Housebroken (6 page)

After the young lawyer and the divorced painter the woman began an investigation of relationships. She asked her friends—the ones who seemed happily married—how it had started: how they'd met the men, what they'd done, what they'd said, what they'd worn, what they'd felt—as if she were asking for a recipe and overlooking the fact that cooks always left out a secret ingredient.

The woman shut the dog in the bathroom and tiptoed into the bedroom. The man was now sleeping with the sheet drawn up to his chin and one foot sticking out. She opened the closet door, took out a T-shirt, and picked up her jeans and bra from the floor. She carried the clothes to the living room where she got dressed. On the sofa she found her black tank top rolled into a ball. She remembered how the man had taken it off last night, how he had asked her to raise her arms and pulled the top over her head as if he were undressing a baby. As she sat on the sofa and dressed herself, she thought that there had been a big difference between the first night and the second. There had been something paternal in the way he had pulled the top over her head and patted her rumpled hair into place. She remembered the night she had spent in the young lawyer's tower, the half-night on this sofa with the divorced painter. She hadn't touched the young lawyer, the divorced painter hadn't touched her, and even before she had gone to bed with them she had known she didn't want to see them again. It wasn't the same with the man.

She went into the bathroom, where the puppy greeted her with joyful barks, brushed her teeth, and washed her face. Then she closed the door behind her and heard the puppy scratching it. In the kitchen, she took a pen and paper and wrote the man a note. She liked writing notes. It gave her a feeling of control. She wrote: “Good morning! It's quarter past seven. I had to go out. Sorry. I didn't want to wake you. Make yourself at home. I left you a key. I'll be back this afternoon. If you can, take the dog out. I didn't have time. And be careful, the door locks behind you. The dog's in the bathroom. I put him there so he wouldn't disturb you.

Hope you slept well,

See you.”

She wondered whether to add “later” or “this evening” or “sometime,” but she wanted the “see you” to be something that goes without saying. There was no need to go into detail. At the last moment she added: “P.S. There's no more milk.” In her desk drawer she found the spare key, put it on top of the note, took her bag, and left the apartment, closing the door quietly behind her.

13

The man woke up and found himself in a dark room; the blinds were drawn and a smell of sleep hung in the air. The alarm clock on the nightstand showed that it was almost ten. He was glad he didn't have to go to work. The genius director was sick. He thought: She and I will have breakfast together, maybe we'll go out for a while, and then we'll come back here, and maybe we'll go to bed, and we'll talk a little, and then I'll go home. He hadn't slept at home for two nights now and it bothered him. On principle. As far as he was concerned, the day was planned perfectly: he could be with the woman and without her too.

He got out of bed, put on his underwear, and went out into the hall. The woman wasn't in the living room. In the kitchen he found the note and the key. He sat down to read the note and was filled with anger. The woman had nice handwriting, round and intelligent, but his anger was too great for him to appreciate her handwriting and her intelligence. She had gone off and left him alone. She had asked him to take the dog out for a walk, as if the dog belonged to them both. She had left him a key.

As he saw it, he had three alternatives: To ignore the note, the key, and the dog; get dressed; leave; and slam the door behind him. Or he could follow her instructions, but only partially: take the dog out—he shouldn't have to suffer whether he belonged to them both or only to the woman—and then leave the key on top of the note, exactly where it was before, and slam the door behind him. Or he could follow the instructions in full, including the ones between the lines: take the dog out, bring him back, leave the apartment, lock the door, and keep the key. He told himself he would decide after he had his coffee, but then he remembered she was out of milk. This was the thing that made him most angry.

The man went into the bathroom to wash his face. When he opened the door the dog leaped on him. It was the first time in the dog's life he had been locked up and he was terrified. The man picked him up and stroked his head and told him about the note and the key, and wondered aloud what he should do. Suddenly he felt full of love for the puppy, as if the dog was closer to him than anything in the world. But then his foot stepped into a puddle. He looked down, put the dog on the floor, dragged him by the scruff of his neck, and pushed his nose into the urine. The dog whined and scraped his feet, but the man went on holding him until he was sure that the dog understood his mistake.

