Rock, Paper, Scissors Read online

  “We’ll go out afterward and have some champagne, just you and me. We’ll celebrate when it’s over,” she calls out on her way to the kitchen. Slap, slap, the soles of her bare feet against the wooden floor. Water running in the sink. She’s rinsing the plates, no doubt. Thomas opens the window and lights a cigarette. He leans across the cornice and blows smoke into the cold, damp night air.

  Patricia returns to the living room. She stops, preparing to say something, but hesitates. Instead she says, “Want me to put my dress back on?”

  He turns toward her, making sure the hand holding the cigarette remains outside. “You don’t need to. I’d be fine if you just took your clothes off.” She regards him solemnly. Then she smiles and begins to undress. He doesn’t have any desire for this at all, but now there’s no way back. So ridiculously compliant of him, just because he felt guilty for coming home late, for smoking indoors when he’s agreed not to, for not making dinner for her, for not talking with her. For coming home drunk like a loser. Now she’s naked and standing in the center of the room, her fair skin almost golden in the half-light of the reading lamp. He looks at her hips, her pubic hair, her smooth thighs. He looks at her belly, a little distended. Her breasts and her long arms, her slender throat. Her skin is slightly wrinkled right above her knees. Her eyes are so black. He takes a deep drag of his cigarette, then tosses it away. He thinks of Annie’s big ass and quickly begins to remove his pants—he needs to be fast now, when, miraculously, he’s erect—and soon he’s spinning Patricia around and draping her over the sofa. He gets on his knees behind her and eases into her, his eyes closed; she gives herself to him, she’s soft, he pulls her close, and just when he’s about to come everything grinds to a halt. He notices a fly on the wall and wonders what it’s doing alive this time of year, then images of his father’s apartment rush through his mind, the bunk beds, the smell, it nauseates him, he draws himself out of her, lies on his back on the floor, turns his head away when he hears Patricia sit beside him, sure that she’s either eyeing him worriedly or accusingly. Soon he hears her stand and go to the toilet. He feels his spine against the floor, the pain. He’s tall and thin and bony. His shirt curls up along the hem. He’s still wearing his socks. But a little while later, after they’ve gone to bed, she does everything she can to be good to him, patiently and expertly, so expertly that even though he doesn’t feel up to it or want to, she succeeds; she knows his body, knows precisely which stimulations arouse him, and he gives in at last. He’s relieved that it feels good to enter her. She makes faint, delicate noises, and he sees her quivering eyelids. When he finally comes, with enormous relief and oddly jarring grunts, her eyes are radiant now, her gaze fixed and sated. She removes a stray lock of hair from her mouth, tucks the duvet around him, and turns out the light. Then they fall asleep.

  On Saturday morning Thomas wakes early, his heart thumping, stressed, uneasy. It’s 6:00 A.M., still dark outside. Patricia sleeps with a hand on her belly, and the bed smells like old man. He rolls over, tries to get his pulse under control. Can’t. He goes to the bathroom, drinks water. Then back to bed. Falling asleep seems impossible, yet he must’ve slept, because it’s suddenly light outside, and he’s dreamt, and now it’s 9:30. Patricia’s up, and his telephone beeps with a text message. Drunk with sleep, he reads, “you need to help me, the toaster doesn’t work, j.” For God’s sake, she’s got to stop this now. Instantly, he’s pissed. Feeling the tension in his neck, he kicks off the duvet. “stop it,” he writes. “aren’t you sweet, thanks a lot,” Jenny replies. He curses under his breath and steps into the shower. He pulls on pants and a sweater, clean socks, running shoes. In the kitchen Patricia sits swaddled in her duvet, reading the newspaper. She drinks coffee. She’s bought bread and butter at the bakery. There’s also juice. “Good morning, honey,” she says, sliding over so that he can sit on the bench. She’s done the dishes. A half-empty bottle of beer rests on the kitchen table, and she’s put the food containers in a garbage bag and swept the floor. But she didn’t use the dustpan: dust and crumbs are heaped in a little pile in the corner, near the sink. Thomas pours coffee and butters his bread. Jenny texts, “knew I could count on you.” He falls for it every time. She feigns helplessness and insinuates that he doesn’t care about her, and so he comes leaping to her aid after all, motivated by a guilt he has no reason to feel. But not this time, hell no. “fine,” he responds, skidding his cellphone across the table. “What’s going on?” Patricia asks, looking at him. “Nothing. It’s just Jenny. She’s obsessed with the stupid toaster.”

