Housebroken (5 page)

10

When they returned from their walk, they found the woman sitting on the living-room sofa. She was wearing faded jeans and a black tank top whose straps fell off her shoulders. Neither the man nor the woman wanted to go out to eat but they didn't want to disappoint each other, so they said nothing. The man wanted to sit on the sofa next to her, watch television, and order a pizza; the woman also wanted to stay at home and see how things developed. She was tired.

She had gone out with two men in the past year before she met the man. She had met the young lawyer at a party. They danced and then he took her to see his apartment on the tenth floor of a frightening marble tower uptown. She admired his furniture, even though it repelled her. It was like the building and a bit like the lawyer, who was very tall and pale. All evening he kept urging her to look out the window, even though the view was of a big freeway intersection and a few distant factory chimneys. Afterward they went to bed.

In the morning the young lawyer said he wanted to cook dinner for her. Tell me what you like, he said, and I'll make it. She almost said that she liked everything, but the thought of another evening in the apartment with the roads and the ugly furniture depressed her. She told him she was busy. A few days later he called and invited her to dinner at an expensive restaurant. She said she wasn't interested in seeing him again, and when she hung up she imagined the young lawyer walking around his big apartment with the cordless phone and looking out at the asphalt and the chimneys. She wondered if he was wearing the white terry-cloth bathrobe with his name embroidered on it in gold letters, the bathrobe she had seen hanging on a chrome hook in his bathroom. She felt sorry for him.

She remembered how they had sat on the white leather sofa in his living room, sipping white wine and staring out into the darkness. She remembered how he had stood up to pour her wine, and when he sat back down next to her the leather had squeaked. He put his glass on the low table—four metal legs topped with a sheet of milky glass—and said: We can have sex if you like.

They went into the bedroom and took off their clothes in silence. They each put their clothes on one of the identical chairs standing on either side of the bed like sentinels. To her it seemed more like a tedious ritual before going to sleep than the prelude to a one-night stand. She lay on her back on the bed and let him run his thin fingers over her belly and seek her lips in the dark. When he kissed her she said to herself that his tongue was like a lizard's, quick and automatic and greedy. The young lawyer turned onto his side, opened the drawer of the nightstand, which had apparently been made to match the coffee table in the living room, and took out a pack of condoms. With the same practiced skill as when he had poured her wine, he drew one out of its wrapper and fitted it onto his penis. She knew she had made a mistake but consoled herself with the thought that it was a good thing he was taking the proper precautions, even though the whole thing already seemed to her as ugly and industrial as the view from the window.

Two weeks later she went on her first blind date. The divorced painter had arranged to meet her at a bar downtown. He was fifteen years older than she was. He was short and stout and he had a gray beard and thin gray hair tied up in what looked like a pigtail. Her first blind date's teeth were stained with nicotine.

The divorced painter showed no interest in her at all. He talked about himself, his painting, his genius, his poverty, and his three teenage daughters who made his life miserable. He bad-mouthed his ex-wife too, and it seemed that he was still in love with her. The woman sat opposite him and drank her beer in silence. The divorced painter said it was important to him to make it clear that he wasn't looking for a relationship. He emptied his glass of brandy, leaned over the table to touch her cheek, and said: “I'm looking for a fuck.”

The woman said: “At least you're honest.”

The divorced painter said: “When I'm horny, I'm honest.”

She asked: “How long has it been since you fucked anyone?” And she thought that he was very different from the young lawyer, who was slick and milky and opaque, like his coffee table and his nightstand. She thought that fate had presented her with two extremes; once she knew both, maybe she would finally be able to identify what lay between them, the happy middle, the compromise that everybody talked about all the time.

The divorced painter said: “I haven't had a fuck in six months. And you?”

“I fucked someone two weeks ago,” said the woman.