Afterward the man was sorry. Not for the dog, who sat chastised and trembling under the sink, but for trying to train him in the first place. What for? It wasn't his dog. He went into the living room and sat on the sofa. He hadn't decided which course of action to take, and wondered if there were any possibilities he had overlooked. He had left the dog in the bathroom, where his whining turned into jackal-like howls. I won't give in to these manipulations, he thought.

He leaned back and his hand touched something soft. He picked up the woman's black tank top and examined it. Then out of habit, he sniffed the material. He failed to identify any smell capable of leading him to the right decision, but was suddenly a lot less angry.

14

The woman sat in a café, half an hour's walk from her house. When she walked there it was still early. The air was chilly and she shivered. She had walked fast, nearly running, and had sat down in a place that seemed far enough away. She wondered whether the man was still in the apartment or had already left. She stayed in the café for nearly two hours, drinking two cups of coffee and eating a Danish.

She wondered whether the man might poke around in her drawers and closets and find things he shouldn't see. She let the thought scare her, because there was something pleasant about the fear, but she knew she had nothing to hide from him. That was the problem. Her photo albums, for example, would reveal only childhood snapshots, family photos, pictures from trips abroad taken by obliging strangers who had agreed to photograph her: the woman standing outside some museum, resting on a cliff surrounded by seagulls, holding a giant tomato in a market, sitting alone in a café. Her bookshelves contained no books with mysterious inscriptions and her desk was free of any incriminating evidence. All the man would find in her drawers were old bills, all paid on time and filed in separate envelopes.

There was nothing in her closet to provoke suspicion or jealousy. On the right the man would see dresses and skirts and jackets on coat hangers, on the left T-shirts and jeans, and in the middle stockings, panties, bras, and pajamas. If he climbed on a chair and opened the upper doors he would find coats and sweaters and winter blankets still stored away because the fall had only just begun, and as usual it was only a sequence of heat waves with the promise of relief.

The waitress asked if everything was all right, if the woman wanted anything. She smiled and said no. The waitress was a woman of about her own age, tall and heavy with reddish hair in a ponytail. From time to time she sat down at a corner table and read the newspaper and took a bite of her sandwich, until she noticed customers arriving or beckoning her. Then she got up, put her sandwich down on its plate, wiped her hands on her apron, and hurried to the table that had disturbed her breakfast, smiling brightly.

The woman looked at the waitress. There was something serene and noble about her that suited her height and her ponytail. For a moment the woman felt like inviting the waitress to sit down with her. She wanted to know all kinds of things: whether she had guessed her age right, what her name was, whether she liked her work, what kind of sandwich she'd recommend, whether she had a boyfriend.

The woman was sure this serenity wasn't something you were born with. The waitress, she thought, wasn't pretty, she was too tall, ungainly, her face and arms were covered with freckles, she worked hard, running from table to table with her pad and smiling at the customers, but in fact, thought the woman, she was smiling to herself. She had a secret. That was clear. The woman couldn't think of anything more likely than love.

The deeper she sank into the waitress's story, trying to draw strength and encouragement and wisdom from it, the more she added details—elaborating on the waitress's apartment, her boyfriend, what he looked like, what he did for a living, and whether he was asleep in the waitress's bed, waiting for her to finish her shift and come home—and the further she receded, with a feeling of relief, from her own story, from her own apartment and from the man she didn't know was hers or not, whether he was sleeping in her bed and waiting for her, whether he had left long ago and would never come back.

The waitress saw the woman looking at her and made haste to put her sandwich down again and hurry over. The woman found herself face-to-face with the smile and the serenity. Suddenly she didn't know whether they were real or whether she had made them up too, and she felt embarrassed at having disturbed the waitress. She ordered another cup of coffee.

