2: The Picture on the Nightstand
—Dejvice, Prague, August 2016 (three years, nine months, and eight days later)—
Simon’s legs felt extra heavy when he climbed the stairs from the metro station. The evening was still terribly hot, and the air wouldn’t cool down during the night. The heat was conserved in the asphalt and concrete, never letting up, only to become more suffocating the next day.
The constant fatigue felt like home, comforting in its normalcy and Simon’s truest friend. He meandered through the crowd on the sidewalk, mentally recounting the contents of his fridge.
He was going to cook a nice dinner today, curl on the couch with Marta for the evening, and let go for a few hours. He’d seen so little of her during the past weeks.
Marta was twenty-three already; she’d finished her Bachelor’s and started a new job. She was an adult, paying her part of the rent, which he had opposed strongly, but in vain.
Fighting with the lock on the main entrance to his apartment building, Simon shook the door a little. Someone had scraped a sign on the glass. Zeman is an asshole. Simon felt a distant camaraderie with the author of the useless act of vandalism. Simple and straight to the point. He wished he could voice his own feelings like that—loud and often. Maybe not while simultaneously damaging public property, though. Simon was dignified, educated; there were always expectations, students watching, colleagues gossiping, patients going crazy. He was the sane one, always composed, dependable.
Marta had probably spent the whole day cleaning and painting her new studio apartment in Holešovice. It was only a few metro stations away, Simon reminded himself. She would be tired tonight, and he was looking forward to taking care of her one more time before she moved away for good.
He finally made it to his apartment. Marta wasn’t back yet, and the room was stuffy. He contemplated the benefits of opening his windows when the evening outside wasn’t any less hot, but opened them anyway, hoping for more airflow.
Exchanging his button-down and slacks for shorts and a plain gray T-shirt, he went to the bathroom and cooled his feet awhile with cold water from the massaging showerhead. He washed his hands and face and drank a tall glass of water mixed with blackcurrant juice—two-thirds water to one-third juice. It was eight in the evening; Marta should be home soon.
He sorted some periodicals he had brought with him from his office at the university. The journal from the Czech Medical Chamber went directly into the recycle bin, he kept the International Journal of Psychiatry and the three issues of Sisyphus – The Monthly Skeptical Scientific Review.
He went through his living room, putting away the few odd items lying on the glass coffee table: a charger, a half-empty packet of paper tissues, an empty water glass Marta had probably left there in the morning…
In the kitchen, he opened the dishwasher and put all the clean dishes in their respective places in the cupboards, cleaned the kitchen counter, sorted through his dirty clothes and started a washing cycle…
Growing desperate, he brushed his shoes and made the bed, even though he was going to sleep in it in only a few hours’ time.
At half past nine, Marta still hadn’t come home.
Simon put on the TV, watched the BBC News and then switched to a basketball game on Eurosport. He poured himself a finger of whiskey. Maybe he should start making dinner anyway. Leaving the TV on for some background noise, he went back to the kitchen and began preparing some vegetables without deciding what he was going to cook. He realized he couldn’t hear the door over the TV and strode back to the living room to lower the volume.
It was almost ten already. Muttering another curse, Simon fished out his phone and stared at it, willing it to light up. He wouldn’t call her. She was a grown-up, and he was not her father. He wouldn’t badger her. He kept the phone close by on the kitchen counter while he sliced and mixed, just in case. When it finally dinged with a message, it startled him. He dried his hands on his shorts and grabbed his phone.
Thinking of you.
From Jano.
Simon sighed and squeezed his eyes shut for a second. The pang of guilt came and went like a single pulse on an EKG machine. Yes, he had a boyfriend now. Universe help them both. But instead of being with the man he was supposed to care about and maybe think of now and then, he was fussing over Marta.
His fingers hovered over the screen. He should answer, but Simon had never been good at lying. He called Marta instead.
“I’m on my way,” she said without preamble, and he winced inwardly. She sounded annoyed.
“I made us dinner.”
“Simon,” she sighed. “You should have at least messaged. I already ate. It’s ten o’clock.”
He gripped the counter and blinked. “I thought you’d be here earlier,” he said calmly, his voice carefully void of reproof.
“I’m sorry. I wanted to finish painting the hall. Now I don’t have to clean all the tools only to get them messy again tomorrow. It took longer than I expected, but it’s done. All nice and ready.” He heard noise in the background, then a voice. A deep male voice.
“Who’s that?” The question came sharp and unguarded.
“That’s Eli. He’s a neighbor. I’m helping him with some stuff.” She sounded wary. Simon didn’t like it.
“In the middle of the night?” He was losing grip of his emotions while his grip on the counter tightened.
“Simon! Do you hear yourself? I’m not doing this. Not over the phone. I’ll be home in an hour. Thank you for the food—I’ll take it with me to work tomorrow. See you. Bye.” She ended the call, her tone clipped.
Simon put the phone on the counter and hung his head.
***
He ate his meal and begrudgingly put Marta’s in a plastic container, which he left next to the fridge to cool. He drank his whiskey, cleaned the kitchen again, and still, she hadn’t arrived home.
Simon knew things were bad when he found himself in Marta’s old room, half-empty now. He tried to remember why he had entered it in the first place, but the picture on the nightstand stole his thoughts. She must have kept it hidden behind other photos—why? Out of respect for him? Out of pity? Now, when she was moving out, sorting her things and packing, the picture frame stood out in the bare room, like an open surgical wound in the middle of a pale, hairless chest.
Marta was in the picture, maybe sixteen years old. Her hair was dyed a wild red, the piercing in her eyebrow new and prominent. Her older brother hugged her from behind, his tattooed arm locked around her. His mischievous smile made Simon’s belly tingle and his eyes burn. Simon had never met a person more beautiful than Matěj. To make it worse, he still remembered every detail—every birthmark, every line of that damned clockwork tattoo. Every angle of that heinous smirk. He even remembered the warmth of that mouth against his neck.
Simon spun around and banged the guest bedroom door shut behind him. Squeezing his eyes closed, he stood, unmoving, in the living room for just a second. He took a deep breath and released it, opening his eyes.
It was imperative he answer Jano’s text.
“My boyfriend,” he muttered into the empty room. What a ridiculous concept. Yet, there it was.
Dinner on Friday? he wrote. Diplomatic, nothing about his feelings, optimistic. Jano was good—clever, nice, even handsome. Last week, after a few drinks, Simon found Jano’s Slovak accent sexy. All good signs.
He promised himself he was going to try. Apparently, he had to try harder.
When Marta arrived home, it was almost midnight, and Simon pretended to be asleep. It was one of their last evenings living together.