Rock, Paper, Scissors

by Naja Marie Aidt

  “Who says that?”

  “I do.”

  Smiling, she shakes her head. “There’s no way I’m going to be squeezed into some dress, I’ll have you know.”

  “Don’t say anything to your mom about Patricia and me, okay? I want to tell her myself.”

  “Of course.” She leaves. It looks like a thunderstorm is on its way. The air is oppressive and dense. Thomas drinks his third beer. He’s the only customer in the restaurant, and the waitress is cleaning up. Though it’s still pretty early, he needs to go home soon; if not he’ll end up sloshed, and that’s no good. He’s still a little under the weather following his bout with heat exhaustion. And Luke lied, Thomas is sure of it. Something’s going on, he just can’t tell what. But he simply can’t envision Patricia dating him. And what about all that money he was talking about? Or the savings he’s got, the plan? If Luke has been with Patricia, he’ll kill him. Thomas examines his hands. Luke, bent over Patricia. His pink tongue slithering into her mouth. He clenches his fists. I’ll kill him. Still, Luke’s presence clings to him like a yearning he doesn’t understand. He feels his cock rising insistently against the crotch of his pants. He pays the bill and leaves.

  The cat hisses at him when he returns home. It’s standing at the far end of the hallway staring at him with its yellow eyes, its back arched, its tail stiff and bushy. “Hey! Chill the fuck out,” Thomas says. Patricia apparently fed it, but it hasn’t touched the food. The litter box has also been changed. She damn well better take that fucking cat, he can’t stand the sight of it. Now it’s sitting in the windowsill watching the sky. The apartment is quiet in a way Thomas doesn’t like. Unlived-in. He’s alone here. He’ll be alone from now on. When he gets home at night, everything will be as he left it in the morning. There will be no more surprises. There will only be what I do or don’t do, he thinks miserably. Only my own fucking mood. In the living room the boxes are sealed, stacked, and shoved against the wall near the hall. He peers in the bedroom closets. She’s taken all her clothes. Her creams and makeup are also gone. And many of the pots, pans, and kitchen utensils. She must have been pretty efficient. Maybe she had help. Not Luke, because he was painting all day, Thomas thinks, almost relieved. He sees how she tried to disassemble the sofa, the open tool box is on the floor beside it, but evidently she couldn’t figure out how to do it. If the store resembled an empty room calmly awaiting, then the apartment is the exact opposite: Something that’s been ripped up, consumed, something sad, drained of life. Standing in the center of it all, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Then Jenny calls.

  “I got a strange letter in the mail today,” she says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s no sender, and the letter has only five words.”

  Thomas’s heart pounds, and he slumps onto the coffee table. “What does it say?”

  “It says: ‘Say hello to your brother.’”

  “Say hello to your brother?” he whispers. “Nothing else? Is it handwritten?”

  “No. It looks like a print-out or a copy. According to the postal stamp it was sent from somewhere here in the city. Isn’t that odd?”

  Thomas says nothing.

  “Are you there, Thomas?”

  “Maybe it’s from Frank and those guys.”

  “Frank?” snorts Jenny. “Why would he send a letter like this? To me? He can just write directly to you, if he wants anything from you. And why would he? What does this mean? Say hello to your brother. It doesn’t make any sense. Does it? Well anyway, I’ll give it to Maloney tomorrow, so you can see it.”

  A pause. Their breaths on each end of the telephone.

  “How’s it going otherwise?” Thomas asks in a small voice.

  “Great! Did I tell you that we’re moving in together? We’ve toured a row house in the district behind the cemetery. There’s even a backyard. With an old pear tree.”

  “Congratulations.” Thomas swallows.

  “How are you two doing? Is Patricia feeling better?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s so awful, Thomas. I can’t even imagine it. Tell her I said hello. We could all go out some night, if she wants. Tell her. We could go to Luciano’s.”

