Mean, yes. That’s exactly how he feels. In the full sense of the word’s two meanings. He hopes she’ll return soon so he can go to the bathroom, because he needs to shift the packets. It feels as though they’ve gnawed an open wound into his skin.
When Patricia returns, a hurt expression on her face, Thomas stands and goes behind the curtain. The bathroom’s impossibly small, and he can barely squeeze in. Once he’s able to close the door he can hardly turn around. The stench of urine hangs in the air, the light is low and intimate, the walls adorned with dark purple, velvet wallpaper. There’s a cracked mirror over the microscopic sink. He fumbles with his zipper and nearly drops one of the packets onto the floor. In the muted light it’s impossible to see whether or not they’ve damaged his skin, but it feels that way. He has this irrepressible urge to open the packets, but it would take too long to get them sealed up again, so he settles on examining one with his hand (it has to be bundles of money) and shoves them into the waistband of his pants, next to his groin. His heart races, a sweet chill ripples up his back and his neck. Shivering, he washes his hands under a thin jet of cold water and goes back to the table, but Patricia’s gone. The waiter bustles worriedly about: “Your wife left. Here’s the check, sir. I hope you enjoyed your meal.” Thomas pays the tab and just manages to see Patricia turn the corner. He reaches her only when they’ve come to more heavily trafficked streets (the packets prevent him from running), and it’s obvious that she’s been crying. She curses at him, cries again, she’s unhappy, she doesn’t understand him. She plants a seed of guilt, he feels guilty, he feels angry, he feels restless. They take the bus home. Patricia sniffles a lot, and a nearly-orange moon rises in the dark sky like a faint half circle. He consoles her and apologizes, but Patricia turns away and jerks her hand back. “I think I’ll die if I have a kid,” he says. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” she mumbles thickly. “I really think you need help, Thomas.” At home she goes to bed immediately, and he knows he ought to sit at the edge of the bed, talking to her gently and calmly, reassure her that he loves her. But he can’t do it. Instead he locks himself in the bathroom and, when he’s finally removed both the tinfoil and the plastic film, quickly forgets about Patricia. He sits with ten bundles of bills in his hands. New crisp bills. Big bills. Five bundles in each packet. He counts them. His hands tremble. The money must have come from their father’s final, measly coup. Though he doesn’t know the details, he guesses that someone double-crossed him and got him busted. Soon it becomes clear that the coup hadn’t been so measly after all. He counts the money again. It’s an enormous sum. His head spins. Jacques must’ve been involved in something huge. Something truly dirty. Carefully he sets the bills on the bathmat, parks himself heavily on the edge of the tub, and lights a cigarette. Goddamn. What do I do? I’ll take the money to the police, nice and easy, on the way to the store tomorrow. He stares at the laundry basket. No, I’ll hide the money. No, I won’t hide the money. I’ll give the money to Jenny. No, that’s too dangerous, and she wouldn’t be able to handle it. I’ll hide the money anyway. Now his eyes wander across the black mosaic floor tiles. No, I won’t, I’ll take the money to the police. I’ll give it to charity. No. For God’s sake, how dumb can a person be. I’ll ask Maloney to hide the money. Someone will come looking for it, don’t be naïve. But not at Maloney’s—no one would look for it there. He closes his eyes. In no way can he involve Maloney in this—Maloney can’t keep his mouth shut. I definitely won’t say anything to Jenny.
