"If you ever hire a detective to spy on me", he said to her as they were having a walk down one of the quieter streets in autumn-time Brooklyn. "This seems to be the right place".
He said that casually, en passant, holding her by the hand, and she quickly laughed it off. After all, a casual remark like that was nothing new. Brooklyn was at its best in early October, and it inspired them to be playful during these long walks close to the Borough Park area where they lived. They would make comments on just about anything, from drooling babies to drunk teenagers. Nothing was off limits, which was the way they dealt with the insidious middle age slowly, meticulously taking ground. So really, there was nothing odd about him throwing a one-liner like that. As a matter of fact, the idea of a detective agency made little sense to her. Outside black and white Hollywood movies and paperback novels by Raymond Chandler, the world had no place for them anymore. Seconds later, Paul brought up something else and that was the end of it. And yet whatever they saw and spoke about later that Sunday afternoon, in her thoughts she kept returning to the detective agency and its name which had stuck for no apparent reason. The somewhat uneventful word ‘Phoenix’ was written on a golden plaque and featured the sort of ill-advised italics she had not seen in years.
That evening, as they were about to go to bed, Rachel searched the detective agency on the Internet and discovered a rather modest-looking webpage with minimalist design. The stomach-churning font was unmistakably there, at the top of the page as well as a brief list of services which, among other things, offered to ‘tail’ your spouse or your lover for a negotiable fee. The whole thing looked silly and grotesque and she had switched the phone just before Paul joined her in bed.
Her next week at the office was rather intense and her thoughts were hijacked by a rumbustious delegation from Lisbon who wanted to promote Portuguese rice which, from what she could gather, was rather nondescript and had no chance of success on the American market. Still, during the business lunch she suddenly realised that they were close to that very street from last Sunday. She suggested having a short walk in the Borough Park area, and the Portuguese people did not mind. By that point, they had been too drunk to care, and she took them to the very place where the golden plaque was. "Look", she said to Monica, the easily amused daughter of a businessman who owned the Portuguese brand. "You know what that is?" However, Monica was more interested in the idea that a detective agency would name itself after a mythological bird rather than the fact that this was, in fact, a detective agency. "Would you spy on your husband?" Rachel asked half-jokingly. "Why?" Monica laughed. "Would you?" Rachel said no and chose to change the subject.
She said no but what she really meant was Olivia.
Olivia was an Italian student who had come to New York to write a paper on Italian postmodernism. They got acquainted back in August when at some point late in the evening the bell rang, and this slender girl with big glasses and full-blooded Sicilian lips was standing in the door way. In an expressive manner that seemed at odds with her subtle build, she said she had moved to this house three weeks ago and was now so excited to be living in Brooklyn. Her apartment was downstairs and Rachel thought that this could be one of those noise complaints they had not had in years. The girl mentioned her name was Olivia and said she had some friends for dinner and maybe they had a corkscrew. A corkscrew? "How dull", Rachel thought and immediately felt Paul's presence behind her back. "A wing corkscrew?" he asked. "Or a cloche?" It was all fairly innocuous and back at the time Rachel did not pay it any mind. But now, puzzled one more time by the word ‘Phoenix’, she really thought about Olivia and the day when she came to ask for a corkscrew. Also, she thought about what happened two days later when she opened a casual bottle of Primitivo and the corkscrew was back in its usual place.
Later that afternoon, at home, she cooked dinner and waited for Paul. Paul was a travel agent and he was running late, and while this was nothing new, she felt angry and strangely agitated. So much so that when he came home, kissed her on the forehead, sat at the table and began to eat, the anger welled up inside her to the extent that she could not hold it back anymore.
"Did you just fuck her?" she said. Paul raised his eyes and looked at her with a badly conceived smile. "What? Actually, the risotto is undercooked. A little too al dente for my taste".
And that was it. There was no question that he had heard her just fine, and yet it was utterly unthinkable that he did not even make a feeble attempt at talking it through. At trying to understand. At getting to the bottom of it. In fact, all he did was change the subject and mention risotto which was just about as al dente as it had ever been. And no, this was not just a casual comment, one of those which can could be brushed off in favour of a better one. There was no doubt in her mind that he knew exactly who ‘her’ referred to. And still. Olivia. How cheap it was, how mind-crushingly obvious. A corkscrew? A corkscrew which he handed to her? Really?
That night, she made a point of making love to Paul in a way she had not done in years. For a start, she put on The Last Temptation of Christ soundtrack by Peter Gabriel (her perfect sex music) and told Paul to take her from behind. She talked dirty (she used the word 'cock' a few time, which he used to love, and at one point she actually inserted her tongue into his ear and whispered the word 'corkscrew') and she faked multiple orgasms that rose in volume and intensity. Rachel screamed during those orgasms with a somewhat desperate abandon in the hope that the sound isolation would fail and the Italian girl would hear everything. By the end of it, Paul was exhausted and wondered what had possessed her. "Nothing", she said. "But I just hate it when it is too al dente".
