by Tom Rachman
"For the record," Annika says, "I adore your hair." She pulls one of Hardy's curls. "Look how it boings back. And I love auburn."
"Auburn?" she says, eyebrows raised. "My hair is auburn like carrot soup is auburn." Her cellphone rings, and she drains the last sip of cappuccino. "It's gonna be Kathleen with questions on my story." Hardy assumes her professional voice and answers. But after listening a moment her tone changes to alarm. She responds in Italian, copies down an address, and hangs up. "It was the police," she tells Annika. "My apartment was burglarized. Apparently, they caught a couple of punkabbestia druggies coming out with all my stuff."
Back home, she finds the drawers flung open and food dumped on the floor. In place of her mini stereo and tiny flat-screen TV are wires. Thankfully, her laptop was at the office. Her apartment is on the ground floor and the kitchen window, which gives onto an alley, has been smashed. That's where they entered, the police say. Apparently, the two suspects stuffed all they could into plastic bags, then fled. But the bags--already jammed with stolen goods from another apartment in Trastevere--tore under the weight and disgorged loot all over the roadway outside. The culprits tried to stuff the swag back in, but the commotion attracted the authorities.
On a long table at the police station are strewn her CDs, mini stereo, little flat-screen TV, DVDs, perfume, and jewelry, mixed with the possessions of the other, absent victim: a nylon necktie circa 1961, a handful of spy thrillers in English, a Catholic catechism, and, strangely, a pile of ratty boxer shorts.
She states for the record that her belongings are among those recovered, but is not allowed to retrieve anything--the other victim must be present to avoid disputes over ownership, and the police cannot find him.
That night, Hardy phones Annika to coax her over. "It's creepy with the window smashed," Hardy says. "You don't want to come and protect me? I'll cook."
"I wish I could, but I'm still waiting for my fella to get home," Annika says, meaning Craig Menzies, the paper's news editor. "You could always come hang out with us."
"I don't want to go overboard. It's fine."
Hardy checks the deadbolt and settles on the couch, blanket laid over her legs, feet snuggled beneath, a carving knife within reach. She gets up and checks the lock again. As she passes the mirror, she raises a hand to block the sight of herself.
She inspects the window in the kitchen--air rushes under the cardboard that patches over the shattered pane. She prods the card. It holds, but is hardly safe. She nestles under the blanket and opens her book. After eighty pages--she's a fast reader--she gets up to investigate what's available in the kitchen for dinner. She settles on rice crackers and a can of chicken broth on the top shelf, which she is too short to reach. Using a ladle, she taps the can to the edge. It wobbles, falls, and she catches it with her free hand. "I'm a genius," she says.
Days pass and the police cannot find the other victim, which means that Hardy is still forbidden to reclaim her possessions.
"At the start," she complains to Annika, "I imagined this guy as some kind of sweet, innocent English monk, with the spy thrillers and the catechism and all that. But I'm starting to hate him. I have this image now of some pervert priest, you know, with the cilice and the drooling problem, hiding out at some pontifical institute to avoid criminal charges in the States. Regrettably, I've seen the man's boxers."
Almost two weeks later, the police locate him. By the time she arrives at the station, he's already sorting through their stuff. She turns angrily to a policeman. "I can't believe you didn't wait for me," she says in Italian. "The whole point was for me and him to divide up the stuff together."
The officer melts away and the other victim turns cheerfully toward her. He's not a priest, after all, but a scruffy twentysomething with blond dreadlocks. "Buongiorno!" he says, conveying in one word his utter inability with the language.
"Weren't you supposed to wait for me?" she replies in English.
"Ah, you're American!" he says, speaking with an Irish accent. "I love America!"
"Well, thank you, but I'm not actually the ambassador. Look, how do we want to do this? Shall we start going through the CDs?"
"You go ahead. A person needs lots of patience for that kind of thing. And Rory is alien to lots of patience."
"You're Rory?"
"Yes."
"You refer to yourself in the third person?"
"The what person?"
