Most people don’t examine clothing when buying it. I mean really examine it, the textures, the density of the thread count, the stiffness of the fabric. People generally care about two things only: Color and pattern. Find something that satisfies both, and as long as it fits you’re walking out of the store with it. People think thread counts and density are irrelevant and applicable only to bed sheets, but they are wrong. You can tell a lot from the fabric quality of a piece of clothing. I usually check where the bottom of the sleeve meets the shoulder – it’s an area requiring a lot of support, but clothing makers tend to skimp because it’s not a part of the shirt people go looking at. That’s why cheaply made shirts thin or tear in the arm pit area first without fail.

DKNY has always been problematic in this area. Donna Karan has always made good-looking men’s shirts, but sometimes Donna doesn’t like to pony up in the durability department. What you are left with is something that looks good, even great, but it doesn’t stand the test of time. And hopefully you weren’t taken for an arm and a leg at the cash register.

I know what you are thinking: Is there a point here? There is. Relationships can be like clothing; two people who might look great together may not have the required durability to stand the test of time. Looks and constitution are two entirely different things.

The friction between Elizabeth and me had been growing steadily through February, and into March, and was now inflicting its venom upon April. Our fights were becoming legendary among the Expats, who began ostracizing us after having enough of our public bickering. Her anger fueled my anger, which in turn provided even more kindling for hers. But no matter how spiteful or how grating we were, we always ended up fucking like banshees by the end of the night. It was almost like a ritual: Elevate the anger and the passion to near-destructive levels, and then fuck it out of our systems.

I knew better than to keep this up. I’d known better in February, but for whatever reason I wasn’t tough enough holding my line and kicking Elizabeth to the curb. My complaints were always the same: She didn’t respect my free time. She was always goading me into doing things whenever I had something else already planned. I still couldn’t get her on the phone to save my life; she could call me, but whenever I’d try to call her it went straight to voicemail, a not-so-subtle way of saying “you’ll talk to me when I say it’s okay to do so.”

Any bar or restaurant I picked was never good enough, never expensive enough, never busy enough. And forget actual conversation; my knowledge of politics was pedantic in her view, my expertise in wine and scotch always was “so-called,” and any common ground there might have been to discuss things we found interesting wasn’t there. So why the hell did I continue being around her? Damn good question.

One Saturday night after a long and frenzied pub crawl from Pilot Tavern to Duke of York, to Brass Rail, to Toni Bulloni, I stumbled into the hotel lobby to find Stephen, the head of our Expat group, making arrangements with the bellman.
“Wow Reed, late night out?” asked Stephen. “You look worse for wear.”

“You can thank the bitch for that,” I replied, completely oblivious to anybody who may have been within earshot. “I was having a nice time with some beers, a few boilermakers, and an occasional scotch before Miss Beauchamp fucked it all up.”

“What did she do?” inquired Stephen.

“Opened her yap,” I replied coldly. I started walking for the elevators.

“Hey hey, don’t you want to know what I’m doing with the bellman and all these pieces of luggage?” Stephen asked.

I turned back around and for the first time noticed the luggage littered about the bellman’s feet. Stephen was leaving.

“Sorry, Stephen, I get so consumed with her sometimes that I have tunnel vision. I literally can’t see anything else.”

“That’s dangerous. Wouldn’t you say that’s not a healthy thing you two have?” Stephen asked. “If every time you are with her you come back to your room in fits of anger then why would you want to be around her?”

“I don’t know. A few weeks back I got on a train and went to Montreal for four days. It was fun. It was relaxing. And it was both of those things because I had stepped out from behind Elizabeth’s cold, sullen shadow. You’re right, I’m the one who’s worse for wear because of her and I don’t know why I keep doing it.”

“We don’t know why either,” replied Stephen. “It’s become uncomfortable being around both of you. Half the time you two don’t even acknowledge us. I imagine if we hadn’t run into each other tonight you wouldn’t have even noticed I left.”

I sat in a nearby chair and slicked back my hair. Stephen was right, I had forsaken the friendships of several people kind enough to take me in and make him a part of their enclave when I arrived here, and for what? A beautiful, emotionally haywire woman who was not much more than good piece of ass.

“So, on your way back home, Stephen?”

“My ship has finally come in,” he said. “GM has finally realized they can’t sweeten their deal here and the Canadian government is not going to ease any of their environmental restrictions, so it’s back to Detroit with me. Not a moment too soon,” he added, “it’s been just short of seven months. I miss my family. You have anybody special back home in L.A?”