She emptied a packet of sugar into her cup and stirred. Again she raised her eyes, carefully this time, to look at the waitress, who was now standing with her back to her and talking to a customer. Perhaps her serenity was the kind that came after a long struggle, something available to everyone, something acquired. The almost masculine height, the heaviness, the too-pale skin and the strawlike red hair, the smattering of freckles, even the breasts that were too small for the rest of her body—all these, thought the woman, moved harmoniously and naturally, as if they couldn't be otherwise, as if she needed no one else's approval.

The woman thought about the man's body: average height, maybe shorter than the waitress, average shoulders, the beginnings of a paunch, cropped black hair, average arms, average hands, bitten fingernails, a face that was hard to remember exactly, and brown, slightly doggy eyes.

In the final analysis, she thought, his looks were average, even mediocre. He was intelligent, but up to now she hadn't heard him say anything she hadn't heard before, and even though he was interesting to listen to, she knew she listened out of anxiety.

Since she had graduated from university five or six years ago, her anxiety had hidden away in all kinds of corners. It had turned into a kind of pet that had to be fed, tamed, played with, and taken out for short, regular walks, tied firmly to a leash. All those years it had never occurred to her that she was raising a monster, that her anxiety wouldn't be satisfied with anonymity, that one day it would demand a name, something catchy and banal, something like the fear of being alone. The young lawyer and the divorced painter were final attempts to put the anxiety in its place, to defeat it, suppress it, but the anxiety had won.

It was the anxiety that had led her to ask a friend whether she could introduce her to someone. It was the anxiety that had filled her up with hope when the friend said she would ask another friend, who did know somebody. The anxiety had sat for a whole day by the phone waiting for the friend to call, and less than an hour later the anxiety had dialed the man's number. It was the anxiety, of course, that had caused her to make the terrible mistake of asking the man whether he wanted to keep in touch when what she had actually been asking him was whether he wanted to keep in touch with the anxiety. And it was the same anxiety—good for it, she thought, for having so much energy—that had dreamed up the plan with the key.

Suddenly it occurred to the woman that the waitress's serenity was really despair in disguise. Each of her smiles was actually a cry for help; nobody loved the waitress and the waitress didn't love herself. She wanted a different life and a different job and a different body, and perhaps she even wished to change places with the woman.

A little before ten the woman asked for the check. The waitress, who was about to finish her shift, brought it, gave her change, and thanked her with a smile for the generous tip. On the way home the woman decided to go to the market. She set out with the calm tread of a person who has made an important decision: She wanted the man. She didn't want to be like that waitress. She didn't want anyone to look at her first with curiosity and then with pity, and to not want to change places with her for anything in the world.

15

The man was happy to find himself on his woman friend's porch. He felt he could breathe freely at last; at last, after two confusing and exhausting days, he could be himself. The friend brought him a chilled beer, noisily opened a bag of potato chips, sat down on an armchair beside him, and folded her legs beneath her. There were two old armchairs on the porch—his and hers.

He hadn't bought milk. He had taken the dog out for a short walk, and the dog, who had already forgotten the incident in the bathroom, frisked and romped all the way, chewed the man's pants, and even though he wasn't on the leash never left his side, even when the man stopped at the grocery and stood for a couple of minutes in the entrance without going inside.

Afterward the man and the dog went home. The man smoked a cigarette, reread the woman's note, as if new instructions might have been added to it, and wondered whether to take the note with him, as if it might be important evidence in a future court case. In the end he decided not to, because the woman might interpret it as an admission of guilt. He left the note on the table and walked out of the apartment, locking the door behind him and pushing the key deep into his jeans pocket, separate from his own key ring. Now he could feel the key digging into his thigh. He raised himself a little in the armchair, put his hand in his pocket, and fingered the metal. It was an ordinary key for a simple lock.