“You’re being glared at,” Luke said to Greta, “by Little Miss Icy Veins.”
Greta stopped scratching and sat on her hands.
“Mrs.,” Big Swiss corrected him. “And there’s nothing little about me. Or icy.”
Pedantic seething—not Greta’s favorite, but it was Big Swiss’s number one hobby.
“Do you think I’m icy?” Big Swiss asked Greta.
“You have cold hands,” Greta said quickly, looking past Big Swiss at the lake.
“But do you consider me distant and unfeeling?”
“Nope,” Greta said.
“Liar,” Big Swiss said.
Greta shrugged.
“The dreaded Swiss stare,” Luke said ruefully. “Still raises the hair on the back of my neck. Not always in a bad way.” He smiled and tugged at his collar. “Have you been to Switzerland, Rebekah?”
Greta smiled and shook her head. The phantoms whirled like dervishes. She hadn’t experienced a flare-up in years, but it was all coming back to her now. Pain was the only way out. Pain interfered with the itch, and if you inflicted enough—on yourself, of course—the itch subsided altogether.
“Can I tell you what goes on there?” Luke said. “I mean, are you curious at all?”
“She already knows,” Big Swiss said.
“Go ahead,” Greta gasped, digging her nails into her palm. “Please.”
“Okay, so, you’re on the train, right, minding your own business, and suddenly you feel that you’re being watched, so you look around. It’s the old Swiss woman sitting across from you. She’s calm and serious and staring hard at your chest, so you look down at yourself, expecting to find a mustard stain, but there’s nothing. Now she’s staring at your sleeve, now the buttons on your shirt. Her eyes linger on your collar. You think, Okay, she’s moving up to my face. When she sees my face, she’ll look away. Nope. Her eyes slip down to your stomach. They travel over your crotch. Your pant legs. You can see her making little judgments and appraisals. Meanwhile, you’re just waiting for her to look at your face, because you want her to know that you’ve caught her staring. Well, the joke’s on you, because guess what? She doesn’t care. She shamelessly evaluates your face, too, even though you’re giving her a look of death. She doesn’t even register your expression. She looks you directly in the eyes, but she doesn’t see you.”
“Yikes,” Greta said. “What’s her deal? Does she hate tourists?”
“No. Swiss people were never taught that it’s rude to stare,” Luke said. “They’ll stare at anyone. It’s like, socially acceptable to stare at a stranger on the train or anywhere else, and they stare at their friends, too.” He looked at Big Swiss. “Like how you’re staring at Rebekah right now, babe.”
“It’s called looking,” Big Swiss said. “If you’re Swiss, you simply allow yourself to be looked over. Then it’s your turn—you look over the person while they look away. It’s a tacit exchange, and totally harmless. It’s just a way to pass the time.”
“Right,” Greta blurted. “I’ve noticed this about you.”
In bed, she wanted to add. It was the very same exchange they performed during sex: I look, you look the other way; now you look while I look away, and if our eyes meet, let’s not see each other, okay? Although initially she’d been weirded out, Greta had grown to like this arrangement. Unlike the voyeurism she usually participated in, this brand was open and consensual, and she’d taken it very personally. I’m irresistible, Greta often thought during sex. She’s transfixed by my face! But now that Greta knew it was simply cultural, she felt—well, like a nobody, like a stranger on a train. She and Big Swiss were just passing the time, apparently, taking turns looking at each other on their way to somewhere else. Big Swiss was on her way to Ecuador to have the most meaningful sex of her life, and where was Greta headed? Fucking nowhere.
Except we’re not on a train, Greta reminded herself. And we’re doing a lot more than looking. Much more, for many hours a day, several days a week. Although, it’s been a few days, hasn’t it? A little skin contact might be helpful right now. Perhaps the phantoms will perish on the spot, and I can stop scratching like a junkie. I’d even settle for footsie.
Greta groped around, located Big Swiss’s foot under the table, and realized it was already being caressed. By Luke’s foot.
“Oops,” Greta murmured. “Sorry.”
The phantoms cheered and stomped their feet. They were much rowdier than she remembered. She scratched at them again. And again. And once more. Silas, who’d been pacing in front of the windows, stopped and stared at her.
“We look at each other out of curiosity,” Big Swiss was saying. “That’s how I would describe it. It’s not judgmental, not always. But the Swiss are vigilant—that’s true. We like to keep each other in check. Americans could never handle that, because they’re such infants, and so easily rattled. They can’t ride the train without getting their feelings hurt. They can’t walk down the street without being offended.”
“We just don’t like to be scrutinized,” Luke said. “There’s nothing childish about that.”
“Stop looking at me!” Big Swiss said in a disturbing baby voice.
Luke gave Greta an exasperated smile. “If you throw your trash out the wrong way, the sanitation people will go through it, find your address, and send you a bill. Can you imagine?”
Greta could imagine quite a bit. Such as what sort of sex they’d have later that night, after she was back in her eighteenth-century dump, in bed with her blow-dryer, alternately warming up the sheets and burning her scalp. Maybe they were into something lame, like wax play. It was a little too easy to imagine Luke naked, laid out like a buffet on this very table, to imagine Big Swiss drizzling hot wax onto his hairless chest, to imagine Luke writhing in agony and then whispering his safe word （“Mommy” or maybe just “All right, enough”）， after which Big Swiss blew out the candle and picked up the fondue pot, and Luke said, “Oh no, oh god, baby, please, please not that, I’ll do anything,” but Big Swiss went ahead and poured bubbling hot cheese all over his legs, and now his safe word was a high-pitched scream. Fondue play burns, baby, it burns your skin right off.
“Sorry?” Greta said.
“I was just saying that when you recycle paper, it has to be stacked in symmetrical piles and tied with a string, and the string must be the correct gauge, the piles perfect, or it doesn’t get picked up,” Luke said.
“Sounds pretty… anal,” Greta said.
“Very,” Luke said.
She wondered if they did butt stuff. Big Swiss was never more tender, more defenseless, more of a mess, than when she was probing Greta’s. “Topping from the bottom”： a phrase Greta had transcribed more than once but hadn’t fully appreciated until just now. If she wanted, Greta could top from the bottom right here at the dinner table. “Luke,” she imagined announcing, “your wife likes to freeze coconut oil, insert an icy shard into my back passage, and wait for it to melt. Does she do that to you?”