  Jenny’s voice is light and mild; she says goodbye and prepares to hang up. “See you on Tuesday,” she says, no trace of instability of any kind, and he hears someone snap on the television in the background, must be Maloney. Thomas is rigid with fear. He sags on the coffee table, unable to move. It’s clear to him that the break-in, the rape, and now the letter to Jenny are somehow connected. It’s got something to do with the money, with him. Someone’s warning him. Him, Thomas, and no one else. Someone knows I’ve got the money. He listens to his own rapid intake of breath pumping like a little locomotive run amok, barreling down the tracks without a conductor. Will they ambush him, kill him? And who the hell is it? Once again he recalls Frank jabbering about his dry cleaning, which he claimed he’d left at his father’s apartment. As if he’d ever dry-cleaned anything in his life, the way he dresses: wrinkled shirts, faded jackets. There’s still a lot of money left in the microwave. He has to get rid of it. But no. It won’t make any difference. Feeling completely powerless, he gets to his feet, stumbles into the bedroom, and throws himself on the bed. It smells nasty and stuffy. He tosses and turns. But they can easily bust the lock. He gets up and latches the security chain on the door. He nearly trips over the cat on his way back to bed—it’s lying across the doorway in the darkness—and it hisses loudly when he whacks it with his foot.

  Back in bed and now it’s pouring outside, rain lashing against the window panes. He can’t stay still, everything’s spinning in circles. Thunder rumbles, a lightning bolt flashes and lights up the room, and soon a powerful boom jerks him upright in bed, startled. He sneaks around the apartment, turning on lights, smoking, drinking whiskey, listening to the rain, keeping an eye on the door, staring out the windows, trying to watch TV, then back out to check on the door again. And gradually the stormy weather passes, following another short, powerful burst, and then the night falls silent. Close to 3:00 A.M. he finally falls into a light and dreamless sleep, which lasts until quarter past 6:00. He thinks something wakes him. A noise. He lies completely still in bed, listening. But there’s nothing. Unease fills him. He practically leaps out of bed and, once again, walks around the apartment, but there’s no one. He takes a shower, paranoid that someone will force his way in, like in a film, a shower curtain smeared red with blood, a singing, unsuspecting person enjoying a shower, and then: dead and maimed. He listens carefully, shuts off the water, listens again, turns on the water, hurries to rinse shampoo from his hair, stands silently on the tiled floor, cautiously opens the door. Walks into the living room, the kitchen. But it’s only him and the cat. Outside the sky is gray. The rooftops are dark after the night’s rain.

  At 7:00 A.M. Patricia pushes her key in the lock. The chain’s still attached. She eyes him through the slit in the door.

  “Thomas? Let me in.”

  She stands in the doorway. Her hair is pinned up, and beneath her thin blouse her breasts are hefty, enormous. He feels an urge to embrace her, to hold her close to him, to whisper in her hair. But then he sees the tightness in her face, the rejecting, irritated eyes.

  “Why did you have the chain on?”

  “Why are you here so early? Can’t you show a little consideration?”

  “I want to do something before I go to work.” She gestures with her arm. “What’s that thing on the door?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This thing. You can’t see it from there.”

  He walks out onto the landing. She pushes the door halfway in. There’s a mark carved into the wood right above the knob. The exact same one that’s on the countertop at the store. The currency symbol. Four lines radiating from a circle. Blood rushes to his head, makes him dizzy.

  “What is it?” Patricia asks.

  “No clue,” he says.
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  She enters the apartment. He stares at the symbol. His pulse thumps in his ears. It happened last night. Someone was here last night. Or this morning. Maybe whoever did it’s on the floor above right now. Thomas darts upstairs. There’s no one. Nor is anyone one flight below. He hurries back, closes the door, and methodically locks it. Stands listening. Not a sound. He heads to the kitchen, to Patricia. “I can’t have that cat anymore, it’s driving me crazy,” he says breathlessly.

  She scoops up the animal and caresses it. Speaks to it in a low voice, lovingly. “Little kitty. Didn’t you eat your food?” And to Thomas: “I can’t take it to Tina and Jules’s. It’s too much.”

  “Too much! It’s goddamn too much for me, all this. Then you’ll have to move to a hotel or home to your mother.”

  “My mother’s in a nursing home four hundred miles away, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “I’m kicking it out! I’ll dump it on the street if you don’t take it with you. I mean it, Patricia.”

