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.I’d attempted a few forced laughs when Toad unveiled my dress, a massive, hot-pink number with shoulder pads and a yellow bow drooping from the waist.Pink Sorel boots to match.I’d managed an additional weak laugh when Toad had turned the dress around to reveal Hockey Barbie written in huge black letters across the back.But Woo was drunk, and I could barely swallow sips of my own beer (slapped into my palm by Toad as soon as I walked through the door – ‘You’ll be needing this, Rooks,’) as Hal and Toad improvised the rest of the costume, any small ability to laugh dissolving there in Boz’s room while I sat on her bed, listening helplessly.They riffed off each other, grew my horror in sentences.‘You know what we should do? Rip off one of the sleeves so it looks like she was in a fight or something.You know, Hockey Barbie duking it out with that totsi, Skipper, in the corners.You dirty bitch – drop your gloves like a man, or I’ll drop them for you – ’ Toad said.Hal jumped in.‘Ooh – we could give her a black eye.Where’s that purple eyeshadow I saw over – ’‘Holy shit – you know what I just thought of ? I think I might still have some of that tooth black-out from that Halloween, like, the football-player Halloween.Oh my God, that would be per – ’‘Yeah, and then rainbow eyeshadow on the other eye, and – stitches on her chin.’They’d followed through.I looked back down at the lobster.Pelly was disengaging the shell for me, deftly and delicately, as though diffusing a bomb.‘Thanks,’ I said.‘No prob.’ Her eyes dropped to the Jill strap resting on my lap, worn as a belt, the through-the-legs strap they’d severed swinging taillike between my knees.On it, Toad had scrawled, DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT, PERV.‘Hockey Barbie’s very own two-in-one Jill strap and chastity belt!’ she’d said brightly.‘Watch her fend off hockey crotch shots by day and horn dogs by night! Hockey Barbie, defending her reproductive organs and her virginity all at once!’‘Why do they call it Jill strap?’ Pelly asked the table.‘Oh, Pelter-Skelter,’ Toad sighed, head down to the lobster, elbows pointing right angles over her plate.The candle splashed kaleidoscope spots across her face.‘You know the nursery rhyme “Jack and Jill”?’ Boz said.Pelly shook her head.‘You know, Jack and Jill went up the hill – ’‘Oh yeah.Yeah.’ Pelly nodded rapidly.‘Oh, okay.Yeah.’Toad abandoned the lobster, clattering her knife onto her plate, and filled her wineglass as she leaned back in her chair.She threw her hand up like a cheerleader as she chugged the wine, then dabbed daintily at the corners of her mouth with her napkin.I examined the cartoon on the Jill strap.I wondered if I could turn it backwards without them noticing.A bit later, I decided.I could already feel the wine in my legs, a slow tingle working its way up.‘Whatever happened to Jill?’ Boz asked.She wore a purple scarf woven with gold flecks that trilled across her chest in the candlelight.‘Jill who?’ Pelly said.‘As in Jack and Jill.Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.Then what, you know?’‘If women weren’t so bad with directions, she could’ve gone first and they might both be alive today,’ Toad said, raising her glass as though offering a toast.Pelly made a clicking sound.‘Oh, Toady, why do you do that? You’re such a chauvinist,’ Boz said.‘Boz, I’ve told you.Why must you make me relive the trauma?’ Toad pretended to cry.‘I remember when my mom brought home the skates.But there was something wrong with them.I told her there was something wrong with them, and she laughed.What the hell was wrong with them? I thought they were freaks, these albino freaks, you know? My mom, she just laughed.Oh, the horror, when she forced them onto my feet.The horror.And there you have it, ladies.The truth: I was once a.I can’t speak the words.I was a fingerpainter.I was a hockey player trapped in a figure skater’s body.There you have it.I swear on Mooner’s track suits.’Toad pretended to blow her nose into the napkin.Pelly rolled her eyes and turned to me.She held the wineglass with her pinky finger raised.‘You like?’ she nodded at the lobster.I hadn’t touched it yet.I nodded, and took another sip of wine.I watched Boz wipe pretend tears from Toad’s face.The other tables buzzed like hives around us.Perfume everywhere.‘Shit,’ Pelly said under her breath and then Mrs.Pelletier glided up to our table behind Toad and Boz.She wore her hair in a bun and had the same stretched-forehead look Pelly did when her hair was in a ponytail, the corners of her eyes pulled back.Pearls, French manicure [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]