Page 30 of Hot Mess
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I did it again the next day.
This time, on foot. Sometime around noon, I dragged my ass out of bed and walked from my place in Coal Harbour through Gastown and into Chinatown, and got a coffee at the same cafe. Sat at the window in virtually the same seat.
And watched women walk by outside.
If they were blondish, I looked closer.
But none of them wereher.
It had rained this morning, and I watched for the yellow boots. The tan raincoat. The clear umbrella.
No dice.
I worked on my phone a bit, but that was mostly just killing time.
Dylan had messaged me from Germany at some point, told me he’d landed, asked what I was doing.
Working on some music, I told him, which was technically about one-percent true. I’d had an idea for a song on the way over, about obsessing over a chick, a la “Every Breath You Take.” The Police got away with it, so why couldn’t I?
Well, congratulations, asshole. You’re a bona fide stalker now.
Jesus Christ. Was I really this bored?
This averse to getting the fuck on with my life?
Posting the classified ad was cute, maybe. Swinging by the grocery store—once—in hopes of catching a glimpse of her? Romantic, possibly. But this was just sad. The kind of thing some pathetic dude who lived in his grandma’s basement would do before going home and, what? Fixing dinner for his RealDoll?
You’re losing it.
Yup. I was bored. That was a fucking fact.
With my band done and Dylan gone and nothing to work on, nothing to really look forward to but an endless string of parties, one-night stands and hangovers, I was aching for something to give a fuck about.
Even if it was just a fucking fantasy.
That’s why people believed in destiny, right? In fate?
That’s why my grandmother believed. Why she told me all those things she did after my mom left. That there was somereason. Somepurposeto it all. Somegreater goodyet to be discovered.
Even if I couldn’t see what it was.
She told me, many times, that we all had a destiny that couldn’t be altered, even by heartbreak or the worst bad luck.
But that was all bullshit. Just stuff old ladies told themselves so they could sleep at night after horrendous things happened.
Because if you believed you had a destiny, it gave you hope. Faith that therewasa purpose, a method in the madness.
That even if you were destined for a whole lot of bad shit, surely you were destined for something good, too. Right?
Wrong.
Bad shit happened.
Good shit happened.
Random shit happened.
