Chapter 4
T
he first time Lucas sees the woman in the green shirt is when she steals his food, but he doesn’t know that yet. He opens his apartment door to pick up his pad thai from the floor in the stairwell, and just then he sees a green shirt lift something outside another door and close it again quickly. Lucas doesn’t give it a lot of thought, because Lucas is giving most of his thoughts to his pad thai. He ordered it through an app on his phone, it’s been cooked and transported and delivered to his doorstep without him having to talk to a single person, and that’s really the peak of how a civilization should work, if you ask Lucas. He’s ordered this pad thai a hundred times before, so he’s already left a tip and five stars in his app before even opening the box. At which point he gets a terrible shock.
Or maybe terrible
is overstating it a little. It’s not like there’s a dead fish or a human finger in the box, that
would really be terrible. Shock
isn’t really the right word, either, if we’re being honest. Maybe more like a mild surprise
. Lucas is mildly surprised, okay? Because his pad thai has no peanuts. Lucas is certainly not a dramatic person, but the peanuts really are a quite central ingredient in a pad thai, the rest of the dish is pretty much just a means of transportation for peanuts into Lucas’s mouth. Pad thai without peanuts is like buying a balloon and just getting the air.
Just as Lucas is going through this trauma, or maybe not trauma
but at least this inconvenience
, his doorbell rings. It’s the second time in two days, and that’s
actually something of a trauma. What’s wrong with people? If one wants to contact other people, surely the civilized thing to do is to send an email? Or even better: not contact them at all? When Lucas reluctantly opens the door, an excited but very out of breath woman in a purple dress is standing outside it.
“Hello! Did you change your password?” She gasps for air.
“Excuse me?” Lucas says.
“Hold on . . . I’m so out of breath . . . I live in the apartment below you. I walked up that whole flight of stairs . . .”
“It’s one
flight of stairs,” Lucas points out, and the woman nods in disgust.
“An . . . entire . . . flight . . . of . . . stairs! I . . . hate . . . stairs. Have you . . . changed your password . . . or not?”
“For what?”
“Your Wi-Fi.”
Lucas looks just as confused by this as you might expect.
“Yes. I actually have.”
“Why?”
“My internet was really slow. I thought maybe it was because someone else was using it.”
“Yes! Me!” pants the woman, whose face has now turned as purple as her dress.
“So . . . I was right?” Lucas says.
“Yes, but now you know it’s me! So now you can change it back again!” she replies.
“But wait, how did you have my last password?” he asks, to which the purple woman rolls her eyes.
“ 1991sacuL
? Your year of birth plus your name backwards? Yes, hooow could I possibly figure that one out? Unbreakable!”
“How do you know what year I was born . . . ,” Lucas begins, more than a little offended, but the woman just impatiently waves her palm at him as if he’s the motion sensor in a public restroom.
“You can find anything on the internet, Lucas! Now, you’ll have to excuse me, I’m a little busy. Can you just give me your new password?”
Lucas clears his throat, since he’s really very reluctant to start a conflict with his neighbors, as conflict inevitably leads to interaction. He therefore proceeds with extreme caution.
“But why . . . are you using my Wi-Fi?”
“Well, I’m really not,” the purple woman protests.
“But . . . you are,” Lucas feels compelled to insist.
The woman sighs like someone might sigh to a child who has just dropped their ice cream on a dog.
“No. I only use what leaks out. You use all the Wi-Fi in your apartment, but there’s also a lot of Wi-Fi leaking out into my apartment, and I use that.”
“But that’s . . . theft,” says Lucas.
The woman gasps.
“That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. That’s like saying it’s theft if I take a little bit of cheese out of a bag of groceries that’s outside of your door. How is it theft if we’ve never even met?”
Lucas scratches his hair.
“Hold on . . . Have you been taking cheese out of my grocery bags?”
“It was just an example! Don’t worry about it!” the purple woman says quickly.
“I’ve actually had some cheese missing sometimes . . . ,” Lucas recalls, but at that point the purple woman gives him a stern look and says:
“You know what? You’re a busy man, I’m a busy woman. Either we stand here arguing about this all day, or you just give me the password and I disappear from your life.”
