She pushed him away. "Shut up. Seven years of your life, just flaking away, gone. This year I'll have all of them, my whole body, in one piece."
"And then what? You'll just keep it around? Are you going to press it like a dried flower or something, make a giant bookmark?"
"I don't know. It might not even work like that. I just…"
"The thing I don't get is why you'd tell me this now. You've been doing these cream treatments for how long?"
"I got it just before we met. I started pretty much right around our first date."
"Oh god."
"You should be happy! It's like I knew all along that you'd be here for the end." She looked at her watch. "Man, I'm going to be late for work."
"If it happens there, will you bring the skin home? Or just pin it up in your cubicle with coloured tacks?"
But she was already standing with half a waffle wagging from her mouth, and putting on her coat, and now the bike helmet, and removing the waffle to kiss him on the cheek, and out the door, and gone. Left with the buzz of the fridge and his half-eaten grapefruit, he registered what she had said: "For the end." What the hell did that mean?
He went to the bathroom and rooted around in the medicine cabinet for this magical cream, whatever it was. But she had for some reason transferred everything to generic plastic containers. Some of the creams were a mysterious robin's egg blue, others white, others just cream-coloured, the colour of cream. He unscrewed the lid of one and sniffed. And another. And another. They all smelled like her. Or like little fractions of her: coconut + aloe + pink, etc. He crowded all the open bottles together in the sink, took a towel and ducked down and draped it over his head so it formed a sort of cave. With the towel trapping the aromas, he inhaled.
Close.
He was late for work. And then, perfect: the fucking subway stalled between stations. After what seemed like ages another train pulled up on the adjacent track and sat there too. He looked in through the lighted windows at the commuters: the frustration on their faces, all those briefcases on all those laps. His own briefcase, on his own lap, had been her idea. "You can't go to work with a plastic bag!" she had told him one day. "But all I take is a sandwich," he had said, to which she had replied, "Well, take your sandwich to work like a man."
But then there was movement. His train was pulling forward. He watched the other train go by, the faces of the passengers sliding past, the lights of the windows fading until they were gone and nothing was left, just an empty track where the train had been. And that was when he realized that he hadn't moved at all. The other train had left. His still sat in the dark of the tunnel, waiting for some signal so it could go.
He thought about this skin business, and about the sex they'd had the night before, purposeful and sterile. He admitted to himself: lately things had gone stale. Maybe something new was just what they needed — a new DVD player, sure, but even better, a new skin. And as the train creaked into motion he began to come around to the idea, and then he was excited, and he was checking and rechecking his cellphone for reception so he could tell her, and was doing this with such fervour that he missed his stop.
By now he was half an hour late for work, so he got out of the subway to call in and let them know — what, that his girlfriend had that morning had an emergency, making implied references to her private parts. That sort of thing worked every time. And then he would call her and say, "Yes, your new skin is just what our relationship needs!" But his phone wasn't working and now the battery was on its last blip of power too.
He was in that part of town where sweaters made from Guatemalan llamas were sold in abundance and everyone smelled like hash. Making his way to street level, he heard music — a song he recognized but couldn't place, played soft and sad nearby.
At the top of the stairs sat a fat man playing the flute. Two CDs bearing the fat man's picture were propped against a yogurt container with a quarter and a penny in it. And now a loonie — cling! — and he made his way out, a dollar poorer, into the neighbourhood, acting as though he had somewhere to go, a place where he was needed, someone to see, trying to find somewhere his dying cellphone would work.
A store to his left was selling bongs and bongos. Out front loitered the expected clientele, who eyed him as he slouched by with his briefcase, phone aloft like a compass.
Here was a retailer of used clothes with a rainbow of jeans pinned over the doorway. Here was a place called The Anarchist Bookstore with a sleeping cat in the window. Here was a medical clinic of some description, and here was — hello! — Your one-stop shop for natural remedies, and then there was some Chinese writing on the sign.
The door chimes were wooden and knocked against one another like bones. A woman sat working the counter. "Hi!" she yelled, smiling.
"Hi," he said. "Do you sell a skin cream — "
"Skin creams, in the back!"
"Okay!"
"In the back!" She pointed past a rack of soaps that were flecked with what looked like dirt. "In the back!"
"Thank you!"
In the back were shampoos made from all sorts of improbable concoctions, remedies for ailments he didn't know could afflict human beings, things that were technically foods but you were meant to rub into your feet. And skin creams. A shelf stretched from the floor of the shop to the ceiling, full of skin creams. "Good Christ," he muttered.
"Need help?!" screamed the woman.
"No!" he screamed back. "Thanks!"
But, yes, he most certainly did. All of the containers were the same: a label featuring a bushel of herbs superimposed over an alpine scene and the brand name, Nati.ir. There was never any explanation of what anything was supposed to do — just a list of exotic plants meaningless to anyone except, he imagined, the sorts of people who hugged too long, always.
But then, right at the bottom, wedged into a corner of the shelf, there was one that was different: Formula 7, in a metal jar. He picked it up and was amazed by its weight — as though the container were filled with pennies. He had to put his briefcase down and hold it in two hands. The metal was cool.
At the counter, the woman working eyed him suspiciously when he placed the Formula 7 in front of her. This time she didn't yell but spoke in a hushed, crackling voice that suggested Eastern wisdom, or laryngitis. "You know what that is?"
"I think so. Is it the cream that — "
She waved her hand. "Four hundred dollars."
"Oh," he said, and suddenly realized what song the fat man had been playing on his flute: "The End," by the Doors, whom he loathed.
AT WORK NO one seemed to notice, or care, that he had been missing all morning. From the phone in the stockroom he called her at her office.
"Baby! I found it! The cream!"
"Oh, no. You didn't."
,of course, I didn't! It's four hundred dollars! But I'm excited. I think it's going to be good. It's going to be great."
"What were you doing out there, anyway? I thought you hated that part of town."
He spoke in a whisper. "Has it started yet?"
"No. No, nothing. I don't think it'll happen at work."
"How do you know? Are there signs?"
"A woman knows these things."
Was she joking? Since when did she talk like that? Since when was she "a woman"? But, he realized, she was right. A woman knew things, all sorts of things. Did she? Probably.
THAT NIGHT HER homework was a Marilyn Monroe picture. He liked Marilyn Monroe — or her bosom, anyway, although he hadn't seen any of her movies.