"Forget it. Okay, I'll get my stuff." She loads up her duffel bag, then scans the remaining items. "Wait--something of mine isn't here." All that's left on the table are his tie, books, CDs, and boxer shorts.
"What are you missing?"
"Just something private. Damn it," she says. "It's not worth anything--just sentimental value. A Rubik's Cube, if you must know. It was a present. Anyway ..." She sighs. "Are you making a report for the insurance?"
"I hadn't planned to, to be honest." He leans his head out the door and glances down the hall. He returns and, in a whisper, tells her, "I'm not exactly living in my flat legally. It's a commercial space, in the strictest-speaking sense. I can work there, but I'm not supposed to be living there."
"And what's your work?"
"Teaching work."
"What sort?"
"Bit of a nightmare with these coppers, what with me not living there officially in the formal sense. I thought about not picking up my things at all. But I needed these." He touches the pile of boxers, grinning.
"Okay, but my insurance has nothing to do with you living in a commercial space."
"They might start sniffing around, don't you think?"
"Sorry--what did you say you teach, Rory?"
"Improv," he says. "And juggling."
"Not at the same time, I hope."
"Sorry?"
"Doesn't matter. Where are you from in Ireland? County Cork, by any chance? Everyone I meet from Ireland seems to be from County Cork. I think it must be empty by now."
"No, no--lots of people there," he responds guilelessly. "Is that what you're hearing? That it's emptied out?"
"I'm joking. Anyway, back to business. My insurance company isn't going to be interested in you, so I will have to file a report. The burglars smashed my window, and in Rome that's going to cost me a fortune."
"A window? Is that all? Jesus, I can sort that out."
"You're going to replace my window?"
"Sure."
"How?"
"Put in some glass."
"You yourself will?"
"Absolutely."
"Okay, but when?"
"Right now, if you like."
"I can't--I have to get back to work. Plus, don't you need materials?"
"Like what?"
"Glass, for example."
"Ah," he says, nodding. "You have a point."
"I don't want to be difficult here, but it took the police practically two weeks to track you down. I can't spend my life corralling you into fixing my window."
"You don't trust me?"
"It's not that I distrust you. I just don't know you."
"Here, take my business card." He hands her one, then removes his watch. "You can keep this, too, as a deposit till I fix your window."
"Your digital watch?"
"If you don't want that, take your pick--anything you like from the table." His junk is laid out there: CDs, dog-eared spy thrillers, the Catholic catechism, the boxer shorts.
A smile crosses her face. She glances at him. She sweeps the boxers into her duffel bag. "Now that's a deposit."
"You can't take those!" he exclaims. "What am I gonna wear?"
"What have you been wearing this past week?"
At the espresso bar, she tells Annika about the Irishman. "And I stole his boxers."
"Why would you take some old guy's underwear?"
"He's a kid, actually. From Ireland. Has blond dreadlocks."
"Dreadlocks on a white guy? That is sad."
"I know, but he's tall, which makes it slightly less h
orrific. Doesn't it? I'm a total idiot, though--I ran out without leaving him my contact details."
"Look, you've got the guy's underwear--he'll turn up."
But he doesn't. She phones the number on his business card and leaves a message. He doesn't call back. She leaves another. Again, no response. Finally, she visits his address, which looks like a boarded-up garage. He answers the door, blinking at the daylight. "Well, hello there!" He stoops to her low altitude and kisses her cheek. She pulls away in surprise. He says, "I clean forgot. You know that--I clean bloody forgot about your window. Aren't I terrible! I am sorry. I'll sort that out for you right now."
"Actually, I'm going to have to file that insurance claim."
He toys with a dreadlock. "I should get rid of these stupid things. Don't you think?"
"I don't know."
"Bit of a tradition about them. One of my odysseys."
"Odysseys?"
"Like, trademarks."
"You mean 'oddities'?"
"Daft, though, aren't they. Come on--you chop them for me. All right?" He beckons her in.
"What are you talking about?"
"I give you scissors. You cut them off."
