She stopped before me, her face puzzled. Perhaps she was wondering why Adriaan had bothered to involve himself with me, or perhaps she was wondering who on earth I could be. Awkwardly, I rose to my feet and stood before her.
We don’t know each other, she said at last. I’m Gaby.
Yes, I said stupidly.
You’re Adriaan’s friend, she said. You’ve been looking after the apartment. Her voice was bright and a little hard, from which it was clear that friend was a euphemism, and that she understood well enough what I was. She paused and looked around the room. The place looks uninhabited, has everything been okay?
I still hadn’t told Adriaan that I had left the apartment. I didn’t disabuse her of her logical misapprehension and instead nodded. Her manner was not openly hostile, it was studiously neutral. Have you had a coffee? she abruptly asked. She didn’t wait for a reply before she moved past me and to the cabinets, she took out two cups. What would you like? Cappuccino? Americano? I said that I would take an Americano, and she nodded and turned back to the machine. I couldn’t help but feel that she occupied the space with quiet aggression, that this preparation of coffee was in some way performative, designed to remind me who the true owner of the apartment was.
But of that there could be no question. She handed me my coffee and I took a sip cautiously, as if the cup might be poisoned. I was not the only one feeling wary, she also regarded me with a certain amount of caution, as if I were an unknown and unformed quantity, someone whose presence in her life might suddenly grow volatile. I saw that the encounter was as complicated for her as it was for me, maybe even more so, and I was both astonished and ashamed that I hadn’t the imagination to see it earlier, all those times I had spent speculating about this woman.
Still, it did not make me feel any more warmly toward her, and I saw that this too was mutual. She smiled, her expression at once brittle and dazzling. I apologize for dropping in like this, she said, although she did not sound sorry in the least. Did Adriaan warn you? I shook my head, mouth dry. He can be so bad about administrative matters, she murmured, as if the matter of our relationship, mine and Adriaan’s, had simply been a question of organization and management. Or perhaps she had meant for the comment to be conspiratorial, two women discussing the foibles of a shared man. I stood before her, uncertain of what she was trying to tell me.
She turned and went to the sink. Everyone will be coming back in a week, she announced over her shoulder as she poured her coffee down the drain. Adriaan, the children as well. She turned to face me and crossed her arms. It was not clear what she meant by everyone, whether that included her, whether that implied a reunion of the family. And you? I asked. I looked her in the face, I had nothing really to lose. She shook her head and looked up at the clock. She picked up her bag. I have a meeting in Rotterdam, she said. And although this was no kind of answer, although the way she had shaken her head was completely ambiguous, I nodded.
She went to the desk in the sitting room and opened a drawer, pushing through papers and notebooks, life roughage I had never before seen or dared go through. She frowned as she gathered a pile of documents together and placed them in her bag before shoving the drawer closed again. She retrieved her coat, which she had thrown carelessly over the back of the sofa, and moved in the direction of the front door. What should I do with the keys? I asked. She turned to look at me. Through all the beauty, I saw a glint of cruelty in her eyes. She looked around the apartment, she gave a little shrug. Keep them, I suppose. It makes no difference to me. And without waiting for a response, she turned and left, the door slamming shut behind her.
* * *
—
I did as she said. I returned the keys to my bag and I left the apartment. As I rode the tram across town, it was as if a boulder had dropped into the middle of my mind. In part it was Gaby, she made it difficult to think, she ate up the air around her, and I wondered how Adriaan had lived with her for so long. But it was not really this, or not only this. It was the fact of Adriaan’s return. What was its meaning, and why had I not heard of it directly from him? My mind circled back to Gaby’s words, had there been an edge of defeat to her voice when she said the children as well, as if that were a battle she had lost, custody of the children? Or was it resignation, over the life she had forsaken in Lisbon, the choice she had made to return?
I stared through the window of the tram, speckled with dust and droplets of water. I was due to meet Eline for lunch, I had not seen her since the dinner with Anton. I thought uneasily of my encounter with him the previous day, and I wondered what obligation I was under to tell Eline of it. But almost as soon as I arrived at the café, almost before we sat down at our table, Eline said, Anton said he ran into you yesterday. Her voice was bright and I saw that she was braced for the worst. She looked at me cautiously, her manner at once solicitous and wary. It dawned on me that she believed her brother had or was in the process of seducing me. As she waited for me to reply, her mouth tightening with apprehension, I saw that she had been in this situation before, she was only trying to judge how bad the fallout might be this time around.