Free Lost Between Houses by David Gilmour Page A

drinking.”
    “I already do that. Drinking and masturbating.”
    “Jesus, Scarlet.”
    “Well really,” she said, laughing, “there’s nothing else to do up there.”
    “Don’t you know anybody up there?”
    “Look who’s changing the subject. And look whose face is turning red,
Mr Beetman.
What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue? That’s got to be a first. How do you spend
your
time up at your cottage? Fishing and water-skiing and all that cottage crap?”
    “Well I don’t spend it doing
that.”
    “Not at all?”
    “No.”
    “Never?”
    “Never.”
    “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
    We walked on for a little while.
    “Sometimes I do it in front of the mirror,” she said.
    “Jesus Christ, Scarlet,” I said, “will you
cool
it?”
    But you could see she was real pleased to have got that in.
    Just to get her off the subject, I went into one of those discount clothing stores. It was nice and cool in there, old ladies shopping for lingerie or pants for their retarded sons, I don’t know, but we just drifted along from aisle to aisle, picking stuff up and putting it back until we got a house detective standing so close to us that we scooted out the other side and back into the sunshine. By now I was pretty hungry so we went into Fran’s on St Clair. I must have been getting pretty easy with Scarlet because this time I didn’t mind eating in front of her. Even a big messy cheeseburger with the cheese dripping down the side,her sitting on the other side of the booth, her feet up, leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette.
    “I got to go back to school in five weeks,” she said. “Fuck.”
    The waitress came over and asked her to put her feet down.
    “Sorry,” she said. When the waitress went away, she put them right back up.
    “Do you think I have nice legs?”
    “Yeah. Sure.”
    “I’m not so sure. I think they’re too thick at the bottoms.” She took a puff on her cigarette.
    “How come you’re not with Daphne Gunn any more?”
    “We broke up.”
    “Do you still like her?”
    “No.”
    “It’s all right if you do you know. Like I don’t own you. Everybody’s got something to hide.”
    “Well it’s certainly not Daphne Gunn. She looks like a fucking potato. Like I’m not going to stagger through life all scarred up just because Daphne Gunn dumped me.”
    “So she dumped you?”
    “In a manner of speaking.”
    “I bet you’d like to get her back.”
    “I never think about it.”
    “Yes you do. Too bad we couldn’t run into her right now, make her real jealous. That’d be fun wouldn’t it?”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “Admit it,” she said. “It’d be fun.”
    “All right, it’d be fun.”
    “Next time she’s at a party, tell me. I’ll make a big fuss over you right in front of her.”
    She took a puff on her cigarette. “I love getting even withpeople. That’s the thing about me. I’m very patient you know. Like I’ll wait years if I have to. But then, just when they think they’re safe, I pounce. Like that.”
    “Sounds a little mental to me.”
    “I’m just more honest than most people.”
    She watched the waitress walk by the table.
    “I got a bad temper,” she said. “You don’t want to cross me.”
    Sometimes there’s stuff people like about themselves that’s supposed to be bad; but you can tell by the way they talk about it that they think it’s neat. I could tell somebody must have told her once she had a bad temper and she liked how it made her sound.
    I finished my burger. Suddenly, all the food hitting my stomach made me go kind of glassy-eyed.
    “Boy, I’m bushed,” I said.
    “Did I just bore the shit out of you?”
    “No.”
    “You look bored.”
    “How do I look bored?”
    “You’re staring at things. That’s what I do when I’m bored. Sometimes it’s a person on the subway. Like a man or something and he thinks I’m giving him the eye. That’s how dumb some guys are.”
    “I got to get out of here,” I said.