I looked up at him. I needed coffee. I needed to dry out. “Nope, just a dog and a superficial lifestyle.”

Stephen laughed a nervous laugh, the kind people let out when they can’t tell whether you are being self-deprecating or feeling sorry for yourself. The problem was I didn’t know which I was being either.

I shook hands with him, traded business cards with him again – it had been the third or fourth time since I had arrived in Toronto but I kept losing them – and wished him all the best.

When I arrived in my room the message light was going off. “Hi, it’s E. I thought maybe you’d want to come over for a little champagne and late night fun.” Was this the same woman I’d just suffered through six hours of bars, booze and bitching with? I could never figure out this woman. Maybe that was how she wanted it.

When I called back I was even more mystified. “Hi babe, think you want to come over?”

I tried to turn the tables. “Why don’t you come over here instead?” I asked. Elizabeth never came to my room. If we ever got horizontal it was in her room or nothing at all. Well, that’s not entirely accurate, but let’s just says hers was the only hotel room we spent any time in together.

“But I’ve already got the champagne and the fun and games ready to go here.” She put a little whine in her voice for emphasis and pity.

“Nah, I’m tired. I’ve been drinking all day.”

“I’ve got something you can take for that. Besides, once things get warmed up you’ll work the alcohol out of your system.”

“How can that be? I’ll be swigging champagne. Garbage out, garbage in.” It was no use injecting logic into the conversation when it came to her.

Elizabeth changed her tone. “Fine, kill the mood why don’t you!”

“E, why can’t you take a hint. I’m tired, I’m nauseous. I’ve been drinking all night. I literally have no further constitution to be able to drink more and screw.”

“Well you could be a little more sensitive about letting me know!” Elizabeth replied.

“How many different ways do you want me to say 'no' so you can understand?”

“Fine.” And she hung up.

“Why don’t you just fuck yourself,” I said to the dial tone on the other side of the phone, “I’ll enjoy it more that way.”
____________________________________________________________________________________

The next morning Elizabeth’s tune had changed. “Come over to my room once you’ve had breakfast, we need to talk.” The tone of her message was ominous, so I was justifiably concerned. I cleaned up and made my way over, stopping first at Le Boulangerie for coffee and a beignet.

Elizabeth barely waited for me to sit down. “I’m late,” she said, tapping the point of her shoe on the carpet.

“Late? As in...”

“As in ‘no Aunt Flo’ coming to town.”

I took a big gulp of my coffee and tried to remain calm. Her being late could be due to a great many things – stress, lack of sleep, too much alcohol and barbiturates – so jumping to conclusions wouldn’t help the situation.

“I wore a condom,” I replied. “Every time. And you said you were on birth control,” I protested.

“I know,” she replied softly, possibly the first time I’d ever heard that tone of voice come from her. “I am on birth control still.” She walked past me and into the bathroom, returning with the bubbly plastic disk containing the month’s supply of pills and placebos.

“I don’t understand,” I continued, “how could you be late?”

“Condoms break, birth control pills can fail. Unless we’re rolling around on the bed in medieval chain mail, there’s always a chance.” The sarcasm and bite was gone from her voice. She was scared.

“Well, how late are we talking about?”

She paused before her response. “Five days.”

“Couldn’t it be something else perhaps?” I suggested.

“I am usually like clockwork down there. No surprises, no holdups.” She reclined on the sofa and held a pillow to her face. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Is there some over-the-counter test we could take?”

“No, it’s too early to be certain,” she replied. “I’m going to wait three more days and if there’s nothing I’ll get tested at a clinic. Then we’ll know for sure.” She grimaced.

I didn’t know what to say. Nothing was going to lessen the blow or comfort either of us so I just left.
____________________________________________________________________________________

Two days later she was in better spirits. “I’m so relieved,” she said as she walked into my hotel room. Wait a minute, what was she doing here? She never comes here.

“False alarm!” she exclaimed, sitting down on the sofa in the ante room. “I started flowing like the mighty Mississippi this morning. Seven days late and a lot of lost sleep but everything’s good now.” She saw the look of uncertainty on my face and added, “Jesus, Reed, if you don’t believe me I’ll show you the tampon the next time I have to switch them out.”

“Thanks but I’ve already had lunch,” I responded. “I’m wondering what caused the lateness to begin with.”

“Work, stress, you – take your pick,” Elizabeth said.

“Me? How?” I asked.

“You’re not exactly the most pleasant person to be around,” Elizabeth replied.

“I’m not? I’m not?” I paused and let the knee-jerk reaction of what I wanted to say slide. “I guess we have a way of bringing that out in each other. I’ve had third party confirmation of this.”

