Part 24 (1/2)
”Sloppy,” she said. ”Double jeopardy.”
A new schedule evolved. He worked, swam, took the tram home. Usually Selena wasn't there. Often their answering machine held messages for her from Mark, talking about their work. Or messages from her to Smith, telling him that she would be home late. As it was happening so often, he sometimes went out for dinner with Frank and other lane-mates, after the evening workouts. Once at a beach restaurant they ordered several pitchers of beer, and then went out for a walk on the beach, and ended up running out into the shallows of the bay and swimming around in the warm dark water, so different from their pool, splas.h.i.+ng each other and laughing hard. It was a good time.
But when he got home that night, there was another message on the answering machine from Selena, saying that she and Mark were working on their paper after getting a bite to eat, and that she would be home extra late.
She wasn't kidding; at two o'clock in the morning she was still out. In the long minutes following the timeslip Smith realized that no one stayed out this late working on a paper without calling home. This was therefore a message of a different kind.
Pain and anger swept through him, first one then the other. The indirectness of it struck him as cowardly. He deserved at least a revelation-a confession-a scene. As the long minutes pa.s.sed he got angrier and angrier; then frightened for a moment, that she might have been hurt or something. But she hadn't. She was out there somewhere fooling around. Suddenly he was furious.
He pulled cardboard boxes out of their closet and yanked open her drawers, and threw all her clothes in heaps in the boxes, crus.h.i.+ng them in so they would fit. But they gave off their characteristic scent of laundry soap and her, and smelling it he cried out and sat down on the bed, knees weak. If he carried through with this he would never again see her putting on and taking off these clothes, and just as an animal he groaned at the thought.
But men are not animals. He finished throwing her things into boxes, took them outside the front door and dropped them there.
She came back at three. He heard her kick into the boxes and make some m.u.f.fled exclamation.
He hurled open the door and stepped out.
”What's this?” She had been startled out of whatever scenario she had planned, and now was getting angry. Her, angry! It made him furious all over again.
”You know what it is.”
”What!”
”You and Mark.”
She eyed him.
”Now you notice,” she said at last. ”A year after it started. And this is your first response.” Gesturing down at the boxes.
He hit her in the face.
Immediately he crouched at her side and helped her sit up, saying, ”Oh G.o.d Selena I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to,” he had only thought to slap her for her contempt, contempt that he had not noticed her betrayal earlier, ”I can't believe I-”
”Get away!”-striking him off with wild blows, crying and shouting-”get away, get away!”-frightened-”you b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you miserable b.a.s.t.a.r.d, what do you, don't you dare dare hit me!” in a near-shriek, though she kept her voice down too, aware still of the apartment complex around them. Hands held to her face. hit me!” in a near-shriek, though she kept her voice down too, aware still of the apartment complex around them. Hands held to her face.
”I'm sorry Selena. I'm very very sorry, I was angry at what you said but I know that isn't, that doesn't... I'm sorry.” Now he was as angry at himself as he had been at her-what could he have been thinking, why had he given her the moral high ground like this, it was she who had broken their bond, it was she who should be in the wrong! She who was now sobbing-turning away-suddenly walking off into the night. Lights went on in a couple of windows nearby. Smith stood staring down at the boxes of her lovely clothes, his right knuckles throbbing.
That life was over. He lived on alone in the apartment by the beach, and kept going into work, but he was shunned there by the others, who all knew what had happened. Selena did not come in to work again until the bruises were gone, and after that she did not press charges, or speak to him about that night, but she did move in with Mark, and avoided him at work when she could. As who wouldn't? Occasionally she dropped by his nook to ask in a neutral voice about some logistical aspect of their breakup. He could not meet her eye. Nor could he meet the eye of anyone else at work, not properly. It was strange how one could have a conversation with people and appear to be meeting their gaze during it, when all the time they were not really quite looking at you and you were not really quite looking at them. Primate subtleties, honed over millions of years on the savannah.
He lost appet.i.te, lost energy. In the morning he would wake up and wonder why he should get out of bed. Then looking at the blank walls of the bedroom, where Selena's prints had hung, he would sometimes get so angry at her that his pulse hammered uncomfortably in his neck and forehead. This got him out of bed, but then there was nowhere to go, except work. And there everyone knew he was a wife-beater, a domestic abuser, an a.s.shole. Martian society did not tolerate such people.
