Naja Aidt - Rock, Paper, Scissors

“To what do I owe the honor?” Thomas asks, chugging his triple espresso so that he’ll be a little more clearheaded.

“I moved,” she smiles. “Luke found me a room with one of his friends. And now I really need a job.”

“What does your mom say about that?”

“What can she say? I’m eighteen. I’m an adult.”

“Are you?”

“Yes!” Alice looks directly at him. “She flipped, of course, she threw a jar of pickles at me, shouting and carrying on. But then she packed all my clothes and set them out in the stairwell. She changed the lock, too, but the next day she called and begged me to come home. Now it seems like she’s accepted it. You know her. But she won’t give me any money, and I’m seriously broke. I need to pay rent in fourteen days. They’ve let me owe them.”

The omelet arrives. Alice squirts ketchup onto her plate and dives into her food. She stuffs a chunk of sausage into the folded-up omelet that’s already in her mouth, then licks the grease from her fingers after she’s swallowed, mumbling, “Sorry, but I haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon.”

“Are you still seeing Ernesto?”

She nods.

“And where does he live?”

“With a friend.”

“How’s it going with his band?”

“Good. They’ve got a concert tonight. Do you want to come?”

“Maybe.”

“Can you loan me some money? I promise to pay you back when I have a job.”

“But are you even looking for a job?”

“Of course!”

Thomas promises to call her later and consider going to the concert. “Maybe Luke will come, too,” Alice says. “We’ve become really good friends. He’s super cool. Ernesto and I hang out sometimes at Café Rose and he’s teaching Ernesto how to shoot craps and win.”

“How do you teach that? The dice fall randomly. Does he have some sort of unique shaking technique, or what?”

Alice smiles. “I don’t know. But it’s kinda fun. He tells me stories about Grandpa and buys me drinks.”

It annoys Thomas that she refers to his father as “Grandpa.” He sucks air through his nose and leans back, tipping in his chair.

“What stories does he tell?”

“All sorts.”

The chair lands hard on all four legs. “Listen. Your grandpa was a criminal and not a nice person. You shouldn’t listen too much to Luc’s glorifying nonsense. Half of it is probably a lie — all that stuff about fishing I guarantee is a lie.”

Alice gives him a defiant look. “Wasn’t it, like, a hundred years since you last saw him?”

“Wasn’t he in jail because he was a fucking crook?”

“Thieves aren’t by definition bad people. Maybe he changed. Besides, can’t thieves go fishing too?”

“He was a mean bastard.”

“But he read poems.”

“What did you say?”

“He read poems. Poetry. That’s what Luke says.”

Thomas shakes his head vehemently. “Give me a break.”

Alice lifts a French fry with her index finger and thumb and dips it extraordinarily slowly into her mouth. “I think it’s a nice thing to think about. He loved Shakespeare’s sonnets. Knew many of them by heart. He read Whitman. Have you ever read Whitman?”

“Of course I’ve read Whitman! Have you?”

Alice laughs. “No.”

“He also read Borges. Mayakovsky and Celan. That’s what Luke says. I think those sound like pretty names. Celan. .”

“Celan? He needs to cut it out. My father never read Celan.”

“Rilke, Mallarmé. . Oh, he was supposedly obsessed with Rilke, according to Luke.”

“Alice, this is crazy. You. .”

“What time is it?”

“I don’t know, but he hasn’t read Mallarmé either—”

“Aren’t you wearing a watch?”

Despite himself, Thomas pushes up his sleeve and glances at his watch. It’s 10:00 A.M.

“Fuck, I’ve gotta go. I’ve got a job interview.”

“Where?”

She winks. “Wouldn’t you like to know!”

He stares at her face, unnerved. Lets his eyes glide down her forehead, cheeks, lips. Is she going to be a go-go dancer? A stripper? A hole to fuck? And why does he actually think that? She looks totally serene. Then her face cracks open and a childish, disarming, perfectly happy smile spreads across it. “Thanks for breakfast, Uncle Thomas.” She sets her hand on his, which is slack and cold on the table — as if it didn’t belong to his body. “You shouldn’t worry so much about me. I’ll manage. I’m feeling good now, much better than before. You know? I’m telling you, living at home was so depressing, I was fucking depressed. She drove me fucking crazy.”

