“Your flat’s really nice,” I said.
“Yeah,” he replied. There was a reprimand in his voice, and I felt ashamed that I’d never been before. “You want some tea?”
“Sure.”
We sat in the kitchen, which was cold. Adam and I had very different ideas on when to turn the heating on. I wondered if that’s why I’d never been to his house, because I’d intuited it would be cold.
“How have you been?” I asked, cradling my mug.
“Not bad,” he answered, and then, searching for something else to say, continued, “I just got back from a work trip.”
“Cool! Where did you go?”
“Italy.”
“Oh, nice,” I responded. And then, after another awkward pause, I asked, “Did you … eat a lot of pasta?”
He smiled to himself. Nodded. There had once been a time when Adam and I were entirely unselfconscious around each other, a time when we had lain naked together. I wondered if he was thinking about this too.
“So … how’s Billee?”
“He’s good,” I said and pulled up a recent photo on my phone of him crouching just above my head on the back of the sofa.
“Wow,” he said. “He looks like a leopard.”
“Yeah.” I laughed.
“So what else is new with you? How’s the translation work?” he asked.
“Pretty good. I went to the Centre again.”
“You did? What language?”
“Russian.”
“How was it?”
“Not bad. Actually, Adam, that’s kind of why I’m here.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I was wondering, do you know how it works?”
“How what works?”
“The Centre. How the language learning works.”
“Well,” he said. “I guess it’s the intense focus. The fact that you don’t talk to anyone, that you cut yourself off like that.”
“I mean, if it were just that, it wouldn’t be so exclusive, would it? Anyone could do it. Theoretically, you could do the same thing in your own home. Just have Steven leave food outside your door and listen to recordings all day.”
“Well, no, it’s more than that. It’s so strictly regimented. They’ve worked it all out. The meditation, the silence … it’s like—Brian and I have talked about this—we reckon there’s some kind of ancient practice they’re following, like a formula for doing things exactly a certain way in exactly a certain order. Have you ever seen Raiders of the Lost Ark?”
“No, Adam. I haven’t. Ancient practice, like what kind of ancient practice?”
“Like a secret code. Like you follow this exact regimen, including the wake-up time, the language booth, the diet. It’s a very precise formula. And it can’t be replicated.”
“What part of it can’t be replicated?”
“All of it. It’s old-school shit, Anisa. Raiders of the Lost Ark–type shit.”
“You know, don’t you?”
“Know what?”
“You know what’s really going on. Listen, Adam, you don’t have to pretend. I know about the Storytellers too.”
I was bluffing, of course.
“The Storytellers? What about them?”
His eyes were blank. He didn’t know anything. I backtracked.
“Well, have you ever met any of them?”
“In real life? Of course not. That’s not allowed. Wait, why? What do you think is going on?”
“I, well, I’m not sure, actually. I just … I feel like there might be dodgy things happening there.”
“Like what? Money laundering?”
“Money laundering? No.”
Adam was so random sometimes.
“What kind of dodgy things then?”
“Okay, like, why are the staff quarters off limits?”
“Oh, illegal workers?”
“No.”
“Drugs?”
“Ugh, no! I mean. I don’t think so. I don’t know. Look, I’m just wondering how it’s humanly possible, what they’re doing.”
“Oh yeah, I used to obsess about that too. Early on, I thought that maybe they injected some kind of chip in my brain while I was sleeping. But now, I think it’s just some secret ancient technique.”
“Why aren’t you more curious about this?”
“I don’t know. I mean how does any language learning happen? How does the brain allow us to make sounds and understand one another? Isn’t it all a big mystery anyway? But tell me, what do you think it is?” he continued. “You said you know something. I’m definitely curious now.”
“I was just bluffing … I thought maybe you knew something,” I said hastily, slicing the tart I’d brought. “Here, try this. Dark chocolate.”
“I don’t like chocolate.”
“Of course you do. Come on, this one’s my favorite.”
“I know it’s your favorite.”
I cut him a slice, picking two plates and forks off his drying rack.
“Here—”
“Do you know what my favorite is?” he said.
“You really don’t like chocolate?”
“Nope. That’s a pretty basic thing to know about me, you would think.”
“Adam, are you annoyed with me?”
“Do you think it’s a problem that this is the first time you’re visiting my home?”
“It is a bit weird, yeah. I thought that too.”
“And you never would have while we were together. You would’ve just said, ‘Ah, it’s cold out, can we meet somewhere in between?’ At the most, you would’ve said that. But more likely, you would’ve asked me to come to yours. And I’d have done it.”
“You loved coming to mine,” I said.
“Did I? Did I love cycling all that way in the cold? Every single time?”
“I mean, you have a flatmate—”
“He doesn’t live in my room! And even now, you haven’t really come to see me, have you? You’ve come to ask about the Centre.”
“No. I mean, yes but no. Adam, listen. I’m sorry I haven’t been here before. If you’d told me it was important to you—”
“I started therapy you know.”
“You did? Adam, that’s great.”
“One of the things that’s come up in our sessions is, well, how lowly I must have thought of myself to put up with you.”
“Put up with me? Are you serious?”
“You never cared about me. You never took any interest in my life. All you wanted was a little lapdog. You know, I don’t think it’s a coincidence you broke up with me not long after you got Billee.”
“Are you serious? We got Billee together.”
“Did we? You’ve never been able to see beyond your own nose, Anisa. And me, I was just so insecure. About who I am. Where I come from. I let myself be your lapdog.”
“I loved you, Adam. You can’t … retrospectively turn things around like this.”
“And you can’t win every argument by trying to analyze my behavior. That’s your defense mechanism. You focus on my stuff to avoid your own.”