“I’m sorry for having behaved like an idiot. I want to sign those papers as soon as possible, so that you’re also the formal owner of the house, you don’t just live here.”
“What?” she said, as though the running water had drowned out what he was saying.
Bob turned off the faucet, took the glass and sat back down opposite her. “On one condition.”
She gave him a cautious look. “And that is?”
“That we lower the price.”
“Lower? Don’t you mean raise?”
“No, lower. Even you won’t be able to pay off the loan if we stick to the current valuation.”
“But…”
“If in due course Stan the Man wants to buy himself in then, of course, you can pay me more.”
Bob looked at the disbelieving face before emptying the glass in a single long swallow. As he put the glass down he could see that she believed him. Her eyes were shining. A slight shiver passed between her shoulders, as though she wanted to put her hand on his.
“And there’s one more thing I want from you,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Explain loneliness to me.”
“Loneliness?”
“In technical terms.”
“Are you lonely?”
“I’m asking you to explain it, not me.”
“Okay.” She folded her arms, breathed deeply and calmly and fixed her gaze someplace just above his head the way she did when she was concentrating. He waited. Waited the way he had waited outside her apartment before those first, comically old-fashioned dates. Outside her workplace after they became a couple. Outside the bathroom after they started living together and she was getting ready to go out to a party. Outside the delivery room when Frankie was born. Waiting for Alice was something he associated with happiness, because he was waiting for something good. But there would be no more waiting. He knew that now. There was nothing left to wait for.
“The language that describes loneliness is limited,” she began slowly, as though testing her way. “But first you have existential loneliness. The knowledge that you have been thrown into this world, and that you, me and everybody else are all, in the final analysis, alone. And then you have interpersonal loneliness. A lack of belonging, the feeling that you are alone even when with friends. You feel as though you’re inside a bubble, the others seemfar, far away because you are, emotionally speaking, somewhere else.”
“Talk about loneliness when the most important people in your lives are gone,” said Bob. “Someone you love. And children.”
It was as though he had pressed a button. Her lips twisted and tears at once sprang to her eyes. “Bob, please don’t start again…” Her voice was hoarse.
“I’m not starting again,” he said. “I’m not talking about us, Alice. This is about Tomás Gomez, the killer we’re looking for. He lost his family, they were shot. What I’m wondering about is whether loneliness by itself can have driven him to want to avenge their deaths.”
She blinked twice.
“Go ahead,” said Bob.
She swallowed. Fixed her gaze back onto the wall above him. “That’s trauma,” she said. “Trauma, not loneliness. Trauma arises when you lose someone you thought you would be spending the rest of your life with. When it was more than an expectation, it was a conviction. Something you based your whole life on. Something that was everything.” She lowered her gaze to meet his. “The trauma is the wound. But the loneliness that comes with it locks you to your trauma. Sometimes there are physical manifestations. Often intolerable pains that follow the spine down toward the stomach.” She put a hand to her own stomach. “You feel you want to disappear, but the body is frozen, and you become simply incapable of drawing warmth from those around you.”
“Silent, locked in?”
“Or raging. Everyone reacts differently. But we often share the feeling that something drastic has to be done. Traumatic memory is circular. Meaning that when something happens that reminds us of a previous trauma it can awaken rage, in this case the rage of abandonment. Everything that has happened before happens again. The whole weight of those previous experiences invades thepresent. The grief that has up to that point been frozen explodes in a vengeful rage. The violence of trauma is often extreme. People stab in a frenzy, they molest the body, not uncommonly there are elements of sadism.”
Bob nodded slowly. “The rage of abandonment.”
“That’s the technical term.”
“Thank you.” He turned the empty glass in his hand. “Alice, has it ever…?” He stopped.
