper, back in the saddle.

“I can’t drink tequila,” I told her. This was the truth. The last time I drank tequila, I found myself up on a strip club stage with a ten dollar bill in my mouth and spicy breasts removing it. It makes me crazy, tequila. I explained this.

“How much money did you spend?” she inquired.

“I forget. I forget everything but the breasts.”

“Just like a man,” she muttered. But, she seem amused. The bartender smacked the shots down in front of us. She didn’t wait for money. “Just do this one with me,” begged Samantha. She used her seductive pout.

“Just one.”

We drank.

“I never forget anything,” she stated, removing another cigarette from her purse and lighting it. “I pass out, but I never blackout. I think if I ever start having blackouts, I’ll stop drinking. That would be enough to scare me.” She let her words sink in, into me and into herself. She seemed content with what she had expressed. She was no longer slurring.

“Are you still drunk?” I asked her. I could feel the tequila spreading its hot wit throughout my bloodstream.

“Barely,” she said.

There was no music in The Gate and the TV was silent. People could talk. People could laugh out loud. All around us buzzed a hive of conversations and private jokes. I tried to listen in, but Samantha appeared disinterested in all of it. She watched the hockey players glide and ordered us milder drinks- a vodka and soda for her, a beer for me.

“Hartley, right?”

“Right.”

“Hartley, you’re a nice guy to stick with me after that party. I can be such an asshole. I know that’s not a word for a “lady” to use.” She made bunny ears with her fingers to quote the word, lady. “But, I think I gave up on being a lady a long time ago. You should just go back to Monique’s. Thank you.”

She looked like a girl who had just opened her last birthday gift and discovered a box of bricks. She sipped her drink and waited for me to leave.

“If you were a character in one of my stories,” I began, “I wonder if the reader would like you? You do so much to make people not like you.”

“I don’t care if anyone likes me. I do what I want.”

“You behave like a spoiled child.”

“I do what I want.”

I set my glass down beside hers. “I used to have a girlfriend who asked me once why I write stories about drunks and addicts, wife beaters and hit and run drivers. For a couple of months, all I wrote about was people who ruined the love of their lives by running away to Sacramento and having affairs with strangers. Why can’t you write about normal people, she wanted to know? Normal people who work hard, raise families and twice a year have a picnic up north in a cow pasture. They play softball and get some ice cream on the way home.”

Samantha was listening. She still expected me to leave. This was my wind up speech before I went, the one with the moral in it. Tomorrow morning, while she buried her head in the toilet bowl, she’d decide that I was right. Going straight was a better way. Jesus saves.

She was listening so I continued.

“I really liked this girl so I decided I would try and write a “nice” story.” I borrowed Samantha’s bunny ears. “I would write a "nice" story about "nice" people and give it to her for a birthday present. It would be about normal people who didn’t have problems and every moment was like vanilla frosting.”

“People don’t live like that.” She was listening. “Normal people who don’t have problems, I mean.” Dark hair tied back and matching shoes. She was listening. She made insightful comments.

“But people do live like that,” I argued. “I see them all the time, all these families at the school where I work. They do go on picnics and parents do play softball with their kids and roll around in the summer grass, happy to be alive. Their bank accounts are balanced, they have nice houses and tasteful china patterns. They have cars. They have happy moments. They are happy.”

“They look happy.”

“What’s the difference?” I challenged her. Quietly, in our own heads, we worked the equation.

“So, I wrote the story,” I continued. “I told it just as Justine wanted it, with the picnic and the family. The picnic was a family reunion, and everyone was as pleased as punch to be there. I made up this fantastic day, where the sun shone down on the reunion all afternoon. Then there was a rain shower that cooled the air and brought this tremendous rainbow. Aunts and uncles who hadn’t seen each other for years sat in lawn chairs, drinking ice tea and talking about the royal family. The kids played and no one fought. The adults played hide and seek with the kids.”

“It sounds nice.”

“It was nice. I hated writing every damn word of it but it was nice.”

“You must have really loved Justine.”

I dismissed the observation

“At the end of the story, the main family, the father, mother and three kids, they get in their Magic Wagon and begin the drive back into the city. Everyone is tired and happy. They sing for a bit. The father, he’s just been made partner in his firm and he’s feeling no pain. He puts his hand on his wife’s knee, admiring the cotton dress she’s wearing. He feels blessed to have met his wife. And then...”

I let my story trail off. It was a poor attempt to show embarrassment at what was coming next. I knew I was building suspense. I wanted Samantha to ask for it. Did she care?

There was a pause while she summed up her options. “Okay, so tell me. And then what?”

I attempted to smile. “And then a delivery truck came around the corner in the wrong lane and sideswiped the Magic Wagon. The father fought to keep the van on the road, but with one hand still on his wife’s knee, he didn’t have much of a chance. The wagon rolled into a ditch and crumpled. Miraculously, everyone was fine except for the pretty wife whom they had to extract from the vehicle by amputating her legs. It was such a tragedy. The father blamed himself for not being more careful.”

“That’s hideous,” said Samantha. She said it without fear or disgust, but as a matter of fact.

