Body Grammar by Jules Ohman

Author:Jules Ohman [Ohman, Jules]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2022-06-14T00:00:00+00:00

2

Back at the apartment, Mari’s girlfriend, Rosana, had made an elaborate Italian meal that Lou shoveled into her body. She soaked up olive oil with the crust of her ciabatta. She complimented the pasta, which was hand-rolled, eggshells lined up in a neat line on the kitchen countertop. Rosana and Mari seemed hours into a fight that Lou was just wandering into. They might have actually been years into the fight; there was an elliptical feeling to what they were saying that reminded her of her parents’ arguments, like the air had been filled over and over again with the same words, no one quite hearing each other, no one changing their mind or logic.

When dinner was over, Lou overheard them arguing in the kitchen, which was so small, she couldn’t enter it without one of them leaving. She waited in the main room, dirty dishes in hand. She felt like she was eavesdropping at the top of the staircase, like she used to do as a kid when her parents had conversations after she and her brother went up to bed.

“Do you see the pattern?” Mari was saying. “How you deny you’re going to and then do this every fucking time.”

Her girlfriend would answer her in Italian and Mari would respond in English.

“I don’t want to live here, love,” Mari said. “I don’t want to go back to school. I’m sorry, but it has absolutely nothing to do with you.”

Rosana said something else that Lou couldn’t understand.

“You said I could sleep with her! You can’t give permission in the moment and take it back a week later. That’s not how this works. What would you say if I told you to stop seeing Brio? What would you say if I was suddenly so disgusted by the idea of you and her?”

Mari came storming out of the kitchen clutching an uncorked bottle of wine and almost ran straight into Lou.

“Sorry,” Lou said. There was nothing she could have been doing except eavesdropping. “I was just—”

“Wishing you could get the fuck out of here?” Mari slammed the wine down on the table, but it didn’t spill. “Same.”

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