He and Kate were facing each other, no more than a foot apart. She was close enough to see the microscopic blond glints of his whiskers, and the tiny brown specks mixed in with the blue of his eyes.
“It is the language, maybe?” he asked. “I know the vocabulary, but still I am not capable to work the language the way I want to. There is no special word for ‘you’ when it is you that I am speaking to. In English there is only one ‘you,’ and I have to say the same ‘you’ to you that I would say to a stranger; I cannot express my closeness. I am homesick in this country, but I am thinking I would be homesick in my own country now, also. I have no longer any home to go back to—no relatives, no position, and my friends have lived three years without me. There is no
place
for me. So I have to pretend I am fine here. I have to pretend everything is…how you say? Hunky-dory.”
Kate was reminded of her father’s confession weeks earlier, when he was telling her what a long haul it had been. Men were just subject to this belief that they should keep their miseries buried deep inside, it seemed, as if admitting to them would be shameful. She reached out and touched Pyotr’s arm, but he gave no sign he had noticed. “I bet you didn’t even have breakfast,” she told him. It was all she could think of to say. “That’s what it is! You’re starving. I’m going to fix you something.”
“I don’t want it,” he said.
In the church she had been thinking that maybe the reason he went ahead with the wedding regardless was that underneath, he…well, liked her, a little. But now he wasn’t even looking at her; he didn’t seem to care that she was standing there so close to him with her hand on his arm. “I just want mice back,” he said.
Kate dropped her hand.
“I would
like
that the thief would be Bunny,” he said. “Then she could tell us where are they.”
Kate said, “Believe me, Pyotr, it wasn’t Bunny. Bunny’s nothing but a copycat! She just has this little semi-crush or whatever it is on Edward Mintz and so when Edward said he was vegan…”
She paused. Pyotr was still not looking at her or even hearing her, probably. “Oh,” she said. “It was Edward.”
Then he did flick his eyes in her direction.
“Edward knows where the lab is,” she said. “He went to the lab with Bunny, that time she brought Father his lunch. He must have been standing right beside her when she punched in the lock combination.”
Pyotr had been holding the keys in his left hand, and now he gave them a sudden toss upward, caught them again, and walked out of the kitchen.
Kate said, “Pyotr?”
By the time she reached the landing, he was halfway down the first flight of stairs. “Where are you going?” she called over the railing. “Just wait till you’ve finished lunch and then call the detective, why don’t you. What do you think you’re doing? Can I come with you?”
But all she heard was the slapping sound of his flip-flops descending the stairs.
She should
make
him take her with him. She should run after him and fling herself into the car. It was hurt feelings, probably, that stopped her. Ever since the wedding he had been downright abusive, as if now that they were married he thought he could treat her however he liked. He hadn’t even noticed how helpful she had been about his stupid keys, or how she had offered so nicely to fix him something to eat.
She turned from the stairs and continued down the hall to the living room. She went over to one of the windows and peered at the street below. The VW was already pulling away from the curb.
In movies, women
were always flinging together elegant, impromptu meals from odds and ends in the fridge, but Kate didn’t see how she could do that with what was in Pyotr’s fridge. All it held was a jar of mayonnaise, a few cans of beer, a carton of eggs, and some very pale celery. Also a screwed-up bag from McDonald’s, which she didn’t bother investigating. The fruit bowl on the counter displayed a single speckled banana. “Miracle food,” she could hear Pyotr saying, which seemed at odds with his fondness for McDonald’s and KFC. When she looked through the cupboards above the counter she found rows and rows of empty containers—bottles and jars and jugs meticulously washed and saved. You would think he planned to take up canning.
Her only option was scrambled eggs, she figured, but then she realized he didn’t even have butter. Could you make scrambled eggs with no butter? She wasn’t going to risk it. Maybe deviled, then. At least he had mayonnaise. She put four eggs in the dented saucepan she found in the drawer beneath the stove, and she covered them with water and set them to boil.
She hoped he wasn’t doing anything foolish. He should have just called the police. But maybe that was where he was going, down to the station in person, or maybe to the lab to reconnoiter with her father.
