According to my first husband this is not a story about Raul. I say there’s no story at all without Raul. He says I’m not seeing the forest for the trees. I have never understood that though. What forest? What trees? Exactly, he says. My point exactly.
I was polite when I first met Raul. I waited until after he left to remark on his teeth. Raul’s teeth were an affront to someone like me, someone who cares so much about teeth. I didn’t bring it up again for another month. By that time Raul was already in the habit of coming by a couple times a week. What does it matter what his teeth look like, my husband asked. I assumed this was rhetorical because who doesn’t know the importance of good teeth?
I wish he didn’t come by so much, I said, which is maybe what I’d been trying to say all along.
I like the guy.
Okay, but there’s something fishy about him.
You say that about everyone, he said.
Well, that was plainly not true, but my husband started listing off people, one after another. There’s your cousin Jerry, he said, and your coworker… what is it you always say about her? Oh, and Don. And, what about that guy last night? You said—
Stop, I said, I get it, we know a lot of shady characters, but—
No, my husband said.
But—
No, he said, don’t—
The doorman, I said.
He told me to drop it, and I thought of how I used to repeat that over and over with my dog and her ball. Drop it. Drop it. Drop it. That’s how he was with the doorman. He couldn’t bear to even think about him anymore.
Well, Raul might not have been on the list of local sex offenders (I’d checked), but that didn’t mean he was someone we should trust, someone we should let into our home. This was clear to me from day one. I came home from work and there he was on the couch with my husband. He was holding a beer in one hand and had the other hand in a pretzel bag. He looked familiar but it took me a moment to place him. He was the guy, I realized, I saw in our lobby with the florescent orange raincoat. I’d assumed he was a delivery person. See, it was a nice building, and he looked as though he’d traveled all night on a bus or kept his clothes in a trash compactor. Raul wiped pretzel salt off onto his pant leg and extended his hand for me to shake. His eyes stayed on me only briefly while I shook his hand, and then he turned back to my husband, resuming their conversation.
I went into the hallway to hang up my jacket and saw Raul’s wallet, phone, and keys on our kitchen counter. I restrained myself from opening the wallet to take a look and instead joined them in the living room where I waited for the conversation to veer away from the topic of Raul’s research on topsoil erosion. The conversation didn’t alter course however, if anything it intensified. Raul grew increasingly heated as he spoke: erosion this, consequences that. Sweat started to shine along his hairline, and above his upper lip. I looked over at my husband to see his response. It could be hard to read my husband; he was a good listener and very curious. When we first met, his attentiveness almost scared me. He asked so many questions I didn’t know if I should be flattered or alarmed, like was he interested in me or trying to mine me for data?
It turned out my husband’s interest in Raul was genuine. He went so far as to call him a genius. More like a nut job, I thought, or maybe said. The man’s brain was like a repository of climate facts, but it didn’t come out conversationally here and there. No, it came out in large gusts like a sustained attempt to rid himself of the information.
His visits grew more frequent. Occasionally I tried to engage with him, but mostly I went in the bedroom to watch Wife Swap as soon as he arrived. A few months into these visits my husband began having trouble sleeping. One night in particular, I awoke to the sound of a gasp. By the time I sat up in bed he was in the bathroom running cold water over his wrists which was what he did when he was overheating. He told me he’d dreamt our apartment was flooding.
It’s Raul, I said, he’s gotten into your head. It’s all doom and gloom with that guy. The way he talks, you’d think we’re on the brink of cataclysm.
Well, my husband said, maybe we are.
There’s something not right about the man, I said. I don’t trust him.
He looked at me, waiting for me to say more, so I told him I couldn’t find the pills I took to sleep, which was true. I remembered searching for the spatula to flip pancakes the previous morning, so I mentioned that too.
You think Raul stole our spatula?
Well, who am I to say? All I know is there’s something fishy about the guy.
Right, he said.
It seemed appropriate to bring up the doorman, but I hesitated, not wanting to further aggravate my husband. He had liked the doorman, chatted with him all the time, like they went way back. When I pointed out the tattoo on the doorman’s neck and the way his eyes darted around like nervous minnows, my husband didn’t see the problem. He shrugged like it meant nothing. When I typed the doorman’s name into the sex offender list and bingo, there he was, my husband shook his head and stared at the screen as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. I’d typed a lot of names in there, but this was the first time I’d gotten a hit, and there was a feeling of exhilaration, like my hard work was paying off.
