Unanswered questions and unquestioned answers (CH07EP09)

When he entered the kitchen his girlfriend, as he came to think of Patty, was talking to his friend Mark. They seemed to be past the smalltalk of the day and were discussing the bigger issues at hand. From the fragment of the sentence he heard, they were discussing the elections for the city council and the fact that the owner of the Chinese restaurant had introduced himself as the independent candidate to become major of the city they were living in.
When they saw him the discussion stopped and Mark asked him how things were going. If he still was in pain and if he already started toning down on the painkillers. He was, but it was hard.
When he sat down at the kitchen counter, on one of the barstools Patty handed him a fresh cup of tea, green tea with a slice of lemon.
Conversation was picked up again and came back to local politics, but moved fast into the interesting realm of the smudge in politics. The rumors around politicians. Was the Chinese restaurant owned by a Chinese or was he actually Taiwanese? Which started a whole new discussion on whether a Taiwanese person was in fact a Chinese as well? He continued with the announcement that he'd been married to a 89 year old Chinese lady once, for only 15 minutes. It had been the consequence of a lost game of black-jack several years ago... Well, the lady had thought she was married to him anyway. She'd died 15 minutes after the I-do's. He was pretty sure that she was Chinese and not Taiwanese, if there was a real difference. Mark and Patty were at a loss, where had this come from, this he knew. He had no intention to elaborate on this episode of his life. Not even when they would ask for it. He put a smile on his face and left it at that. Patty and Mark picked the conversation up. It was a lively discussion with many laughs and it emphasized to all that life was getting normal again. The reality of the day was taking over from the absurdity of his 'accident'.
He inquired about Mark's ventures into the world of love recently. He knew about Mandy and that it wasn't going anywhere, but Mark had told him once that he was never shy on girls. This time was different, after the dates with Mandy, Mark hadn't dated anymore. Actually he had, with Mandy. Non-romantic dates. Mark explained it by seeing his friends becoming so close and that their love seemed to run so deep that he now was looking for more in a relationship than just romance and what it could lead to. Mandy was definitely a dead end when it came to that, but both seemed to enjoy each others company and they both weren't looking for sex at this point in their lives. It worked, because both didn't feel sexually attracted toward the other.
Mark had another coffee and then he left. He still had a sales target to meet and times were not that good recently.
After he left Patty told him that Mandy had told her that she and Mark had been on a few more dates, as friends, but that she had gotten very fond of Mark and now actually wanted to take their relationship to a next level. But she didn't want to ruin their friendship right now and feared that romance would cause this. Patty asked him if he thought men and women could be just friends. If he though that men could be with a woman and not consider sex as a possible result of a discussion. He didn't answer, instead he asked her if she would make him another tea and he was going to take a bath. His wounds were itching and he thought that maybe one of the wounds had gotten infected. She turned on the water cooker and told him she would be upstairs with the tea, he should already go and tend to his wounds.
While she was waiting for the tea she thought this over. Why didn't he answer? It had seemed almost as if he hadn't even heard her. She dismissed it, maybe he hadn't because of the wounds. Although she was pretty sure that they all had healed. She would take a close look, maybe they had to call the doctor.
When she got upstairs with the tea she heard the water in the bathroom running, the typical noise of a bath filling up. She put the tray with the tea on the windowsill and quietly walked over to the bathroom. The door was a bit ajar and she was allowed to take a peek inside. What she saw made her whole body shiver. His muscular body was in plain view as he was taking of his clothes ready to step into the tub. His wounds were showing, slightly reddened and she was sure that they must hurt him still. But he never complained about them. It was as if his wounds would heal and then worsen again. As if he would inflict the wounds on himself over and over again, but the scares she saw were the exact same scares as she had tended to ever since she met him in the hospital. They could not be self inflicted, not over and over again without clear signs of self mutilation.
She could see the ripple through his back muscles caused by the agony while he was easing himself into the water, which was either too cold or too hot as she could tell from the flexing of his muscles. Too cold would be most likely as he had been complaining about his wounds itching, hot water would increase the itching, but would be better for an infection.
She turned around, picked up the tray with the tea, decided to get some cookies and took care of it.
When she got back to the bathroom he was rubbing the special emulsion into the areas around his wounds, at least there where he could reach. He smiled as if it wasn't a painful experience, but his eyes told Patty otherwise.
He looked at her, saw her concern and within the blink of an eye his facial expression changed and the pain was gone from his eyes. Te smile was genuine and he reached for the tea. Patty gave him a cookie instead and told him that the tea was still too hot. A tremble in her voice gave away that she didn't believe his change in posture and wasn't convinced that the pain hadn't been there. He took a bite of the biscuit, dipped it in the tea and nibbled on it. Then he told her that he thought that the wounds on his lower abdomen seemed to be infected. That they would never really Completely heal because of the parasite living in him. Childhood problem. No doctor ever found anything, but whenever he had a wound in his lower abdomen it took a dead serious infection to heal, and still it would be a weak spot. No problem. Patty asked him why he thought it was a parasite when nobody ever had found anything. He replied by elaborating how weird it was that some people wild dip a biscuit in tea before eating it, maybe that was because they didn't like chewing? The tea didn't really add any flavor to the cookie and it wasn't that hard anyways. After this he handed her the tube with the emulsion, asked if she would rub it in the remaining wounds and then maybe they could out and maybe buy some plants or flowers to brighten up the house. He wanted the house to reflect how he felt about her, which would require a lot of flowers. An awful lot of flowers, that was of course when she was okay with that and wanted to do something like that. Patty didn't know how to respond. It had been the second time he just continued their conversation, if that was what it was, with something completely else, completely of topic, not even close to the original topic. As if she had been unconscious for a split second missing the transition from one subject to another.
Sure she wanted to go out with him, but she also wanted to buy some groceries. They would have to go to a nearby town as she needed some special vegetables and spices, for diner that night.