“Yeah, who?”

“Stephen. He says the rest of the Expats are sick of us, too.”

“I haven’t talked to Stephen in like, ages,” Elizabeth said. “Out of sight, out of mind. How is he?”

“Back in Detroit, that’s how he is.”

Elizabeth brushed back some hair that had fallen onto her cheek. “I’m sorry I didn’t know he was leaving, I would have said something. We’ve been in marathon discussions and I’m having a hard time negotiating the kind of deal the brass sent me up here to secure. It’s been my toughest one yet. So that, and you, and all these things combined must have taken their toll.”

I walked up beside her and put my arm around her, high on her shoulder. She shrugged it off.

“You do know if it had been positive we couldn’t have kept it.”

“You don’t think I know that?” said Elizabeth, her voice raised. “You think every woman who gets pregnant instantly throws reason to the wind and wants to become a mother?”

“You said it.”

She sneered at me in response. “You fucking men." She adjusted her hair and calmed herself down. "There’s more to it, though. You live in California, I live in Virginia. It wouldn’t work. It couldn’t work. And then –“

“I know, I know.” I interrupted.

“I wasn’t finished,” she snapped. “There’s more. You’d better sit down.” Her tone was urgent and almost demanding. I knew better than to question her.

“I have been meaning to tell you this forever – and I mean it, forever – but I never meant for this, you and me, to go on as long as it did.”

“Neither did I if that makes you feel less guilty,” I added.

“Shut up and listen. I’m trying to tell you something, Reed. I have a boyfriend. Fiancée, actually. Back home in Virginia.”

I shot out the chair like a bullet. “Why the fuck would you hold something back like that! You’ve been cheating on him with me? I’m just your little plaything while we do our time in Canada? Fucking great!”

“Don’t get hysterical about it. You knew all along what you were doing with me,” she replied.

“But I didn’t know you were already in a relationship. Someone about to get married.” She bristled as I said it. I should have known. Somebody as beautiful as her always has a boyfriend. Shit, women like her are born with a boyfriend.

“You know what it is about you Elizabeth? You always have to have a spotlight on you. You always have to bask in somebody’s attention. You can’t be happy off on your own, yet when you are with somebody you continually nitpick everything they do. You have no respect for me or anything I want to do. If it’s not about you it’s not important. And now on top of all that you’re going to be married. Fantastic! I bet your man is going to be in for such good times!” I mocked.

Elizabeth looked like she was on the verge of crying but I wasn’t buying it. She’d played the super vixen card for so long that I didn’t believe she could behave any other way.

“I don’t know,” she said, “I don’t know if I love him, I don’t know if I don’t. I wanted a connection, just something that would help me sort out how I felt for him. I figured if I felt something for somebody else it would put my feelings for him into proper perspective. I didn’t want a relationship – Christ, we’re two completely different people abroad for just a few months – and then you came along and I thought ‘here’s a fun guy to be with, I can see if he gets me feeling all those things I used to feel with Thomas.’”

“His name is Thomas?”

“Yeah,” she replied, “but the thing is, you didn’t make me feel those things. You made me feel guilty.”

“You should be...you cheated on the guy.”

“I know. I also realized that no guy is going to make me feel different and in turn that made me more and more angry. I discovered all men were going to make me feel like this. And it didn’t help to clear up any of the issues I had with Thomas.”

I sat back down next to her. “And the almost-a-pregnancy was the icing on the cake.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry, I really am. I wanted to hate you, I wanted to find something that would spin me back towards Thomas.”

“You hated me plenty, or weren’t you keeping track?”

“Not in the way I thought or wanted. I wasn’t angry with you, just about my situation. I guess it rubbed off on you. I hope you’ll find a way to forgive me.”

Never long on goodbyes, Elizabeth got up and collected her purse before walking to the door. I followed behind her and held the door as she left. Stopping to kiss me on the cheek, she added “if I can’t get this deal done by the end of the week then I’m going home. They don’t want to spin their wheels up here any longer.”

“Convenient.”

“I guess. If I don’t hear from you by then I’ll assume you’ve decided to deal with it in your own way, without me.” She ran her finger along the collar of my shirt. “I hope it won’t end like that.”

I watched her walk down the hall and out of my life. I tugged at my shirt, trying to loosen the tag on the collar that was scratching my skin as I craned my neck. DKNY. It figures. It looks good, but it scratches and irritates below the surface and it’s not made with the little things in mind that makes it last. Just like Elizabeth and me.