“Haven’t we?” Greta asked.
“No,” Big Swiss said slowly. “We were at the dog park.”
If they remained friends, which seemed unlikely, they’d have to revisit all of Greta’s lies. Where and when they were told, how and why. It could take weeks, years, forever. It would be a lot of work.
“My last name is Work,” Greta said.
Big Swiss frowned. “Greta Work?”
“Disappointing, right? I’ve never gotten over it.”
Big Swiss freed her hair from its bun. Her red lipstick had been applied very recently, probably in the driveway.
“Did you lose your job?”
“Of course,” Greta said. “Did you get my email?”
“I skimmed it,” Big Swiss said.
She’d spent six hours writing two paragraphs, roughly the same amount of time she spent on a transcript. It had been nearly impossible to apologize without making excuses. Hence, the dozen times she’d typed and deleted “PMS” and “the wreckage of my past.” But she knew that excuses of any kind infuriated Big Swiss, and so in the end she’d simply said she was sorry, which was true, and that the experience had galvanized her into considering therapy again, also true, and that if Big Swiss wanted to see Greta, she had Greta’s permission to spank her bare bottom mercilessly, which Greta suspected Big Swiss found appealing, possibly on a very deep level, and then Greta apologized a couple more times.
“I don’t accept apologies,” Big Swiss said. “Sorry is just something you take off a shelf. It means nothing to me.”
“I think I know why you’re really here.” Greta stood and pulled up her nightgown. “How do you want to do this? With a belt?”
Big Swiss scowled. “I knew you’d look for an easy out. Maybe you should try sitting with your discomfort.”
“Maybe you should make sitting more uncomfortable for me,” Greta said.
“But then you’d feel like the victim. You see how that works?”
“No belt, then,” Greta said. “Just your hand.”
“Tell me why you did this. Why you lied to me for six months.”
Greta took a breath. “My mother burned everything I gave her in the yard and then killed herself in the house. She didn’t think of the mess. When I feel like throwing myself in front of a train, I always think of the poor soul whose job it is to pick up my large intestine and place it in a trash bag. It stops me. But at the end of the day, I’m just as careless and selfish as she was, because I’m acting on my impulses without thinking of the mess, and expecting you to pick up the pieces.”
“So, you’ve been programmed to behave this way. By your past.”
Greta nodded. “It’s all conditioning.”
“You really believe this.”
“Yes, but this is new. I was in a stupor before we met. Ask anyone.”
“Maybe I’ll ask Sabine. Where is she?”
“Picking strawberries at the farm down the road,” Greta said. “She’s making galettes for dinner. She’s a very good baker, by the way. Sam Shepard once said he loved her scones—”
“Have you told her what you did?”
“Not yet,” Greta said.
“Why not?”
“Maybe I’ll tell Sabine when you tell Luke,” Greta said. “How’s that? Does that seem fair?”
“It’s incredible to me that you’re still getting mileage out of your mother’s suicide. You’re still using it as currency, even though it has nothing to do with what you did. In fact, it’s kind of psychotic that you’re spending that currency on this moment. When will it run out?”
Never, Greta thought. I’ve been living on it all my life.
Big Swiss went on. “If everything can be explained by your trauma, then nothing is really your fault, right? You always have this convenient out. Your mother killed herself, and so that gives you permission to do whatever you want? To eavesdrop on my therapy sessions? To fuck me?”
“You made the first pass,” Greta reminded her.
“Right, which I would never blame on trauma.”
“But we see things through a lens, don’t we? The lens of our own experience?”
“Why not say that you made a choice, that you knew what you were doing was wrong, and that you did it anyway? Why continue coasting on your trauma? It’s not a good look at your age.”
Neither was smoking, but Greta lit a cigarette. Not for the first time, she considered appealing to the gynecologist in Big Swiss. The truth was, Greta only felt “normal” for one week out of every month. The week before her period: rage, lust, and what felt like clarity. The week of: cramping, fatigue, self-pity. The week after: mind-numbing depression. That left one week of feeling “okay” and “like herself,” but sometimes she wondered if it was the only week in which she wasn’t herself, if the other weeks were the real thing, the real her. At any rate, her reactions to events depended on where she was in the cycle, except she never kept track of the cycle, so she never knew where the fuck she was.
“I was curious about you,” Greta said. “That’s what was driving me at first. I wanted to know more about you. I’d never met anyone who’d been beaten half to death, who’d had to beg for their life, and whether you like it or not, you’re inadvertently coasting on your own trauma, because anyone who knows what happened to you—and evidently, everyone knows—is going to treat you a certain way, possibly as someone whose trauma trumps their own. I bet you’re put on a pedestal quite a bit. But you’re so accustomed to this, you’re not even aware of it. What you’re not used to is feeling this stupid and taken advantage of, but keep in mind that this situation only sucks because it’s happening to you. On paper, eavesdropping and then lying about it isn’t that bad. I mean, I’m not suggesting that it’s awesome, or ethical, but what you’re doing is worse. Much worse.”
“Worse than using someone’s confidential information to seduce them? To have this false identity, to lie about your own name, to act all-knowing, and then to continue listening even after we’re sleeping together—I mean, you should have recused yourself.”
“This isn’t a courtroom,” Greta said. “And anyway, I’m the stenographer in this scenario, not the judge. In fact, I always typed exactly what you said without judgment—”
“I thought you were psychic at one point,” Big Swiss said. “I feel totally exploited. I was convinced we had this freakishly deep connection. I mean, I wouldn’t even know how to explain this—”
“I’m not a con artist. Calm down. What I did was weirder, yes, but not worse. We’re both guilty. I signed a confidentiality agreement, but I’m not married. I didn’t invite my mistress to dinner with my super-sweet husband. I didn’t talk about starting a family in front of her. You did that.”
Big Swiss held up her hands. “I’m not saying I’m innocent. I’m not playing the victim. I’m fully aware that I’ve done a terrible thing.”
“Yes, but you’re suggesting that adultery is somehow more refined—or genteel—than eavesdropping, and it isn’t.”