FEW:?You mean, have I continued doing dumb shit?
OM:?I’m just wondering what you do with red flags when you come across them.
FEW:?Well, I’m married. I work at a women’s clinic. I don’t meet many strange men in my daily life.
[ALARM]
OM:?My next appointment is here.
FEW:?Do you think I could get a copy of this transcript at some point?
OM:?Sure, of course.
FEW:?I had a transcript of my grand jury testimony, but it was destroyed in a flood.
OM:?Was it something you looked at often?
FEW:?Never. But I liked having it in a drawer.
[END OF RECORDING]
Greta might have liked having it in a drawer, as well. She switched on the printer. As she watched the pages collect in the tray, her chest swelled with something wholly unfamiliar, something other than dread. She’d heard plenty of extreme stories, but she’d never known anyone who’d taken such a beating, not even a man, without luxuriating in self-pity. Big Swiss didn’t possess the impulse to please, to match anyone’s needs or desires. Her only need, seemingly, was to satisfy her own curiosity. That’s what drove her into the house and up the stairs. Granted, curiosity killed the cat, or, in this case, broke its jaw in two places. Of course, no one should get their face pummeled for climbing the wrong stairs or rejecting the wrong person, but, given the ridiculous number of red flags—the kidnapping, the prison time, the dumpy house, the super-sad dog—Big Swiss had not only courted disaster, she’d practically bought it a boutonnière.
Greta considered her own behavior around red flags. Her habit was not to ignore them so much as to ingest them, a somewhat laborious mental production that involved placing them in a stockpot with butter, herbs, and mirepoix; cooking over low heat without browning; adding red meat, additional red flags, a jug of red wine; and voilà, four hours at a lazy simmer later, an extremely rich red-flag stew that she forked into her mouth every day like a fucking moron, sometimes for years on end.
But what about the business card? Why hadn’t she googled the guy’s name? People her age refused to do anything without consulting the internet. Has this toothbrush been vetted? This olive oil? This novel? This guy who just got out of prison? It was a mistake Greta would have made even yesterday, but Greta hadn’t grown up with the internet. She wasn’t on social media and she texted reluctantly, with one finger. Sometimes she tried incorporating her thumbs or some of her other fingers, but she never got the hang of it.
At age twenty, or even thirty, Greta would have followed the guy up the stairs. But the way Big Swiss had rejected him was completely foreign and unthinkable. Whereas Greta had only learned to say no, like, a couple years ago, it seemed clear that Big Swiss had been saying it her whole life, and not only no, but nope. Nope! And when the guy hadn’t taken nope for an answer, she’d simply said, “I’m not attracted to you.” Truth-telling—a bizarre choice. Greta would have sooner told someone she had herpes or hepatitis. Or a long-standing, extremely pungent yeast infection. She’d have mentioned discharge. She’d have mentioned the color of the discharge. “I have no doubt you’re some kind of genius at eating pussy,” she would have said. “But trust me, you don’t want this one.” Instead, Big Swiss had said, “I hope you’re not planning to rape me.” As if it were preposterous, as if it didn’t happen every fifteen minutes.
If he’d pretended to be fine with a yeasty vag, Greta would’ve let him go down on her. To cover up her misplaced shame, she would’ve complimented his technique. “Wow, you really know what you’re doing,” she’d have marveled. “Jeez.” Perhaps, when he tried to fuck her afterward, he’d have felt good enough about himself to take no for an answer. A polite but firm no, followed by something like, “Call me old-fashioned but I’d rather get to know you first. Is that weird? When can we see each other again?” He likely would’ve raped her, anyway, because he was a psychopath, but, given the choice, Greta would have taken rape over a broken face. Better the devil you know.
She placed the transcript in the bottom drawer of her desk and clomped downstairs to the kitchen. Although the occasion didn’t call for bubbles, the only alcohol in the house was a bottle of prosecco. She opened it, spilled roughly half of it into a large canning jar, and decided to do something she’d never done before, something she’d never felt compelled to do, which was to listen to the last fifteen minutes of the session again, sans headphones.
Now that Big Swiss’s voice occupied the entire room, the air shifted. Greta noticed a subtle change in pressure. Big Swiss had an undeniably large presence. When she climbed the stairs to her doom, yet another pane fell from Greta’s window. It was hard to imagine Big Swiss being overpowered by anything—confusion, desire, alcohol, a homicidal maniac. The beating was even more unsettling the second time around. Greta became hyperaware of her hands. When Big Swiss descended the stairs with a ruined face, Greta found herself wanting to punch herself. In the face. Just to see what it felt like.
5
The following day, Greta transcribed two sessions. In the first, a man said that Om’s amethyst geode reminded him of his ex-wife’s vagina, which prompted an embarrassing lecture about the healing properties of crystals, during which Om had the gall to proclaim that geodes helped you see the whole picture and make difficult decisions. In the second, a young woman made a startling pass at Om by suddenly sitting on his lap and calling him Papa, which was somehow more disturbing than Daddy. It had happened suddenly—neither Om nor Greta saw it coming. To Greta’s surprise and relief, Om did the right thing and talked about transference, and Greta chastised herself for thinking Om was a charlatan, but then she wondered if the woman simply wasn’t Om’s type. If the session had ended a different way, Greta never would have known, because Om wouldn’t have sent her the file, and if there was no transcript, did anything really happen? Then she wondered if Om had hired her not because he was writing a book—a book he refused to discuss, strangely—but rather to keep himself in check, or hold himself accountable, which seemed wise. Perhaps he’d become a sex and relationship coach because he himself was a sex and relationship addict.
During both sessions, Greta could hear Big Swiss’s voice in the background, as if she were talking to someone in the next room, but whenever Greta paused the audio, the voice was still there. Apparently, Big Swiss’s voice had earwormed itself into Greta’s brain. It played for hours and was as difficult to shake as “Come On Eileen” or “Penny Lane.”
At the end of the day, Greta smoked a cigarette at the window. The sun was on its way down and the wind was picking up. A squirrel stuffed dead leaves into its mouth like salad, while another watched from a nearby tree branch, straddling it like a pommel horse and panting. Gradually, Greta became aware of humans loitering near the locust tree. Long-haired guy, short-haired girl, both wearing dirty jeans and muddy boots. Together they gazed at the broken chandelier Sabine had hung from a tree branch. The guy smiled and clasped his hands behind his back while the girl took photographs. They seemed a little too open to awe, and Greta suspected they knew they were being watched.