Naja Aidt - Rock, Paper, Scissors

There’s something strange between them now — mornings in the little kitchen, evenings when they make dinner, on the couch watching TV, or lying in bed in the stuffy, sweltering bedroom where their clothes are more often heaped on the floor instead of in the laundry basket. Thomas feels it but he doesn’t quite understand it. Now, seven weeks after the rape, Patricia seems calm — serene even. Her sessions with the psychologist are over, the immediate shock having been worked through; she’s eating and sleeping again, she’s gone back to work, she’s functioning . But she’s distant, and this distance seems to intensify with each passing day — something dreamy, silent, foreign. And despite his more or less good intentions, Thomas can’t get through to her, can’t make contact. June turns to July, and July is hot as a sauna. During the day it’s humid, scorching, the air as motionless as a cloud of hummingbirds on tiny fluttering wings. Heat shimmers, melting the asphalt, making people dizzy and hallucinatory. The city reeks. It’s been eighteen years since the temperature has been measured this hot. And now it’s Wednesday evening, and once again they’re standing beside the oven preparing a simple dinner in silence. Patricia rinses lettuce, Thomas stirs tomato sauce. They boil water for the pasta. The sun’s setting, but its absence doesn’t make much of a difference; nights are thick and heavy, sleep restless and horrible, and here, enshrouded in steam from the boiling water, and the gas burners, sweat pours from their bodies. Patricia’s hair is wet, her naked shoulders gleaming. Thomas glances at her. He longs for her presence, her caress, her concern. Patricia slices a cucumber. He dries his hands on a dishtowel, and he’s unable to resist the urge to wrap his arms around her. But the embrace is clumsy, and Patricia stiffens at his touch, like so often. Once again he’s afraid to get too physically close, to overstep her boundaries, after what happened. He lets go and settles on putting his hand cautiously on her arm.

“How do you feel today, hon?”

“Fine.” The paring knife whacks the cutting board in quick, hard strokes.

He removes his hand and tries to make eye contact, but she’s focused on preparing the salad. “I wondered if you could help me order the flowers for the grand opening?” he says. A short pause. She dumps the lettuce and cucumbers into a white bowl and pours olive oil into another. “But I guess you’ll need to see the room first, and the colors. You still haven’t seen it yet. We could ride over after dinner? Would you like that?”

“I’m too tired,” she says, squeezing lemon juice into the oil.

“Is it the heat?”

She shrugs and whips the dressing together. The timer goes off. He strains the pasta and mixes the tomato sauce with the spaghetti.

They sit on opposite sides of the table. She ladles a huge portion of food onto her plate and gobbles it hurriedly, greedily.

“Patricia,” he says. “Will you tell me how you really feel?”

“What do you mean how I really feel ? I just told you I was fine.”

“You seem a little sad, I think.”

“Sad? I’m not sad.”

“You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure, otherwise I wouldn’t say it. I’m just tired.” She shovels spaghetti into her mouth. Tomato sauce squirts, leaving a red stain on her white tank top. Thomas pushes a few soppy leaves of lettuce around his plate. He’s not hungry.

“I know I’ve been gone a lot recently. It’s been stressful getting everything sorted out at work, you know. The new store’s opening on Tuesday, and the floors aren’t even finished yet. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be.”

“But I am.”

She shrugs, ladling another portion of spaghetti onto her plate. He watches her. She’s deeply suntanned. Fine, miniscule lines surround her eyes and mouth. Since the rape, there’s been something rigid about her. As if her expression is unchanged. She moves her mouth only when she speaks or chews. She glowers at him. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m just looking at you, hon.”

“Can you stop asking me how I’m feeling all the time? To be honest, it’s a little irritating. How are you feeling?”

“Sorry.”

“Every time you ask it’s as if you want to remind me to feel bad. But I don’t feel bad any more.” She spears a chunk of cucumber with her fork. “I’m past that. It’s over.”

