The first time he sees her he’s thinking about another woman. She wears a crewneck sweatshirt that suggests she’s been to Harvard’s School of Dental Medicine, but although he doesn’t know her, that seems improbable, maybe because she wears the sweatshirt as if it’s a dress. The woman he’s been thinking about would scorn the ripped 40 denier tights, would probably call her a skank and in another breath complain about misogyny. He’s tired of thinking about this other woman. Feels like the woman’s subsumed his mind, that his thoughts are not his thoughts but a projection of hers. He wants his thoughts back. He wants to feel virile. Isn’t that why he came to this blasted party? 

So is nanohydroxyapatite actually better than fluoride? Henrik says to her.

It’s been a key ingredient in Japanese toothpaste for two decades, she says without missing a beat. Would you trust the people that came up with Pikachu and toilets that wash your ass? I would.

Henrik realizes he didn’t expect her to be funny. He considers analyzing his subverted expectations, but decides to move onto another question. How often do you tweeze your eyebrows? he says. 

Is he negging her? Her eyebrows are thick. Not wild, exactly, but also not tamed. If he had to guess, he would say Greek or Israeli with no real certainty. Thank fuck he knows better than to guess, though.

Whenever I feel like it, which isn’t particularly often. I was Cara Delevingne before Cara Delevingne was Cara Delevingne. She crosses her legs twice, which is something only very skinny people can do. The woman he’s been thinking about would publicly ask if she was a model but privately suggest she has an eating disorder. He thinks, though, that she just has a high metabolism.

I understood nothing you just said. Do you really have a doctorate in dentistry from Harvard? 

Please, she says. 

My ex-girlfriend wants to know if you’re a model, Henrik says.

Your ex-girlfriend wants to know, she repeats. Skepticism. But flirtation, also? She scratches her nose and it almost looks like she was going to pick it but thought better of it, realized she has an audience, a hungry audience.

Okay, I want to know, Henrik says. He isn’t drunk, unfortunately. But he feels like he is. There’s something resembling excitement surging through his body; he feels the way he does when he’s on a suspension bridge. But wasn’t there a study that said men mistook adrenaline for sexual attraction. Could that be what’s happening here? But he isn’t on suspension bridge and there’s a woman wearing a sweatshirt for a dress, so. 

I just have impeccable eyeliner technique, she says. I can put eyeliner on in a moving car with my left hand—I’m right-handed, by the way, which probably means I won’t ever become president or have an unconventional thought—and it looks perfect. She pauses so he can appreciate just how impressive that is and continues: Everything you’re seeing is a deliberate calculation intended to mimic the pinnacle of nonchalance. But if I told you how long it took to decide on this ridiculous outfit, you wouldn’t believe me. First you’d be incredulous, but then you’d be profoundly disappointed that I wasn’t this effortless babe that wakes up with perfect lipstick.

You’re not wearing lipstick now, Henrik says, confused but also impressed by the flow of verbiage. He wasn’t expecting so many sentences, let alone so many syllables. He underestimated her. She knows it. 

What’s next? she says. Going to ask if I have daddy issues and say something about Freud and find a way to segue into do you want to get out of this lame ass party with a suboptimal spirits selection? Or maybe you’re the type who pretends that drinking coffee after midnight is normal. 

I think it’s normal for some people, Henrik says. He’s feeling uncertain as to whether he should perceive her words as hostile or playful. Are they mutually exclusive? Why hasn’t he asked for her name yet? Why hasn’t she volunteered it of her own accord? For that matter why hasn’t she asked for his name? Is there a commensurate amount of emotional investment? Is there any emotional investment at all? Is this just banter? Can banter ever mean something? What is Nadine doing this very moment? Probably looking at clothes she can’t afford, loading up her shopping cart and then mournfully closing all her tabs only to receive an e-mail asking her if she left something behind and if she’s lucky maybe a 10% coupon and then she buys everything she put in her cart and feels for a moment, fulfilled. Nadine was never fulfilled. Or maybe someone’s whispering pornography in her ear in some expensive tapas bar and she’s going along with it because she’s horny and not the least bit sad that Henrik isn’t taking up half her bed anymore and miraculously this one-night stand actually knows exactly how she likes her clitoris licked, cottons on faster than Henrik did, and she’s making this comparison and feeling more and more justified about her decision to dump him and the one-night stand becomes a husband and—

Are you okay? she says. You look the way I did when I realized Mommy kissing Santa Claus is actually the father. Why couldn’t we let Mommy have some extramarital fun for once? But seriously, are you okay?

