One Plus Two Minus One (24 page)

Beth looked
up, and realized Ethan was down the corridor, watching.
“Yeah, and fuck you too,” she said to him. “What
do you want?”

He looked at
the maintenance guy.
“I needed some help
with my assignment.”

“
So ask a
fucking tutor.”
Beth stood there a
minute, and then said, “Come in.”

The
maintenance guy seemed about to leave. “Sorry,” Beth said.
“But just have some sense about where you are
and who you’re talking to.”

He ignored her, offended, and walked off.

“Or be a fucking dick,” Beth said after
him.

“You’re an angry woman,” Ethan said.

“So fucking what?”

“It’s hot.”

“Oh,” Beth said, and grinned and calmed down
right away.

She was
having mood swings.
Maybe Ethan had given
her early menopause.

Ethan was
looking at the note she had taped on her door.
Do not clean this office. Do not maintain this
office. Do not empty the bin or open the window. Do not touch my
papers. Do not ever touch my fucking whiteboard
.

“
What?” she
said.
“The whiteboard? Someone did
once.”

He nodded.

“And once I threw something away and I
realized I needed it a week later, so I don’t want the bin
emptied.”

“
Right.
Don’t people mind the
swearing?”

“They don’t have to look at my fucking door
if they don’t fucking want to.”

Ethan
grinned.
“And that guy just
then?”

“
He’d been
making noise for an hour.
He could work
around my lectures.”

“Do they?”

“
Nope,” she
said.
“And that’s the fucking problem
with this place.”

“Are you okay?” he said.

“
Yep,” she
said.
“Now.” She closed the door and
kissed him. Kissed him for a long time.

“
Was there
something?” she said.
“Or just to see
me?”

“Just see you.”

She kissed
him a little longer.
“That’s fucking
cool,” she said.

“I know.”

“I was trying to do something,” she said.

“I’ll go.”

She
hesitated, still kissing, not sure if he would be offended.
“Do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

He opened the door, kissed her again, said,
“Bye.”

She watched him go and grinned to herself and
wondered what was wrong with her.

Three hours
later she got an email from the head of maintenance about her
abusing one of his staff.
It had been
copied to her head of school. She deleted it without bothering to
reply.

*

Robert
was getting more involved with his political
friends. There was going to be an election, or a law change, or
something. Beth didn’t really care. Robert talked about it a lot,
about his new friends who cared as much as he did.

“It’s nice you have a hobby,” Beth said, and
that shut him up for a few days.

Not forever.

“
I wondered,”
he said a week later,
“If it would be
okay to have a meeting here.”

Beth looked
at him, surprised.
“Ah, no.”

“It’s close to the campus.”

“And still no.”

“Why not?”

“What did I say about having a bunch of
hippies in my lounge?”

“They’re my colleagues.”

“Like that’s better.”

He looked at
her for a moment and seemed annoyed.
“Shit, Beth…”

“What?”

“Do you have to be like that all the fucking
time?”

“Like what?”

“
Yes, Beth,
they’re political scientists, and what you do is far more
important, but you don’t have to be such an utter bitch about the
people in my department.
They’re my
friends.”

She thought
about that.
She probably took it too far
sometimes, but then again, she didn’t want him here, and he didn’t
have to talk to her like that even if she was being
rude.

“
It’s not
that they’re political scientists,” she said.
“It’s that they’re hippies. Like I said. You fucking
dick.”

“We’re going to have a fight about this?” he
said. “Really?”

“
Yeah,” she
said.
“Okay.”

He looked at her.

“
This is my
fucking house,” she said.
“You’re a guest
and you don’t get to try and bully me into having your dodgy
friends over.”

“I’m a guest?”

“
Yeah, you
fucking are.
I’m paying the rent and I’m
paying for the food and since you haven’t once offered to help,
you’re a fucking guest.”

He looked in
his pocket, took out two twenties.
Threw
them on the floor. “That’s all I have on me.”

“
Thanks,”
Beth said.
“Big spender. That fucking
helps.”

“
I’ll get as
much as you want.
And I’ll go right now
if you want me to.”

She looked at
him for a long, long moment and almost said yes, he should
go.
She wanted to, quite desperately. She
could have him out of here in an hour and Ethan inside her in
two.

Because she wanted to so much, she
didn’t.

“That’s not the point,” she said.

“I’ll pay rent.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“Because then you’ll lose this power you
think you have.”

“
No,
Robert, because I’m fucking sick of all this
political bullshit, and I used to put up with it because I was
stupid and I loved you and it had always been like that, but I’ve
got a life here now and I don’t want that shit to be part of
it.”

He looked at
her for a moment.
“That’s really what the
problem is? My political activism?”

No, she
thought.
Not at all. “Yes,” she
said.

“
There’s an
election on, Beth.
It matters. Maybe for
the first time in a decade.”

“
I don’t
care,
Robert. You’re not going to change
anything, so why bother?”

He looked at
her like he didn’t know her at all, and part of her welcomed
that.
Part of her wanted him to get so
confused by this woman he didn’t know he just went away.

