The Gum Thief - Douglas Coupland [42]
“Really?” said Kyle.
“Yes,” said Steve.
“Huh.”
“You see,” said Brittany, “it’s not so bad getting another opinion.”
“You’re right,” said Kyle.
Everyone sipped, and then Brittany changed the subject. “In the closet I saw a football,” she said. “Do you two have children?”
Although technically nothing was happening, the room came to a stop. Steve and Gloria darted eyes at each other. Gloria said, “Um, yes. We have a lovely child.”
“Yes,” said Steve. “A lovely, lovely child. Just one.”
“How interesting,” said Kyle. “Boy or girl?”
Steve and Gloria made eye contact before Steve answered, “A boy.”
“He’s never mentioned on your book jacket flaps,” said Brittany.
The doorbell rang.
“Dinner’s here,” said Steve.
Bethany
Roger,
Unlike Brittany, I don’t mind test-reading your book at all! In fact, Glove Pond is now officially a part of my life, and I’d like to share it with other people, but who . . . Kyle? He’ll never be the reading type. My other fellow Shtooples inmates? No way—this is too special. So that leaves my mom.
I wish I had something I’d made that I wanted to keep special for myself, Roger. You’re lucky—you have the book. My only writing class ever was a disaster. I chucked out almost everything the afternoon I returned home from the last one. Sheer disgust. Golden lining: at least my couple of years of toil at the community college allows me course credits if I go back to study nursing as a “mature student.” Yes, I’m still thinking about it.
The one thing I did keep from my writing class was my essay on toast being buttered—”from the toast’s point of view.” I include it here in this envelope. Think of it as a fellow writer’s inspiration to another fellow writer. Wait— that last sentence came out wrong.
As they say in cheesy restaurants everywhere, Roger, “Enjoy!”
Bethany
Toast
I deserve better than to be forced to document my cruel fate at the hands of a pat of butter. What crime did I ever commit, except being crispy and golden brown on the outside—bearing the faintest bouquet of carbon—while being tender, fluffy and white, nay, cloudlike, on the inside?
And like I can’t see the knife coming my way! If you wanted to scare me, it worked, and . . . oh jeez . . . it’s not even butter, it’s margarine. Oh dear God, it’s not even margarine—it’s a spread—house- brand spread, bought from a Costco, at that. That’s all I get in the end? Butter-like spread-type bulk- purchased yellow goop? I don’t even rate butter? Thanks. Thanks a lot. At least butter is a classy way to go. Even margarine has a certain Volvo cachet.
Well, that’s life. During my childhood as a humble slice inside the loaf (four slices in from the front), I once had dreams. Maybe one day, as toast, I would bear an image of Jesus or, if not Jesus, then NASCAR racing legend Dale Earnhardt or, failing that, Catherine Zeta-Jones. Instead, all I display is a golden brown toastiness distributed across my heated surface with about the same degree of randomness as craters on the moon, with a slightly darker browning in my midriff where I bowed slightly towards the toaster’s equatorial grill.
I think it’s actually mean to trick young bread slices into thinking that they, too, might one day harbour toast faces, let alone be sold on eBay for thousands of dollars and make a wacky news story that goes viral.
Life generally blows. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are far worse ways to go than as toast—croutons and stuffing spring to mind—as well as the worst fate of all: blue mould, followed by a few hasty twists of the bread bag’s neck, then you’re plunged into the trash and live in an anaerobic limbo until the year AD 327,406, when a glacier scours you out of what was once the local landfill. My fate is to be toast. I suppose that’s a small blessing.
Wait—wait—it’s almost here, the knife. It’s almost ready to dock onto my super-sensitive