Is anyone? Henrik says. He’s feeling dispirited. This party does have a poor selection of spirits and it’s too bad because it’s precisely what he needs. He wishes he was at a party with a bartender, a bartender wearing a waistcoat and an attentive smile. He misses attentive smiles and doesn’t care if he’s paying for them. Who is Nadine fucking? He has to know. He doesn’t have to know. There’s someone here right now asking if he’s okay. Has he answered her?

I’m not sure, she says. Sometimes I think I just need to change my social circle. You know, the thing where the five people you hang out the most with are the ones that infect you the most? So if you’re hanging out with five people with service industry jobs and no ambition and zero degrees, that’s probably what you’re like, too. Although the people I know in the service industry are the most ambitious. But that was just an example. But suppose that the five people you hang out the most with are these really earnestly zen folks that do yoga and drink green tea but also find time to produce earth-shaking art and watch movies with subtitles and shit like that. Maybe you’d be an artist that isn’t suffering. Maybe you’d be rich. Maybe the only reason we’re unhappy is because we’re surrounded by unhappy people and we’d be happy if we found other people. Maybe it all comes down to propinquity and sheer dumb luck. Like us being here now—that’s propinquity. I’m still on the fence as to whether it’s sheer dumb luck.

Henrik thinks, there’s no way she’s a dentist. But maybe he just has a limited idea of what a dentist is like. That seems probable, also.

Are you saying that if we have a clinically depressed friend, we should just lose them? Henrik knows that’s not what she means but he doesn’t know how best to prolong this conversation. He’s not sure why she’s still talking to him. He supposes, though, that everyone wants a chance to soliloquize. He just happens to be there, and listening, sort of. Surely, she has other options; Nadine has other options, but he—what does he have? His roommate is probably wondering where he is. Henrik always makes dinner for the two of them. Two single men. That’s why Henrik isn’t home now. He doesn’t want to be a single man making dinner for his single man roommate anymore. He doesn’t want to pretend to be a cheerful Casanova anymore. He doesn’t want to pull his weight and extra and that’s what he’s been doing. And his single man roommate might not even be single for much longer. Won’t stop talking about someone named Thea. A possible nympho who codes for a living. Seems like a good combination. Henrik is probably going to have to find a new roommate. He hates finding new roommates. Really, what would be best if Henrik was back with Nadine and his single man roommate was with Thea but still lived with Henrik until Henrik was ready to live with Nadine.

Have you ever had sex in a car? she asks him. 

No Freud. No sex. No coffee. Just blatant. She has pretended to be her best friend’s sexually omnivorous girlfriend enough times that she can assume her best friend’s girlfriend’s desultory sex-laced manner at the drop of a hat. It’s the personality equivalent of a wig except sometimes she doesn’t feel like she’s consciously putting the wig on. It’s just part of her now. Does that make her a selective parasite, clipping personality traits like coupons for sexual conquests?

Have I lived a life? Henrik says. He remembers that it would be appropriate to smile. He smiles and it feels unstrained. It’s a real smile. He’s imagining sex in a car with her now. His imagination is not wholesome. 

I haven’t been drinking that much, she says. I have a car. A Saturn.

Those still exist? Henrik says.

Barely, she responds.

◆

Thirteen days later, Henrik thinks about her the next time he sees Nadine, who wants her mandolin back, having perhaps forgotten that the mandolin was a gift, although it was one of those gifts where the giver was thinking about themselves more than the receiver. Henrik has used the mandolin maybe once or twice, for pickling carrots. Henrik wonders if the mandolin is an excuse. A sous chef would surely have more than one mandolin but maybe that’s like thinking a barista actually wants to make a pourover for themselves. Nadine handles Wagyu beef with love and care at work and when she’s done work puts a Dr. Oetker’s pizza in the oven and falls asleep after the second slice. 

Did I have a lasting influence on you? Nadine asks. 

Henrik starts to think literally no one in his life musters effort for a good segue. They just hurl shit at him as if to say figure out the context, dude. It’s too much pressure. He wants a script. The mandolin is in her hands and there is no good reason she should stay, no good reason Henrik can think of at least. He suspects she wants him to say something nice so she can leave with a clear conscience. 

I never put socks in the dryer anymore, Henrik manages to say. Why does he feel like he needs to be nice to her? But it’s true that his socks don’t fall down as much. His mother used to say, if you can say something nice that’s also true, then you should say it. So maybe that’s why. Everything always circles back to the woman you came out of, maybe.

That’s good to hear, Nadine says. Has she gotten a haircut? Nadine’s hair stylist is a beautiful man who would be threatening if he didn’t have three boyfriends and two huskies. There’s something different about her. As if her soul has undergone exfoliation. It seems like Nadine wants to say something else but hasn’t figured out how to articulate it. Her mouth opens and closes and Henrik imagines an opportunistic fly inhabiting her mouth, dying in her mouth. Henrik wonders why anyone would want to be a fly on the wall, or a fly at all. Who wants to have wings only to be swatted mercilessly? At least spiders get to be collected in jars if they’re lucky. Nobody jars flies. Fuck flies. 