She went back to the living room and looked out the window again, for no earthly reason.
The living room seemed less empty now that Pyotr had moved his desk in from the study. It was heaped with various belongings that must also have been in the study—junk mail and stacks of books and coiled extension cords, in addition to the computer equipment. She picked up a wall calendar, curious to know if he’d made a note of their wedding, but the page was still turned to February and all the days were blank. She put it back on the desk.
She returned to the landing for her tote and carried it to her room. The leopard-print slipcover had vanished; the daybed had been stripped to its rust-stained navy-and-white-striped mattress, and there was no sign of sheets or blankets. A naked pillow slumped on the floor next to it. Couldn’t he at least have put fresh linens on—tried to make it more welcoming? Her garment bag hung in the closet and her carton of shower gifts sat on the bureau, but she couldn’t imagine ever feeling she belonged here.
The air in this room had an atticky smell, and she walked over to the window and struggled to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. Finally she gave up and went back out to the kitchen. She looked to see if the eggs were done, but how was she supposed to tell? At home she had relied on a plastic color-changing gadget dating back to Mrs. Larkin. So she let the eggs cook a few minutes longer while she spooned mayonnaise into a plastic mixing bowl and sprinkled in salt and pepper from the two shakers on the table. Then she resumed her inventory, looking into all the under-counter cabinets, but they were nearly empty. After lunch, she would have to unpack the kitchen items from her box of shower gifts. The thought lifted her spirits somewhat. A project! She knew just where she would store her green mugs.
She turned off the burner beneath the eggs and carried the pan to the sink and ran cold water over them until they were cool enough to handle. When she started peeling the first one she could tell by the feel of the white that it was cooked enough, but as luck would have it, the shell came off in tiny, sharp, stubborn chips, bringing chunks of white along with them. The egg ended up about half its original size, pockmarked and ugly, and the tips of her fingers were bleeding. She said, “Damn,” and rinsed the egg under the faucet and held it up, considering.
All right, egg salad, then.
This turned out to be a wise decision, because the other three eggs looked equally deformed after she had peeled them. She chopped them with a very dull knife and then she chopped some celery, using the counter as her work surface because she couldn’t find a cutting board. Most of the celery had to be stripped off and thrown into the bucket under the sink. Even the innermost stalks were slightly flabby.
She thought of the salad bowl she’d been given at her shower, and she went back to her room to get it. Packed inside the bowl was her dream catcher. She took it out and held it up and pivoted slowly in the center of the room, debating where to hang it. Ideally, she supposed, it should be suspended from the ceiling directly over her bed, but that seemed like a lot of work and she wasn’t sure that Pyotr owned a hammer and nails. She looked toward the window. It had only a yellowed paper shade, but there must have been curtains at some point because an adjustable metal rod was stretched between brackets above it. She put the dream catcher down and dragged the ottoman over from in front of the armchair in the corner. Then she took off her shoes and stood on the ottoman and tied the dream catcher to the curtain rod.
She wondered if Pyotr had ever seen one of these. He would probably find it peculiar. Well, it
was
peculiar. He would fold his arms and tilt his head and study it for a long, silent moment. Things always seemed to interest him so. He always seemed to be watching her with such close attention—at least until today. She wasn’t accustomed to attention, but she couldn’t say she found it unpleasant.
She hopped off the ottoman and dragged it back to the armchair and put her shoes on again.
Could the police have had him come with them to Edward’s house to make the arrest, possibly?
It was almost 2:30. The so-called wedding banquet was scheduled for 5:00. This meant there was plenty of time yet, but on the other hand, Aunt Thelma’s house was way out in horse country and Pyotr would need to wash up and change clothes before he went. And Kate was all too familiar with how people in labs could forget to look at the clock.
Maybe he had to fill something out, a warrant or an affidavit or whatever they called it.
