Chapter 10
ten
RODRIGO
We’re fighting (again), and making pasta.
The pasta water is not boiling. This is, in the larger context of my evening, not the most alarming thing happening in this kitchen, but I keep returning to it— the pot sitting cold on the burner, untouched since Alana filled it twelve minutes ago and then got distracted by having extensive feelings about my character— because I think the pasta water is a metaphor, and I think I am the pasta water, and the thing I am waiting for is going to be very, very hot when it arrives.
“The thing that I really, like, cannot understand,” Alana is saying, waving the wooden spoon in the air like a weapon, “is why you keep bringing up this job in Spain thing. Like, every single day. Spain, Spain, Spain. What is Spain?”
“Spain is my home,” I say, from my position against the far wall, which I have selected for its defensibility.
I have been tracking her hands since she opened the utensil drawer.
The garlic press is not dangerous. The wooden spoon is not dangerous, but could present a problem in Alana’s very capable hands.
The knife block, which she has been standing mere feet away from for the better part of this conversation, is very dangerous.
“I grew up there. My family is there. And now there might be a job for me. My work is?—”
“Your work is here,” she says. “Your life is here. I am here!” She gestures at herself with the wooden spoon. “Do you see me? Like, hello! Am I not reason enough to stay?”
She is wearing a robe and no shoes, and her hair is loose, and she is, as always, the most beautiful person in any room she occupies.
But I know now, her beauty is a trap, and I only hope I can leave this relationship safely.
Don’t make her mad, I remind myself. La diabla does not like to be angered.
“You are reason enough for many things,” I say carefully, which is the diplomatic version.
“Then why are we even—“ she puts the garlic press down, thank God, and opens her hands— “talking about this? I want to stay in Chicago. You have a life here. You have me. You have a beautiful apartment. You are, I want to say this gently, much better-looking than most of the other men out there, and the bar is genuinely low, so that’s saying something.”
“Gracias,” I say.
“You’re welcome,” she says, and picks the garlic press back up. Then she puts it back down and opens the refrigerator, and I watch her stare into it for a moment— and I take the opportunity to breathe.
I knew this was going to happen. I have been preparing for this conversation like it’s an impending surgery— not looking forward to it, but clear on the fact that the alternative is worse.
I have been floating the idea of a job in Spain for three days.
Small mentions, casual references— I left a fake job listing up on my laptop.
I told Benny about it in a phone call I made sure Alana could overhear.
I have been building a paper trail of my own exit because I know Alana, and I know that a man who disappears suddenly is a different problem than a man who has been publicly considering another option.
One is a betrayal. The other could be a negotiation followed by a slow separation, if I approach it gently.
Perhaps if I make Alana believe I am taking a job in Spain, I can go home and disappear slowly while she forgets all about me.
Benny is done with his job now, which is the other thing.
His part in the whole Twin Ledger situation is finished, and he’s already at the family house in the countryside of Tuscany, probably eating the very best food and pretending to be someone who has never been within three hundred kilometers of an illegal arms deal.
There is no one for Alana to threaten, is the point.
Benny is safe. I am the only person left in this apartment with a stake in this conversation, and I have decided that tonight is the night.
I think, briefly and entirely against my will, about Melissa's baby shower and the woman I met there. Billie. The woman with baby pictures and gold-flecked eyes that looked like they had recently been used to see something very clearly. I know that I can’t ever be with her, in particular— but if I go back to Spain, maybe life will bless me with someone like her.
Someone warm where Alana is cold, and soft where Alana is all sharp edges.
“I think,” I say, when Alana closes the refrigerator, “that I should go to Spain for the job.”
She turns and looks at me. The wooden spoon is still in her hand. Something in her expression goes very still.
“And I think,” I continue, because I have rehearsed this, “that maybe this is a natural point for us to— take some space. Re-evaluate. Give you the chance to explore all the incredible options you have.” I clear my throat. “Separate.”
The word sits there. A very short word for a very large thing.
Alana doesn’t move for a moment. Her robe flows softly around her, but she stays frozen like a statue.
