him. She must not take his coolness as a dare, because she had no empirical proof that he was daring her at all—because she had no empirical proof that he was in pain and hiding it. Pretending to be fine and being fine looked the same from the outside, and the outside was all she had. She must not admit she desired to see him in pain, for that would suggest that she desired for him to be in pain. Either desire was perverse. She had to focus on loving him, very normally.
A flash of pink appeared below her on the path as she turned at one of its many joints. There was no reason, as far as she could guess, for the path to curve around so much according to variations in the terrain, given that every centimeter of the mountain was designed and therefore could have been designed for a straight path from top to bottom. No reason but propping up the silly pretense of naturalness. When the path straightened out again, she saw Matilda, one of the neighbors, who was wearing a hot pink cardigan. Encountering Matilda was a surprise. It had been at least two weeks since she’d crossed paths with anyone ascending or descending the mountain.
“Hey,” Matilda called out, huffing slightly as she climbed toward Anja. In one arm she was holding a small, fat dog with yellow fur. Its tongue was poking out of its mouth, which was rimmed with a light froth of drool. “He gets tired on the hike up,” Matilda said as she walked closer, patting the dog. “I always have to carry him part of the way.”
“I feel the same,” said Anja. “I wish someone would carry me.”
Matilda stopped half a meter away, hoisting the dog so his nose was near her ear. “How are things? We haven’t seen you in ages.”
By we, Matilda meant herself and her husband, whose name Anja couldn’t remember. They were the Danish couple, in their forties probably, both very handsome. Stately, even.
“Oh, all good here. Minus, you know. A few house things.” She gestured upward.
Matilda rolled her eyes and they both laughed. “Well, we signed up for it, didn’t we?”
“We did.”
They would not talk about the specifics, that was clear. The neighbors were all private about their situations; there was no sense of camaraderie. Maybe she and Louis had just cut themselves out of the group, but she didn’t think so. Everyone had moved in at different times and had been briefed separately. “I’m glad everyone is trying to maintain the delusion that this is high-status,” Louis had said. “Campfires and barbecues would ruin the game.”
“We aren’t allowed to have any open-air fires here anyway,” Anja had pointed out.
Matilda and her husband lived in the house closest to Anja and Louis, maybe a hundred meters downhill. They couldn’t see each other’s houses from their own lots, due to the placement of the foliage, and it was easy for Anja to forget that anyone else might be within earshot at a given moment. Isolation by design.
“It’s partially our fault we haven’t seen you lately,” Matilda said. “We’ve been back and forth to Copenhagen a lot.”
“For work?”
“Yes, and family. Our daughter. We still have our place there.” She cleared her throat.
Primary residence was supposed to be the Berg, but of course nobody was going to chase them down and insist they stay there all the time. A lot of the others probably still had apartments elsewhere, places they could retreat to when tired of lukewarm showers.
“And you?” Matilda smiled. “Still working in biology?”
Anja nodded and said it was going very well, thanks. She wasn’t grateful for the reminder. She thought, with guilt, of Michel, who had been texting her with some regularity. This was the longest she’d gone in ages without seeing him. She’d taken his reliable Monday-through-Friday presence for granted. It made sense to talk to him about what was happening to them now, to him more than anyone else, actually, but she couldn’t bring herself to call him just yet. She wasn’t sure why. It also made sense to ask Matilda whether her garbage disposal system had ever worked, which she wouldn’t do either.
Matilda asked about Louis, and it took all of Anja’s powers of self-presentation to keep a placid face. She didn’t know Matilda well. She couldn’t just go around telling everyone.
“He’s fine,” she said. “Busy, like always.”
The conversation was boring and they were both glancing behind each other, signaling that it was time to move on.
“You should come over and see us one of these days,” said Matilda. “We’d love to make you dinner.”
“I’ll talk to Louis about what day would be best.” They both knew she wouldn’t.
Matilda took a step up the path and Anja took a step down the path and they said how nice it was to see each other. When they had reversed altitude, Anja now looking up to make eye contact and Matilda looking down, Matilda said, “Also, if you wouldn’t mind not mentioning Cheeto to anyone.” She lifted the dog again and let him wet the side of her face with his little snout. “He doesn’t normally stay with us. It’s just, you know.”
“Of course not.”
At night she had very little to report. The day had been spent rereading her contract and watching The Bachelor with Laura.
“Laura’s been watching too much TV” was her only conclusion. “She needs a job.”
“What’s wrong with watching TV?” Louis asked. “Does she actually need a job?”
It was around midnight, and it was predictably hot inside. He’d come home late, they’d had sex, he’d showered. She watched while he flicked water off his sides, air-drying. His outline was perfect.
“Yeah, she needs a job. But she’s treating TV like her job. She’s super deep in all these forums. Like she’s studying up for something. She was nonstop with the trivia today, and she was really, overly upset when her choice contestant got kicked off.”
“I didn’t know The Bachelor had contestants. I thought it was a dating show, not a game show.”
“Technically they aren’t called contestants.”
“Do they win money?”
“No, they just win a husband. But then they get all sorts of product sponsorships and talk-show-hosting deals, so indirectly, yes, they win money.”
“It’s always seemed off to me that Laura watches that shit. Didn’t she used to be some kind of anarchist?”
“Yeah, she used to be full-on black bloc.”
“Sound like the biggest cliché of disillusionment.”
“No, not exactly. She’s really anthropological about it. She calls it critical visual engagement.”
“Or maybe she just loves watching TV. I’d be more on board with it if she didn’t try to frame it as something intellectual.”
“You should be grateful Laura makes me watch so much TV, otherwise I wouldn’t understand any of your cultural references.”
“But I never watch TV.”
“You
