In the front, Dex flicked the MP3 player until The Beatles Abbey Road came on and gave Jenn a playful nudge with his elbow. She looked at him, coyly peering over the edge of her designer shades, and smiled in return. It seemed to be some little inside joke or perhaps telepathic couplespeak for something.
I looked away from them and kept my eyes on the road. It wasn’t as uncomfortable as it had been the day before but it still made me feel funny inside.
“Something” came on, one of my favorite Beatles songs.
At least it was, until Dex started to sing along with it. I had to look. He was eyeing me in the rearview mirror while carefully crooning to the most poignant parts. I shook my head and looked away.
Dex continued the sing along with the next song, “Maxwell Silver Hammer.” He was louder this time and to my horrible surprise, Jenn started to sing along too. They traded off verses like some Paul and John session, and when the chorus kicked in, they both began to act out the hammer hits with their hands, in tune with the rhythm. They were smiling at each other, singing at the top of their lungs, and having the world’s most stomach-turning karaoke competition in the front of the car. And to a song that was essentially about a serial killer with a hammer.
I felt sick. My face scrunched up at their cutesy, song-sharing coupleness. Abbey Road was now forever ruined for me.
Luckily the song wasn’t long and Jenn stopped singing as soon as “Oh Darling” came on. Dex kept going, of course. I mean, he was really letting ‘er rip. I tried not to be won over by his vocal prowess but it was hard, especially when he rolled down the window and started howling with Paul at the most passionate, throat-burning parts.
Jenn made an annoyed sigh and smacked him on the shoulder. “What are you doing? Roll up the window. No one wants to hear you.”
He ignored her and kept belting it out the window to the bemusement of the cars and pedestrians going past. A few of them gave him the thumbs up for the free performance on wheels.
“I’m serious, you’re so f**king embarrassing,” she sneered, and for the first time, I didn’t find her so pretty anymore.
I quickly eyed Dex to see his reaction. He stopped singing and gave her one hell of a look. Had I mentioned that Dex was the king of looks that could kill? It was one of those looks. I waited with bated breath for Jenn to explode into flames and I was glad I was sitting far away in the back seat.
She didn’t burst into flames, unfortunately, but she did push her shades further up against her face and brought out her phone. She started texting someone, ignoring the bolts of brimstone that were shooting out from Dex’s fiery glare.
Finally, he brought his attention back to the road before we almost rear-ended a van, turned down the volume on the stereo and we rode the rest of the way to Capitol Hill in relative silence. It was f**king weird. They had gone from a sickening, “in love” couple doing a duet to the complete opposite in the span of two songs. Who knew the Beatles were still so controversial.
The lunch, then, was brutal for all of us. Dex and Jenn weren’t talking to each other and Jenn wasn’t talking to me, which left Dex and me making careful small talk with each other, dancing around subjects like two characters in a play. When Jenn got up to go make a phone call outside, Dex exhaled loudly and comically collapsed across his chicken club sandwich.
I watched him anxiously, rubbing the edges of my fingernails. He eventually lifted his head and a small, tired smile tugged at his lips and the corners of his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be,” I told him, trying to sound cool, like I was an impartial friend and not at all invested in the decline of his relationship. “Couples fight all the time.”
“Yeah,” he said slowly. Then sighed, sat back in his chair and rubbed his chin, his eyes unfocused.
“Am I making things worse?” I asked.
“Worse? No, kiddo. Things aren’t worse. This is just the way it is sometimes.”
What I think he meant to say was that “this is just the way it is all the time” but he was trying to save face. I didn’t know why. Why did he bother with her? Why did he bother moving with her? Why did he bother getting a dog with her? I didn’t understand any of it. Did he love her? Was that it? Did he actually truly love her and was too afraid to let go?
I could have gone on with these questions, as I often did, but I stopped myself and forced myself to think about something else. This was the only way I was going to get over him. Get over him as he sat across from me. I turned my attention to the other people in the restaurant, trying to focus on something, anything else. I picked up on a group of girls my age who were giggling with each other over a Smartphone they were passing around the table. I envied them. It was working.
Jenn came back to table after her phone call was over. She stopped in front of us, leaned over to Dex, moved his face over to hers and kissed him passionately on the lips. There were tongue and slobbering sounds involved. My eyes widened, watching them, unable to look away.
When she pulled back, he looked dumbstruck, while she gave me a quick, sly wink. It either said, men are simple or it said, oh no you don’t. I’d put bets on the latter.
“Excuse me,” I blurted out, quickly getting out of my chair, which rattled loudly against the tiled floor, and hurried my way over to the restaurant’s bathroom before I burst into tears.
I entered the washroom, which was thankfully empty, and ran the tap, splashing an endless amount of cold water on my face. I wouldn’t cry, I wouldn’t cry. I was going to get out of the damn city without a single tear leaving my face.
