He couldn’t stop laughing, and when she flashed him the grimace and mimicked the deep moan he made when climaxing, he nearly doubled over. She’d repeated the grimace and moan ever since, each time he tried to explain something serious to her and she refused to take him seriously.
Rumpled Sunday, Bleeding Heart, o-face, salty anchovy, people-ships, the lazy-eyed cow, the remote known as Asshole… this was their mythology, their connective tissue. The pathways they’d laid in case one of them lost their way and needed to find the route back.
Things he’d long forgotten began to surface, one by one, in presentiments and dreams. At first he thought they came from the present, not the past, and that they belonged to someone else. It began with nightmares. He clung to the idea that the amounts of happiness and unhappiness in his life ought to be in balance; this was a precondition, he felt, for each new day with Dina. He’d wake in the middle of the night, groggy, and sit in bed and stare into the darkness. He’d grope frantically for the light, try to focus on some real object, and convince himself there was no ghost. He couldn’t make sense of his dreams, though he felt there was something to them: a twisted logic, a truth hidden from the world. Dina would wake, too, because she wanted to be a part of whatever it was he couldn’t articulate. She’d press up against him in the dark like a small wild animal, not to flee danger together but to be together no matter what, until Matija was no longer scared to go back to sleep. At times, he dreamed he was standing by a river and watching a boy he didn’t recognize with a large head of tousled hair who stood waist-deep in the water. The boy would stare at him for a while. Then he’d open his mouth like a person screaming. No sound came from him, only dark, velvety blood coursing down his chin, over his chest and belly, into the murky river. Sometimes, still delirious, Matija would mumble, “There, they’re here, they’ve found me.” Dina felt there must be another side to this man who seemed endlessly lighthearted. A dark side, something he kept hidden. She thought this because of his unexpected reactions, the occasional blast of rage he’d later try to walk back, and other moments when he seemed to withdraw into himself, staring, entranced, into his darkness.
“I like when you do that.”
“Am I tickling you? I can’t cover it all with spit.”
“…”
“It’s hard. By the time I reach the tip, the part below it is dry.”
“Doesn’t matter. Really. I like that you aren’t doing it just so I’ll feel good. You have a plan: cover it all with spit. I’m witnessing the work of a master.”
“I’m an apprentice before this masterpiece. The first part always dries.”
“Like memories.”
“Like what?”
“Memories. That’s how they fade, too, like brushstrokes… Such a loony. Loony Gajski. It’s all loony tunes inside you. But I’ll cover them, too, with spit.”
3.
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m watching you.”
“What, you’re watching me do the dishes?”
“No, I’m watching your ass wiggle back and forth while you scrub the frying pan. It’s sexy.”
“This is sexy? Sexy like a T. rex-y?”
“Sexy like those panties you’re wearing today. They’re so… retro. Are those heritage panties from the Gajski clan women? Passed down from one generation to the next by the mature members of the dynasty, since the conquest of the Avars? I find things from the past sexy in general. Not just the undies, but the T. rex thing. Since when have you been into rhyming jokes?”
Dina often came up with rhymes in idle chatter, when she had nothing in particular to say. She’d repeat the last word said and add a rhyme to it with no concern for logic. Matija thought of this as her grandmother’s influence.
“Rhyming jokes? Up in smoke?”
“Since you got saddled with this pig in a poke?”
“Do they annoy you? Bug you? Are you about to dump me? For another woman? Go ahead, be my guest, you philanderer. Get lost, piglet. Who gives a fuck anyway? Nonsense. Garbage. Just wait, you’ll see. What’s that thing they say in Međimurje? Every butt knows the way to the toilet?”
“Every ass ends up on the crapper. That’s what they say in Međimurje. And don’t you forget it if you want to be a Međimurje daughter-in-law.”
“What kind of a Međimurje man are you? You only say you’re from there as an excuse for your bad spelling. Or when the people of Zagreb begin sounding like conceited smart-asses. And when were you last there anyway?”
“…”
“What’s this now? Nothing to say? Am I getting to you?”
“No. Every day you amaze me. In the morning, you bump into things and iron the clothes you’re already wearing, you toss out this lucid gibberish, your Dina-isms, and I spend the whole day wondering where they come from and what’s going on in your head. It’s as if something a really long time ago got turned inside out, and now nothing works exactly how it’s supposed to, but everything still functions at some deep-down level. No way do you annoy me.”
“You know, sooner or later we’ll get on each other’s nerves for this or that stupid thing—you know that, don’t you?”
Now Dina, still washing the dishes, was almost totally serious as she spoke. As he listened, Matija could imagine, the day before, Dina’s colleague, a maybe slightly older blonde from a small town, talking about her sad marriage of many years. Things just weren’t the same anymore, she said. He walks right into the bathroom in the morning when she’s brushing her teeth, sits down and starts taking a shit, and asks her what she’s planning to cook on Saturday, green beans or kale? And he sees nothing wrong with this. And it’s so wrong for her that she doesn’t even know how to say it. After that, how could she possibly find him attractive? So they haven’t had sex for months, Dina’s make-believe colleague and the colleague’s probably very real husband.
“Look, you’re already messing with me. I mean, who goes around in granny panties like that?”
“These are my dish-washing panties. I wash the car in my thong. No, seriously. I seldom wax pathetic, but what we have is really good, and that’s making me a little crazy. I want to know you won’t pack up and leave. I know I won’t.”
“You know I care, don’t you? I mean, I can’t hide it. No matter what… This really matters to me. I wouldn’t just walk out. Okay?”
“I guess.”
“Y’know what? Let’s make a list right now—instructions in case of emergency, or whatever. The three or four things we have to do if one of us loses interest, snaps, or something. I think people break up because they forget what it was that brought them together. And remembering is so… easy. Okay? A plan.”
“An emergency plan.”
“Right, in case of emergency. We’ll do everything on the to-do list, and then ta-da—we’ll be back where we began!”
“To-do, ta-da. Yeah. Okay, but you do the writing, I have a few more plates. ‘In the eventuality of a breakup…’”
“Wait. Right. ‘In the eventuality of a breakup, the undersigned, Matija Dolenčec and Dina Gajski, agree to have sex.’”
“Come on, I was serious.”
“Hey, I’m serious, too. It’s one of the three things that binds me most to you. You know how before… I dunno… You know how people always put on an act. Like in everyday life. I was anxious, I realize now, that during sex someone would look into my eyes and see who I really am. With you, I’m not afraid of that.”
“Really?”
“Really. And not just because you mock my o-face.”