The Gum Thief - Douglas Coupland [76]
So it’s late afternoon and Cruella is out back, colour- sorting file folders. Then, after six weeks away, StudBoy enters the store, and he’s with this totally foxy, hot UK bitch. And so everybody’s happy to see Kyle again, and we all blow off our customers to go talk to him, and Miss England opens her mouth and she sounds like a Cockney chainsaw, which is a riot, and then everybody has the same thought at the same time, which is, Can’t wait to see Cruella’s face when she sees her. And then Eliza Doolittle says, “So, where’s Whatshername?” and with perfect timing Cruella strolls down Aisle 3-South and sees everybody standing there. Then foxy bitch’s face collapses and you can tell she’s suddenly pissed at StudBoy. She storms out of the place and into the parking lot, where it’s dumping rain, and StudBoy follows her, and the moment they get outside, someone’s grandma in a Cadillac plows right into the back of the FedEx van, but the ho and StudBoy don’t even blink. She’s shouting words to the effect of, “You dated her? You put me and her in the same league?”
Blair, let me tell you, it is truly fun to watch people have a shit fit in the rain beside a car crash. It’s like a really good drug that makes time fly. Everybody in the store— staff and customers alike—came out to view the fun, but if anybody was smart, they should have been inside the store, shoplifting the brains out of the place. You could have walked out with an office chair stashed under your jacket and we wouldn’t have noticed.
Anyway, I have to say I felt a little bit sorry for poor Cruella, but she looked like the drama didn’t bug her, and within a minute she was back to sorting folders again. It’s hard to imagine her having much of an inner life. The Goth thing was total bullshit.
Break time is over.
Are you coming to the lame-o company party this year? S
Bethany
Roger, I have to write to you or I’ll go nuts. The last few days it feels like real life and my dream life are joining together and I can’t tell which is which. Out of nowhere, I see pictures of burning houses and people being thrown vio lently around rooms. Cars falling from the sky and crushing pizza parlours. Drowned teenagers walking out of the sea. Homeless men in parking lots having fist fights and battling for control of stolen souls. A tornado will come down from above and suck away both the earth and the sky. Crazy shit. And the more I try not to think about it, the more it hap pens. So then I try to think of the opposite of these scary pictures. I try to think of a perfect city where it’s always bright and where people don’t die—a place where you can have turkey dinners or read good books any time you want and where there’s always new space on your arm for a cool tattoo—but those pictures never click, and instead I wonder if I’m awake or asleep, and whether I should stab myself with a fork to see which one it is: reality or dream.
Kyle is back in town, and he brought his ho to the store—and if I ever wondered what it feels like to be a bacterium under a microscope’s lens, I now know. It was so stupid and cruel of him. So cruel. What was he hoping to gain by it? And all eyes were on me, just waiting, waiting, waiting for me to create a scene, but I wouldn’t give them that satisfaction.
Roger, this past month has been so hard, and your being fired was almost too much for me. In my head there was always the fact Before that, when life was horrible
I could always tell myself, Yes, well at least Roger’s in this with me.
Oh God, I’m sitting here and my inner voice won’t shut up. Do you ever get that? All you crave is silence, but instead you sit there and, against your wishes, nag yourself at full volume? Money! Loneliness! Failure! Sex! Body! Enemies! Regrets!
And everybody’s doing the same thing—friends, family, that lady at the gas station till, your favourite movie star—everyone