“Stop saying fuck all the time, Alice.”

“Now it’s kind of a relief. Now — now I am — full of hope, actually. Yeah, full of hope, that’s how I feel.” She stands and kisses him on the cheek. “Call me later, okay? Come with us tonight, we’ll have a lot of fun.” She moves easily and effortlessly through the restaurant, and the glass door slides shut behind her with a swoop . He stares at it for a long time. Now it’s as though she’s not been here at all, as if she were a ghost. But Celan? Rilke? He leans across the table, resting his head on his forearms. Oh, lethargic body. Oh, sleep. Then someone claps a hand on his shoulder and pulls him up. “No sleeping in a public place, young man.” Maloney stands before him in all his girth, a Coke in his hand, looking at him warmly. “C’mon.” Thomas gets to his feet and chugs across the street after Maloney. “Were you watching me and Alice the whole time?”

“Christ no, I just wanted a soda.” Maloney spits out a piece of chewing gum. “I can’t deal with anymore customers, you need to take over. All they do is complain. That visual artist returned an entire box of acrylics, one of the big ones. She claims they’re ‘dry.’” Maloney spins abruptly, and Thomas bumps into his belly. “What the hell does she mean by that? Who does she think she is? That’s shit for us, they’re goddamn expensive. It’s a straight loss.” He walks on, turns his head, raises his voice: “A straight loss!”

“Did you check the expiration date?” Thomas sniffles.

“Of course I checked the expiration date! They’re good for another three years. Go see for yourself. I don’t think they’re dry at all.”

“But they’ll just need to be returned to Gross & Selvaggi, right? That can’t be our problem.”

Maloney groans. “Just have a look at them, okay? And what are we going to do about the coffee automat? It’s enough to make me sick.” He shoves the door open. Annie, who’s standing at the register, glances up from her book; he strides past her, hunched over. “Fucking bullshit. I’m going to the basement. Peter! Inventory! C’mon!” Sighing, Annie returns to her book. Down at the end of the store, two teenage boys fumble with some of the expensive ballpoint pens. They probably write poetry too, Thomas thinks, just like fucking Mallarmé. An almost welcome stab of anger throws him off balance, his body tense as a bow; he clenches his enfeebled hands into fists and kicks a cardboard box. Annie lurches once again when he shoves open the door to the street with his hip and shoulder then closes it hard with both hands, suddenly irritated by the loose springing mechanism, the soundless sliding noise, tame, toothless, in every way an expression of an anesthetized bourgeois and political correctness. A door should slam shut, goddamnit, hard and resoundingly, like when an ax strikes a rock. He smokes a cigarette, feeling his body as something toughened, agitated, as if Maloney has broken through his sleepwalking and infected him with his continually seething stew of emotions. But Thomas isn’t seething. He’s boiling. He wants to kick something over and punch someone’s face until it bleeds, gushing red. He wants to see blood. Because what the fuck’s up with poems, and Luke finding Alice a room? Angrily he checks the box of returned acrylics, comparing them with the individual tubes they sell. Sure enough, the colors in the box are a little dryer than the newer tubes. He calls Gross & Selvaggi, fills out the return slip for the entire shipment of “artist boxes,” and orders a new crate. After taking a deep breath he writes the visual artist, apologizes, says it’s their fault. He’ll let her know as soon as a new batch has arrived. She can kiss my ass, he mumbles to himself. But in the meantime he would like to offer her a small compensation, and he invites her to come see the pastels, charcoal, and watercolor paper. He doesn’t send her an e-mail, he sends her a watermarked card in eggshell color (Conqueror, 40lb) with Lindström & Maloney printed in blackish-purple ink in the lower right corner, and he tells Annie to take it to the visual artist right away. From the basement emerges the sound of tearing paper and cardboard being split apart and folded up. Peter and Maloney are apparently cleaning up. Thomas slams the hallway door shut, startling the two teenagers who are still trying out ballpoint pens. Thomas takes a deep breath, leaning his head against the doorframe for a moment. Then he crosses the floor to them.