Housebroken (10 page)

The woman's territory was a consecutive sequence of corners. It began in the bedroom and included half the bed and three-quarters of the closet, passed through the bathroom, which was almost all hers, except for one toothbrush, shaving equipment, and a yellow rubber duck the man had bought for himself when he went with his best friend on a shopping expedition for his baby. It continued through the living room, where her desk stood and most of the man's possessions were scattered—the books, the tapes, the little things in which he had ceased to take an interest since moving in with her. The kitchen too was hers, and especially the table, which turned in the course of time from an ordinary Formica table into a fortress. From her position at the table, where she worked on her occasional translating jobs, took the phone when she spoke to her girlfriends, and placed the heater, she could see the right-hand corner of the man's desk.

The dog had a few feet of cold floor under the sofa, which were exclusively his. Sometimes the man or the woman would sweep his corner and he'd stand aside anxiously watching his accumulated property being swept away. A white sock, empty yogurt containers, shreds of newspaper, a yellow tennis ball were dragged out from under the sofa by the bristles of the broom as the dog danced around it and barked in protest.

They would sort through his things, throw most of them out, and put the things they took pity on, like the sock and the tennis ball, in places where the dog couldn't get at them. If he stared long enough at one of the objects, the yellow ball on the man's desk or the sock hanging on a door handle, if he growled at it or whined, the man or the woman would relent and give it back to him, throwing it on the floor and looking at the dog as he pounced on it and crawled under the sofa holding the prize in his teeth.

Six months, that's how long it took for everything in the house, the woman's things and the man's things and the dog's few personal belongings, to be shuffled and reshuffled like a pack of cards until they all found their places. And one day a dog license arrived in the mail; printed in small letters in the little square at the top was the word
Anonymous,
his breed and color and the names of the man and the woman. The woman asked, What's this? and the man casually told her the whole story.

The dinner party was the man's idea. He said: “Let's invite my friends and your friends, two couples.” Let's combine our two worlds, he said without saying, and the woman agreed. It reminded her of the days when she had cooked meals for couples who brought along their single friends, but now everything was different.

The man invited his best friend, the baby's father, and his wife, and the woman invited a close friend and her boyfriend. They planned the menu together, conferring and arguing and trying to combine the different tastes of each couple. The dinner was set for Thursday, and early on Sunday morning the man found the woman sitting at her table in the kitchen with all her cookbooks open, including the one he had bought her; she was wrapped in a blanket warming her hands at the radiator. He loved her. Now he was sure.

All those months he had tried not to burden himself with such thoughts. They were unnecessary and dangerous. He knew his own logic, the skill he had developed in analyzing everything to pieces only to be left at the end with satisfaction at the successful analysis and a pile of pieces. He stood at the kitchen door and looked at the woman, who smiled at him, her hair still a little flattened from sleep and her feet moving in his white sports socks that she liked so much. There was a little scratch on her neck: he had given it to her in the night and he was as proud of it as a child. She asked: “Coffee?”

He sat her on his lap, leafed through the books with her, chose the first course with her, and then made love to her on the floor. In the great feeling of love he suddenly had for her, a drowsy love, he helped her stand up, turned her around, and brushed off the threads of dust clinging to her body.

He took a sip of her coffee, which was already cold, and went to wake the dog to take him for a walk. The dog was sleeping in his usual place, on the rug at the foot of the bed. During the last few months his mischievousness had turned to laziness. The man had trained him well. His needs had become less and less urgent. Twice a day the man took him downstairs, in the morning and at night before they went to sleep. The collar now fit perfectly, and had two silver disks attached, one with his license number and the other a heart-shaped tag the man had bought; the leash always stayed at home. From the beginning it was clear that the dog didn't need to be tied up.

Sometimes the woman took him out, but the dog preferred walking with the man. The woman was always afraid he would escape or run into the road. She didn't trust him, and whenever he left her for a moment to sniff something or stare at another dog on the opposite sidewalk, she would run over, grab his collar, and hurry him home. The man suggested putting him on the leash if she was so anxious, and once she tried, attaching the brand-new leash to the collar, but the dog sat down at the front door and refused to budge.

On Thursday morning the man woke the woman, made her coffee, and brought it to her in bed. He also brought the radiator and placed it near her. He sat down on the bed and offered her a little box wrapped in gift paper. The woman snatched it from his hand, tore off the paper, and opened the box. When she saw the necklace she jumped on him and threw her arms around him. They had seen the necklace together in a store display window near the house. She put the necklace on and the man helped her to fasten the clasp, kissing the nape of her neck. Then he bent down, scratched the dog behind his ears, and said that it would be nice if they invited his woman friend to the dinner party as well.

She was lonely, he said, and he felt a little guilty for having neglected her.

The woman didn't know what to say. She kept quiet for a minute and then said: “But it will be all couples. She might feel uncomfortable.”

“Yes,” said the man. “I thought of that. But I thought—and if you don't want to just say so—that maybe you could ask your friends to bring someone. My friends have been trying to fix her up for years and nothing ever comes of it. She's been through everyone they know. Maybe your friends know somebody? I thought it might be nice. Don't you?”

“Yes,” said the woman. “It might be nice.”

“But only if you don't mind,” said the man and wound his sock around the dog's muzzle, but the dog wasn't in the mood to play. He looked at the sock which had slipped to the floor, lay back down on his rug, closed his eyes, and cocked one ear.

“So it's okay?”

“It's okay,” said the woman.

“Will there be enough food?”

“Yes,” said the woman.

“So do you mind calling them? Do you mind asking?”

“No,” said the woman. “I'll call.”

At noon the man called the woman from a phone booth, and in a babble of shouts and laughter and hooting horns she heard him saying that his friend was delighted with the invitation and that she'd come. “Well, did you talk to them?” he asked. She knew that he could hardly hear her in the noise. “Yes,” she said, “I talked to them.”