  “Toaster?”

  “I can’t explain it. And it’s boring! Ridiculous. She’s trying to manipulate me, as usual. I guarantee she’s bored. Alice is off with her new boyfriend all the time, she says, and Jenny just sits staring at the wall.” He hears how hotheaded he sounds, how loudly he’s talking. Already he regrets it, but he can’t help himself now.

  “She’s working, though, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, but when she’s not working. She works the late shift. All she does is eat, all day. And stare. That fatty.” Thomas slams his cup on the table. “I’m going for a walk.” Patricia looks at him, surprised, then returns to her newspaper with a shake of her head. He’s almost never angry. Now he’s boiling with rage. He takes the stairs down from the sixth floor, tramping hard on the steps, pounding his fist on the elevator at every level. Luckily he left his cellphone back in the kitchen, otherwise he would’ve called and given her an earful. The temperature outside is colder than yesterday, the wind’s blowing from the west. A plastic bag dances in the gusts. He should’ve worn a jacket. He fishes his cigarettes from his pocket and finally gets one lit after several attempts. Fucking wind. Maybe the door of his father’s apartment was busted a long time ago. Maybe it was just some junkies, like Maloney suggested, who’d stolen the silverware and a few pieces of furniture, or some drunken second-hand shop dealer, or some boys, or maybe all of the above in several rounds. Maybe it really was some kid throwing an apple core through the door on his way down the stairs. But it was in the living room. Thomas turns a corner and the wind lashes his face. The park on the other side of the street seems gloomy in this gray weather. An old woman with two small dogs is practically flying through the air. A band of youths hang around the benches at the park entrance. Farther down the street there’s an ambulance, and the EMTs are maneuvering a stretcher into the vehicle. His rage dissipates once he’s trudged around the block. Yet he still has no desire to go upstairs to Patricia. He decides to go grocery shopping. The supermarket is filled with families chugging around with large carts and piling them with items. There’s a line at every register. The families with children appear to be buying groceries for the entire week: milk, bread, frozen foods, cereal, huge packages of toilet paper. Thomas removes products from the shelves, but the entire time his ears ring with a high-pitched note of irritation. And when he puts his items onto the belt—goat cheese, red onions, crackers, sparkling water, and a whole bunch more—he suddenly stops. Every single one of these people will die. Every single person, no matter how old they are. The ones babbling cheerfully, clowning around, having a good time, arguing and talking, or lonely or hunted or sad or happy or relieved—even plain joyful—they will all die. Maybe soon. They’ll lie like wax figures in some morgue. Their insides and their flesh will swell and rot, bacteria will explode inside their bodies and make them stink like dead cows in 95-degree heat. He looks at a dark-skinned, middle-aged woman behind him, at the young blond man at the register, at a grandfather holding his small grandson’s hand. They’ll all be disgusting corpses. Maybe very soon. The grandfather actually looks like someone who might kick the bucket any day. The kid could run in front of a car. The woman could have a terminal illness without knowing it. Him too. Even him. Maybe he’s got cancer. He slides his card through the machine and grabs his bags. He has a headache, a hangover, and stiff legs. The glass door glides open and nudges him back onto the street with a puff of warm air. Son of a
bitch. Their father lay with his eyes closed, his dark hair combed back; one of the guards had found him, dead as a doornail on the floor. Heart attack. A white sheet covered his body. When they removed it, he was wearing prison garb. “Yes, that’s him,” Jenny had said, though no one had asked them to identify the body. She took a step back and squeezed Thomas’s arm. He felt nothing but loathing. There he lay, a corpse, already pallid and stiff. He recognized with a cool indifference some of his own features: Yup, that’s how I look, too. It was as if their father resembled a boy or a young man, and yet didn’t. His features were smooth, wrinkle-free. The dome of his forehead, his jutted chin, his broad mouth, his thick lips. His face expressed nothing. It was clear that he was no longer a human being. Yet it was unmistakably him. The body, a form for the life that had been inside him, like a mold one lifts a cake out of. The cake had been eaten. Their father’s big hands were crossed over his abdomen; they’d probably struggled to set them just so, or maybe they’d hurried, as soon as he’d been declared dead by the prison doctor. With a sudden tenderness, Thomas imagined several female officers with keys and pistols in their belts standing over the deceased, washing his ears, cleaning his nails. Arranging him, getting him ready. But it was the nurses who’d fixed him up. Those hands unnerved him; they were the same ones that had filled so much of his childhood. The hands he and Jenny had kept a close watch on, the entire time, those fast, unpredictable hands. Their father wore the ring with the black square on his little finger. He’d inherited it from his big brother, who’d been in the foreign legion and died when he was twenty-six, and he’d always promised Thomas that it would be his some day. “When the time comes, you’ll get the ring, Thomas. Before my brother got it, it was my father’s. When I die, it’ll be yours. And your son will have it after you.”

