What ever happened?
Chapter One
Catalina stared at a pea-sized smear of toothpaste on her bathroom mirror. It was kind of translucent, somewhat yellowish. It was from Wayne, who had left for work earlier, the only thing left was his scent on the sheets. She had considered calling him, telling him to come home and clean up the stupid stain because she couldn't shower like that, but she didn't. Catalina hadn't spoken to Wayne in two weeks. Truly she’d gotten bored of him, of his face, his big hands, his raspy voice, his too cool demeanor. She hadn’t spoken to him since she’d lost her job at a publishing house.
When she’d been laid off Wayne had said “It really is for the better, you know? This way we could think of having a family”, and two weeks later he had gotten The Job, Catalina’s dream job. What the fuck was Wayne doing that was so much better than what catalina did? Was it because he was a man? It was because he was a man, for sure. "A man doesn't have so many changes of emotions...", "A man doesn't run the risk of getting pregnant..." People would say. Nonsense. In what world would an immature thirty-something year old man be a better fit for any job than Catalina? She could even make a better construction worker than Wayne, he cried when he came, for fuck’s sake.
She hated it when people looked at her in a condescending way and tried to give her bullshit explanations for her complaints and problems, as if she wasn't intelligent, as if she didn't reason for herself, as if she was going to believe them. She didn't want help, she wanted to cry and scream and drink vodka.
Catalina grabbed the sides of the sink and screamed at the stain, at Wayne's childish and thoughtless way of acting, at the condescending comments, at the patronizing attitude of the people around her, at her attention seeking bitch of a dead best friend. She howled like a wolf, shrieked like a hyena and, as tears welled up in her eyes and she burst out laughing, she walked out of the bathroom. She threw herself on the bed and stared at the white ceiling. It was June and the air conditioning of the flat she and Wayne shared had stopped working, it leaked brown-colored water and smelled awful,so she was sweaty and angry, her bangs stuck to her forehead causing pimples to form. She really couldn’t afford pimples right now, she had to take a shower, unwind, think, relax. Maybe call Wayne, or Zaira’s mother.
It was her best friend Zaira’s funeral, and she’d promised her family she would be early. God she really had to put in the work, be a good friend. A good friend would arrive early for her best friend's funeral, as she promised, a good friend would wear modest black clothes and shed real tears, snotty and red faced, on her best friend’s grave. A good friend would face her fears and shower even if there were splashes of her boyfriend's saliva on the mirror.
But Catalina was not a good friend, she was faking it for a Balmain blazer. Zaira's funeral was at her family's home –a large house in Vermont with acres of land and beautiful gardens– and she knew for a fact that Zaira had left a black Balmain blazer there two years before, when they went skiing together. If she was late, she wouldn't have time to steal the blazer from Zaira's bedroom closet.
Catalina hated Zaira, she hated that she’d died, what an attention seeking whore, she thought. She’d died in a car accident, she’d been texting her boyfriend and she’d gone off the road, down a cliff. She imagined Zaira’s body, limp and bloody, stuck through the windshield, glass shards piercing her tan skin. She tried to feel pity, sadness, grief, but she realized she couldn’t care less about Zaira, she only cared about the blazer, and maybe the catering, and Zaira’s hot cousin, Ahmed.
She peeled off her sweaty pajamas and went into the bathroom, looked at herself in the mirror. The overhead light made her look like a hot, tan, zombie. Like an undead Paris Hilton. Grey undertone, brown overtone.
Wayne's saliva stain was just above her navel. She looked at it and gagged. If she squinted, it looked like a small slug, green and slimy, sliding down her body. She ran her cold hand over her belly and looked at the stain, now above her ring finger. She imagined what an engagement ring would look like on it. Given Wayne's lifestyle, it would probably be a big sparkling diamond, the kind you could see from space. Why hadn't Wayne asked her to marry him yet? It was time, she was getting older and honestly, tired. She was tired of a lot of things, especially New York. The thing was, Catalina wasn't cut out for the East Coast, with its country clubs and its horses named Rocky or Bowie and its mountains and its rich people who weren't in show business, and who were offended if you assumed they were.
She missed Los Angeles, she missed the curb in Mulholland where the cars always crashed, she missed the bars on the strip and she missed sunset boulevard. Nobody in L.A. got mad when you asked them if they worked in showbusiness, because everybody did. If she was in L.A. she wouldn’t be living with a boring, incompetent, boyfriend; she’d be living with an aspiring model or actor who’d work as a waiter or a club bouncer to pay for his coke. But she moved to New York because it was oh, so romantic and now she was unemployed, playing housewife for an ugly boyfriend who spat on bathroom mirrors.