Despite all the bad dreams my husband still seemed happy to see Raul, or Doomers, as I’d started calling him. I couldn’t take my eyes off those ragged teeth, but I don’t think they ever formed a smile. It was all: dark days ahead. And hey, I’m not one of those climate-denying kooks. I believe science is real and the world is changing. I don’t hate polar bears. But also, why be that person? Why thrust your bad news in everyone’s faces? My husband didn’t need that! I didn’t need that.
Well, again I awoke to my husband gasping as he surfaced from a nightmare. I patted his overheated arm and told him it was okay; it was just his unconscious responding to Doomers’s flood of negativity. That man should be ashamed of himself, is what I said. And then I patted his arm and said more soothing things until he was asleep, and I was the one furiously awake. I was the one thinking, how dare he. How dare Doomers use my husband as a sounding board for his crazy rants, my husband who was so naively trusting, who was blind to indecency?
The next morning when we were going at our coffee, I told my husband I didn’t like Raul one bit. I said, why does he have to get so hysterical about nature? Why can’t he just enjoy it like everyone else before it melts or whatever? Then it occurred to me. It all fell into place: the paranoia, the crummy teeth, the sweating.
Drugs!
You’re being absurd, my husband said and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
All the pieces line up, I called from outside the door.
I know a few things about drugs, I said.
No you don’t, he said. He flushed but didn’t come out.
That’s when I realized I would need to take things into my own hands. It had been the same with the doorman. The doorman needed to be fired, it was obvious, but my husband didn’t see it that way. He said bad people aren’t actually bad, which was sweet and naïve but also stupid. We got into a terrible argument. Unlike me, my husband saw the world as he wanted it to be, not as it is.
Luckily, I am not one of those women who is cowed by her spouse. I sent an email to the homeowner’s association, and we had a meeting that lasted two hours. The important thing is we got him fired, but this doorman was no easy fish to fry; he made the whole process difficult. He sued the association (because you can’t fire someone for being a criminal!) and we had to testify in court. The other women in the building wanted to back down. It’s unbelievable, I had to be the one to cajole them into standing up for women everywhere. Let’s not allow a man to make us uncomfortable in our own home, I said. Remember how he looked at us with those eyes? What eyes, someone asked. He had been gone awhile by that time, so I had to remind everyone of the slippery fish that were his eyes. Well, I got through to a couple of them because three of us testified.
Doomers had the habit of emptying his back pockets onto the coffee table or kitchen counter before making himself comfortable, all too comfortable, in our living room. All I had to do was slide his keys into my pocket and say I was going out for a bit. Once in the elevator it was easy to pick out his apartment key because it was identical to my own. As a kid, I’d learned how keys could be used for self-defense and it had become habit to hold one tightly between my thumb and forefinger ready to aim at an eye or a neck.
The elevator doors made a dinging sound as they opened onto his floor. It occurred to me I should be grateful that the homeowner’s association hadn’t responded to my emails about installing cameras on each floor. I was doing the right thing, but the cameras wouldn’t have seen it that way. When I put the key into the lock it was like plugging a lamp into a socket, the way my nerves lit up. There were voices in the stairwell as I opened the door and I paused a moment, almost losing my nerve. But if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s giving myself pep talks. I told myself I was brave. Bravo.
The apartment was a mirror image of our own, but with books and newspapers covering every surface, like a library overturned. This was, I realized, why Raul never invited my husband over; he didn’t want anyone to see how he lived. In addition to all the newspapers and magazines and books, there were stacks of loose-leaf papers, papers dense with text and charts and tables.
I peered through these only briefly before going into his bathroom. The drawers of other people’s bathrooms have always depressed me; the accumulation of plastic combs, band-aid boxes, pouches of tissues and old chapsticks. Of course, his drugs weren’t in the bathroom, that would be too obvious. His bedroom was like the rest of the house, overwhelmed by books and papers. Even the bed was covered with the exception of the far side where the blanket was pulled back as if someone had escaped. I rifled through dresser drawers. I removed and replaced books from bookshelves. I was sliding my hand under his mattress when the ding of the elevator sounded. No voices followed and no sound of footsteps on the carpeted hallway, just the metallic clank of a key turning in a lock. My stomach lurched and lurched again before I understood the sound was not coming from Raul’s door but from the door across the hall. I couldn’t get my nerves under control after that and left without turning up a single syringe or bag of powder.
