This Cake is for the Party Read Online Free PDF Page B

lucky pantyhose! If you know what I mean!”
    When Krystal leaves, her hand lingers on the door handle for a second before she lets go of it. A rectangle of bleached sky and desiccated lawn disappears as the screen door hushes itself shut.
    Inside our house, it is remarkably cool and dark. In the winter the lack of light is blatantly depressing, especially for Lise, who has a mild case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. But in the summer the cool linoleum and tiny square windows make it the only sensible place to stay during a heat wave.
    I sit at the kitchen table and give Lise the eye. “Were you talking about me?”
    Lise looks at me. “What do you mean?”
    â€œIn the bedroom.”
    â€œDon’t even,” she says.
    Lise glances over at Atlas, who is huffing around in the living room. He’s taking the couch apart, pulling off cushions and pillows and tossing them onto the rug. Lise goes to the fridge and pulls out a plastic litre bottle of diet Coke. With her free hand, she pinches two tall glasses by the rims, careful that she doesn’t clink them together too hard, and then she comes over to the table. She pours one for each of us without asking.
    â€œNo thanks,” I say.
    â€œIt’s just Coke.”
    â€œIt’s toxic. I thought we weren’t going to buy it.”
    â€œIt reminds me of my childhood,” Lise says. “It’s sweet.”
    â€œIt’s going to rot our teeth.”
    â€œNo it won’t. It’s diet.”
    â€œI’m trying,” I tell her. “We say we want to eat better. Then you buy this stuff.”
    â€œI said it’s diet .”
    Lise drinks it to make a point, looking at me over the edge of her glass. I can see her teeth swimming through the caramel liquid. She has such neat white teeth. They should be yellow from all the coffee and cola, but they look like polished oyster shells. Her lips are pursed over the rim to exaggerate the suction. Her eyes ignite as she chugs it down. She’s going to start laughing. I turn my glass slowly on the table. It occurs to me to not say what I’m about to say, but the way she’s drinking in my face makes my sinus cavities hurt. I can’t stop myself.
    â€œYou know, at least Krystal —” I start.
    Lise swallows the rest of her drink and lets out a rocking burp. “’Scuse me ,” she giggles. “At least Krystal what?”
    â€œI was going to say that at least Krystal—who is a drunk , who is a loser , who is in deep problematic trouble —”
    â€œGreg, shut up now,” Lise warns.
    â€œâ€”at least Krystal is pretending to get a job.”
    A rhythmic, throaty, muffled sound comes from the living room. Atlas is screaming from inside a pile of pillows. Lise jumps up from the table to check on him. The screaming stops as soon as she steps into the room. See, that kid is calculating . He knows exactly how to get to her. I saw him scrape his knee on purpose once. He was rubbing his knee over the edge of the concrete step in front of our door, trying to make it bleed. When I caught him doing it, he actually started to cry and said, “Ow, I hurt my knee.”
    When Lise walks back into the kitchen, the look on her face is as expressive as a wall of aluminum siding. “He’s pretending he’s a tiger,” she tells me. “He’s made a fort with the cushions and he’s playing a tiger that wants out of the cage.” She takes a sip of her diet Coke and then says, “I’m going to forget that you called my best friend a loser. I’m just going to forget that.”
    I got my first car last summer after I landed the job at Scotiabank. It’s a black Jetta—predictable, I know—but now I have deep feelings for it. It’s probably not right to feel this kind of love for a vehicle. But it’s more than just a car. It’s my zone . Sometimes, when I’m driving along the