His place was clearly not intended as a living space. It is windowless and illuminated solely by a halogen lamp in the corner. A yellowing mattress is pushed against the wall, with a battered backpack beside it, a heap of clothing, juggling balls and clubs, a toolbox, and his spy thrillers and catechism. A basin and a toilet are affixed to the wall, without a divider for privacy. The room smells of old pizza. He rummages in the toolbox and emerges with a pair of industrial scissors.
"Are you serious?" she says. "Those things are the size of my torso."
"What do you mean by 'torso'?"
"I'm just saying they're big scissors."
"It'll be fine! Don't you worry, Hardy."
He sits on the closed toilet seat. He's now almost the same height as she is standing. She rises on the balls of her feet and snips, handing him the first amputated strand. "This is actually kind of fun," she says, and cuts another. The discarded locks pile up like kindling. His ears, bared now, are bent slightly, like a rabbit's. He raises a mirror. Both are reflected: Rory studying his shorn head; she studying him. He grins at her and she laughs, then catches sight of her own face and recoils, shaking hair from her shoes. "That look okay to you?"
"Looks brilliant. Thanks very much. My head feels so light." He shakes it, like a wet dog. "You know, I'm starting to think getting robbed wasn't so bad after all. I got my stuff back and I got a free haircut out of it."
"Fine for you, maybe. I didn't get all my things back."
The next morning, Hardy awakens thinking of Rory. At noon, she sends him a text message. Thereafter, whenever a mobile beeps she checks hers. But it's never him. She rues having sent that pathetic message ("I still have your underwear!") and hopes that somehow he never received it. After a few hours, she can't bear waiting any longer, so she phones him. He picks up and promises to "pop by" later.
By midnight, he still hasn't showed. She phones again, but no answer.
It's almost 1 A.M. when he appears, grinning, on her doorstep. She makes a point of looking at her watch. "I'll get the stuff now," she says. "It's kind of freezing if you leave the door open like that."
"Should I come in, then?"
"I guess." She fetches the plastic bag containing his underwear. "I hope those weren't your only pairs."
"Course not." He takes them. "I wondered before why a thief would want my underpants. But now I see they're a pretty popular item."
"So, okay, I guess that's all. Or, uhm, did you want a drink or something?"
"Yeah, nice one, yeah. Lovely."
"I have stuff to eat. If you want."
"Super, super." He follows her into the kitchen.
She opens a bottle of Valpolicella and heats up a casserole of lasagna that she had planned to bring to the office. (She cooks abundantly and expertly but eats none of it; she has seen the bricks of butter, shovels of sugar, gallons of double cream that disappeared into the mix, ready to reappear on her hips. So her creations--the Leaning Tower of Potato, the Seattle Swirl Cookies, the Sesame-Crusted Salmon Cakes with Lemon Tarragon Sauce--end up at the paper, spread out for the staff, nibbled by distracted editors, spilled on the carpeting, as she observes from her desk, feeding only on their praise.)
Rory devours the lasagna, downs most of the wine, and chatters, all at once. "Lovely. Super." He tells her about his father, who owns a plumbing company outside Dublin, and his mother, a secretary at a medical-supplies company. He briefly attended university in Ireland but quit short of a degree and traveled to Australia, Thailand, Nepal. Next, he was in New York, working at pubs. He took a class there in improv comedy and performed at an open mike in the East Village. After that, he trekked through Europe, took a ship from Marseille to Naples, passed a few months in the south of Italy, then made his way up to Rome.
She fills his glass. "I'd never have the courage to teach a class in anything. Not that I'm qualified to. Let alone in a foreign city. It's pretty brave."
"Or plain stupid."
"Brave," she insists.
He asks about her work. "Hate to admit it," he says, "but I've hardly read a newspaper in my life. So bloody small, isn't it."
"Small?"
"The writing. You need to make the writing bigger."
"Mm," she says. "Maybe."
"What do you write about then, Hardy?"
"Business." She sips her wine. "Sorry, I'm not keeping up with you here."
"You won't keep up with me," he replies good-naturedly.