  “But you can’t die,” he’d said, anxious. He was seven years old.

  Their father had laughed out loud. “Ha! I’m not planning on it!”

  Thomas wanted nothing to do with the ring. They must’ve forgotten to remove it when they prepared his body. Jenny squeezed his arm. “He looks so different,” she whispered. She’d visited him at the prison, so she must’ve known. He hadn’t seen his father’s face in many years. Outside it was cold, but the western sky was soft pink, golden. The bushes shivered when they walked toward the road. Thomas had taken the package containing his father’s possessions from the cell; they’d just handed it to him, without asking whether he wanted it or not. He could have chucked the whole thing in the garbage can on the way home, but the package now lay at the bottom of the bedroom closet, on top of his shoes. He’d first realized he had it when he got home. Later he’d opened it and found the pathetic dirty magazines, the notebook with telephone numbers sloppily scratched in, and the watch with the worn leather strap—which the old man had owned for as long as Thomas could remember. Every time he raised his arm to smack him or Jenny, or just raised his arm threateningly, pretending he was going to hit them—which was almost worse than the punch itself—he’d seen the reflection of light on the face of the watch and tried to tell what time it was. As a way of shielding himself. Like whistling when you were being beaten. Or reciting a verse in your head when you were being yelled at by the teacher, in front of everyone. Later he sang pop songs to himself, but around his sixteenth birthday nothing worked anymore, and so he began to fight back. Though he was taller and bigger than his father by the last year he lived with him, his father was almost always superior, except the one incredible time when Thomas had managed to haul him down to the floor and sit on his chest staring directly into his eyes, hissing: You will never hit me again, you bastard. He was agitated by so many emotions that he nearly lost his breath. As well as a strong desire to cling to his father’s body, to feel his arms around him: tears, love. Their father had only smiled and shook his head, clucking his tongue. And Thomas stood and walked to his room. The next day he ran away from home.

  Wind rips at the enormous white tarpaulins covering the façade of the adjacent building. He still has no desire to return to Patricia, but he can’t stay out here. A woman opens a window on the second floor. He meets her glance for a moment, then her face disappears behind a checkered cloth that she shakes out vigorously. Crumbs and fluff billow in the air like snow. He takes the elevator up and carries the grocery bags into the apartment. The bathroom door opens, and Patricia exits with a towel around her head. “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “Every time you walk through that door you say ‘I’m sorry’.”

  “I know,” he says.

  “Did you go to the store?”

  “Just picked up a few things.” He turns and grabs the bags and walks down the hall. He gives her a quick peck on the cheek as he passes by; she smells like fresh laundry, but there’s also this hint of earthiness, of wet soil, which he always finds off-putting. He sets the bags on the kitchen table and checks his cellphone. Jenny has called several times. She’s sent three text messages: “please can’t you help me?” and “I’ll take it to the shop then” and a half-hour ago: “aunt k called.” He hears Patricia setting up the ironing board in the living room. With the phone in his hand he opens the bedroom door. It’s cool and dark in here. He sits on the bed. His clock ticks faintly. He doesn’t want to call. After a short time, Jenny answers, out of breath: “What do you want?”