Shame or anger; anger or shame. Grief or humiliation. Resentment or regret. Lost love. Omnidirectional rage.
Mostly he didn't swim anymore. The sight of the women swimmers was too painful now, though they were as friendly as always; they knew nothing of the lab except him and Frank, and Frank had not said anything to them about what had happened. It made no difference. He was cut off from them. He knew he ought to swim more, and he swam less. Whenever he resolved to turn things around he would swim two or three days in a row, then let it fall away again.
Once at the end of an early evening workout he had forced himself to attend-and now he felt better, as usual-while they were standing in the lane steaming, his three most constant lane-mates made quick plans to go to a nearby trattoria after showering. One looked at him. ”Pizza at Rico's?”
He shook his head. ”Hamburger at home,” he said sadly.
They laughed at this. ”Ah come on. It'll keep another night.”
”Come on, Andy,” Frank said from the next lane. ”I'll go too, if that's okay.”
”Sure,” the women said. Frank often swam in their lane too.
”Well...” Smith roused himself. ”Okay.”
He sat with them and listened to their chatter around the restaurant table. They still seemed to be slightly steaming, their hair wet and wisping away from their foreheads. The three women were young. It was interesting; away from the pool they looked ordinary and undistinguished: skinny, mousy, plump, maladroit, whatever. With their clothes on you could not guess at their fantastically powerful shoulders and lats, their compact smooth musculatures. Like seals dressed up in clown suits, waddling around a stage.
”Are you okay?” one asked him when he had been silent too long.
”Oh yeah, yeah.” He hesitated, glanced at Frank. ”Broke up with my girlfriend.”
”Ah ha! I knew knew it was something!” Hand to his arm (they all b.u.mped into each other all the time in the pool): ”You haven't been your usual self lately.” it was something!” Hand to his arm (they all b.u.mped into each other all the time in the pool): ”You haven't been your usual self lately.”
”No.” He smiled ruefully. ”It's been hard.”
He could never tell them about what had happened. And Frank wouldn't either. But without that none of the rest of his story made any sense. So he couldn't talk about any of it.
They sensed this and s.h.i.+fted in their seats, preparatory to changing the topic. ”Oh well,” Frank said, helping them. ”Lots more fish in the sea.”
”In the pool,” one of the women joked, elbowing him.
He nodded, tried to smile.
They looked at each other. One asked the waiter for the bill, and another said to Smith and Frank, ”Come with us over to my place, we're going to get in the hot tub and soak our aches away.”
She rented a room in a little house with an enclosed courtyard, and all the rest of the residents were away. They followed her through the dark house into the courtyard, and took the cover off the hot tub and turned it on, then took their clothes off and got in the steaming water. Smith joined them, feeling shy. People on the beaches of Mars sunbathed without clothes all the time, it was no big deal really. Frank seemed not to notice, he was perfectly relaxed. But they didn't swim at the pool like this.
They all sighed at the water's heat. The woman from the house went inside and brought out some beer and cups. Light from the kitchen fell on her as she put down the carton of beer and pa.s.sed out the cups. Smith already knew her body perfectly well from their many hours together in the pool; nevertheless he was shocked seeing the whole of her. Frank ignored the sight, filling the cups from the carton.
They drank beer, made small talk. Two were vets; their lane leader, the one who had been pregnant, was a bit older, a chemist in a pharmaceutical lab near the pool. Her baby was being watched by her co-op that night. They all looked up to her, Smith saw, even here. These days she brought the baby to the pool and swam just as powerfully as ever, parking the babycarrier just beyond the splash line. Smith's muscles melted in the hot water, he sipped his beer, listening to them.
One of the women looked down at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in the water and laughed. ”They float like pool buoys.”
Smith had already noticed this.
”No wonder women swim better than men.”
”As long as they aren't so big they interfere with the hydrodynamics.”
Their leader looked down through her fogged gla.s.ses, pink-faced, hair tied up, misted, demure. ”I wonder if mine float less because I'm nursing.”
”But all that milk.”
”Yes but the water in the milk is neutral density, it's the fat that floats. It could be that empty b.r.e.a.s.t.s float even more than full ones.”