"Can I pour you some more?" She does so. "Well, I was hired to write about personal finance and luxury goods. But I seem to have become a one-woman business section. We had this ancient guy in Paris called Lloyd Burko who used to do the occasional European business story. But now, essentially, it's just me."
"Nice one, Hardy." He notices something in her expression. "What's funny?"
"Nothing--I just like how you call me Hardy."
"That's your name, is it not?"
"Yes. But I mean how you say it."
"How's that?"
"Say it again."
"Hardy."
She smiles, then resumes: "Basically, financial reporting is this sinkhole at the center of journalism. You start by swimming around it until finally, reluctantly, you can't fight the pull anymore and you get sucked down the drain into the biz pages."
"That bad, is it?"
"Not really. I tend to dramatize. The sad truth is that I'm secretly into this stuff--I'm the kind of person who reads Morningstar stock reports on vacation. My feeling is that, at heart, every story is a business story."
"Ah, right," he says.
"But I'm weird that way."
He carries his dirty plate to the sink. She jumps to her feet. "No, no--you don't need to do that." She stumbles. "Oh--I think I'm a bit drunk."
In the restricted space of her kitchen, they are close. She looks up. "You're irritatingly tall. It's like an indictment of everything I stand for."
"You're not so short."
"Who said I was short? I'm a minimalist."
He leans down and kisses her. "Your nose is freezing, Hardy."
She touches it. She's no longer trying to sound clever. "Can you do that again?"
"What?"
"That thing you did before."
"Calling you Hardy?"
"No, the thing you did after that. The thing you just did."
"What thing?"
She kisses him. "That thing. Keep doing it, please."
Activities shift into the bedroom.
Afterward, they lie in the dark, side by side on her bed. "Can I get you anything?"
"No, no, Hardy. I'm lovely."
"I quite agree. A last bit of wine, maybe?"
"A wee dram wouldn't hurt."
She pours him a glassful and speeds back to the bedroom in bare feet. Before entering,
she says, "I wasn't cold before, I was just nervous." She hands him the glass. "My nose, I mean."
He sips. "Delicious."
"You sound a bit drunk. Nice drunk, though. Charming drunk." She leans into him. "What's that tattoo, by the way?"
"It's a wolf. I got it done in Sydney. You like it?"
"A wolf? I thought it was a seal. A seal howling at the moon. Anyway, it's very nice." She kisses his shoulder. "It's so nice to have someone here."
The next day at the espresso bar, Annika asks for details. "Did your Irishman fix the window?"
"We got slightly drunk, actually."
"Oh really? Continue."
"No, nothing."
"No, something."
"Okay, something."
"And the window?"
Hardy hires a glazier--she doesn't want Rory to feel pressured about it each time he drops by. But a week later he hasn't dropped by again, hasn't called, hasn't answered her messages. She visits his place, ready for a sad scene. But when he opens the door he kisses her on the mouth and asks where on earth she's been. She ends up taking him home, feeding him, watering him, giving him lodgings, as before.
"I like coming here," he says, propped up in her bed as she dresses for work the next morning. "You have a proper bathtub."
"Is that the extent of my appeal? You're overlooking my shower."
"I prefer baths myself."
"You're not going to vanish again, are you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Vanish. As in absence of Rory. Deficit of Rory. Apartment devoid of Rory."
"Don't be batty. I'll give you a ring."
"When?"
"How's about tomorrow?"
"When you say tomorrow, do you mean two weeks from tomorrow?"
"I mean tomorrow. Actual tomorrow."
"As in two days after yesterday?"
He doesn't call. She wants to scream. But this is how he is: easygoing, which means tough-going for everyone else. She can hardly be surprised at this stage. She collects him from his hovel down the road in Trastevere as if he were a puppy, rescued from the pound for the umpteenth time, wagging at the sight of her yet certain to scamper away the minute she absents herself. His time without her, as far as she can tell, is occupied by reading books on the CIA and drinking plonk with his Italian hippie friends. His improv classes turn out to be more hypothetical than real. But everyone needs something they do, she decides, especially if they're not doing it.