Rock, Paper, Scissors

by Naja Marie Aidt

  Maloney trudges back into the restaurant. Thomas stands helplessly staring at the traffic. Shortly afterward an empty taxi approaches, and soon he’s on his own street. She’s been with another man, he thinks, full of heavy, almost stunned grief; she has another man, I was right, I knew it, and now I’ve heard it. I’ve heard her having sex with another man. I’m not angry. I ought to be raging with jealousy, ready to pound her and her lover. He’s slack and amazed. There’s nothing between himself and the world, the temperature’s the same, everything’s merging. For the third time the driver asks Thomas to pay up. He’s impatient. Thomas hands him the money and climbs out of the cab. He fishes his keys from his pocket. He unlocks the door. He punches the elevator button, can’t deal with the stairs. He waits. The elevator—with its familiar whirr and clatter—rattles down the shaft. But there’s another noise now. Behind him. Whimpering, breathing. He turns, stares down the stairwell to the basement, where it’s pitch dark. Makes out some kind of bundle in the depths. The basement door is ajar. “Help me,” a voice whispers, very weakly. “Help.” It’s Patricia’s voice. The elevator comes to a halt with its little ding.

  He guides her toward the light. She’s naked below the waist. Her eyes see past him, an empty gaze, zombielike. He gathers her clothes and ushers her into the elevator. She’s pale as a corpse. When they reach the apartment, she goes directly to the bathroom and turns on the shower. “Who took your clothes off?” Thomas asks, grabbing hold of her. “You can’t take a shower, Patricia. You need to be examined.” She wriggles free of him and returns to the shower. He tugs her back and embraces her. She cries soundlessly. “I’m calling the police,” he says. He doesn’t know how to console her; he searches for the right words, but doesn’t find them—there are no words he can trust. Her entire body trembles, ice cold, in shock. Still this vacant stare. Abruptly she dashes to the sink and throws up. Afterward he gives her a bathrobe and holds her again. He asks, “Should I call the police, or do you want to wait?” She doesn’t want to wait. She washes her face in cold water and brushes her teeth. Scrubs her teeth for a long time. She plops down at the little table in the kitchen. He makes her a cup of tea and asks if she’s eaten. She hasn’t, but she doesn’t want anything. He regrets asking the question. “Did you know him?” he says carefully. She shakes her head. Shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t know. No. I don’t think so.” She looks at him. “I can’t be in my own body,” she says. “I want to shower.” She seems more calm and composed now. Two officers arrive thirty minutes later. Thomas has wrapped Patricia in a blanket and positioned her on the couch. He’s sent from the room while the officers talk to her. He jams his ear against the door and hears snatches of her incoherent account. She came home from work and was attacked from behind opening the door from the street. Everything happened so fast. A man shoved a towel in her mouth and hauled her into the basement. That’s where he raped her, on the concrete floor. She screamed, but no one came. She managed to call Thomas. But the man grabbed the cell phone from her hand and flung it. “He yanked at my hair. It hurt. Everything hurt. I screamed, but no one came, no one came. He . . .”

  “Yes,” one of the officers says.

  But Patricia says nothing more. A few minutes pass. Despite the heat, Thomas is freezing. His heart gallops like a wild horse behind his ribcage. Someone entered his girlfriend’s body. Was close to her, forced her. Someone sullied her, besmirched her, caused her pain. She’s been violated. It’s completely unreal. He squeezes his eyes shut. Now he hears Patricia speaking again. They ask her if she saw the perpetrator’s face. No, he was wearing some sort of black hood. She couldn’t see his face. “And he had gloves on, I could feel them.”

  “How old do you think he was? Could you tell?”

  “He wasn’t very old. He was . . . it was . . .”

  “Yes.”

  Thomas hears her crying again.

  “I don’t know!” she sobs peevishly. “I really don’t know! I couldn’t see his face!”

  Her tears subside.

  Long silence.

  “Did he threaten you?” one of the men asks.

  “Did he say anything. Did you hear his voice?”

  And a short time later: “He said absolutely nothing to you?”

  She’s probably shaking her head in response to these questions. Their voices are so low that Thomas can’t catch what’s being said. The two men exit the living room and tell him that he should drive her to the hospital. She needs to be examined for traces of DNA. In the meantime, they’d like to see where the rape occurred. They’d also like to take Patricia’s pants, panties, and shoes with them. “Do you have a car?” one of the officers asks. Thomas shakes his head.