“But,” he says. “But. . can you really get over it this fast? It hasn’t even been two months. Don’t you think that you. . that you’re just repressing it?”

She gives him a tolerant smile. “For God’s sake, Thomas! Don’t you think I know best how I’m doing? I’m not repressing anything, honest.”

Later he washes the dishes. She turns on the TV and throws herself on the couch with the cat. It sprawls across her belly, its paws resting along her breasts and hips. It’s purring. The woman and the animal are completely relaxed. But when Thomas enters the living room, she gets to her feet. “I’m going to bed.”

“But it’s only nine 9:00!”

“I’m dead tired.”

She gives him a hasty peck on the cheek. A short time later he hears her brushing her teeth. Then she closes the bedroom door. He pours himself a tall glass of whiskey and stares out the window. Again he has this constricting sense that the vibes in the room are all wrong. As if everything is unsaid, held back: an ominous silence. He feels rejected. He goes down to the street to smoke. The evening’s humid, the air stagnant. He feels powerless. A flock of rambunctious teenagers scoot past, ignoring him; they’re completely absorbed in themselves, hopping and bopping along without a care in the world, laughing, pushing, shouting. He gives them a wistful, envious glance. If only they knew what awaits them. But you shouldn’t think like that, it’s vile, he thinks, the store , think about the store instead, the cool, freshly painted walls, the smell of varnish. He closes his eyes and slips into a moment of bliss: cigarette smoke encircles his head in the still, moist air, and he imagines himself standing behind the counter welcoming new customers, showing them around, punching the first sale into the register. And Alice is smiling, rolling the handmade paper into brown tissue, securing a red and white-striped string around the package with a practiced hand and handing it to the customer. He opens his eyes. He flicks his cigarette butt away, and when a little later he peeks into the bedroom, Patricia’s fast asleep, her hair on her face. The hallway light illuminates her head and upper body. Every time she breathes, fine strands of hair shift slightly. Her breasts seem larger. Then she rolls on her side with a grunt.

The next morning Thomas hears Patricia leaving the apartment at 7:30. The heat gives him a headache. Even now, this early in the day, the heat is intense, enervating. When he walks into the kitchen, he sees that she’s forgotten her cell phone. There’s a bowl filled with dried oatmeal on the small table. She no longer drinks coffee in the morning, but she left the package of mint tea open, and steam billows from the kettle. He picks up her cell and palms it. He’s already glanced through her call list. One day when she was especially distant, he even dialed some of the numbers. Mostly women answered, girlfriends, though once he got the voicemail of a man he didn’t know. Luke’s number is there too. It doesn’t appear that she’s ever called it. But why would she have Luke’s number? He puts the cell down, makes a pot of coffee, and then takes a shower. Soon there won’t be any clean clothes left, either in the dresser or the closet. He doesn’t know why, but they’ve pretty much stopped doing laundry — neither bothering to do it. Irritated now, he gathers his clothes off the floor and stuffs them into the washing machine in the bathroom. How hard can it be? She doesn’t clean anymore, either. The living room floor is dusty, littered with cat hair. He sighs. Still half-naked, he grabs his shaving kit. Just as he’s about to rinse the shaving cream off his face, his eye falls randomly on her toiletry bag. Tubes of lipsticks and eye shadow, a large powder brush. He spots the little silver perfume flacon that he gave her on their one-year anniversary. A sentimental moment: we were happy back then . He sighs again then dries his hands. He fishes up the flacon, but drops it and it falls back into the toiletry bag, and he has to set the bag in the sink to root around between the tiny cases and pencils and tubes, and just as he finds the silver flacon, he notices a piece of flat white plastic that doesn’t look like anything else in the bag. He lifts it out. It looks familiar, but what is it? He rolls it between his fingers. And then, all at once, to his horror, he understands what he’s holding. A pregnancy test. Two small pink lines side by side indicate that the test is positive. There’s no doubt about it. Positive. He shakes it. Stares numbly at it. Then he drops it as if it were poisonous.