The first time Candice saw Agatha was at a Yeah Yeah Yeahs concert. She waited in line about fifteen people ahead of Candice, wearing a short red plaid skirt and a faded black Nine Inch Nails T-shirt cut into a crop-top. Her leather jacket, the one she owned for the better part of her life, was unzipped and the lapels were so big they almost completely obscured the breast pockets. Her short, thick legs were covered in thigh-high black fishnets, all culminating at her feet. She had on black spiked fetish stilettos patent-pointed-toe six-inch heels. She stood there, not fully paying attention to one of her friends talking about the industrial party he attended the night before. Her fingernails were coated in dark nail polish with gray anarchy signs on her middle fingers. Candice watched those fingers raise a cigarette to Agatha's lips which were coated with punk-couture-purple lipstick. She sucked hard down past where most people would have tossed it, nodding as she exhaled a plume of smoke.
She took another drag and flicked her cigarette further than just about any human could. Then she ran her hand over the shaved side of her head on the left, up into the longer hair on top. She had purple roots that faded into pink, that faded into blonde tips. Candice had no reason to go up to the group. What would she have said? "Hi, my name's Candice. I really like your style. You look so cool. Can we be friends?"
She had been ignoring her boyfriend, Kevin, who was talking to his roommate. "You remember that, right babe?"
"Huh?" Candice asked.
"You remember when we saw Yeah Yeah Yeahs open for Red Hot Chili Peppers?"
"I do," she answered, watching Agatha's thick hips walk into the Hollywood Bowl. "It was a great show. It was one of the first ones we saw together."
About a million miles away Kevin thought out loud, scratching his long dark beard, wondering if it was, in fact, the first show they had gone to together. Candice pictured what Agatha's closet looked like. She saw hanger rods buckling under the weight of all the clothes and boxes filled with shoes not worn in a while but would be worn again.
"I think it was the Strokes or maybe Jack White," Kevin said like he had discovered something meaningful.
"Yeah," Candice nodded. "I think you're right."
Almost six months later, Candice sat at the edge of her bed crying, staring at her phone. It dinged and vibrated, then it dinged again, and again, and again. "Oh my God, just stop already. Just fucking stop." She rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands. It dinged once more. Eight missed messages. Opening her phone, she read the first few lines of Kevin's most recent text assault. "If we can't be together then I don't know what the point is. I'm better off dead."
She set her phone face down on the nightstand. Holding her hands out in front of her Candice partially clenched the air like she was gripping a ball. She grimaced and groaned, until her invisible ball popped, turning her hands into clenched fists.
They broke up three days earlier and still Kevin came over that night to watch movies. The whole time, Candice said to herself,
get through tonight, just get through the night.
But movies weren't all Kevin wanted. They had been together since their sophomore year of high school. That's almost seven years. When he put his hands on her, Candice kept thinking,
you've done this a million times. What's one more?
But she didn't understand. Did he not hear her? It was an hour-long talk that ended with, "I feel like I need to be alone for a while." And then, he showed up with two of her favorite B-movies,
Birdemic
and
Hard Ticket to Hawaii
. What did he think, that he could distract her and she wouldn't notice their relationship was over?
Kevin spent the night and Candice laid there watching the strange shapes her eyes created in the dark. After a while, she watched YouTube videos. Then she tried to sleep again. When that didn't work, she got up to knit, but she kept messing up her stitches. Even in the other room, Kevin's heavy breathing grated on her like a slow drill burrowing into the base of her neck. She cleaned the kitchen and re-watched the beginning of
Birdemic,
only up to the point where the eagles and vultures first attacked Silicon Valley
.
By that time gray light peered through the blind, and she was staring at a blank TV, too tired to think, too frantic to sleep. Kevin came in and kissed her forehead, "I've got to get to class. I'll see you tonight."
You've got to be fucking kidding me.
Kevin showed up with
Ninja Terminator
and
Robot Monster
, but this time Candice sat by herself in the recliner. Around the time Robot Monster carried the female lead away from her colleagues, Candice yawned and said, "I'm going to bed. We can hang tomorrow afternoon if you're free."
"But we haven't even gotten to the part where the Great Guidance teleports to Earth and unleashes his dinosaur-army."