  “Then we’ll call an ambulance.”

  She says very little during the short drive to the hospital. She stares out the window at the darkness. Once in a while her lip quivers. He holds her hand and doesn’t know what else to do. He wants to embrace her, to lie on top of her, to protect her, to warm her, but he’s afraid she’ll feel trapped, that she won’t be able to stand the physical proximity. The medics seem so solid, everything they do seems right, they make Patricia smile faintly, they inspire in her a sense of security. They don’t turn on their flashing lights, they drive slowly and calmly through the city, chatting reassuringly. Patricia doesn’t want to leave the ambulance. But the man who’d sat beside them persuades her, and he explains to Thomas where they need to go. They wait in a long, green hallway, the fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling juddering as if an entire colony of cockroaches has taken up residence inside them. Finally her name is called. It’s a female doctor who’ll examine her, thank God. She guides Patricia gently through a door. Thomas texts Maloney: “she was raped.” He writes the word raped, and it cuffs him upside the head like a baseball bat, and he gasps, as if only now does he understand what has happened. He pictures this masked monster pulling his girlfriend into the basement and having his way with her, he pictures his gloved hands holding her wrists, clutching her throat. What if he had killed her? He could have killed her. Maloney calls him up, shocked, quietly frightened, ashamed that he’d led Thomas to believe she’d voluntarily been with another man. “I’m so sorry, Thomas,” he practically whispers, “tell me if there’s anything I can do for you two.” Thomas requests that he look after Alice in the store, since he doesn’t figure he’ll be at work tomorrow. “I’ll call Jenny,” Maloney says.

  “No, don’t tell anyone. I don’t know if Patricia wants anyone to know.”

  And then he sits and waits. Time seems to stretch endlessly. But according to the clock on the wall, only twenty minutes have passed. Soon Patricia returns. She says nothing about the examination. She says nothing at all, and he doesn’t dare ask. At home she takes a long shower before they go to bed. Afterward her skin is red from the hot water; it looks as though she scrubbed herself with the nail brush. She doesn’t have many injuries, just a few scrapes and some bruising on her buttocks and the backs of her thighs, which she must have gotten when she was thrown down on the concrete floor. Before she crawls into bed, she pulls on stockings and a long-sleeved woolen jersey. She pops the sleeping pill the doctor gave her. She breathes rapidly, inhaling quick bursts of air. Then she falls asleep. Thomas, on the other hand, lies awake half the night, because he realizes in an instant—an instant that gashes time, burns itself into time like hell’s roaring flames—that the break-in at the store and the rape might be connected. The apple core in his father’s apartment, the slit armchair. All of it might have something to do with him, and the money in the microwave. Rigid with guilt and fear he lies breathless beside the sleeping Patricia. And he took what he wanted from her roughly at the museum, against her will. He held his hand over her mouth, forced himself into her. As if he were giving her a foretaste of what would happen to her tonight. As if he himself had incited violence against her body. As if the violence surrounds them now—he brought it into their lives. The ransacked store. The symbol on the countertop. Patricia�
�s beautiful face, stiff and empty. Her freezing cold body, exposed from the waist down. Someone had waited for her. Someone had planned it. Why else would you cover your head? Why else would you wear gloves? Or was it just a coincidence? Why didn’t he ask the police if a serial rapist was terrorizing the city? I hope there is, he thinks desperately, I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with me. He imagines the two assaults against Patricia, one of which he was responsible for. Here she’s sprawled across her desk on her stomach, trying to turn, biting his hand, and here she’s lying on the basement floor, on her back, a figure leaning over her, blocking her face from view. Holding Patricia’s wrists in an iron grip. The images are soundless and repetitive, an endless stream of images, two situations, time looping from one to the other: Patricia deprived of the opportunity to decide for herself. Deprived of the opportunity to say no. It’s unbearable. Thomas gets out of bed and wanders the apartment, restless and unhappy. The cat follows him with its eyes from its seat on the couch. Not until it’s almost morning does Thomas glide into a short, uneasy slumber, but Patricia wakes him at 6:00 A.M. The sleeping pill has worn off. She’s drenched in sweat. It’s at least eighty degrees in the bedroom; the sun is up.

  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 tab
le. 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.