Elaine’s hair is yellow like the sun and hidden under a veil of secrets.
On Monday afternoons, Elaine likes to walk five miles down the road to the nearest diner to buy a drink and read The New Yorker. Every now and then, she likes to imagine her own name at the bottom of the story she is reading. It’s just daydreaming, she thinks, not wishing.
“What’s the time?” Elaine asks the waitress.
“Three,” the waitress says. She looks up at Elaine, while she chews her bubble gum. Her teeth are blue. She is refreshed by a memory of her four-year-old niece and cheap bubble gum from the candy store. Strands of bluish spit form and recede as the waitress opens and closes her mouth. Elaine shifts in her seat, fucking chew with your mouth closed, she thinks.
Her favourite colour used to be blue, but it isn’t anymore.

“Money first,” she says.
“Isn’t that for me to decide?”
“No.”
Elaine is half naked. Her legs are spread across the cheap yellow-stained mattress; the bed sheets smell like piss and cigarettes. She’s wearing a vibrantly red wig and blue fishnet stockings. Ray is a musician.
“He said you’d be difficult at first,” says Ray, “but it’d be worth it.” Elaine rolls her eyes and holds out her right hand like a teacher asking a brat to hand over the scissors.
Ray obliges.
Elaine sits up, crosses her legs, and begins to count the money, licking her thumb between each sheet. Her uncle Frank always told her she should have taken accounting in university. She never made it.
“Business first,” she says. Elaine rolls over on the bed and tucks the money into one of her shoes then takes hold of both and shoves them underneath the bed.
“Gum?” Ray pulls a pack of mint green gum out of his stark yellow shorts.
“No.”
He shrugs. Elaine plucks off her wig and whips it across the room.
“Where do you get one of those?”
“I made it.” This is a lie. She stole it from her niece’s fairy princess costume.
Ray begins to unbutton his shirt, he leans forward on the bed, smiling.
He smiles like a demon, she thinks. As he leans closer, she picks up his scent: salty body odour and mint gum.
Elaine thinks she should have been used to this feeling by now. It makes her feel sick every time; she hates herself. Elaine cries and he likes it.

“I hate you!” She’s fuming, shaking with anger. Her left cheek is red, burning. She slams the bedroom door and falls on her bed covering the left side of her face with her hand. I’m not a whore, she thinks, I’m not a whore.
Ray staggers down the hall towards her bedroom. He’s drunk, but his breath is sweet: lime, tequila, oranges. Since they met, Elaine has discovered: he is a practical joker (the annoying kind), he sleeps in the nude, and the space between his front teeth irritates her. Gravely.
“Clean up that mess you made.” Ray stops in the doorway of Elaine’s room but doesn’t dare go any further, she has good aim.
“Get out!” She is sitting up on her bed, eyes red with fury, her left cheek still burning.
“It was a joke.”
“Out!”
Ray’s cell phone rings, Elaine can hear it ringing from the kitchen table. His ringtone is “The Hustle”. Elaine feels an overwhelming hatred bubbling up inside her.
Ray turns around and calls to the guests awkwardly sitting side by side on the loveseat, “Pick it up, mum.”
“She’s not your mother.”
“Free country.”
I’m over it, she thinks. She slides herself off the bed, pulls her jeans straight and smoothes over the imaginary wrinkles on her blouse. Elaine feels the double margarita she had earlier swish in her belly. She gets the feeling it wasn’t enough.
“It was a joke.”
She doesn’t answer.
She glides past Ray in a swift movement, not looking at him as she passes. She makes her way down the hallway to where her parents are waiting patiently to continue their meeting. Another double sounds good, she thinks.

“We think you should come home.” Elaine gets her eyes from her father and everything else from her mother. Her swagger she got over time.
“You and daddy?” Elaine is now sitting on the sofa opposite her mother and stepfather. He is silent.
“I think you should come home.” Pamela flicks her golden hair off of her shoulder and folds her arms.
“I can cook.” Elaine folds her arms, mimicking her. Her mother’s eyes shift to the floor. She sees it coming.
“Your father called,” says Pamela. “He’s out in two weeks.”
Ray stumbles into the room from the kitchen; he is holding another tray of pinkish margaritas. “I added strawberries this time.” They all ignore him.
“I’m pregnant.” The tray hits the floor. Elaine’s socks are sprinkled with specks of pink.
“Fuck,” he says. Ray already has two kids from a previous relationship. Elaine lets out a snort, she feels better.
Ray’s phone goes off again. Pamela rises from the love seat and makes her way to the kitchen, avoiding the puddle of pink as she passes. A moment later she comes out with Ray’s cell phone clutched in the palm of her hand. She walks over to Ray and thrusts it in front of his face.
“Fucking get a new ringtone.”
Elaine smiles. “Clean up that mess you made.”

“I’m keeping it.” Her face is expressionless. She smiles at the technician and pulls her sweater over her exposed belly. Ray is in the corner of the room. His forehead is wrinkled.
“She’s showing,” says the technician. She places the reader back on the stand and wipes it off. Ray begins biting his thumbnail.
“How far along is it?” He says looking up.
“Two months,” says the technician. Elaine smiles at her, she smiles back. She gets the hint and leaves the room.
“I’m keeping it.”
“You know—”
“I’m keeping it.”

The doorbell rings. Elaine answers it in her nightgown. It’s three in the afternoon, her ankles are swollen.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
“Heard you’re pregnant.”
“I’m not.” Elaine hadn’t seen her father in three years, she wasn’t about to start again. His eyes are green.
“Who is it?” calls Ray from the kitchen.
“Jehovah’s Witness,” she calls back. Joe is thinner than he was the last time she saw him. His shirt is ripped, he smells like cigarettes. He has a mustache; it makes him look more Italian than he should. Joe stands there with his mouth open.
“I don’t have any money,” she says. Elaine takes her hand off the doorknob, her palm is sweaty. She remembers when it happened. She was eight.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I know.”

She hears the birds singing. Ray is on the sofa.
“Get your teeth fixed.”
“Free country.”
“I’m leaving you.”
“Why?”
“Free country.”

Elaine is sitting on a park bench reading the New Yorker. Cecilia is wearing her favourite blue dress that her grandmother made her for Easter. She’s dancing. Twirling and twirling with her arms extended and her face up towards the sun. It’s feeding her; she is drinking in its energy. She collapses on the earth, drunk.
She staggers up, winding towards her mother.
She stops half way and spots an incandescent weed spewing independently from the garden path. Cecilia pulls it from the earth.
“I’m keeping it,” she says to her mother. Elaine smiles back.
Her hair is golden, her favourite colour is blue.