When I calmed down a bit, I gently patted my face with a paper towel and leaned against the mirror. I needed to get a hold of myself. I was tired of being fine and tough one minute and then losing it the next. What the hell was wrong with me? Jenn, Dex, they both had way too much power over me and my emotions. This had to stop. Now.
I breathed in a few times through my nose until I felt under control and then went into the stall to pee. I thought about this Bradley fellow. Maybe I’d ask Rebecca tomorrow about setting me up with him. Maybe he was just the distraction I needed from this whole Dex and Jenn business. Plus, the fact that both of them seemed totally against it, was finally sounding intriguing.
As I pondered this exciting diversion, I heard the door to the washroom open and a woman enter, her heels slowly making their way down toward the mirrors. She absolutely reeked of gin, the tangy scent of juniper flooding the bathroom. That, coupled with the slight unevenness of her gait, made me think that this girl was pissed off her gourd.
I slowly reached over for the toilet paper, not wanting to make too much noise in case she thought she was alone.
But the person giggled.
I paused, listening. There it was again. A high, strange, sloppy giggle. She had to be wasted.
The giggles continued until it was full-out laughter, her loud, braying laugh echoing in the room.
I quickly finished my business and was about to get up off the toilet seat when the laughter died down and the girl spoke.
“He said he loved me,” the mystery drunk said in a mild Minnesotan accent. It reminded me of Frances McDormand’s character in Fargo. Who was she talking to? Was she on the phone?
I got up, pulling on my jeans and tried to peer through the crack in the stall door. I couldn’t see anyone. The sink in front of my closed door looked empty.
“He said he loved me. I love you. And the next time he saw me, he told me, ‘I’ll kill you.’” She laughed in surprise. “He said he’d kill me. Can you believe that?”
I waited for someone to respond, straining my ears to hear the crackle of a voice on the other end of a line.
“Can you believe that?” she repeated, this time her voice lower, edgier. Perhaps she was talking on a Bluetooth. I had no idea. It didn’t matter.
I turned, about to flush the toilet.
“Perry, can you believe that?”
My eyes flew to the door. Did she just say my name? I swallowed my breath and kept still, arm frozen in mid-reach. Was she…talking to me?
I didn’t know what to say. Who was this person? What did she want?
I heard the shoes move, closer to me now, and I had a terrible flashback to the time I was in the Seattle airport washroom and Creepy Clown Lady appeared. But this wasn’t her. Not this time.
“Perry…” The voice now buzzed, like it vibrated on the wings of a bee. It filled my head and tickled the insides of my cheeks.
A slow tide of blood appeared at the bottom of the stall door and crept forward toward my feet, a sticky crimson blanket spreading out on top of the black marble.
I gasped, shocked, aghast, unable to process this. Was this actually happening?
It kept coming, a never-ending flow of shiny blood and it wasn’t until I saw several wasps, living, breathing wasps, riding the swells toward me like yellow, wriggling surfers, that I finally moved.
I grabbed the door and tried to unlock it. It was stuck. The latch wouldn’t turn. The blood kept flowing and the door wouldn’t open. I was stuck in the f**king bathroom stall.
Hopelessly, I rattled it back and forth for a few seconds; then, just before the blood kissed the tips of my Docs, I stepped up onto the toilet seat.
I balanced precariously on the porcelain edge, crouched down briefly and leaped up for the side of the stall. My arms caught the metal edge and I hoisted myself up, kicking at the steel sides for support and momentum, the clanging noise banging out across the room. I pulled myself over to the other side, the edge digging into my ribs, dangling like Agent Starling scaling a wall, and then quickly dropped down onto the toilet in the next stall.
One foot caught the seat while the other went straight in the toilet with a cold splash.
I pulled my foot out in one swift motion, and leaped onto the ground. The stall door here was unlocked. I shoved it open and barreled out into the washroom. I didn’t look to see if the Minnesota girl was standing there, didn’t bother to see if the endless river of blood still covered the bathroom floor. I just ran straight to the doors of the bathroom, my wet foot sopping as I moved, and ran out into the hallway.
I continued straight out of the restaurant, not caring about leaving Dex or Jenn at the table, and ran onto the busy sidewalk, where I almost collided with an old man carrying Christmas decorations.
“Sorry!” I squeaked out and twirled around in the opposite direction. I ran up to the end of the block, my mind racing, my heart convulsing, and stopped beside Dex’s Highlander. I leaned across the hood, hugging it, feeling the solidity of the car, the sunshine on my back, the people passing by who were undoubtedly giving me a strange look or two.
I didn’t care how long I stood there, hugging the car. It just felt safe, somehow. Safe and real. Not a bathroom full of blood and gin-soaked words.
“Kiddo?”
I sensed Dex’s presence behind me before he even spoke.
I closed my eyes and tried to figure out what I would say. I had nothing.
He gingerly placed his hand on my shoulder. I straightened up and turned to look at him.
“What…?” he trailed off and bit his lip. He was looking at my left leg, which was soaked up to mid-calf with toilet water.