Free Cadillac Couches by Sophie B. Watson Page B

important to me was that I hold it together until after dinner. I was divvying up the future in increments: dinner, home, eat, reveal, break up. Only once I was on my home turf could I act.
    When he got to a snow-cleared street he fiddled with the radio tuner until he got the university station. It was angry music hour. He went to turn it off.
    â€œNo, leave it on, please.”
    It was jolting, loud, screeching heavy metal full of primal screams and lots of Satan references. I’d never been a metal fan, but I found it suited me—it was animal enough for my mood.
    We went through a drive-through A&W. He got a bacon double cheeseburger and fries, I got a cheeseburger and a Root Beer. “You sure you don’t want some kind of sundae? Like the kind with broken cookies that you like?” he yelled to me over the music.
    â€œNo, thanks. I’m FINE .” I lit my third cigarette of the truck ride off the end of my second. Chain-smoking was my only solace. I pledged myself to cigarettes for the rest of my life. They were my mercy. And now heavy metal too, apparently. I could relate to the headbanging urge. Nihilism was the clear way forward.
    I didn’t know how to look at him. I was so used to looking at him with love, with lust, with curiosity. What now? Loathing? It was all disbelief and confusion because, somehow, somehow I could still feel his love. It just didn’t make sense. I focused on the sweetgrass hanging from his rear-view mirror.
    We pulled up in front of my five-storey brick walk-up apartment building on 105th Street, one of Edmonton’s only truly steep hills. Once inside, I put Peter Gabriel on the stereo, turned on the string of Christmas chili pepper lights. Together we arranged the food on the coffee table. I pulled out my duty-free vodka from Mexico and made us both a cocktail.
    There was no way I could eat my meal. Smoking and drinking were possible, but not eating, no way. The burger was repulsive. The bun looked like processed paper pulp, the meat was plasticky, the condiments gelatinous and leering. I let it sit there untouched, wasted. I ate one soggy fry and regretted it. He slowly, stupidly chewed on his burger. I could see that each mouthful was harder to chew. Mayonnaise seeped out of the corner of his mouth. I smiled tightly at him. I felt that stale fry sit in my stomach by itself, squirming.
    I thought I was bluffing successfully but wasn’t sure anymore why this was important. Now all I wanted was for him to eat all of his food. It was important to me that he had his dinner, I didn’t know why.
    Finally he was done. “Aren’t you going to finish yours? Or start it even?” We both knew I wasn’t going to, but he mustn’t have been able to stop himself asking and going through the motions. I didn’t say anything. He cleared the table and went to the kitchen. I listened to him scrape the plates, my burger made a thud as it hit the bottom of the garbage bag. He gulped down a glass of water and the leaky tap dripped.
    When he finally came back in the room and sat down opposite me, I looked at him and said firmly, “Let me just start by saying: I know.”
    â€œWhat?”
    The tap dripped.
    â€œI’m fully aware that I shouldn’t have, but I did. I read it.”
    â€œI read it,” I said a bit louder.
    It was amazing how instant his reaction was. He clamped his hand over his mouth, gagging, and then got up and ran to the bathroom. I could hear him vomiting. It felt appropriate somehow, that deep retching noise, the appropriate soundtrack for this hell. It took him a while, and I went over and over the thing that stumped me, that I couldn’t wrap my head around. I lit a cigarette and topped up my drink with more vodka. We weren’t some stodgy couple with no romance left—we were still honeymooning. My guts ached. My insides felt like they’d been mugged and beaten to a tender pile of bleeding