The divorced painter brought his face close to hers. His breath smelled bad. A blend of cigarettes and cheap brandy and something else. He beckoned the waitress and ordered another brandy for himself without asking the woman what she wanted. He crumpled his empty pack of cigarettes, took one of hers, lit it, and said: “You want to fuck me?”

Suddenly it seemed to the woman that she longed for the young lawyer, but she knew it was too late to invent such longings. She said to the divorced painter: “Yes, I'll fuck you if you like.”

And afterward it turned into an act of charity. The divorced painter didn't have a car, because he was poor and because he didn't believe in cars. She knew this was a lie he told himself, and that the lie was part of the bad smell coming from his mouth—a smell that would soon become a part of her. She thought of the divorced painter's ex-wife, who had thrown him out of the house. She imagined the divorced painter wasn't only a terrible husband, but a terrible painter as well. They took a cab to her home and she paid. The driver, a young, attractive man—someone who looked like a student, someone who only a few years earlier could still have been her boyfriend—looked at her in the rearview mirror as if he felt sorry for her. For a moment there was something thrilling about being a victim.

They went up to her apartment and the divorced painter spread himself out on the sofa and opened his fly. She didn't turn on the light. She knelt down next to the sofa and began to fondle him. The divorced painter asked: “Do you have anything to drink?” And the woman said: “There's some wine in the fridge. Should I get it?”

He said yes, bring whatever there is. She went to the kitchen and opened the fridge and took out the bottle of white wine she had received as a gift and was saving for a special occasion. Punishment should be celebrated too, she said to herself. She pulled out the cork and poured a full glass for the divorced painter. She drank tap water and heard him calling from the living room in a voice hoarse from cigarettes. She returned to the dark room where he had already stripped naked. His clothes were on the floor and he was on his back, his hands clasped behind his head, waiting.

She said to herself: I'll remember this. If I remember it, I won't do anything like it ever again. If I never do anything like this again, maybe my life will be better. She placed the glass on the table and the divorced painter took it, drank, and belched. It occurred to her that she had been deceiving herself all evening: the young lawyer and the divorced painter were not two extremes, but two ends of the same extremity. She stood for a moment without moving and thought: Maybe I'm not looking for a relationship either. Then she bent down over the divorced painter and gave him a blow job.

The divorced painter groaned and writhed like a lizard but nothing happened. He didn't have an erection and he didn't bother explaining or apologizing. She stopped and took a sip of his wine. The divorced painter got up and roamed naked around the dark room, looked out of the window, and said: All you can see from here is apartment buildings. You should see the view from my studio. An authentic, alienated, industrial landscape. You don't see landscapes like that anymore. And she said: Yes.

The divorced painter got dressed, swallowed the rest of the wine in one gulp, and asked if he could take a few cigarettes to last him until he got home. She said: “Take the whole pack.” When he was gone she got undressed and took a shower and put on her favorite big white T-shirt, brushed her teeth, and went to bed. She felt nothing. Even the longed-for disgust, like the relief of vomiting after nausea, failed to come.

11

The man saw the woman sitting on the sofa in her faded jeans and black tank top, and thought of the little girl who had fallen off the swing. He wanted to hug her. He sat down on the sofa and they both began looking for ticks in the dog's coat. Their fingers dug and twisted and met, and there was a moment of peace and reconciliation in the air, at least from the point of view of the dog, who had fallen asleep in their laps.

They couldn't find any ticks and after a while they disappeared into the bedroom. When they emerged it was already very late. We never went out to eat, said the man, and he sat down on the sofa next to the dog and turned on the television. Get off, said the woman and pushed the dog off the sofa. She sat down next to the man, stroked his thigh, and said: “Should I make something?” The man nodded. He was hungry.

The woman went into the bedroom and came out wearing panties and the man's purple T-shirt. The man asked if he could help with anything and she said: “Sit. I'll call you when it's ready.” The dog ran into the kitchen after her.