  “What’s up with the toaster?”

  “It doesn’t work.”

  “Why are you obsessed with it? Why do you want that old piece of shit? Why are you harassing me?”

  “Am I harassing YOU? I think you’re harassing me. Why won’t you help me?”

  “Don’t waste your money taking it to the shop, that’s crazy. Don’t waste your money on him.”

  “He’s dead. It’s my toaster now.”

  “Don’t you hear how ridiculous that sounds, Jenny?”

  “Should I hang up now? Stop it, Alice, I’m on the phone!”

  “What’s she doing?”

  “Badgering me for money. Won’t you just look at it?”

  “Only if you tell me why you’re so obsessed with it. Why didn’t you take a painting instead? Or Grandma’s dishes?”

  Patricia stands in the doorway, a stack of creased shirts over her arm, and looks at him sharply. Then she leaves.

  “Because,” Jenny sighs, her voice softening. “That is, because, you know, it meant a lot to me when I was a child. When we made toast. We lived on bread, Thomas. It was magical to me, it could make plain things interesting. Toasted bread was fragrant and tasty, especially if we had butter or jam. I know it’s nostalgic. But it’s a good memory. For me, at least.”

  Now it’s Thomas who sighs. “A good memory. Do you really mean that?”

  “Yes.” Long silence. “I’d like to hold onto that good memory.”

  “It sounds like you’ve taken a course on positive thinking.”

  “I haven’t. I’m just thinking that I might as well make the best out of it.”

  “Out of what?”

  “Well—I don’t know. Everything.” They fall silent. He hears Alice clattering in the background, and a television. Jenny clears her throat.

  “Okay,” he says. “I’ll look at it. Will you be home in an hour and a half?”

  “I’m always home, Thomas.”

  They hang up, and he sits staring at his shoes. Then he stands and walks back to the kitchen. While he puts his groceries in the fridge, Patricia comes in. She says, “You seem very strange.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because that’s what I think.”

  “Are you trying to start a fight?”

  “No.”

  “Have I done something wrong?”

  “No. But you seem strange.”

  “Oh, Patricia. Stop. I’m just not quite myself.”

  “How so?”

  “Restless. Odd.”

  “What do you mean ‘odd’?”

  “Claustrophobic.”

  “Claustrophobic? Do you
want to talk about it?”

  He looks out the window. “I’m going over to Jenny’s soon. I promised I’d help her with something.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I won’t be long. We can see a film later.”