Or Patricia, either. I’ll put the money in a safe deposit box at the bank. Like I’m in some fucking movie. Idiot. I have to think about it. I’ll decide in the morning, I’ll sleep on it. The old fool, hiding money in the toaster. He probably felt like a gangster, smart and resourceful. The idiot. It was almost as though Jenny had intuited the money was in there, but she couldn’t have known that. Thomas flushes his cigarette butt down the toilet and slides the window open a tad. He pulls a bill from one of the bundles and holds it up to the lamp. It’s legit all right. Watermark and all that jazz. He packs the money back up and tiptoes down the dark hallway. He pours himself a tall glass of whiskey in the living room and gulps it down, grimacing. It occurs to him that there’s an old microwave in their storage unit in the basement. He smiles. He thinks: I’m smiling like crazy because I am crazy. We might as well stick to kitchen appliances, he thinks, if that’s the way the old man wanted it. I’ll put them down in the microwave then. He draws his keys out of his pants pocket, carefully closes the door behind him, and takes the elevator down. The basement is dark as a cave. He fumbles for the light switch and suddenly he can’t remember where their storage unit is. Every unit is numbered, one after the other in a system of hallways running lengthwise and crosswise. But which number is theirs? Is there some sort of system? There are iron doors with bars for each of the small compartments. Through these bars he can see moving boxes and worn-out furniture. It’s not here. Or here. He begins to sweat. The heat from the boiler room is unbearable. The smell of dust clings to his nostrils. The light clicks off. He turns the corner onto a new, long hallway. And another. This one’s like a passageway, narrower than the others. His footfalls ring metallically on the hard floor. At last he catches sight of an orange plastic chair that he’d used in his kitchen before he moved in with Patricia. And there are the boxes filled with summer clothes. And the microwave, way in the back. He can feel his heart hammering. In with the bundles, close the oven, slam the door shut. A thought rumbles through him: Is this secure enough? He’s about to open the door again—because of course the money should be taken to the police, what is he thinking? what kind of person is he? But now he wants to get out of the basement. Now he’s panicking. What if he can’t find his way out again? The bundles will have to stay there until morning, in any case, and nothing will happen to them between now and then. Desperate and downright afraid, he bumbles around the basement searching for the exit. He keeps finding new hallways, new light switches that click off, new fucking signs on doors with new combinations of numbers. He wants to be calm and composed, but he’s not calm and he’s not composed. At last he finds a door and enters an unfamiliar stairwell. Out on the street he lights a smoke. His torso is wet with sweat, and his throat is constricted; it’s as if there’s an iron hand wrapped around his chest, squeezing him, as if someone shielded behind iron is screaming in his face. In the silence of the street at night, he can see that he’s wandered off, down in the basement, in the completely opposite direction of his own door. He’s four doors from his own. It almost makes him smile—it’s so laughable, this. His watch shows quarter after 1:00 A.M. The wind has settled. How long did he stumble around in the darkness like a scaredy-cat? Slowly his breathing returns to normal, his pulse calm. A scooter motors noisily past with two youths on it, the girl tightly clutching the young man; each wears a black helmet. He catches a glimpse of the girl’s long legs in skinny jeans. Her blonde hair spilling down her back. The moon vanishes behind a dark cloud. His shadow towers long and ghostlike on the street. When a humpbacked old man with a squeaky, nasal voice calls to his dog on the other side of the street, Thomas jumps, frightened. “Come, Bingo, you old scoundrel. Come to Papa.” Later in the night, rain begins to fall, heavy and monotonous. A powerful sense of unreality trails him into his dreams when he finally falls asleep close to morning, just as the first sliver of daylight wedges through the blinds. He dreams of the basement, and once again: the little girl on the carousel, her facial expression now distorted; grasshoppers everywhere; the sensation of suffocation; stagnant warm air.
The following morning the wind has picked up again. Patricia goes to yoga at 10:00 A.M. She doesn’t seem angry with him, but she’s quiet. Thomas wanders anxiously through the apartment the entire morning. He can’t think about anything else but the money in the microwave. At 11:30 he’s so jumpy that he decides to go for a jog, to rid himself of his unease. Against a strong wind, he pants around the park four times. More than once he has to stop for a drink from the water fountain. The sun breaks through the layer of clouds. When he returns, Patricia’s listening to music. It sounds like Schubert. She’s scrubbing the kitchen sink.
“Tina and Jules are coming to dinner at 7:00. They’re bringing Stella.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“No particular occasion.”
“You