She took a big onion, tomatoes, black olives, and a little jar of anchovies out of the fridge. She chopped the onion, peeled a few cloves of garlic, put a pan on the stove, and heated up some olive oil. Then she opened the freezer and took out a little bag of basil she had frozen a couple of months ago, maybe more, she couldn't remember how much time had passed since she last went to the market. She would go there to pick out the freshest fruit and vegetables and herbs and exchange secret smiles with the vendors, as if they too were invited to the big meals she cooked for her friends, the dinner guests who always came in couples.

Sometimes the couples would phone and ask if they could bring a friend, a guest from abroad, someone who had dropped in to visit, someone they had conjured up for her out of thin air, and she would lay an extra place at the table, a plate and glass and fork and knife and spoon for her prospective date. By the time the first course was over, she knew that nothing would come of it. Whether she served stuffed prunes, fried eggplant sprinkled with pine nuts, tomatoes baked with herbs, roasted peppers, or summer food—figs filled with goat cheese, a salad of green beans with garlic—she knew that nothing would come of it.

The woman stood at the sink and held the bag of frozen basil under a stream of warm water. She heard the television in the living room—an old musical on the movie channel—and saw the bag change color under the water, become transparent, the green leaves appear, the layer of ice melt and wash into the sink, and she felt that she too was thawing, awakening the cook, who had grown tired, had rebelled, and had sunk into a long sleep.

“What should we call him?” asked the woman after they had finished eating and emptied the leftover spaghetti into the dog's new bowl.

“I don't know,” said the man. “First you have to be sure that you want to keep him. There's no point in giving him a name and then throwing him out.”

“But at least we can think of names,” said the woman and cleared the dishes off the table. “So we'll have one when we do decide.”

12

The joy of cooking took hold of the woman like a violent recurring outbreak of a malignant disease. In the morning she woke early, got out of bed, closed the bedroom door quietly behind her, and took the dog with her to the kitchen, so he wouldn't disturb the man. A soft light entered through the balcony door. The dog moved around the room, sniffing at the cracks between cupboards, the gap under the fridge, the wooden legs of the chairs on which the man and the woman had sat the night before. She looked at him and suddenly felt full of love. She had always wanted a dog. She had always thought: When I have a home of my own I'll have a dog. But now it occurred to her that things could happen the other way around. She took the remains of the salami and cheese out of the fridge and put them in the dog's bowl. She poured water out of his aluminum pan and replaced it with milk. Then she put the kettle on to boil for coffee and leaned against the marble counter to watch the dog, eagerly eating and drinking, unaware of his new role. She thought: I have to fill the fridge. I have to do a big shop today. The dog finished his food and began to drag his bowl across the floor. The woman took the bowl and put it on the counter so the noise wouldn't wake the man. She sat at the table and drank her coffee. The dog sat on his haunches and looked up at the counter. The man, the woman, and the bowl were now his whole world.

Suddenly the woman was seized by anxiety. She remembered yesterday morning. She reminded herself that she was sitting in the kitchen, enjoying the quiet, the soft light, the dog, and her shopping list, because of the man asleep on his stomach in the next room.

Maybe he had other plans. Maybe when he woke up he would get dressed quickly and say that he was late for work; maybe this time he would agree to drink coffee out of politeness while all the time he'd be planning his escape. He would sit in the kitchen and play with the dog and drink his coffee and smoke one of her cigarettes, but she would know he wasn't really thinking about the coffee or the dog but about what he would say, if she dared to ask (even in her calmest voice, although he would see through the calm, and the tone of indifference acquired over years of experience). So, will I see you tonight?

When she was younger, she had promised herself never to play games. During her twenties she had kept this promise. She had a few short affairs which she herself broke off, always with an honesty and directness that astonished her partners, and always with a certain degree of cruelty. I won't play games, she would explain to the girlfriends who rebuked her. Later she met the young lawyer and the divorced painter. They were a game, but its purpose was to lose as much as possible. She was good at this. It frightened her to be so good at something so bad.