It turns out it was a good thing I left when I did because I barely had time to replace Raul’s key before he popped up saying he had to head home. With him gone, the apartment felt quieter than usual. I warmed up plates of leftover linguine and shrimp from the night before and put them down on the kitchen table. My husband inhaled the steam coming up off the noodles. He had a face you could easily imagine as a child—all doughy innocence. I didn’t have kids, never would, but I had this guileless babyman. As he strung linguini around his fork, he told me about the day of interviews for a new head of HR at his company. I could only half listen. I was feeling glum thinking of all the places I’d failed to check in Raul’s apartment, perfect hiding places for drugs, like inside a pillowcase or tucked under a picture frame or within a book that was carved out just for that purpose. I hadn’t opened any of the books. Even hours later as my husband snored beside me like a sweet baby hippo, I couldn’t shake the feeling I had failed to protect him from the doom and gloom that was Doomers.
I thought of Doomers amidst those papers and books, and newspapers and magazines. That’s when it hit me. Fire hazard. He could bring us all down. Terror is what I felt, thinking of how we would all go down in flames. It was enough to propel me out of bed and start the letter right away to the homeowner’s association.
Their response was an outrage. We do not interfere with disputes between residents? As if! Well, that’s when I started making calls. I left messages for everyone in the housing association. Several days passed and because they were dodging my calls I started in on the other people in the building. Everyone needed to be alerted to the danger we were living in. By the end of the week, I was on edge. Any minute the building could burst into flames and apparently no one cared.
I was in the bedroom on Friday when the doorbell rang. By that time my body was like a can of soda someone had spent the week shaking. I didn’t know where my husband was but I knew not to answer the door in the state I was in. I turned up the volume on Wife Swap so I didn’t have to hear the second or third ring or the sound of my husband’s feet padding down the hallway to answer it.
It was a good episode, one of the wives was a real piece of shit, but even so my mind kept slithering back to all those papers waiting for a flame. There was a word for what I was witnessing: the moment of danger during which no one stands up, no one holds himself accountable. I’d been told the story in college about a woman raped, calling for help, while all the neighbors listened thinking someone else would respond. In the end no one did a thing. Imagine! A woman suffering alone without a single person coming to her aid!
That did it! I flung the door open. My husband and Doomers were leaning over the coffee table dipping chips into a jar of salsa, like primitive men leaning over a fire. You are endangering us all, I said. I was a foot away from Raul.
The way you’re living… all those papers, the fire hazard, I said. I was about to rip Raul’s flinching face right off but caught my husband in my periphery. The horror on that soft gentle face.
I saw it, I said, turning to my husband then. It’s a fire waiting to happen. It’s like a, I don’t know what. It’s a— but I couldn’t even get my thought out because my husband was standing up saying, what? What? Over and over, like he couldn’t even register what I was saying. And, because I hadn’t turned down the volume on Wife Swap, the dialogue came through. A man’s voice said No, little squirt, this is cauliflower.
I’m sorry for this, my husband said. But he wasn’t apologizing to me, he was talking to Doomers. Doomers! Doomers, who was gaping at us like he didn’t have an inkling of what was going on, like we were putting on an incomprehensible impromptu performance. My husband, in all his level-headed gentleness led him to the door, his words too quiet for a reproach to be heard.
After Doomers left, my husband rested his head against the closed door, it seemed to me a posture of self-punishment, like he might begin beating his head against that door. I was just trying to protect you, I said, protect us all. I spoke to the back of his head, a head enflamed where he had been anxiously scratching recently. I’m done, he said. There was relief until I realized he wasn’t referring to Doomers. I don’t know how I knew, but I did.
This has nothing to do with Raul, he said, you do realize that don’t you?
He took steps towards me, searching my face as if trying to find something new there. The tv was still on and that terrible woman, who was truly a piece of shit said, No sir. No siree-bob, that is not how we do things in this house, young man.