“And what did they say?” shouted the man. “What did they say?”

“They said they know someone but they don't know if he's free this evening. They'll try to get in touch with him.”

“What did you say?” asked the man. “I can't hear, there's a lot of noise here. We're shooting outside.”

“They said they'd try,” said the woman.

“Are they bringing someone?” shouted the man, and the woman, who was speaking from the kitchen, standing next to the porch door, suddenly filled with anger and yelled: “What's the matter with you? Are you deaf?”

“What?” said the man. “I can't hear. Wait a second, okay?”

“Okay,” said the woman quietly, to herself, and rolled her eyes, rubbing her foot on the belly of the dog who was lying on his side next to the fridge. In the background she heard honking and distant voices, and she tried to guess if the woman whose voice she heard was the beautiful actress in the picture on the board.

When the man came back to the phone there was less noise but there was static on the line. Now she couldn't hear him.

“So what did you say? That you talked to them?” asked the man.

“What?” said the woman.

“Did you talk to them?”

“Yes!” she shrieked into the phone. “Yes, I talked to them! I've already told you a thousand times, I talked to them!” And the foot resting on the dog's belly suddenly kicked, and the dog jumped up and began running around the kitchen, whining and confused.

“Sorry!” said the woman. “I'm sorry!”

And the man said: “What?”

And the woman yelled: “Forget it! I can't hear a thing! We'll talk later.”

“We'll talk later?” asked the man.

“Yes!” screamed the woman. “Yes!” And she slammed the phone down.

When the man came home everything was ready: the kitchen table stood in the middle of the living room, covered with a blue tablecloth, set for eight, and wonderful smells came from the kitchen, smells that had greeted the man while he was walking up the steps. It was a cold evening at the end of winter and all the heaters in the house were on. The man took off his coat and put it and his key ring on his desk. He found the woman sitting on the sofa, with the dog's head in her lap.

He looked at the table and exclaimed admiringly. He put down two bottles of wine he had bought and said: “I brought wine. You forgot to tell me to bring some, but I remembered.”

“I didn't forget,” said the woman. “The guests are bringing wine. You didn't have to buy any.”

He returned to the front door and examined the table from there in order to go on admiring it from a distance and see how it would look to someone coming in. Then he went into the kitchen, opened the oven door and peeked inside, lifted the lids of the three pots standing on the stove, opened the fridge door, and whistled appreciatively at the dessert waiting there, covered with Saran Wrap. He returned to the living room and sat down next to the woman, put the dog's head and paws on his thighs to warm them, and said: “So everything's ready.”

The dog was the first to sense it. He had known in the morning that something bad was going to happen, and then came the kick in the afternoon. It was the first real kick he'd received since the day the man and the woman had taken him in, and it was unlike any kick he could remember. He had crawled under the sofa and watched the woman's legs walking back and forth in the living room, and he heard her crying in a low voice. The crying didn't last more than a few minutes. When he finally came out and stepped softly into the kitchen the woman tried to pick him up, but he wasn't a puppy anymore, and while the upper half of his body was clasped in her arms his hind legs scrambled in the air. For a moment they danced a strange kind of dance until the woman let him go, and a dim memory flickered in his head of that first day, when he was five weeks old—an unsuspecting stray dog.

“What's wrong?” asked the man. “Are you in one of your moods?”

The woman remained silent and held the dog's tail in her hand.

“You know,” she said, and the eyes she had made up a few minutes before filled with tears, “that's a stupid question when you come to think of it. I'm always in one mood or another.”

“It's just an expression,” said the man. “I never really thought about it. So are you or aren't you?”

“Yes I am,” said the woman and caught a big tear trickling down her cheek with the tip of her tongue.

“Are you crying?” asked the man.

“No,” said the woman.

“What's wrong?” he asked and tried to put his arm around her, but she moved away, dragging her half of the dog with her to the end of the sofa.

“You take me for granted,” she said. “That's what's wrong.”

“What?” said the man.

“I'm not your slave,” said the woman.

“What?” said the man. “What are you talking about?”

“About this dinner,” said the woman. “It was your idea. You wanted to invite people, and I've been slaving over it all week, and today, out of the blue, you suddenly decide to invite that friend of yours, and it wouldn't be so bad if it was only her, but now someone else is coming too that we don't even know.”

“So they are bringing someone?” said the man happily, forgetting that he was on the brink of a fight.

“Yes!” screamed the woman. “Are you happy? Yes! They're bringing someone. All day long I've been busy with these stupid arrangements! All day long!”

The man assumed his didactic tone, which made the dog prick up one ear to figure out whether the reprimand was meant for him, and said: “Look. I didn't mean for the whole burden to fall on you. I suggested having a dinner party because I thought it would be fun for both of us. I thought it was time for you to meet my friends and me to meet yours. For six months we've been at home, alone, and it's not that I don't like it, but we never go out at all, we never meet people, and I just thought that it would be a change for us. That's all. And besides, I did help you. We planned what we would cook together.”

“What we would cook?” screamed the woman. “Did you cook?”

“No,” said the man. “You. You cooked.”

“Naturally!” said the woman, and her hand pulled the dog's tail. He woke up and looked at her, but he didn't whine. He got off the sofa and walked slowly, almost limping, to the bedroom.

“As usual! You live here like a king, three meals a day, on the clock, without lifting a finger! What have you got to complain about?”

She didn't want to say these things. They were as new to her as they were to the man, but she couldn't stop. “You moved in without even asking me. We were only together about a week, and suddenly your things landed here, and suddenly I turn into some housewife”—and suddenly the woman found herself taking profound pleasure in merely saying these things, even though they weren't true, because the outburst was more pleasurable than the truth.