  “Don’t you want me to come with you?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Well, then I’m coming with you.” Patricia gives him a look, challenging him to tell her she can’t come. Her eyes bore into his. “It’s been a long time since I saw Jenny and Alice.” Thomas glances at the floor. And so Patricia gives up her ironing and goes with him. The sky’s blue, and the green river water reflects the treetops and the silhouettes of houses. The train screeches slowly southward, out toward the suburbs that form a broad and frayed ring around the city: public housing high-rises and wide swaths of rundown row houses, body shops, storage sheds. Huge factories surrounded by barbed-wire fence, smaller industrial plants. A junkyard here, a warehouse with a big wind-swept parking lot there, a lumberyard, then more of the tall cement towers where people are crammed together beneath ceilings thick with asbestos, the best of which have access to a boxlike balcony. Though she’s now on a sugar-free diet, Patricia has bought an apple pie. She squeezes his hand. They walk through the streets where young men hang out in front of delis and fast food joints. A whiff of beer and smoke wafts from the bars; they pass the shopping plaza with the movie theater, where people stand in line at the ticket window. A gaggle of women scowl at Patricia when she stops to pick up her silk scarf. The elevator rocks threateningly. It snails its way up to the eighth floor. It smells of piss here. They look at each other the entire way up, but say nothing. Alice opens the door. She seems surprised. “Look who’s here!” But she gives Patricia a hug and lets them enter. For a moment Thomas thinks: She looks like Mom. But that’s probably just his imagination. Alice is small and slender and has a prominent nose and a pretty, curvy Cupid’s bow like her father. Her golden-brown skin is smooth and fine, her dark eyes almond-shaped and a little crooked. She’s shaved her head. A snake tattoo threads its way up over her neck to the back of her head. She’s only just turned eighteen. Dropped out of school, unemployed. For a moment, Thomas recalls her sitting on his lap when she was little. The way she’d held onto his neck when he carried her. Now she steps to the side so he can enter the apartment. And here comes Jenny, smiling, from the kitchen; she looks hot and sweaty, her lipstick seeping into the small wrinkles near her mouth. She sees Patricia and says: “You’re here?” Patricia smiles and hands her the pie. The kitchen is a mess, and a large pot simmers on the stove. “How nice. I was just making some soup.” Jenny washes her hands. “I thought Thomas might want some lunch, but maybe you’ve already eaten?” Thomas leans against the fridge. One can see a long way from the kitchen window: the forest in the distance, high-rises, other parts of the city. When he leans forward and glances down at the area between the buildings, his stomach lurches: networks of trails, a playground, parked cars. A few children run across one of the fields wielding a kite on a string. It swirls in the air and flutters back and forth in the wind, and it looks as though they can barely hold onto it. He turns. The soup is sludgy and gray, and smells nauseatingly of cabbage and pork fat. Patricia converses politely, Thomas watches a flock of geese. Or are they ducks? He goes to the living room, where the curtains are drawn. Darkness, low furniture, a whole lot of embroidered pillows on the sofa. On the wall a number of faded drawings from when Alice was a kid, signed with large, clumsy letters. For the world’s best mom. Congratulations Mom. A reproduction of a picture of a deer standing beside a lake. A framed photograph of himself and Jenny. In it, they are young and standing under a tall tree. Jenny’s skinny. She’s wearing a white dress and her thick reddish-blonde hair spills to her waist. He just looks like an overgrown boy. They hug each other, smiling. Their feet are bare. Maloney was the one who’d taken the photograph. Light flickers between the green leaves. A walk in the woods. A very long time ago. It smells stuffy in the apartment, and he wants to open a window, but marches down the hallway toward the bedrooms instead. The shelving units have seen better days. A bunch of bric-a-brac, some books, washed-out bed linens and towels in untidy stacks. A door is ajar. Alice is lying on her bed with a man. Thomas hurries back to the kitchen. Jenny has ladled up the soup, there’s no way out of it now. “Alice and Ernesto! Lunch!” Jenny shouts. “Is that her boyfriend?” Patricia whispers. Jenny nods, and rolls her eyes and shakes her head resignedly. They sit around the little camping table. Jenny passes out pink napkins adorned with teddy bears. Thomas grinds peppercorns over his bowl. Unidentifiable chunks of fatty gray meat bob around in the murky liquid. He lifts a piece of overcooked cabbage with his spoon and lets it fall back into the soup. What is she thinking, serving such dog food. She knows that he—that he can’t. That he has better taste than this. That this is . . . The kids drift in. This Ernesto is only a head taller than Alice, but he’s broad and muscular. His hair is short, black, and shiny. He greets them politely, introduces himself. He must be older than Alice, Thomas thinks, feeling discomfort, both at the soup—which actually tastes like food served at an institution—and Ernesto’s hairy hands, one firmly planted on Alice’s thigh as he shovels soup into his mouth with the other. Alice stirs her spoon around her bowl and picks at a piece of bread. “How are you doing?” Patricia tries. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you.” “Really good,” Alice says. “Are you still looking for work?” Alice nods disinterestedly. “No, you’re not,” Jenny says. Ernesto glances up. Alert. Solid jawline. “And how about you?” Patricia regards him with interest. “Are you a student? Are you in college?” All of a sudden she sounds rather strident. He smiles curtly. “Hardly,” he says in a calm, friendly voice. “I’m a musician.” “Really, how exciting—are you a singer?” He shakes his head. “Drummer.” So that’s why he’s so muscular, Thomas thinks, clearing his throat. “Ernesto plays in a really cool band,” Alice explains, pushing her bowl aside. “They’re super awesome. You can listen to them online, if you want. They’re called El Pozo.” She stands. “They just sit around, doing nothing at all,” grumbles Jenny. “You don’t do a thing. I don’t know how you can stand it.”