I hate women.
I hadn’t seen Holly for almost two weeks. After I had dropped her off at home, after I had accidentally hurt her feelings, everything had changed. I hadn’t really noticed the first couple days. No calls, which was weird since she usually called at least every few days. When I started wondering about it and dropped by Baskin Robbins to check up on her after work, she had given me a cool smile and told me, simply, that if I wasn’t there to buy ice-cream I needed to “fuck the hell off.” My one attempt to call her ended with her picking up the phone and hanging it up before I could even get a word in.
I think I hate caller ID, too.
Tonight, I had gotten sick of it. And so I had dropped by right as her co-workers were locking the door. They told me that she hadn’t worked tonight. That she was avoiding some pompous ass-hole. And I could tell by the way they told me just who they figured that ass-hole was.
I fucking hate women.
And so I found myself at Café Yoko’s, alone, and nursing a warm beer. I looked across at the empty seat. It hurt more than I thought it would. But it was hardly doing me any good to sit here, brooding over it. I was just thinking of leaving when a voice interrupted my thoughts. “Let me guess,” she said. “Girl problem?”
I looked up. A reed-thin girl stood over me. The first thing I noticed was her eyes; they were a rich, oily black that seemed to see right through you. The second thing I noticed was that she had a smug grin on her face.
I scowled up at her. “Do I know you?”
“So I was right,” she said, then answered, “No, I don’t think you do.”
“Then what the hell do you want?”
“To help you, maybe?” She didn’t wait for an invitation, but took the empty seat across from me. I didn’t try to stop her; hell, I was getting used to this kind of thing.
“Maybe I don’t want help.”
“But I think you do,” she answered quickly. “You’ve been sitting here for nearly a half-hour.”
I ignored her, taking another drink from my beer. “So, what? You’ve been stalking me for a half-hour?”
She shook her head. “No, I was getting a drink. But you’re brooding rather noticeably. A girl, right?”
I don’t know why I didn’t just keep ignoring her. She probably would have left if I had. “Yes,” I said, just wishing she’d go away, “it’s a problem with a girl. Look how psychic you are! Now why don’t you go away!”
She seemed completely untouched by my sarcasm. “Right, and obviously you said something that hurt her. Nothing major, nothing that should have hurt her feelings, but something nonetheless.”
I ignored her. That was nothing that a gypsy fortune teller, looking at a guy drinking alone on a Friday night, couldn’t have guessed.
“But,” she continued, running right over my silence, “she’s not actually your girlfriend, is she? Seems like she’d want to be, but you’re pulling back for some reason.”
That actually stunned me for a second. I wasn’t certain where she had got that from, but I was relatively certain it wasn’t in the fortune-teller’s handbook. She didn’t say anything, but I could practically feel her eyes on me, waiting for my reaction. I took another drink of my beer, then looked up, keeping my face plain. “Who are you?”
She smiled and held out her hand. “Cassie.”
Like that tells me anything, I thought. “And what do you want?”
She looked slightly puzzled. “Like I said, to help you.” Then she smiled again. “I can tell you how to get back into her good graces, if you care to listen.”
I gave her a sarcastic grin. “You want the whole story, or do you want to tell it to me?”
She shook her head. “No, I think I already got most of it… Emotional, gets hurt easily, takes things the wrong way, right?”
“Yes,” I answered. Her and every other girl I’ve ever had to deal with.
Cassie’s eyes defocused. “So you’ve been fighting for a few weeks, right? She’s not taking your calls, and when you try to see her she blows you off?”
I forced a laugh, but it was still kind of creepy hearing her. “Yeah, I’ll give you that.”
She nodded knowingly again, oblivious to my tone of voice. I don’t think she actually heard vocal inflections, or if she did, she didn’t seem to care. “Well,” she said, after spending a few minutes contemplating the table, “your solution is simple enough, if you want to see her again. But you might want to decide, first, whether or not you want to see her again.”
I sat up a little straighter. “Excuse me?”
Cassie opened her eyes. Somehow, I had gotten the point across that I was angry. “Well, look at you two,” she answered defensively. “She really likes you, and she’s never not going to like you. But you’re not doing anything about it.” Her tone softened and she went back to her distant-mindedness from moments before. “If you keep spending time with her, this is just going to happen over and over again.”
I started to say something back, but then stopped myself. She might have a point. “So what do you suggest, oh mighty seer?”
She laughed. “I think, obviously, you should just bite the bullet and be her boyfriend. If you keep seeing her, it’s going to happen eventually anyways. You’re just going to hurt both of you more by avoiding it.”
“Sure I will…” I said, not even bothering to hide my sarcasm. Seriously, that was the biggest bullshit I’d heard in a year.
She scowled. “Fine. Don’t believe me, just like all the others. But mark my words, you will.”
“Whatever,” I said. “So what’s your suggestion for getting her back? Seducing her? Giving her an engagement ring?”
Cassie looked like she’d rather hit me than answer. But then she forced that smug grin back onto her face. “I’m only telling you this so maybe you’ll believe me next time: All I can tell you is, ‘Go home’.”
I looked at her skeptically. “Go home?”
“Yes,” she answered brightly. “Go home. She’ll come to you. Or she’ll be waiting for you.”
I gave her a long look, then took an even longer drink from my beer. This girl was cracked. “If you say so,” I said simply. “But if you’re expecting me to buy you a drink now, you’re out of your mind.”
“Oh, no,” she explained, “I’m working for free tonight. Really, I’m just kind of advertising. I’ll probably start working days in a week or so.”
Advertising… I wondered for a moment, then realized what she meant. “You mean you want to be another guru in the back?”
She nodded. “I figured I should talk to a few people tonight to get some practice and get my face known before I actually started charging food for my services. I’ll mostly be working days, so if you need me later, I’ll be in the back.” She looked past my shoulder. “Now if you’ll excuse me, that guy’s been sitting there for almost an hour. Looks like he just cheated on his girlfriend and is trying to figure out whether to admit it to her or not.” She got up and left, leaving the chair pushed out from the table.
I watched her go and then shook my head. Commercialized guruing, I thought to myself. Just what is this world coming to?
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