Her loose hair seems to sway even in our windless apartment, medusa’s tendrils portending danger.
The wooden spoon, held at her side now, not gesturing, not waving, seems heavier.
I have seen her face do this before— go quiet, go internally somewhere— and I know from experience that the quiet is never actually quiet.
“Separate,” she repeats.
“Sí,” I say.
“You want to break up with me.” She says it like it’s a mathematical equation. Neutral. Confirmational.
“Well,” I say, “the exact term is not— things are not so black and white— but we do want different things— you should think of it more as a chance to explore–”
“No one breaks up with me,” she says.
Her voice has not changed. It is still the voice she uses to talk about yoga and Oprah and vision boards and getting drinks at the bar. Sweet. Airy. That makes this moment all the more terrifying.
“Alana—”
“I’m going to make us dinner,” she says, pivoting back to the counter.
“And then we’re going to talk about this properly.
Okay? Because I think you’re just— stressed, or whatever.
The job. Everything. You’re overwhelmed and you’re catastrophizing.
” She opens the cabinet above the counter and pulls out a box of pasta.
“You know what? I should have cooked for us weeks ago. I just— I’m not, like, a traditional home-type person, you know?
That’s not my identity. But I can cook pasta. I can absolutely do that.”
She opens the box. She turns the burner on— finally, the pasta water is on the agenda— and she tears the pasta open and then, because there is no other explanation, dumps the entire box into the cold water immediately.
Before it’s boiling. As a lover of food, I must admit— this might be the most horrifying thing I have watched Alana do.
And that is saying something, because I have watched her kill a man. More than once.
“I have been thinking,” I say, carefully, “about what I want my life to look like. And I think?—“
“Everyone thinks pasta is hard, right?” Alana says, poking at the cold water with the wooden spoon, seeming satisfied with this activity.
“But it’s like, it’s literally just water and pasta.
There’s nothing to it. I saw this video where the guy said you can put it in cold water from the start and it’s even better. Something about even cooking.”
“That’s not—” I begin.
“I’m trying to take care of you,” she says, and turns to look at me, and her face is so genuine that for exactly two seconds I think that maybe I’ve been overreacting. Then she adds, “And you are going to appreciate it,” and the moment is over.
I realize there’s nothing I can do, now. There’s no way for me to get out of this safely. But at least I know Benny is in the clear. If my own death arrives as a result of this choice, I am alright with that. I look La diabla straight in the eyes and tell her the facts:
“I am breaking up with you,” I say.
The wooden spoon stops.
The kitchen is very quiet, except for the burner. The cold pasta sits in the cold water.
“No,” Alana says.
“Sí,” I say.
“This doesn’t fit my vision board,” she says, looking as if I’ve slapped her.
“That’s unfortunate,” I agree. “But it is what’s happening.”
“Rodrigo.” She sets the wooden spoon down on the marble counter. “I understand that you are having some kind of— episode— right now. I actually have a lot of compassion for that.”
That’s funny, I think, because you have not once asked me why I’m unhappy in this relationship.
“But what you need to understand is that you and I are going to get married,” she continues, “and we are going to have a wonderful life, and the only thing that is going to happen tonight is that you are going to eat some pasta and tell me how pretty I look in my new robe.”
I watch her hand close around a handle.
She pulls a knife from the butcher’s block.
It is a chef’s knife. A large one.
“You can kill me, Alana,” I say, looking at the knife as if it’s nothing. “But I will still have broken up with you, and the result will be the same.”
To my surprise, I’m not afraid. I know she will try to kill me, yes, but a man must live his life on his own terms, and this relationship has made me less afraid of death and more afraid of a life lived without love.
She looks at the knife for a moment, then at me, and her expression is the same warm, slightly exasperated expression she uses when I’ve done something she considers mildly inconvenient.
She points the knife at me, then says, “I have been planning our future—” she gestures with the knife to indicate the future, which is apparently located somewhere to my left “—since April. April. Do you know what I gave up in April for this relationship?”