“
I’ve told
you over and over,” she said, and this part was true.
“I’ve told you I don’t care. I’ve told you I
don’t want to be part of all that, and you never fucking listen. So
listen to this. No hippies in my house. No fucking activists, no
political agitators, fucking no-one. You understand me?”

He nodded
slowly.
“Yeah, Beth, I
understand.”

He looked around for his jacket, picked it
up.

“
Fuck off
then,” she said.
“Run away.”

“Yeah, Beth.”

“Coward.”

He got his
shoes, and started putting them on.
Ignoring her.

“Are you fucking listening?”

“No,” he said.

“Well, fucking listen to me.”

He sat there, and waited.

“
I don’t want
any of that shit in my house.
No posters,
no paint, no fucking signs. Nothing, okay?”

“Okay, Beth, I got it.”

“
I’ve had it
with all that student radical bullshit.
I
just want a normal life in a nice house for a while.”

He nodded,
and went to the door.
“You’ve changed,”
he said.

“
I
know.
About fucking time I
did.”

He looked at
her for a moment, and left.
He closed the
door gently behind him.

She would
have slammed it, and she thought Ethan would have slammed it, and
she wasn’t sure why
Robert’s calmness
annoyed her so much.

*

Robert
came back that night, while Beth was sitting on
the couch watching TV. Robert didn’t approve of TV, so Beth had
been watching it more lately. He sat down beside her and handed her
an envelope.

She looked
inside.
Money. A lot of money.

“How much is that?”

“
Two
thousand.
Enough for rent for a
while.”

“On this place, that’s enough for rent for
about three weeks.”

She tried to
hand it back, but he wouldn’t take it.
She held it out for a moment, then got sick of him being
childish and threw it towards him. Then got up, and got his two
twenties from that morning off the bench, and dropped them in his
lap too.

“
Don’t be so
controlling,” he said.
“Just take
it.”

“
Your whole
fucking problem,” she said.
“Is you never
listen to me. You always think you know what I want when you
don’t.”

He looked at her.

“
My life,”
she said.
“My house. My rules. No
hippies, and you’re not paying fucking rent. You’re a
guest.”

“
I thought I
was your partner?
That we were a
couple?”

She didn’t answer.

“Aren’t I?”

“Fuck knows.”

“What does that mean?”

She looked back at the TV and ignored
him.

“Beth…”

“I’m watching this.”

He looked at her for a moment, then stood up
and went towards the stairs.

“Hey,” she said, and threw the envelope
towards him.

He stayed where he was, didn’t pick it
up.

“
I’m fucking
controlling,” she said.
“You won’t even
take your money back.”

He went up the stairs.

“
Hey,
Robert?” Beth called.

He stopped.

“
Sex with you
bores the fuck out of me and I hate anal.
I just want normal sex.”

“You said.”

“
I’m saying
again.
So you get it.”

“
Yeah,” he
said, and was finally starting to sound impatient.
“You could have just told me ages ago. You don’t
have to go so completely fucking mad about it.”

She picked up
a book from the coffee table and threw it towards the
stairs.
One if his books, that he’d left
lying around. Then another.

“Fuck you,” she shouted, and, “Welcome to the
new fucking me.”

He just stood
there and looked at her.
The books hadn’t
gone anywhere near him. After a moment he went upstairs.

Beth felt
satisfied.
She actually felt quite calm,
like that was something she’d needed to do for years and it had
just got done. She liked shouting at him, she realized. She liked
being angry and acting all aggrieved. It made her feel alive, it
was almost addictive. She was starting to understand what he and
all his political friends saw in being angry about shit.

She hoped the
walls were thick, though.
She couldn’t
usually hear the neighbors, but it might be they just didn’t shout
at each other. She didn’t really want them knowing what was going
on in here.

She stayed up late, went to bed at two, shut
the door loudly and tossed around and pulled the blankets off him
and did everything she could to make sure he woke up.

Now she’d started, she had days and days
worth of rage inside her ready to come out.

*

Robert
was in the shower when Beth woke up. She could
hear water running. She got up and went downstairs, made coffee,
put muesli in a bowl for her breakfast. She sat at her big wooden
table and chewed slowly.

Robert
came downstairs and put on toast. “Should we
talk?” he said.

Beth shrugged.

Robert
stood there until his toast popped, and she
ignored him. He spread peanut butter on his toast, looked at the
chair beside her, then sat on the couch.

“Don’t eat on the sofa,” Beth said.

He looked up at her, and kept eating.

She got up, walked over, and dropped half a
bowl of muesli and milk into his lap.

“
What the
fuck is wrong with you?”
Robert said. He
didn’t stand up, didn’t shout.

“I’m going to have a shower,” Beth said, and
went upstairs.

She went into
the bathroom, and saw
Robert’s razor and
shaving cream and deodorant on the bench. She scooped all three up,
went to the top of the stairs, and threw them down.

“Don’t leave your shit lying around,” she
shouted.

The cans and
razor bounced down the stairs.
The top of
the razor came off, and clattered away somewhere. The shaving cream
hit a step top-down and spurted some foam out.

It reminded
Beth of Ethan coming on the stairs, coming on her, and suddenly she
couldn’t be bothered fighting with
Robert
right now.