Dan and Elsa
She met him in a laundromat in London. He was open and friendly and they hit it off right away. From the start she thought he was hilarious. Of course, she'd been lonely. The weather was grim and sleety and she didn't know a soul east of the Atlantic.
"Ah, traveller's loneliness," Dan crooned sympathetically over dinner. "It's the worst."
After dessert he was embarrassed to discover he'd come without his wallet. She was more than happy to pay for dinner. At the pub, over drinks, he told her he was a translator for the United Nations. He was, for now, between assignments.
They saw each other four times that week, five the week after. It wasn't long before he had all but moved in with Elsa. It was against her nature, but she was having the time of her life.
Still, there were details, unexplained, undiscussed, that she shoved out of her mind. He never invited her to his home; she never met his friends. One night he brought over a carton filled with tape recorders -- plastic-wrapped straight from the factory, unopened; a few days later they were gone. Once she came home to find three televisions stacked in the corner. "Storing them for a friend," was all he told her. When she pressed for more he merely shrugged.
Once he stayed away for three days and was lying asleep on the bed when she came in midmorning. "Where have you been?" she cried. "I've been so worried. Where were you?"
He looked sour as he woke up. "Don't ever ask me that," he snapped. "I won't have it. Where I go, what I do, who I do it with – it doesn't concern you, Elsa. Don't ask."
He was like a different person. But then he seemed to pull himself together, shook the sleep off, and reached out to her. "I know it hurts you," he said in his old gentle way, "but I thing of jealousy as a flu, and wait to get over it. And you will, baby, you will." Like a mother cat licking her kitten, he groomed her back into trusting him.
One night she asked him lightly if he felt like stepping out to the corner and bringing her an ice cream. He didn't reply, and when she glanced up she found him glaring at her furiously. "Always got everything you wanted, didn't you?" he asked in a strange, snide way. "Any little thing little Elsa wanted, somebody always jumped up and ran out and bought it for her, didn't they?"
"Are you kidding? I'm not like that. What are you talking about?"
He got up from the chair and walked out. She never saw him again.
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From the book 'Without Conscience'
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