Nadine’s mouth opens again and produces speech but Henrik isn’t listening because he’s thinking about how much he wants a tuna tartare drenched in sesame oil and lime and how maybe the woman from the party might, conceivably, have a thing for seafood. How something that lives in the ocean ends up in your mouth—it makes Henrik think of how the average cotton T-shirt has flown further than he ever has. He feels so provincial sometimes, only having been to Europe once. Not even London or Paris or Amsterdam, but two weeks in Gothenburg when he was too little to remember. A family trip. He wishes he could say it was pastoral and lovely but he doesn’t remember anything except his older brother exclaiming that the 7/11 in Sweden had much better pastries. And he remembers his father running to the Systembolaget liquor store at 5:50pm, desperate to get there ten minutes before closing time. Sobriety and family: not his father’s specialty.

Henrik? Nadine says. She sounds tentative, the complete opposite of her sous chef kitchen persona at work. Persona means mask in Greek. Near the end of their relationship Henrik realized he preferred the mask to what was underneath but that didn’t mean he wanted Nadine to end their relationship. I don’t know if I should tell you this, but if I were you, I’d want to know, Nadine continues. Henrik thinks, what a curious phrase that is—if he were imagining he was somebody else, he would be imagining he was somebody else still from his own terribly limited perspective. 

This is solipsism, he says. How does he even know that word? Is he even using it correctly? Doesn’t matter. Sounds impressive. Must have been the fake dentist—she used it when they were in her Saturn and decidedly not having sex, a defiance of expectations that perhaps should have been disappointing but had actually been quite nice. He got to be the little spoon for perhaps the first time in his life. He wants to tell somebody about it but it isn’t very masculine and it doesn’t make for a good story. Maybe he isn’t really Swedish if he’s thinking about masculinity so anachronistically.

Nadine never asks what things mean because she doesn’t like appearing anything but knowledgeable. Henrik would bet the farm, though, that Nadine has no idea what solipsism is and unkindly, he judges her.

I’m seeing someone. And I want to tell you before you find out through the grapevine. It isn’t anything serious, but I like him, Nadine says. Henrik senses a contradiction. Why tell him if it isn’t serious? What constitutes serious? What constitutes frivolity? Is fucking serious? Seriously.

Henrik registers that Nadine’s spoken. Okay, he says. He thinks that grapevine is probably classier than saying social media but he also knows that the grapevine is social media so maybe Nadine should have just said that. Fucking grapevine. 

So am I, Henrik says. Her name’s Perusha and she’s a dentist.

I never thought you’d date a dentist, Nadine says. She is looking at him with something that resembles pity. He isn’t sure if it’s because he said Perusha’s a dentist or if she doesn’t believe him, thinks he’s too pathetic to attract a dentist, or any member of the female species, can’t believe that she herself fell for him. The truth is, he has a masculine face and a mild personality. He’s six-one. It doesn’t really take that much. It isn’t Nadine’s fault.

Don’t you think you’d better go? You have your mandolin, Henrik says. He regrets it immediately. He doesn’t want her to leave, exactly; he just wishes she’d never come.

I didn’t come for the fucking mandolin, Nadine says. It wasn’t pity, more like her chin felt like it would detach from her fucking face from the effort she expends in preventing the most dreaded of clichés. She won’t have a chin that quivers or a lip that trembles. No. She was the one that broke up with him. She gets the triumphant sunset and the motorcycle and the stampede of suitors and the good gyuto. And the mandolin. She considers saying something like, isn’t a dental hygienist more in your league but then remembers that she is supposed to be a feminist and ought to act like it. She thinks of her therapist advising her not to think of people as occupying leagues. In this instance wouldn’t she be putting herself in the same league as a hypothetical dental hygienist. Isn’t she insulting herself to boot. Dental hygienists make way more money than women sous chefs do. Most dental hygienists, unlike sous chefs, are women. Nadine is good with her hands; maybe that’s what she should have done. Perusha. What kind of name is that anyway? Nadine always did joke that she was too white—what if she was right? Henrik looks blank, which incidentally is how his face looks when it’s quizzical. She used to find that charming, that questioning look of almost insipid curiosity, as if it didn’t matter what words came out of her mouth because no matter what she was endlessly fascinating, unknowable. But now. But now. Perusha: a dentist, ostensibly. Henrik’s face, blank or quizzical, waiting for her to say something appropriately magnanimous and leave already. He never did understand her. And now—he doesn’t want to, either.

She leaves the mandolin and Henrik is more confused than ever.