Friday is the worst night for California widows. Not only are wastrel husbands off reservation but going out is an admission of loneliness and, much, so very much worse, of the potential for straying. These are not labels that are shrugged off easily in this town. They leave a stain right on the glabella that makes the morning routine of teeth brushing and combing an exercise in self-interrogation and regret.
It’s a grubby little town this one, and the people in it learn very quickly that what matters most is not what you are but what they say you are. Encounters aren’t encounters in a place where everyone likes to talk. Encounters are alibis, spaces of confected busyness that are guided by very specific moral strictures. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings.
All this is moot, however, as with regards to those California widows because there’s just no competing with Heather Tremblay of a Friday night. She’s got the entire male population (those that weren’t missing, of course) under her spell, addicted to the neck-crack head-rush.
And even though she is also a widow, it has become readily apparent that the broken heart she wore for the first few weeks was actually a lightning bolt. She’s one of the few women I’ve ever met who could wake up on a Saturday, piss a piss that was the colour and consistency of ranch dressing, kick out whoever she’s shared her bed with and get on with the business of getting on.
She
does
not
demur.
The wowsers of the town tried to run her out once, banging on her door after a particularly scandalous Friday night. But HT wasn’t having none of it. With a look that was a mixture of bemusement and scorn – the same look she gave her piss, in fact – she told them to fuck right off. And as she swallowed some painkillers she told me to get out of her bed.
so much of me disappeared that morning. no no no. there’s no getting over heather tremblay.
Written on Friday, 24 January 2014