Different Kinds of Cancer

She had a hard time putting it into words herself. "I'm not a goth. It's not, like, goths. Well, it kind of is, but—"

"Not all the black clothing?"

"Partly, yeah," she said. Indeed, she looked like someone who'd woken up to find herself naked in public, snuck into Liberace's wardrobe, and come out to hail a cab. Purple frock coat, ruffled sleeves. Now that I come to think of it, more like Prince.

She lifted the frosted mug to her lips and then shaved off the beer mustache with her tongue. She had such gorgeous eyes that she might have been a cat in a past life... so much of that had spilled over into this. "But it's more than that. I mean, I guess we're kind of a subset, but not really. We hang out at a goth bar in the west end, but, like... goths, they're so down. Everything's pointless to them. But vampire fandom's not. If you read Anne Rice, her stories are about really embracing life. Even in death, you know?" As if beckoning it, she raised the cigarette to her lips and drew deeply.

I watched her. My parents smoked; I'd seen people take a drag on a cigarette a million times but she seemed to make it real. I didn't want to take up the habit, she did make it interesting. Her narrowed eyes met mine and caught me looking. She took it from her lips, blew a breathful of smoke at the ceiling; a dandelion casting its seeds to the wind. She looked at the thing on gentle fire in her hand, wages literally going up in smoke. She said, "Can't believe they banned it. Maybe in restaurants with kids, okay, sure. But bars? It's going to kill the night life in Toronto, if they really go through with it."

I wanted to keep my opinions on the matter to myself so I flooded them back down my throat with the beer.

"Ever seen those cartoons, commercials, with Fred and Barney smoking?" she said.

"Yeah, I have them on tape, as a matter of fact."

"Do you? You should bring them in. Everyone would get a kick out of those."

"Imagine animating something like that."

She snorted, butting the cigarette out as the waitress arrived. "Oh, yeah, you think that shit we're flogging is that much better? Sugar and chemicals, and we're selling it to kids."

"We're not, our clients are. Or their clients, really," I said.

"Same dif'." She hoisted a burger that could have kept someone of her slight frame alive for a week and bit into it. It didn't stop her from talking. "Just different kinds of cancer," she mumbled over bun and dead cow.

I couldn't explain it. At 23 or 24, she was two or three years younger than me, but the smoking already made her look ten years older. She wore pancake make-up an eighth of an inch thick and routinely dressed like someone from The Muppet Show. But I liked her. I wanted her. I cherished even moments like this.

She swirled a French fry around in ketchup. She knew I was squeamish; she teased me, "Looks just like blood, huh?" Popped it into her mouth and winked. "Do you believe in saints?"

"Saints? What do you mean?"

"Y'know, like, really good people who get promoted in Heaven. Special good people."

"I don't know. Maybe."

"Like Joan of Arc. Doesn't it seem kind of arbitrary? She's burned at the stake, right? A witch. And for hundreds of years, she's a heretic. Some nut who heard voices. Demons. Then one day someone up and decides the voices were angels after all, and she gets beautified. And then not too long ago, a saint."

"Beatified."

"Hmm?"

"You mean beatified."

"...Oh. Yeah, whatever. But my point is... was she right all that time? Did she really have a mission from God? And if she did, then wasn't she a saint all along? And if she was a saint all along, then does it make any difference what the Pope says?"

I thought about it for a moment. It got boring. I said, "What brought this up?"

She held up a fry. "French fries. You know, that old line about "one order of Joan of Arc". French... fry? Get it?"

I nodded, a little bemused. "French fries make you think of saints," I said.

She wielded the fry like a Frenchwoman waving away the world with her cigarette holder. "Well, I didn't go to university like some people. I never learned there were some ways you're not supposed to think."

"I was just kidding."

"So was I..."

I smiled. I felt like I'd just gotten a report card with does not play well with others in the comments.

The restaurant had a dedicated 1950s theme (except for the prices, of course... those are forever contemporary). Everything Pepto-Bismol pink and rounded, chrome-plated and futuristic in a lost sense. License plates from other provinces and states on the wall, expired before we were born. The silence between us was mortared up with soft vibraphone jazz, the kind of departure from the usual Buddy Hollyesque, incipient rock and roll that suggests some real thought and experience went into crafting the ambiance. If not for the shapes of the cars blowing by on Parliament Street, I might have imagined us back in time for a moment. "How's the beer?" she asked.

I was trying something from a local microbrewery. "It's a little bitter."

"Can I try a sip?"

I nudged the glass towards her. She raised it to her lips, sampled, nodded.

"So what do you think?"

She looked me in the eye, those long, Tammy Fay-plastered lashes dropping lazily. "Not bad, but not really my thing," she concluded.

I glanced at my watch, feeling in so many ways out of time.