Page 58 of We All Live Here
“Try it.”
He is clearly not going to leave until she does. She opens the wrapper and takes a small bite. She can taste peanut butter and overly sweet chocolate. It isn’t bad, but she isn’t really hungry. She takes another bite, letting it melt on her tongue. She will eat it and thank him, say something about how great he is, which is all Gene ever wants from anyone, and then he will go.
But instead of leaving, he sits on the bed beside her uninvited, and opens a second packet, popping a whole one of the chocolate discs into his mouth and letting out a little “mm” of pleasure. He speaks with his mouth full. “I keep a supply of them in my case. All this low-calorie stuff that Bill does—it’s good for you, I guess, but a man needs to have a little sugar in his life, you know what I’m saying?”
Celie nods, and starts on the second. They eat in silence, listening to Truant’s protests fade into sporadic grumbling growls, just to let Gene know he is still there, behind the curtain.
“I had a little cry this morning,” Gene says, as he finishes chewing.
Celie twists to look at him.
“Didn’t get a part. Kind of crazy, really, but I just knew I would begreat in it. Just one of those medical dramas. It would have got me out of a hole. Would have got me back in the game over here. I got a call-back and then—after making me hold my breath for three days—goddammit if they didn’t go with the other guy. He couldn’t even act!”
He pops the other peanut butter cup into his mouth and chews. “And Iknowhe wears a hairpiece.”
Gene lets out a long sigh. And then he nudges her. “C’mon. Help me take your dumb dog out for a walk so it likes me and doesn’t bite me again.”
Celie sinks back onto her pillows. “I don’t want to go out.”
“Aww, c’mon, Celie. Help me out. I need to get this mutt on side. And you know the women are mad for me over here. The only way I can keep them off me is if I have an attractive young chick at my side.”
“You can’t call women chicks any more.”
“Young ladies.”
“Worse.”
“Really? Okay. Let’s settle on arm candy.”
She rolls her eyes.
“I’m talking about me, not you. C’mon, finish your Reese’s and let’s get outta here.”
•••
The Heath is busyat this time of day, its pathways covered with a carpet of ginger leaves, couples with takeaway coffees walking arm in arm, and children released from school jumping stray branches on the ground, brought down by the autumnal winds. Celie doesn’t want to talk, really, but Gene never stops so she just lets him go on, about his failed audition, about how he misses the LA weather, about a woman who looks like a girl he once dated who cut the toes out of all his socks and he didn’t even discover it till a week after she’d gone. She wonders whether that means he wore the same pair of socks all week, or whetherhe just walked around LA barefoot, but she can’t be bothered to ask. She keeps thinking about how awful it’ll be in school on Monday, the way the excitement about the party is going to ramp up toward the weekend, and how everyone will gradually find out that she’s the only person not invited. It’s like a disease, she thinks, being unpopular. People might not even know about it, but when they see you being isolated they’ll be worried they might catch it and steer clear. She’s already eaten lunch by herself four times in the last week.
“I think I might change schools,” she says, when it’s clearly impossible for her to say nothing. “There’s a sixth-form college up the road I might go to.”
“Okay. Sounds like a plan. Why’d you wanna change schools, though?”
Gene has hold of the lead and Truant is lagging behind them, as far as it’s possible to get from Gene without actually pulling himself out of his harness.
She shrugs. “I might get better exam results.”
He looks at her for a moment, then pulls a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and flips one into his mouth. He lights it and takes a long drag, blowing a thin plume of smoke into the air. “You don’t like your school?”
“It’s okay.”
“Nobody leaves at your age unless they hate their school.”
She kicks at a stone. Her voice when it emerges is choked, as if there is a giant pebble lodged in her mouth. “I used to like it.”
He doesn’t say anything. Just keeps walking but she can feel his gaze on her. And suddenly she’s crying again. About Meena and the party and the anxiety knot she has in her stomach the whole time.
“Hey,” he says. “Hey.” He puts his arm around her and she doesn’t even care if anyone sees. It’s just all too much. “C’mon. Tell your old pal Gene. What’s going on?”
“You won’t talk to Mum?”
