TWO. (Olga)

I pushed my hair off my face and clamped shut my eyes as the banging on the door got louder. The dog lost his mind barking, until I filled to the brim and shot straight up, eyes wide. I marched to the door and moved the dog, now in hysterics, away with my foot. I opened it.

It was Olga.
She was standing there, propped up against the door frame with one hand, her sun-bleached hair falling effortlessly around her shoulders, tapping her foot impatiently.
-Where the hell you been slut? I've been standing here for a hundred hours.
She broke into a smile, pushing past me to squeal at the dog, who was now shaking with excitement, his whole body wagging. She tossed her purse on the table, the contents scattering across it and onto the floor as she unwound her silk scarf, throwing it on a chair to reveal her long, perfect neck. She flopped onto the bed and let the dog jump on top of her, slobbering all over her face. She wrapped her arms around his body and squeezed him tight to her chest. She growled at him and he started to buck, frantically trying to escape.
-Olga you have shit on the bottom of your shoe, I pleaded.
She let go of the dog and he jumped to the ground, trotting happily to a bowl of water in the corner.
-Of course I do, she moaned and sat up, crossing her leg to prop her ankle on her knee.
-Other one, I said.
She re-crossed her legs and grabbed her foot with both hands examining the shit caked up around the sides of her leather-wrapped heel.
-I just bought these, she whined, You got a spoon or a knife or something?
-I'm not giving you a spoon for that
-Fine, she said and pulled the shoe off her foot, hobbling to the window. Great view, I'm impressed, she said looking back at me as he slapped her shoe against the brick outside the window.
-There's a balcony down there, be careful, I said
-Oops!
-What?
-Nothing, she smiled and slipped her shoe back on

Olga stretched back out across the bed like a long white bird. She had far more blush on one cheek than the other and her shirt was mis-buttoned, but that wasn't much of a surprise. Even though she didn't necessarily have reason to, she always seemed tossed together, like she was perpetually twenty minutes late. But she could spill a cup of coffee down her shirt and still somehow own the rest of the day. She just didn't need to try very hard and she didn't. Her eyes were like two huge chocolate almonds, shiny and annoyingly seductive. She rolled over and looked at herself in the mirror hanging on the wall, smoothing her eyebrows with a wet thumb.

When we were kids our grandparents' farms sandwiched a stable up north and each summer we would spend it riding horses until the year we both turned fourteen and she was expelled. She told the younger kids that if you rode the horses bareback you would have an orgasm, and then mockingly demonstrated what it would sound like riding around the arena. Even though none of them knew what she was talking about, when they all started asking to ride the horses bareback, it aroused some suspicion. When they were asked why and they all answered cheerfully:
-We want to have orgasms!
Olga was promptly expelled.

-Oh come on, she moaned, why didn't you tell me I did this to my face? She rubbed her cheek furiously to remove the excess blush. Get some pants on, she demanded, sitting up and switching gears. We have to make it to the east end in less than an hour. They want to meet the talent.
She smiled devilishly, getting up to light a cigarette by the window.

Olga had called me two months ago after we hadn't spoken in over a year to ask me to apply for a position at her brother's design company. I only ever drew illustrations on the backs of napkins and the insides of books, but she told me to apply anyway. Apparently they liked them and so they hired me and three others to round out the company. Olga told me on the phone that applications had come in from graduates of all the big important design programs in the city and that I should be impressed with myself. Truth was I had no idea what the hell I was doing, or the first thing about what design really meant or what designers even did. She told me to shut up and fake it until I made it and I didn't bother to argue. It wasn't like I had other plans.

-Oh you can't wear that, she said crinkling her forehead as she leaned against the window frame. She always seemed as if she was trying to assess your intentions behind making decisions she didn't agree with. She lifted a string of turquoise from around her neck and put it over my head. She tilted her head to the side and I could tell she was thinking of some dagger to shoot at me, but she didn't say anything.
-It's fine. Let's go. She looked at herself again in the mirror, fixing the buttons on her shirt so that they matched, and rolled her eyes at her reflection in the mirror.
I wasn't going to mention the buttons, but she always seemed to manage to catch herself like that. Olga had a very precise way about her that made you feel like you were two steps behind.

I was supposed to meet her brother, his business partner and the other designers at 1 o'clock in some converted warehouse in the east end of the city that very fashionable up and coming companies, I was told, worked out of. We were going to meet each other, instantly click and then order Indian food and discuss the trajectory of the company, flush out our revolutionary design concepts and all sorts of other professional things I had no business discussing. I studied comparative literature in a vacuum for four years; the best I could do was draw on the table with coloured pencils and comply. Luckily Olga was helping them get off their feet by doing some marketing since she was so well connected. What it meant for me was that I didn't need to walk past the threshold of the heavy warehouse doors to sit at the round table with the knights of design-cool, alone and shaking. Olga was a social life-preserver.

She unleashed half a can of hairspray into her palm and mashed it into my hair. She wrapped a rope that was holding my curtains back around my hips and made me put on a pair of heels that didn't match anything I was wearing.
-Yep, she sighed contentedly, sinking into her hip. She looked at me satisfied with herself, which I hated, and smoothed her tongue over her front teeth.
-Let's move, she said and marched out of the apartment, grabbing her scarf and bag as she went.