“Alana—”
“A trip to Monaco, Rodrigo. I had a whole thing in Monaco and I stayed here because I was committed to travelling less, and wanted to put down roots in Chicago with you?—”
“I’m still breaking up with you.”
She throws the knife.
In Alana’s defense, it is not— I want to be clear here— thrown at me.
It is thrown past me, close enough that I feel the air from it before I hear the sound of the blade embedding in the cabinet behind me with a very definitive thunk.
I have, in a single reflex, moved sideways against the counter.
My heart is doing something unpleasant. I look at the knife.
I look at her. She is looking at her nails.
“I missed on purpose,” she says. “You’re welcome.” A pause. “You don’t even thank me for the most basic things.”
She’s telling the truth. I’ve seen Alana throw a knife with such accuracy she pinned a fruit fly to the wall. If she wanted to hit me, she would have.
The pasta water has begun, distantly, to heat.
“I’m going,” I say. “To Spain. And we are not together anymore. I need you to understand that. No one has to know that this didn’t work out. You can tell everyone you broke up with me.”
“And Benny?” Alana’s voice hardens, and for the first time, I hear La Diabla in her tone. There’s the woman I know. The one who can turn on a dime.
“Benny is somewhere you can’t touch him,” I shrug. “He’s retired from the Twin Ledger. Maybe you should do the same.”
Alana does not lunge. She does not pick up another knife.
She does not produce anything from the utensil drawer, which is, now that I think about it, more alarming than if she had.
Instead, she turns and looks at me for a long, level moment— those pale steel eyes going somewhere dark where I can’t follow— and then she picks up her phone from the counter.
I watch her do it. I watch her hand close around the phone, and I understand immediately that this is worse than the knife. The knife was a feeling. The phone is a plan.
“Where are you going?” I say.
She picks up her purse from the hook by the door. She slips her feet into the shoes she left there— silk mules that match nothing she’s wearing, which tells me she is, in fact, very upset— and she opens the front door.
The hallway light makes a halo of her hair.
“Who are you calling?” I ask.
She turns and looks at me one last time, and she smiles— a full, luminous, unhesitating smile, the one that has cost me six months— and she says: “You’ll regret this.”
And then the door closes. I hear her feet padding toward the elevator, followed by the ding of a button, and then— silence. She’s gone.
I stand in the kitchen. The pasta water is finally beginning to boil, because the universe has a sense of irony.
The knife is still lodged in the cabinet door.
The vision board still covers our wall— the magazine women, the magazine lives, the carefully curated spot for a best friend who does not yet know she’s been selected.
Alana has not told me whether or not she’s befriended the woman from the baby shower yet— Billie.
I want to stick around to find out, only to warn her, but this is my one chance to leave.
My continued presence will only make Alana angrier— which is good for absolutely no one.
Maybe if I leave this city, Alana will also leave Chicago and start over somewhere new.
That’s been her pattern for many years. If I give her nothing to stay here for, perhaps she’ll finally go and terrorize some other trendy hot spot, like Milan or New York.
Then, Billie will be safe, and I’ll be able to start again.
For a moment, I think about what might have happened if I’d been single and able to get to know a woman like Billie— but I push the thoughts away as quickly as they came.
My attraction to the woman is one thing, but the truth is, I don’t know her.
I tend to rush into relationships, and it’s a mistake I’m not going to make again.
There is an idea of the perfect woman in my mind, and I project her onto people I do not yet know— that’s how I ended up with Alana.
Think with the right part of your body, which is your brain, I remind myself.
If my experience with Alana has taught me nothing, it’s that.
I was wildly attracted to her, too, in the beginning, and look how that turned out— with knives in cabinets and my degenerate cousin in hiding.
I move to the closet and pull out my bags, which I’ve pre-packed. One duffel and a suitcase. That’s all my life needs.
I open the front door and peek into the hallway.
Alana is gone. I run for the stairwell like a thief in the night, taking the emergency exit to avoid running into Alana in the building’s lobby.
As I run down three flights of stairs, my suitcase plodding behind me, Alana’s last words to me echo in my mind:
You’ll regret this.
And the thing is— I believe her.