“Truly, yes it is,” I concurred. “But let me say this. It took me a week to write twenty pages about that fucking family reunion but when that Magic Wagon rolled and the firemen came and began weighing their options as to how to get the pretty wife out, I could feel the juices heat up. And then I started thinking about this husband, who one moment had everything and the next, Bam! He was in for the contest of his life. I mean, how does one deal with the guilt? And so many questions? Do they still make love? How does his wife react? Does she sink into a legless depression and sleep all day with the curtains drawn or does she find a whole new perspective on life and run a charity from her wheelchair?” I sipped my beer for moisture. “I wrote two hundred pages answering all those questions, easy as pie. I loved every minute of it.”

Samantha couldn’t help but snort. She looked at me as if we’d met for the very first time. “You’re twisted,” she decided. “You’re twisted, but you understand.”

~

It grew late. We left The Gate and went for a walk.

“What did your girlfriend say about the story?”

“To be honest,” I answered, “she dumped me. I tried to give her the first part of the story about the family reunion, but I made the mistake of leaving the ending hanging with the husband’s hand on his wife’s knee. I kept referring to this delivery truck and I think she sniffed out that the story didn’t end there.”

We were two blocks into our walk and I realized my jacket was still back at Monique’s.

“Cold?” asked Samantha and I responded with a white lie.

“Justine dumped you because you didn’t give her the ending?”

“No. She went looking for the rest of the story on my computer while I was out picking up Chinese. She found it. She read it. When I came home she told me to leave.”

“You can’t be serious?”

“Oh, but I am.”

We continued walking, turning up and down blocks with little concern for where we were going. “I’m attracted to the struggle,” I explained.

She ditched her cigarette. “Me too,” she said. “Me too.”

~

Out of the darkness arose a park with slides and lifeless swings. Perched on one of the leather seats, Samantha let her shoes dangle in the sand below. She drew letters. “I don’t even think I’m drunk anymore. Was I such a cow at Monique’s?”

I tried to play it down. “You weren’t so bad.”

From her depths, I heard a hiss of air escape, like a soup jar being pried open. “I don’t really drink to get drunk,” she began. She began slowly, trying to get it all right. “I drink to have the hangover the next day. Does that make sense?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Well, it’s like my old roommate said.” She drew a large F in the sand. “Fab used to go for these long runs which he hated, but he kept on going, so one day I asked him, why do you keep running all the time if you hate it? And he said to me that yes, he hated the running part, but after he was done, it was like no other feeling. He felt very peaceful. Everything that was bad before he went running didn’t quite seem so bad when he was finished.”

I thought about this for a bit while she erased her F in the sand. “I can understand that. I hate writing but once it’s over, I feel great.”

“I don’t hate drinking, but I don’t love it either. I just like the feeling the next day.”

“Headaches? Puking?”

She smiled. “I don’t get any of that. I’m a nicer person the next morning. The only thing I want to do is get through the day. You’d be amazed how pure you can be when you don’t try to accomplish anything. You just be.”

It was my turn to impart a laugh. I sat down in one of the swings beside her. The leather strap was wet with dew and it soaked through to my underpants. “That’s one way to look at it. Why don’t you just take up running? It would be a lot healthier. You wouldn’t try to dance with strangers in your Reeboks.”

She smiled, embarrassed. Was she embarrassed about her performance at the party or that she couldn’t remember any of it? She drew an I in the sand.

“What’s the I for?” I asked.

“Idiot,” she replied. She did not say who the idiot was.

~

“Where are we going?”

“To the bakery.” Samantha led me out of the park and up the street, filled with dozing houses. It was two, three, four? My watch was in the pocket of my absent jacket.

“Have you ever thought about being an AA counselor?”

“No,” I told her.

“You go deep.” She stopped in front of a house, the blue glow of a television like a lighthouse beam. “Not many people want to get very deep. Most of us think this is as deep as it gets.” She watched the TV through the window. “They’re sleeping,” she decided. Using an imaginary remote control, she clicked the TV off.

~

Back on the lit streets, Samantha found an empty storefront and examined herself in the glass window. “Look at me. I’m a mess.” She pulled a tiny makeup kit from her purse and gave it to me to hold. “Hartley, right?”

“Right.”

She nodded as if this was an improvement. Using the window’s reflection, she applied lip liner and inspected her hair. She retied the long, black mane in the back. “Hartley, I am going to read one of your stories one day.” She reclaimed her kit and hid it within her purse. Her cheeks glowed with colour, her lips like candy. A fresh Samantha emerged, or the real Samantha returned. She looked natural. Happy. She looked like the type of girl you could take out for a wood oven pizza and a Caesar full of garlic.

“Come on,” she said. “You can’t go home just yet.” She took my arm and led me towards the sweet smells of pastry. “They’ll sell you whatever you want out the back door.”

We stood in a deserted parking lot shared with a garbage dumpster, concrete blocks and faded divider lines. Samantha knocked on the back door of the bakery. There was a short wait before the door opened.

“Ordering,” said Samantha. The paper hatted Greek didn’t even flinch. “Do you have any cupcakes this morning? Vanilla cupcakes?” She looked at me while placing the order and grinned. I saw some of the morning sun.

The Greek baker returned with two cupcakes, doused in vanilla frosting. They were still warm as we held them in our hands, the paper cups greasing our palms. Samantha paid five dollars- night prices.

We sat on concrete blocks in the laneway, savouring our cupcakes. I ate the ivory topping first, rounding off the surplus with my finger and letting it melt in my mouth. Samantha peeled the wrapping from her cupcake and bit into it. Out on the street, a delivery truck rumbled past on a morning run.

“There’s that truck,” she said. “Right on time.”