Secrets

He asked me what the worst thing I had ever done was. It was 9am, too early for that kind of question. We were sitting in the faded seats of his Chevy pickup drinking black coffee. I was wishing I had added cream. I kept blowing on my cup but the coffee remained scalding and a blister was forming on the roof of my mouth. The rest of my body ached too from lack of sleep and the wild tumble under the orange and brown afghan on his creaky mattress.
He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out the thin crack between the window and the frame while he waited for me to answer. I examined the scuffed toes of my Dayton’s which were pressed against his dashboard. With my legs in that position I could smell my own muskiness. I searched for the best worst, something that would make me seem sexy and brave, a Bonnie to his Clyde, rather than boring, vindictive and petty.
-I robbed a bank once.
-Really, which one?
-Ok, you got me.
I put my hand on his thigh. It was warm and slightly damp. With my other hand I rubbed a clear circle in the fogged up passenger window. I searched for inspiration in the landscape. The orange trees remained silent. I thought of my many sins. Three servings of Thanksgiving dinner: gluttony. Sleeping in until 2: sloth. Glaring at the perfect girls in their summer dresses: envy. My sins: uninteresting.
-What about you?
-I asked first.
Against the backdrop of the window his jaw was squarer than I remembered. He hadn’t shaved and his chin was silvery in the soft morning light. Against his pale skin, his lashes looked like black feathers on fresh snow. He reminded me of every boy I’d ever lusted after in high school.
- Why did you pick me last night? There were so many girls at the bar.
- Are you hoping for a compliment? Because you were beautiful, fierce, engaging.
I grimaced and touched my coppery hair, feeling where it had matted and snarled. I picked at a knot near my brow line.
-Truthfully, because you were alone.
So, not knowing too many people in town yet had its advantages.
- I guess I’m pretty boring.
- We all have secrets.
I thought about holding Leah’s hand as she left the clinic in tears, but that was her secret, not mine. I thought about teasing Angelo in grade six. He was big for his age. He smelled funny and spoke slowly and we called him Retardo Angelo. I saw him cry once. That night I cried too, soaking my “My Little Pony” pillow. I never called him Retardo Angelo again but he still refused to dance with me at the grade seven graduation dance.
- I made fun of this one kid a lot when I was in elementary school. We made him cry. It was pretty awful.
He smiled a shallow smile and touched my chin and then my breast.
-That can’t be the worst thing you’ve ever done.
I poked my tongue into the coffee blister. It caved, filling my mouth with bitter liquid. I thought of his tongue in my mouth and of the dark stain on the stalactite ceiling above his bed.
-I want something recent. We all have stories of petty theft and truancy from our childhoods. Those don’t interest me.
A loon hooted outside the truck. I wondered if my roommate was worried about me. We didn’t talk much. Taking the place had been a snap decision made more out of necessity than any mutual affinity but as far as she knew, it wasn’t like me to stay out all night. I pictured her anxiously rifling through my stuff, searching for a contact number. Had I left anything embarrassing out in the open? I doubted it. I hadn’t really even unpacked yet, never mind settled in.
- I should probably get going soon.
-You haven’t properly answered my question princess.
- Why is it so important to you?
He flicked the cigarette butt out the window and began to clean under his nails with the zipper of his coat. In the darkness of the bar and later his room I hadn’t noticed how dirty his hands were. Now I could see that the ridges were lined with grime. A shower was really starting to sound appealing.
- Intimacy.
- Right.
I thought of the new orange and cinnamon shower gel I had recently bought, of the sea foam green tiles in the bathroom and of the always backwards toilet paper roll. I thought of the almost expired milk in our avocado green fridge and of my favourite misshapen purple mug.
-I’m sorry, I really can’t think of anything. I’m tired. I think I just need a breakfast and a shower.
- We’re not leaving until you can come up with a better answer.
He smiled but his eyes remained flat like dull nickels. He rolled the window up the rest of the way. The smell of trapped smoke chafed the inside of my nostrils. It was too warm in the truck now. I felt like I was sitting under piles of damp wool blankets. I really did want to unearth something horrible about myself, really. And then, in a horrible combination of joy and horror, like winning the lottery but suffering a heart attack from the shock, I thought of Max.
I had buried Max in my subconscious which was more than I did for his body. Max was a jovial slobbering golden retriever that lived next to me in the first place I lived after leaving home. The place was a rambling, drafty house shared with a gaggle of students. Max’s owners were a newly wed couple who were busy looking after their new baby, so Max was usually left up to his own devices in the front yard. The students in our house kind of adopted Max. We always had pockets full of treats for him, which were always showing up in the most unusual places, once even in the toilet tank, a mystery we never quite solved. We also had an agreement with Max’s owners that we could take him for walks whenever we pleased. I took advantage of this situation quite a bit because I secretly hoped Max would be a good way to meet the man of my dreams.
One morning I took Max for a walk to our usual park. There was a big clearing and I always took him off the leash there. He chased his tail and some other dogs, a poodle and some basset hound type mutt that was often there, as usual. Then, a squirrel darted across his path and he chased that too, right out of the park and into oncoming traffic. With the squeal of brakes and tires his life was over. I held his head and watched snot and blood pool around his muzzle, matting his golden fur. It could have happened to anyone. But it didn’t. It happened to me and I would forevermore be the girl who killed Max so before a crowd could gather and while the dazed driver was still calling animal control, I grabbed Max’s collar and ran.
The young couple searched for weeks. They put up black and white posters on every pole in a fifty mile radius. Max’s sad puppy eyes stared at me every time I left the house but I never told anyone.
- I killed a beautiful dog. I left him in the middle of the street.
I choked on the sentence and the memory. I turned my head to the foggy window again. He reached over and stroked my hair slowly turning my head to him. He kissed my forehead, my nose. He closed my eyelids and kissed them too. I forgot about the soap and the tiles and the toilet paper and the milk and the mug and Max.
- See, we all have our secrets, he whispered.
I kissed him back. I bit his lips and his chin. I clawed at him.
- Don’t you want to know my secret?
I didn’t, not really. He fondled my breasts, held my wrists above my head, laid his forearm across my throat and pinned me against the cold window. His eyes changed again, softened from dull nickels to smoky mirrors. I saw a tiny reflection of my face in his eyes as my vision dimmed.
-I’m sorry.