It is an offer that cannot be refused, Lucas must admit. The woman in the purple dress has clearly understood the value of her own absence, it’s an unbeatable negotiating tactic. So Lucas gives up and confesses:
“The password is PadThaiPadThai
.”
The purple woman taps her temple as if she and he are now part of a secret conspiracy.
“Ah! Clever! Because someone might figure it out once, but no one figures it out twice!”
“Okay, thanks for coming,” says Lucas, as you do if you’re in the absolutely nicest way possible trying to say: Go away.
But the woman doesn’t disappear. Instead, she asks:
“Did you hear about the frying pan?”
“Yes.” Lucas sighs.
“Crazy, huh? To just put it on the ground like that? Why not sell it on Facebook?”
Lucas doesn’t answer because he is busy imagining the nightmare of strangers ringing your doorbell, wanting to buy your frying pan. Lucas would rather set his entire apartment on fire.
“Do you live alone?” the woman asks with a sudden interest.
“Yes,” says Lucas and slowly, slowly tries to close the door.
“Do you know that involuntary loneliness is as dangerous to your health as cancer? There is research!” the woman says, leaning into the doorway.
“It’s highly voluntary. I have a new video game, so if you’ll excuse me . . . ,” Lucas begs her.
“I don’t live alone, I have a cat. People with cats live longer. There’s research!” the woman informs him.
“Okay,” says Lucas in the way you say that if you really mean: But would one really want to live longer if one has to have a cat?
The woman nods in a way that looks encouraging but feels condescending, like she’s watching a Tyrannosaurus rex trying to learn to play the piano.
“The first sign of depression is often denial. I’m in a Facebook group where you can talk about it. Do you want the name of it? Unfortunately, a lot of people feel ashamed to talk about their feelings, but . . . ,” she explains.
“Who?” Lucas mutters and immediately regrets it.
“What do you mean, ‘who’? Who who?” the woman asks.
“It was . . . nothing,” Lucas tries.
“No! Tell me what you said!” the woman demands, whereupon Lucas takes a deep breath and mumbles:
“I just wonder who is ashamed to talk about their feelings. I’ve been on the internet, and it seems to be the only
thing people talk about there . . .”
The woman seems to have a lot of feelings about this, mildly put.
“It’s actually a stigma!”
“Okay.” Lucas sighs, and then says in the most pleasant of pleasant tones:
“So, anyway, now you have my password. Thanks for coming.”
“You don’t have to get snippy with me just because you’re unhappy!” the woman replies.
It should be noted that Lucas is certainly not proud of himself when he hears himself shouting back:
“I AM VERY HAPPY!”
Or at least he was, until very recently.
Finally, the woman in the purple dress turns to leave, and for a blissful second Lucas thinks he is going to get his life back. But just then the door to the apartment next to his opens. The woman in the green shirt peeks out.
“Are you Lucas?” the green shirt asks, disgruntled.
“Yes, that’s him. Do you need the password for his Wi-Fi?” the purple dress asks helpfully.
The green shirt looks very uncomfortable.
“No, no, but I think you’ve accidentally stolen my food.”
“I certainly have not!” says Lucas.
He, a man who never gets annoyed, has now suddenly been annoyed twice in as many minutes. This is what you get for meeting people.
“Pad thai without peanuts?” the green shirt asks.
Lucas clears his throat in embarrassment.
“All right. Fine. I do happen to have that here. But I didn’t steal
it!”
“Sure. Sure. You just happen to have it,” says the green shirt, as though that’s most definitely theft.
Purple Dress interjects helpfully:
“It’s not theft if it happens outside your apartment. It’s a bit like Wi-Fi. And cheese.”
Lucas sighs rather deeply at both of them and goes inside to get what is not his pad thai. It is actually not, if you would ask him, even pad thai at all.
“Who orders it without peanuts?” he mutters.
“I don’t like peanuts,” says the green shirt sourly.
“Peanuts are the whole thing!” Lucas replies even more sourly.
“Yes, and that’s exactly the thing I don’t like,” the green shirt points out.
They exchange pad thai. Or whatever one of them is.
“Thank you,” the green shirt says quickly and tries to disappear back into her apartment, but this she can of course forget about. Because the woman in purple has been readying herself for the cruelest form of interpersonal terrorism: small talk.
