The Gum Thief - Douglas Coupland [62]
All of us looked at the pens on the floor, and Pete looked at me and said, “Shawn, you’re in charge of putting these all back in order. Get to it now.”
So you can see why I’m pissed at the guy.
Blair, consider yourself lucky to have been fired from this place.
I have to go now.
PS: I checked YouTube and, for whatever reason, your gum theft clip has had over 180,000 viewers.
Bethany
That prick Kyle is out of my life. I can’t describe what I’m feeling right now . . . but I’ll try. For starters, I want to put six bullets through his heart. No, let’s get specific—his ventricles—his aorta—his atrium—his cathedral—his fucking World Trade Center.
It was Sunday and we were in this pub restaurant in Hampstead—we’d decided to splurge because we all got sandwiched-out this week. We were there with Jason and Rafe, the jock buddies, and they were acting all weird with telltale ditch-the-girlfriend-and-let’s-toss-a-Frisbee faces. So we ate a lunch of roast pork, turnips and mashed potatoes, and when it came time to leave, we were out on the sidewalk, surrounded by moms and dads and kids in strollers and pigeons and cars zooming by, and Kyle told me that he and the jocks were off to some soccer game or something (I was right on that score), but, more importantly, he said, “Bethany, it’s over, and it’s not like you didn’t see it coming.” (Actually, I didn’t—I saw other crap, but not this.) And never having been dumped before, I had no experiences to draw from, no set of responses—so I just stood there.
“You don’t have to make this harder, Bethany. Jesus, say something.”
You know what? It didn’t even occur to me to ask him why he wanted to break up. He babbled on; I waited for something like reality to return to me.
He said, “I think I’ve been pretty good to you, Bethany. I’ve never lied to you or stolen anything from you or purposefully fucked with your head.”
I asked him what would happen next. He said his stuff had already been packed at the hostel by Denise.
“Denise?”
“Yes, uh—Denise.”
Who, you ask, is Denise? Denise is a ho. He apparently met the ho named Denise in Wimbledon a few nights back. All those trips to watch Canadian football at local pubs were apparently something else.
In any event, Kyle told me he was moving to some place in Shepherd’s Bush, a neighbourhood in western London.
“Let me get this straight—you’ve never lied to me or fucked with my head, but as I stand here a slut named Denise is packing—or has already packed—your stuff and you’re moving across London with her?”
“You think I planned for this to happen?”
I froze.
. . . You think I planned for this to happen?
How many times in the history of human beings has that little gem been tossed about? It was like I was watching some old 16 mm instructional film from the 1980s about adrenaline and “fight-or-flight,” and I could actually feel enzymes and hormones coursing through me, and the net result was that I became a statue. So Kyle kissed the statue on the forehead and walked away. “Email me.” He walked around the corner of a newsagent shop selling KitKats and sandwiches-fucking-sandwiches.
Huh?
I chased after him, and I could see his shoulders hunching up when he heard my voice, and I could also see the annoyed faces of Rafe and Jason. Kyle nodded at them to leave for a second, like he was some big mob capo. I lost it and demanded an explanation to the effect that you don’t drag someone halfway around the planet and leave her kicked in the gut outside a restaurant that serves turnip.
“The thing is, Bethany” (and this is what really did kick me in the gut) “you’re all about death, and that was interesting for a while, but I’m now back in the land of the living. Lately I’ve been . . . I’ve been sensing that you don’t quite get the gist of breathing and eating and fucking and sleeping and all the other everyday shit that goes with life. It’s as if, to you, being alive is a prank that you’re playing on the world. I don’t get your joke any more.”
I said, “But . . .” (and isn’t that the saddest little oneword sentence in