She unpacked the rest of her shower gifts and found places for them in the kitchen. She emptied her suitcases into her bureau drawers, helter-skelter at first, but then, feeling time hanging heavy, she rearranged everything in orderly stacks. She unpacked the items from her tote—her brush and comb, which she set on her bureau; her toothbrush, which she took to the bathroom. It seemed too intimate, somehow, to fit her toothbrush into the holder alongside Pyotr’s, so she went to the kitchen for a jelly glass and she stood her toothbrush in that and set it on the bathroom windowsill. There was no medicine cabinet, but a narrow wooden shelf above the sink held shaving supplies, a comb, and a tube of toothpaste. Would they be sharing this toothpaste? Should she have brought her own? How, exactly, were they going to divide the household expenses?
There were so many logistics they hadn’t thought to discuss.
Next to the shower stall, a used-looking towel and washcloth hung on a chrome rod, and on another rod next to the toilet were another towel and washcloth, brand new. Those must be meant for her. The sight partly assuaged the injury of the bare mattress in her bedroom.
It was after 3:00 now. She took her phone from her tote and checked it, just in case she’d somehow missed his call, but there were no messages. She put the phone back. She would just go ahead and eat on her own. All at once she was hungry.
In the kitchen she scooped a bit of egg salad onto a chipped white plate. She got herself a fork and a paper towel, since she couldn’t find any napkins, and she settled herself at the table. But when she looked down at her lunch she caught sight of a fleck of bright red on a piece of yolk: her own blood. She spotted another fleck, and another. In fact, her egg salad as a whole looked effortful and not quite clean—overhandled. She stood up and scraped her serving into the garbage bucket, and she added the rest of the egg salad from the bowl and then concealed the whole mess beneath the paper towel. The kitchen had no dishwasher, so she rinsed her dishes under the tap and dried them with another paper towel and put them away. Destroying the evidence.
It occurred to her that life in the coed dorm had been a lot more fun than this. Also (looking down at her left hand) that white gold and yellow gold really didn’t go together. What had she been thinking, listening to her father on matters of fashion? In fact, people shouldn’t wear rings at all if their nails were short and ragged and rimmed with garden soil.
From the fridge she took a beer, and she opened it and tossed back a good portion of it before she went out to the landing again, still carrying the can. She wandered toward Pyotr’s room. His door was shut, but what the hell; she turned the knob and walked in.
The room was sparsely furnished, like the rest of the apartment, and very neat. The only thing out of place was the ironing board that had been set up at the room’s center, with an iron standing on top of it and a crisp white dress shirt draped over its narrower end. This had the same effect on her as the new towel and washcloth. She felt more hopeful.
The double bed beneath the window was covered with a red satin quilt stitched with fraying gold thread, like something in a cheap motel, and a reading lamp was clamped precariously to the headboard. On the nightstand was a bottle of aspirin and a gilt-framed photo of Kate. Of Kate? She picked it up. Oh, of Kate and Pyotr, except that since Kate’s stool was higher than Pyotr’s chair she filled more of the scene. The startled expression she wore wrinkled her forehead unbecomingly, and the T-shirt beneath her buckskin jacket was streaked with dirt. It was not a picture to be proud of. All that distinguished it from the others her father had snapped—some at least marginally more flattering—was that it was the very first one, the one he’d taken on the day that she and Pyotr had met.
She thought about that a moment and then set the picture back down on the nightstand.
The bureau was topped with a dusty cutwork dresser scarf, probably Mrs. Liu’s contribution, and a saucer that contained a few coins and a single safety pin. Nothing else. The walnut-framed mirror above it was so old that Kate seemed to be looking at herself through gauze—her face suddenly pale and her cloud of black hair almost gray. She took another swig of beer and opened a drawer.
It was her superstitious belief that people who snooped in other people’s private spaces were punished with hurtful discoveries, but Pyotr’s drawers revealed just a paltry collection of clothing, carefully folded and stacked. There were two long-sleeved jerseys she had seen a dozen times, two short-sleeved polo shirts, a small pile of socks rolled in pairs (all ribbed white athletic socks except for one pair of navy dress socks), several pairs of white knit underpants like the ones the little boys in Room 4 wore, and several foreign-looking, tissue-thin undershirts with uncommonly close-set straps. No pajamas. No accessories, no doodads, no frivolities. The only thing she learned about him was the touching meagerness of his life. The meagerness and the…rectitude, was the word that came to her mind.