Mary, who is 50, is newly in love. Her friend thinks she seems pathetic, but supports her anyway. The friend’s thoughts on men are very divergent. So divergent that sometimes she wants to kill them. And one day, Mary’s boyfriend stops calling her.
As men are
A shortstory by Mette Honoré
I’m still walking around. Restless. I hear the thoughts in my head clearly. It feels like I’m imprisoned in my head. The rain has soaked my clothes, but even so the heavy weight feels liberating. I don’t have a sense of how long I have been wandering around, but it’s getting dark, so a couple of hours maybe.
I know that He will start making dinner and eat it alone. He will sit on the sofa and look at his computer. Here, he’ll enjoy the food he is so good at making.
The restlessness has been unbearable for months. More so than usual. I fiddle with my mobile cover and break off a piece of my already short nail. I bite the nail completely down and spit out the stump. It feels unpleasant when the nail catches on my clothes because its surface is raw and torn, like when I am walking in deserted streets and cannot escape my thoughts. It hurts at the end of the nail where it’s attached to the flesh. It bleeds, not much, and not visible, but I can clearly feel it.
My friend stopped by yesterday. She had red cheeks and brown legs. Newly in love, even though she’ll soon be 50. She acts more like a 16-year-old. It didn’t seem like she herself could see how ridiculous it was. I listened carefully to her manic narrative, and clapped my hands when she spoke aloud about how much sex she had had the last week. Like I wanted to hear that! I nodded and smiled and probably seemed quite absorbed. She didn’t ask about me. Luckily. So, I continued along her lines and got all the details about where she had fucked last and how big his dick was.
I saw him looking out of the corner of his eye. Maybe at her legs? Maybe at the shape of the neck on her sweater and I wanted to kill him.
I walk slowly down a side street. A man of my own age walks behind me. The wind carries his scent past me and I can feel it in my stomach. The feeling you get when a man smells good. The hairs on my arms stand up and I turn around to look at him. He smiles when I look at him and the hairs on his arms are evident. His eyes are fixed on mine for several seconds when he passes me. My heartbeat races. I remember that my mother always said – “a stranger is a friend you haven’t met yet.” But I don’t want to meet anyone else than him.
When I stand in front of the house, I feel nauseous. It just crept up on me. My headache is also back, and I look in at the lit-up window. He’s sitting on the sofa with a coffee cup next to him. I tread with heavy footsteps towards the door. I pull down the handle to see if it is open. He says nothing from the sitting room. I sneak upstairs to the bedroom, pull my clothes off and go into the shower. I let the hot water mix with the wet rain. Soon, everything is warm and clear.
”Maria?” He yells from the hallway. I say nothing, just hold my breath. Maybe he’ll come up and he’ll find me in here? I can’t hear any footsteps on the stairs, so I dry myself and go into the bedroom naked. I find a nail file and try to file the nail that’s still catching on everything. The rough feeling against the sharp tip at the end that is silver-colored. It glints from the light in the hallway.
Suddenly, he’s standing in the doorway.
“Are you here?” His eyes are open, but I’m sure that there’s a gleam in them. I am naked.
“Yes,” I say, and move towards him. He takes a step back when I come closer to him.
“What do you want?” His eyes flash, but I know the rage. I’ve seen it before.
“Come,” I say, and walk towards him. His face is close. I can smell his breath. It smells of coffee and man. His hands, his wide eyes and his quick breath.
The next day when I wake up there is no-one next to me. I get myself up off the bed and notice a gooey substance. My nail is bleeding and the file is smeared with blood. I find my clothes in the bathroom. They are wet from yesterday. I don’t care – I still have the smell of him in my nose.
My friend phones after a couple of days. Now she’s crying. The boyfriend hasn’t called in several days. I nod and can understand why she thinks it’s strange. I meet her at a café. She asks if she should call him. I say that I don’t think she should. He’s probably lost interest. Men lose interest. It’s the hunt that’s important I hear myself say. She nods and I can see that she knows she’s been hasty. Cheap, some would call it. Not me, but others. She wants me to sleep over at her place. She feels alone. She doesn’t dare go over to his place, and I don’t think she should either.
In her apartment she says
“You seem distant,” and I want to say you talk too much. I reassure her that I’m just in deep thought. I continue the conversation about him. About how he has said that he loved her and that it was strange that he hadn’t even sent her a text. I agree with her. Many men are like that. Hard to have faith in. They want so much, but don’t act on it. She nods. She’s tried it before, but this man seemed so different. One would think that she more than anyone would know that all men are basically the same.
The days pass. She has written to him. As if I didn’t know that she would. It’s possible that he won’t wait for her. Life waits for no one. I remember the other evening as I came home. His eyes that gleamed. His clothes I tore off. I need to tell her, but I cannot. That would sound insensitive.
My phone rings after a couple of days. I can see it is her number. She turns on facetime, so I can see that she is red-eyed. As she starts talking, I realize that she hasn’t lost hope.I know he won’t come back. He’s finished with her.
She has talked so much that I have forgotten to think. The time has passed. I’ve sat still. I am restless. The doorbell rings and she ask me to wait. I can hear that she is talking to someone in the hallway. I think that it must be someone selling her something. She comes into the living room. She is deathly pale in the face and there are two men behind her. I can´ t really see them, only their silhouettes. She begins to cry and look into the camera.
“They’ve found him!” she gasps. I look at the two behind her. The men are all too silent.
“What are you saying?” I say.
“They have found Peter and need to take me with them to the police station.” The men’s mouths are moving asymmetrically behind her and the sounds coming out don’t match the movements.
“What’s happened?”
She stutters crying.
“They’ve found him. He’s dead!” I feel a lightness in my head and a pain in my solar plexus.
“Pull yourself together and go with them,” I take a deep breath.
The men observe her silently. I’m sure that they think that she did it. She doesn’t seem trustworthy. She was almost sickeningly interested in him.
“Will you come here when I come back?” she wants to know.
I nod a little hesitantly.
“If you think it will help,” I look her directly in her eyes. The men follow her out, as men do. I take my bag down from the hook on the wall and walk out from my apartment into the streets.
In my car, I can feel my nails. I look down at them and am irritated that they are both shabby and crooked. I can’t bite them anymore without doing more damage. I fish my nail file up from my bag and notice that it still has blood on it. I wipe the file in the corner of a Kleenex I have in my bag and throw the Kleenex out of the window. The file glistens in the sunlight and I file a bit off one of my nails. It becomes smoother, but the other is completely bitten down. The flesh under it is red and painful. I prick the flesh with the file and hurt myself when I poke a hole under the nail. Blood oozes out and I don’t have any more Kleenex in my bag. I suck my finger and stop the bleeding. It tastes of iron in my mouth. I look in the rear-vision mirror and smile. I throw the file out of the window and roll the window up. I knew there was something wrong with that relationship. I had a feeling. It had been too good to be true. Maria is not the sort you stay together with. I just knew.
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