  She steadies her gaze on him. “You’ve become such an unlikeable person, Thomas.” Then she puts the cat back on the floor and begins removing pots from the cabinet. She turns on the radio and blasts the volume. He puts on his shoes and leaves. He stops to scowl at the symbol carved into the dark wood. Someone has been here, someone stood right here and scratched into his door, while he was on the other side, so close. His fingertips tingle and prickle. He stumbles down the stairs. Sobs uncontrollably for a moment, filled with grief, anger, confusion. And then this powerful fear above all else. He’s afraid of what’s coming for him. He’s certain now: Someone’s trailing him closely. The gutter is rimmed with rainwater; it’s a little cooler than in previous days, but the humidity’s still extremely high. Feverishly he paws around in his pockets. His cigarette pack is empty. He buys a croissant, but doesn’t eat much of it. There are few people on the street this morning, and it’s quiet and gray. Only a little past 7:30. He can’t shake the feeling that someone’s watching him. But all he hears are his own steps. Unlike on the street, the train teems with people. He squeezes into the hot, swarming mass formed by the cluster of bodies, and he imagines someone stabbing him with a knife as he stands here. It would be so easy, so soundless; the perpetrator could hop off at the next station unnoticed, and disappear. He can easily imagine the young man with the stubbled face doing it, the way he leans against Thomas with all his weight each time the train rounds a curve. Or the older man over there, with his pigtail and buggy eyes, who every now and then glances at Thomas. It could be a woman, could be the girl dressed all in black with the baseball cap. He’s practically waiting to be assassinated. His saliva has apparently dried up; he swallows and swallows, but it doesn’t help. Four stations before his actual stop he squeezes onto the platform, right before the door closes. He dashes up the stairwell. Almost in surprise, he realizes that no one’s following him. He trots the rest of the way and locks himself in the store. He tries to do his usual morning routines, his hands trembling. He sits down in the office, it’s a quarter past 8:00. At last Maloney arrives, and drops the letter on the desk. It’s a printout. Say hello to your brother. Even the text on the envelope is printed. It’s an average, cheap envelope, standard size. Copy paper. Thomas holds the letter up to the light. Just as his sister had said, it was sent from here in the city, from the central post office. “Can’t you take it to the police? Talk with that guy, what was his name again? The one who came here when we had the break-in? What if this has something to do with that? You never know.”

  “Kagoshima.”

  “Yeah, him. Go over to the station, Thomas. They need to see this, it’s too damn weird.” Thomas doesn’t respond. “If you don’t, I will,” Maloney adds.

  “I’ll go over there in a bit.”

  “You want coffee?”

  Soon the new coffee automat’s making slurping, clicking sounds, and Maloney returns with two paper cups. He sits down. “Looks like you didn’t sleep a wink all night.”

  “I haven’t.”

  Maloney gives him a worried look. “You’ve certainly got a lot to contend with right now. Have you talked to Patricia?”

  “Nope. Why should I?”

  “Break-in, rape, break up, what the hell’s going on?” Maloney shakes his head regretfully. Thomas regards him. There’s something buoyant and fresh about Maloney despite his girth; he’s clean-shaven, wearing a spotless, light-blue shirt. Which even seems to be ironed. “And now this letter. What’s going on?” Thomas picks up the letter and leaves the store. The police station isn’t far away. But of course he goes in the opposite direction. He took a whole lot of money that should’ve gone to someone else. He can’t tell Kagoshima that, for Christ’s sake. He’s backed himself into a corner. It tears at his flesh, an urge to flee, a stab in his chest. He walks around the block and sits on a bench, but he can’t stay still; he stands, has to smoke, he trudges down to the water—which looks so ungodly disheartening today, cloudy and motionless, hardly a ripple on the surface. He returns to Maloney. “They’re looking into it,” he lies, “but from what they can see there are no fingerprints.” The floor guy calls, wants to settle the bill. The day passes, and mostly Thomas mopes, cursing himself, thinking angrily and vulnerably about Patricia, and then again: But the whole thing’s my fault, the rape, his fault, and it’s too late now, he can’t get her back, he can’t get rid of the money, and it’s so obvious that he’ll soon get a visit that won’t exactly be a social call, and what can they do now other than punish him brutally? All he wants is to go back to the hospital and lie there, in that green hollow, safe and sound, gliding in and out of sleep like a newborn, someone looking in on him, fluffing his pillows, adjusting his blanket, taking care of him; the nights will be long and peaceful, no one will look for him there, no one will find him, he’ll be among strangers, he’ll be a stranger himself—that’s the only relief he can imagine. “Maybe you should go on a trip,” Maloney says as they’re closing up. “Maybe as early as next week, after we’ve opened The Other. Go to the casino or something. Get your energy back. You look like a ghost.”

