Peter Buwalda - Bonita Avenue

“Shut your trap,” Joni said. To his amazement, she stood up, plucked a sliver of glass from her shoulder. “You do understand,” she said with unnerving calmness, “that we’re stopping now . It’s over, Aaron.”

His arms slid off his head like rubber. He let out a sob, a deep sob — and nodded. Yes. Case closed. Not only did he understand what Joni said, he knew it. He knew it already outside on the deserted street, when he lifted the Oilily bag out of the trunk and heard the cacophony of breaking glass roll toward him from the front hall, he knew then that it was all over. A profound and irreversible knowing. He knew that it was Sigerius who had just smashed through his newly installed sliding glass door. A crystalline finale to everything, to Joni and him, their fresh start, his friendship with her father, life in the farmhouse, his adopted city. (Strangely enough, he told Haitink later, the real din was internal, his insides shattered. In his head too, something was smashed to pieces. He himself splintered into little bits. “You think so now,” Haitink said. “I thought so then ,” he said. “ Now you think you thought so then .”)

The national anthem was being sung on the TV. They stared at the football players. “What did he say?”

“I’m going,” she said flatly. “I need to be alone. Maybe I’ll call you.” She pulled some clothes out of the Oilily bag, took her rolling suitcase by the handle and walked outside. Was this really happening? Ten minutes ago they were like the little figures on top of a wedding cake, gushing over a future they had cut short their vacation for: California here we come! He believed it, and otherwise at least Joni did. The morning after the brush fire nearly drove them into the sea, she rose out of the surf of their little pebbled beach like his very own Ursula Andress. “You know what?” she had said as she walked over to him, wringing out her hair and tossing her flippers and snorkel at his feet, “I want to go home. We’ve got a million things to do. We’ll watch the France-Holland match back in Enschede.” And now she was just walking out of his life?

He spent the first few days and nights mostly frightened. Somebody who walked out like that could just as well walk right back in. Every hour of the day and the mostly sleepless nights he was aware that Sigerius could show up to settle the score. He lay on the clammy leather of his sofa in the darkened living room, cringing with every sound from outside. So as not to be caught off guard he took the telephone with him to the toilet, and while he showered the thing lay in his piss-stained washbasin. He went to the shed and dragged back the splintered panels the city had used to board up his windows the first time around, and nailed them over the new hole in his house. (The previous time had been no more than a foretaste, a harbinger.)

During that clumsy carpentry job in the full midday sun, he let the likely scene between Joni and her father expand into something monstrous, he continually replayed the moment where Sigerius smacked his daughter in the face, take that, whore , he felt it himself, a white-hot blow that in fact was intended for him , after which he pictured Sigerius, like a Viking in a suit, head-butt the glass door to smithereens. The violence of that deed surpassed his worst fears, belittled the visions of vengeance that he’d tried so hard to suppress during his moments of regret about the website.

When he stumbled upon a black tennis bag that turned out to contain a bolt cutter, it dawned on him that his father-in-law had been on a mission. Holding that leaden weight in his hands, he realized that Sigerius hadn’t sent them abroad simply out of benevolence, it was a premeditated move. But how did he get into his house in the first place? The tool fell to the floor with a thud, it made him dizzy, he had to sit down: how long had his father-in-law been wise to their shenanigans? He avoided going up to the attic, spared himself seeing the ravaged room, upturned bins of clothing, dildos, wigs torn asunder.

Joni’s departure left behind an abyss; occasionally he could touch the spongy, weedy bottom. The last remnants of his ability to sleep at normal times of the day dried up; his body only turned off when the empty batteries started to rust through. At night he lay on a sheet on the sofa, during the day blades of light pierced the splintered boards. Only when he’d entirely run out of provisions, down to the last crumb and last sheet of toilet paper, did he venture out. Everywhere he used to shop had either been blown to bits or burned to the ground, so he undertook longer expeditions by bike, returning from these other neighborhoods completely wrecked, more from nerves than from physical exertion. He saw them everywhere, sitting, walking, standing — Sigerius or Joni, or both. In his weakest moments he dialed Joni’s number, but of course she didn’t answer, and he did not know what to say into her voice mail. His grief turned into raging jealousy, and vice versa.

One day he found an envelope with the keys to their Alfa on the doormat. Their website had gone off-line, he noticed one night; he was surprised she was able to manage it on her own. He began to suspect that perhaps she had already left for America. At night — daytime there — he checked their joint bank account, he’d studied that astronomical seven-digit balance so often he could recite it like a telephone number — until, sure enough, the dollars started evaporating. From certain transactions he concluded that Joni had instructed their collection agency to refund money to clients. Withdrawals from Sunnyvale Plaza, purchases at Borders Books and Trader Joe’s — amounts that approximated his own withdrawal of crisp 100s he used to pay the Italian or Chinese food deliveries — confirmed that she was indeed in America. He was crazy with mistrust. Did she have someone else there? One afternoon he called up McKinsey Amsterdam and invented an excuse to be connected to Boudewijn Stol. When he actually answered, Aaron waited a moment and then gently put down the receiver.

He hung in time like a jellyfish in the ocean, pulsating silently as though not only Roombeek, but also the entire world had exploded, and his living room was the sole entity revolving around the sun. He gave his insomnia free rein, day and night lost all relevance, his waking state gradually took on an inscrutable rhythm, drifting in and out of sleep. His dreams were intense. He now ordered all his food by phone, and the doorbell invariably shook him violently out of a turbulent underworld. Every now and then he got so sick of himself that he attempted to read something, or stared at the television, played a jazz record at full volume, only to wake up to the tick-tick-tick of the needle catching in the lock groove.

The few times the phone rang, he first had to get over the shock before he dared listen to his voice mail. Whenever anyone rang his doorbell — the postman, charity collections, even once his friend Thijmen — he would sink to his knees next to the radiator and peek under the curtains to see who was there to threaten him. The constant fear that it was Sigerius.

One day his voice mail overflowed with messages from Blaauwbroek. The jovial banter about putting out his barbecue, about rinsing the suntan lotion out of his ears, whether he was back in long pants — it was as though his boss was speaking a foreign language. He did not respond. Only after the third message, “Bever, stick some TNT in your ass and get over to the newsroom,” did he force himself into action. Maybe, he thought, the world just kept on turning. He shaved, put on the only clean clothes he could find, and got on his bike.

His eyes no longer accustomed to so much daylight, he blinked his way around the fenced-off disaster area and cycled toward the Drienerlo woods. The brilliant sun burned into his retina, passing cars screamed in his face. His mouth was bone-dry. The campus still exerted a magnetic force on him, but now the poles were reversed. He cycled uphill, or so it seemed, he had to toss his cigarette away because he was gasping like a drowning man. When he reached the green corridor between the city and university he gradually slowed down, he couldn’t catch his breath, even though he was almost standing still it was like he was being sandblasted. He was up against the sound barrier. Deafening noise, birds, leaves, insects, the stomping of ants. Up in the trees, libelous whispers. Everything on his body itched and tightened, his eyes watered.