How to Get Along with Women Read Free Page A

her arms up around Tim’s neck. She still has her t-shirt on and it lifts off the waistband of her jeans with her arms up high like that. She’s not wearing a bra.
    What do you weigh, Zelda, ninety pounds? Tim says. Her skinny legs and the ribs sticking out under her breasts. She tries kissing Tim’s neck and he shakes her off a little.
    Phyllis I said that you in there?!
    It’s not fucking Phyllis, fuckhead, Tim says and outside the man slumps off to try the next locked door.
    Zelda pulls back and runs her hands under some water in the sink, then rubs them through Tim’s beard. Her hands are warm and his wet beard feels good to her. She waits until she knows he’s looking, pulls the front of her t-shirt up to the shoulder and holds it there.
    4.
    When Zelda gets home Mary is there, vacuuming in her purple slip. The slip is satin with black lace trim along the neckline and down at the hem, where it grazes Mary’s thighs.
    This place is a fuzz palace, she says. She has music on, and there’s the noise of the vacuum and Mary singing along This here’s a story of Billy Joe and Bobbie Sue... Zelda goes into the kitchen.
    Slip is the wrong word. A slip is something you wear under clothes, under a suit, to prevent static cling. It goes with a blouse and a hat, gloves even. It goes under.
    She goes to the fridge and pours herself a glass of half grape juice, half ginger ale and then gets out a spoon and adds a scoop of vanilla from the freezer. The ice cream has frost crystals over the top of it and Zelda has to dig down underneath to get to the part that’s good. She takes her drink and sits down at the table.
    It’s really a nightie.
    Mary comes into the kitchen and says, What am I, Susie Homemaker? and sits down too and Zelda lets her have a sip of her drink and then she gets up and makes Mary one, too, just the same except with more ice crystals in it. There’s getting to be almost none of the good part left.
    Zelda says, Ray coming over?
    There’s animal hair everywhere, Mary says. I could spend all day cleaning, and sit down for an hour and look at it all clean and by the end of the hour it would be like this again. Just like this.
    If he comes, do you think he’ll bring those steaks again? Because I might be vegetarian. I’ve been thinking about it. You know, because the only way to eat a steak is real rare, and that seems sacrificial. To me.
    Do you think there’s much point? Mary says.
    To being vegetarian?
    To cleaning up. To making the fake house.
    Zelda brings her hands up to her face and combs her fingers through her hair. She gets the smell of the clove cigarette and Tim’s truck and the McDonald’s pie, his wet beard against her fingers.
    I was thinking that if you change what goes in your body, then maybe you change what it does, Zelda says.
    Think it can go backwards? Mary says.
    Like how? Zelda says. There’s a little foamy cream down in the bottom of her glass, a bit of white froth that hasn’t totally sunk into grape-colour. Where’s Max? she says suddenly.
    I locked him outside in the back. He was attacking the vacuum cleaner. He’s okay. I took him for a long walk.
    He’s okay, Mary says again.
    Her long hair hanging loose over one shoulder. She draws her leg up onto the chair and hugs her knee and lets her chin rest on it. She looks at Zelda.
    Zelda sees Mary’s top lip is stained purple from the drink, the same colour as the slip. Nightie. Whatever.
    We could just move more, Zelda says. You could throw away the vacuum and whenever it gets too hairy in a place, we just vacate.
    Vamoose, Mary says.
    Can I let Max back in now?
    Vacate, Mary says. I wonder.

Kiss Me Like I’m The Last Man On Earth
    I met Asher Katz in the spring of 1984, when I was ten years old and he was already eleven. He came loping over the parking lot at my grandmother’s condo on Bathurst Street, a shiny black condom machine hoisted on