  “That’s exactly what I am,” Thomas mumbles, turning off the chandelier. “Hey,” Maloney says. “The casino is the perfect solution! There’s alcohol, hot babes. You’ll forget all your troubles at the gaming tables. Unless of course you lose everything, but fucking hell, it’s fun. Do it, man!”

  “Jenny tells me you’re moving in together?”

  “Yeah,” Maloney smiles. “She fell in love with this place with a pear tree. Did she tell you that?”

  Thomas wants to tell him that he’s happy for them, that it’s courageous of Maloney to finally move in with a woman, that it’s fantastic, but he can’t muster the energy. He’s already on his way down the street when Maloney finishes locking the door. “Where are you going?” Maloney calls out. “Don’t you want to get a beer?” “I gotta run,” Thomas calls back, but his shout is nothing more than a peculiar whistling, and when Thomas turns the corner he begins to sprint. He runs, faster and faster, he sprints through the city, sweaty, out of breath, red-faced, he runs as if fleeing from a huge beast that could rake its massive claws through him at any time and flay him open, slicing straight through the vulnerable flesh, tossing him around as if he were a child’s forgotten toy, trampling him into the dust, splitting him apart, until he’s utterly shapeless, nothing more than a bloody pulp, a black mush shorn from skeleton, and the skeleton is easily yanked apart, crushed, destroyed.

  Thomas goes to a bar. He orders vodka. He sways on his feet, and every time he sips he thinks of Celan’s death fugue: “Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown / we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night / we drink it and we drink it / we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined . . .” And he keeps drinking. He considers war and persecution and extermination: to be forced to dig your own grave. The Holocaust, mass-extinction, the black brands of history. He thinks of how everyone bears this brand. With frightening cla
rity he sees that it’s not just the exterminated who bear it, but the exterminator as well. Always. He shivers, trembling. To carry it with you. And the dead, who are gone, who haunt the living. Dead father, dead mother. He thinks of his own life, a suddenly splintered life, and he can’t determine when it began to splinter and change shape, to lose its substance and direction. He thinks of his own life as a war, he thinks of his unknown persecutors. But after the fourth glass the alcohol gives him a merciful gift, swaddles him in a robe of unfeeling, he’s pain-free now, he pinches himself on the arm, not even that hurts, he sighs loudly, relieved, drains his glass and looks around the bar, and there, in a dark corner, he thinks he recognizes a familiar face, lit in the glow of a nicotine-yellow basket lamp. Very slowly the person raises a cigarette to his mouth, and then he lifts his face. His eyes are glazed. He’s on more than alcohol. Looks straight through Thomas with his wasted heroin stare. And now it occurs to Thomas who this person is, it’s Mingo, the man at Ernesto’s concert who was tripping on acid, the man with the street like a gorge, the one with the girl sitting on his lap. Now he remembers what Alice told him: that it was the “exact opposite,” apparently the girl is selling drugs, not Mingo. He’s sitting by himself, drinking a cola. Slumping on the bench with the lit cigarette dangling between his fingers. He seems to have forgotten it. With his hair plastered on his head, he looks far more wretched and skinny than the last time Thomas saw him. And there’s the girl exiting the bathroom. What was her name? Anna? No. Andrea. She says something to Mingo, slides onto the bench beside him, nudges him to get his attention, nudges him again, hard, an elbow to his side, and then, very slowly, he fishes something or other from his pants packet and gives it to her. She drops it into her bag, gets up, and leaves without a word. But Thomas can see her standing on the sidewalk. She seems to be texting someone. On his bench, Mingo appears stoned, his head dipping against his chest. He drops his cigarette on the floor. A couple seated at a neighboring table turn to him, irritated, and the man extends his leg and stamps out the cigarette with his foot. Thomas orders another vodka. Andrea’s talking on her cellphone now, pacing back and forth. And when Mingo soon threatens to slide all the way down—he’s sagging at an odd angle between the bench and the floor, twisted around with one arm sticking straight up—the bartender kicks him out. Mingo tumbles onto the sidewalk. Andrea steps around him. And Thomas can’t see anymore. Maybe Mingo’s sitting down, or maybe he’s fallen. Thomas turns his back to the street. The bartender returns, shaking his head in consternation. “Fucking junkies,” he says. “I’m sick and tired of them.”