Page 34 of The Square

“Don’t like deer.”

“Once we’re there—”

“Knew a lad once called Trevor. Got bit by a deer tick and developed Lyme disease. Nasty business that. Don’t you have an apartment in Tokyo or someplace a little more cosmopolitan?”

“Will you fokken stop taking the piss?” I slam the table so ferociously that it jolts the mug sitting way across the other side. She sits back. Looks at me. Nods. I go on. “Once the baby comes, we’ll make decisions about what happens then. But, for now, this is what we’re doing. How pregnant are you?”

“Quite.”

“You know what I fokken mean.”

“About eleven weeks, I suppose.”

I start working the math out in my head. “We’ve only been here…”

“It didn’t happen on this jaunt, darling. I imagine it happened on that stopover between the States and Joburg that you took a few months back. Almost three months back, to be precise.”

I pause to think about that. I barely even remember it. It wasn’t official business. I was just getting away. Things with Christine were… complicated, and on my way back to South Africa, I had my pilot land at Heathrow. I called Eliza from the plane and told her to meet me at the airport hotel.

Savagely romantic.

“Yeah, all right,” I say. “Well, this is what’s happening now. So…” I stand, pull my cell phone from my jacket pocket.

“Who are you calling?”

“Whoever I need to. We can arrange for your shit to be sent, after.” As I’m pressing ‘send,’ she steps around the table, pulls the phone from my hand, and ends the call before it can commence. “Oi, give me my phone,” I say, reaching.

She places it down on the table and puts her arms around my waist. She kisses me lightly on the lips and looks into my eyes.

“Alec?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you love me?”

I squint. Not only was I not expecting the question, I don’t have a ready answer. She’s never asked me before. It’s never come up. If I’m honest, I don’t know if I’ve ever even considered it.

“What?” I say in response.

“Do you love me? Simple question. You love Christine. I know you do. You love her desperately and with your whole heart. I’m pretty sure you feel that way about Danny too. I know they love you.” She starts tracing the back of my shirt with her fingernails. Roughly in the area where my tattoo lives. “They love you so much, they’d do absolutely anything in the world for you. They’d go wherever you ask them, do whatever you ask. Kill who you tell them to kill… Anything. And even though you’d never admit it, you’d do the same for them. So,” she says, stepping back from me now and taking my hands in hers, “all I want to know is: Do you feel that way about me? Would you do anything for me? Go to any lengths? Kill for me?”

“Of course I would.”

“OK, well, that’s not really fair. You’re a sociopath. I think you just like killing people. You don’t need an excuse. But the bigger question remains… do you love me?”

“I… I feel like…”

“I didn’t think so.” She smiles. I would call it a sad smile, but it’s not. It’s just… accepting. “Which is fine. Because, honestly, Alec… I don’t love you. I don’t. And I know you don’t care. Which is perfect. Because if you did, you wouldn’t be you and this wouldn’t work. But, dear heart, I’m not sure that I see us raising a child together and living happily ever after. Happily ever afters are for romantics and simpletons. And we are neither of those things. Are we?”

“I’m not trying to be something I’m not or suggest that I’m interested in living a fiction. I’m just—”

“You’re just feeling guilty. But—and please consider seriously what I’m saying—you’re feeling guilty about a whole raft of things that have nothing to do with me. And since you’ve gone and gotten your life right cocked up and aren’t sure you can fix it this time… you’re trying to fix it with me. And Alec, my angel”—she takes a deep breath—“I don’t want to be someone’s fucking consolation prize.”

I’m just about to respond when I am reminded of a short-short story that I once heard described by an oke I knew. He said it was “the scariest thing he could of.” He was a monstrous naaier who was unintimated by anyone or anything. Not even me. Which was a shame for him. Had he been more easily intimidated, he might still be alive today.

But in the moment right before my hands tightened around his throat and he took his last breath, he said, “I ain’t scared.”

“Goodfor you,” I told him.