“Did you hear about the frying pan? The board still hasn’t found the culprit.” She nods, clearly expecting an answer.
“No,” says the green shirt, which of course is the wrong answer, because now the purple woman starts to explain
. From time to time during the story she looks sternly at Lucas so as to make him nod to confirm that what she’s saying is indeed the case. At one point he even hears himself say “mmm,” and that makes him immediately want to go and wash his mouth with soap and water. The green shirt, meanwhile, tries to get away as soon as the story seems to be ending.
“Okay, sorry about the frying pan, but now I really have to . . .”
“Wait! Have you just moved in?” the purple woman asks curiously.
The green shirt suddenly looks a bit uneasy.
“No, no, I’m . . . only staying here temporarily. I’m borrowing the apartment from an . . . acquaintance.”
“Oh! The tall woman with glasses who used to live here?” the purple woman asks.
“Yes.” The green shirt sighs.
“She’s a doctor, right?”
“Yes.”
“Is she your doctor?” the purple woman interrogates.
“I don’t really feel comfortable answering that . . . ,” Green Shirt mumbles.
“Oh, you don’t? Well, we can either stand here and argue about it all day, or you can just tell me the whole story right away and I’ll disappear from your life!” the purple one informs her, ice cold, as if she were holding a gun loaded with annoyance.
This makes the green shirt groan and whisper:
“Okay, but please don’t tell the board that I’m staying here, in that case. It’s against building rules. But I . . . well, officially, I suppose I’m in what is medically called a . . . coma.”
“Excuse me?” Lucas exclaims with his mouth full of peanuts.
The green shirt looks a little defeated.
“I was in an accident. I was hit by a car while cycling to my children’s school,” she explains.
“Oh no! Did you have the kids with you?” the purple dress yells anxiously.
“No, no, the kids were already in school. But they called me because my daughter had forgotten her backpack and my son had gotten the wrong color apple in his lunch bag for the field trip. And my husband had taken my car to work, because his car was in the repair shop and he has a very important job, so I had to ride my bike. And then I got hit by a car.”
“And went into a coma?” the purple one asks.
The green one shakes her head.
“No, no, not really. I was only unconscious a little while. But when I woke up in the hospital, the doctor and the nurses had . . . well, met my family. And apparently my daughter had asked if
the doctor knew where her backpack was before she even asked how I was doing. And my son had been rather impatient asking when I was coming home, because he had no clean underwear, because my husband doesn’t know how to work the washing machine. Or the dishwasher. Or the vacuum cleaner, even though that was my husband’s Christmas gift to me . . .”
Even Lucas is looking at her with some compassion now.
“Your family doesn’t seem very helpful.”
The purple dress nods angrily.
“They seem to take you for granted!”
The green shirt blushes.
“Yes . . . well, that’s what the doctor said too. So she offered for me to be in a coma for a few days. Or, you know, not that I’d be in
a coma, but pretend to be. So every time my husband calls the hospital now, the doctor says, ‘Oh no, sorry, she hasn’t woken up yet.’ But actually she’s lent me this apartment. Apparently this doctor does this sometimes when she feels that mothers need . . . a break.”
“Wow,” the purple dress says, “like a coma vacation? What do you do with all your time?”
The green shirt beams.
“I watch TV shows! I haven’t had time to watch TV for years, but the last few days I’ve been watching so much TV that I’ve even had time to watch bad
shows . . .”
“You’ve also had time to have pad thai without peanuts,” Lucas interjects, in a tone that indicates he would maybe encourage her to broaden her horizons a bit.
“Yes!” The green shirt nods without taking the hint at all.
“We won’t say anything to the board about you staying here!” promises Purple Dress, looking sternly at Lucas.
“Mmm,” says Lucas.
So the three neighbors part ways. The purple dress goes home to her Wi-Fi, the green shirt goes home to her TV shows, and Lucas goes back to his peanuts and his video game. He almost has time to go back to being happy before his doorbell rings again. Outside stands the board. All three heads shout at once:
“Now there are TWO frying pans on the ground out there!”
So: It’s a frying pan that’s ruining Lucas’s life. We’re getting to that now.