After treating his wounds they prepared for a rainy day in town and went of. First taking care of Patty's shoppinglist, which took quite some driving around to various ethnic stores. Then they went to the florist where he spend in Patty's opinion an obscure amount of money on flowers, vases and decorations. It was to help the economy he told her. Patty just wondered how he would pay for this as she was still not clear on how he earned his money. They went back home and while Patty was working on diner, marinating the meat, chopping the vegetables and preparing various sauces, he was creating the most beautiful flower pieces she'd ever seen. When she was ready preparing diner, he just finished his last piece. The whole house smelled like roses, lilies, daisies and various other flowers. Patty suggested that maybe they could invite Mark and Mandy for diner as she realized that more food was prepared than the two of them could eat.

Later that night the four of them had diner.

Green Tea instead of Black Coffee (CH07EP08)

When he turned around Patty saw the terror on his face. He didn’t answer when she asked him what was wrong. Then when she moved she felt the sheets tug at her. She looked down and saw the stains in the sheet. The next second she started laughing and he noticed a slight hysteria in her voice. As sudden as she’d started laughing she stopped. He was relieved that she was still alive, but he didn’t understand. He asked her what was going on and she told him that the day before she had cut herself while working on her bikini-line and that the sheets must have opened the wound again. She always lost a lot of blood when she had a wound, even a little cut like this one, it was an illness that ran in her family. They left it at that.

The next few days he had to take a lot of rest and Patty helped him as much as possible with everything he did. She bathed him twice a day, cooked diner and did the laundry while he did the dishes. It was the first time ever he was living with somebody, and he felt great for the first time in his life.

At the end of the week Mark dropped by to see how things were going. Mark had dated Mandy twice that week, but it didn’t click between the two and the second time they decided to leave it at that. When Patty opened the door Mark was surprised and asked her what time she had arrived. She told Mark that she’d been with the patient for the past few days and that she would stay with him even after he’d completely recovered. She asked Mark if he would like some coffee or tea. Of course he had to come in, see the patient and sell some vacuum cleaners. They laughed. Patty made coffee for the two of them and put on some water for the green tea she had to make for her patient. In fact it had been her idea to stay away from the coffee as long as he was recovering and he’d agreed on the single condition that she would come up with an alternative.

Mark asked Patty how things were going, if she was serious about moving in completely. They talked about how one could meet somebody who was so perfect for you that you couldn’t think of a life without that person. She asked Mark about him and Mandy. She was sorry to hear that it hadn’t worked out, but was happy to hear that they both had felt the same way about their future and suggested the four of them should get together for dinner or maybe even a nice game of bowling. After 20 minutes all that could be said without talking was said and they finished their coffee in silence, waiting for him to get into the kitchen, finish his green tea and they would wait for what was to come. It had never been clear to them who he actually was, or what went on in his mind. Patty knew he was the man she loved, the man that made love to her like no one ever had made love to her before. Mark knew that he was probably one of the few persons in his life that called himself a friend... unconditionally. Both of them suspected that he had a past, a past you probably wouldn’t wish to your worst enemy. Patty admired him for being the person he was, even more considering his past, the past she didn’t know. Mark wondered about him because he was the person he was, even more considering his past, the past he’d tried to get out of him on many an occasion.

It had been the second time they’d spoken, it wasn’t at a sales pitch, but at the grocery store. He’d asked him where he’d lived before he moved to this metropolis. He had laughed about Marks overstatement and had told Mark that he’d moved around most of his life, setting up a business every time he needed money. He called himself a man of many trades, but didn’t dare to call himself a jack-of-all-trades. Mark had never understood this, never grasped why he didn’t consider himself the proverbial jack. Mark had tried to get to know more about his mysterious new friend but this had been the closest he ever got. After that it seemed as if the more time they spent together, the less he knew about his new friend.

Sticky red sheets (CH07EP07)

It had been 45 minutes since he woke up and although the sun was shining right into her eyes, she was still asleep. Since 5 minutes he allowed himself to blink his eyes, but only to be able to tell the time when he would look at the clock. 10 minutes later he noticed that she wasn’t breathing. He hadn’t noticed it before because he was too fixated with her eyes. He panicked. He regained his calm when he realized that maybe she wasn’t completely a sleep and therefore didn’t take such deep breaths. Then he noticed the red stains in the sheet covering her. Whatever it was it was still fresh and what else could it be but blood. He looked at his hands and only now noticed that they were sticky and as he held them in the sunlight he saw that they were covered with the same red substance as he noticed seconds before on the sheet. Again he panicked. Nothing made sense anymore. It wasn’t the first woman he’d killed. She wasn’t even the first woman he loved and killed anyway. But she was the first person he killed without knowing it. He panicked because he realized that he was a threat to society. It was dangerous to have him around. He had to move, leave the new vacuum cleaner behind and move to a new home, as he had done so many times before.

He ignored the phone and instead made breakfast. He would leave that day, leaving her behind make it look as if somebody had taken hold of him. He went upstairs to take a shower, anticipating the pain he would experience. The phone rang again and after the second ring she asked him why he didn’t pick up the phone.