Rachel never did go to check whether Paul was ever downstairs with Olivia huffing profusely and trying to make her Italian body excited. First, she did not need any proof as she had already discovered a novel by Italo Calvino in his briefcase, and second, he would not have done that in her apartment in the first place. She knew Paul. Paul was secretive, and there was a bigger chance that he would do it in his mother's basement or in a cheap hotel in Queens. Instead, at some point in early November she found herself in one of those quieter streets in the centre of Brooklyn and stared at the golden plaque with the word ‘Phoenix’ on it. Now that she looked at that plaque against the yellow-coloured maple trees of Borough Park, it did not look so tacky and dated anymore. As a matter of fact, she stepped into the doors of the agency with a certain defiance she had not felt in years.
Considering the fact that she did not know what to expect, the place was a match for her imagination. There was a bored girl sitting at the reception making selfies and feeling completely at ease now that Rachel was sitting there waiting. The walls were completely white, and overall the place had a distinct look of a hospital or maybe an especially uninspired lawyer's office. There were no posters on the walls and no certificates flashing a meaningless award won by Phoenix a good decade ago. After some time, she was asked to enter a small room at the very end of a long and uncomfortable corridor. As she was walking there, feeling the odd floorboard creak under her feet, she could not stop wondering what could possibly be happening in all those other rooms along the way.
The room which she entered looked like a Stasi interrogation cabinet. Again, she was mostly drawing from books and movies but the similarity was uncanny. There was little furniture inside, and the lamp standing on the edge of the desk smelled of dead flies and burnt oil. "How can we help you?" said a middle-aged man on the other side of the desk. He did not quite turn around so effectively to greet her, the way Philip Marlow would have done, but this was still a little too theatrical for her taste. In the end, though, the meeting turned out to be very business-like and efficient. Also, as she studied the face of the man more closely, she recognised him to be your average New Yorker (if there is such a thing) that you would overlook on your next commute to Manhattan. "It's my husband...", she began and immediately felt a tinge of remorse and even panic. Who were these people anyway? And did she have to fear God? Still, she thought of Olivia, Italo Calvo and the rest of it, and in the end provided all the required information and signed an agreement which included, among other things, a somewhat exaggerated down payment.
Phoenix worked fast, and two or three days later she had a second meeting in the last room of the long corridor in downtown Brooklyn. There, by the same lamp smelling of dead flies and burnt oil, she was shown a dozen printed images of her husband walking into a hotel in Queens and leaving it a few hours later. And then there was another picture, made twenty-seven minutes after the first. It showed Olivia walking out of the same building with a tote bag saying ‘Save the Planet’. Rachel felt severe palpitations inside her throat as she studied the pictures again and again. Then, however, as she paid the rest of the fee (which seemed counter-intuitive as she was paying for bad news) and left the building, the feeling changed. For the first time in what appeared to be days, months and even years, she felt free. She felt ecstatically, perversely happy. She knew exactly what she was supposed to be doing now. And when over dinner that day Paul mentioned that he felt like he was being watched by someone, she only shrugged her shoulders and tried to suppress the subtle glint in her eye. “Maybe one of your past clients who you fucked over. Sold him a trip to Saudi Arabia or something”.
As a matter of fact, she actually felt emboldened by what she had discovered recently, and there was a new dimension to her voice as she offered John to have coffee after work. John was taken aback at first and did not quite understand where the catch was, but John was notoriously slow and she was not especially looking forward to sleeping with him. Still, she chose John because he was single and he appeared to have good relationship with Paul. During her birthday party two or three years ago, they bonded quite seamlessly over the latest travails of the Brooklyn Nets, and this, she felt, could be explored. That, and John's suppressed sexuality where a corkscrew was nothing more than a corkscrew. She loved that. She loved the possibilities.
Surprisingly, she did not see a lot of Olivia in the ensuing weeks. But then she did not care anymore. This far into the season, New York was getting less attractive, and Olivia may have been stuck in her room reading Infinite Jest and waiting for a visit from Paul (who did not have any reason to hide now that she was quite open about John). She did not care. In more ways than she cared to admit, she was actually enjoying her life.
And then, by Christmas time, the whole thing was effectively over. They were both invited to come to a classical concert that neither of them really cared about. Haydn's symphony felt like one big false ending, and she kept looking at the yellow socks of the cellist which seemed oddly out of place. Two hours later, they walked out into the snow, and at some point and for no reason at all, she brought up the detective agency. "Why", she asked, "why did you mention it that day in October?" Paul said he did not know what she was talking about, and for once she believed him. He actually had no idea. "Which detective agency?" But she only chuckled and so they trudged along, in the dirty snow, towards their apartment in central Brooklyn. He was thinking of that Italian postmodernist novel that Olivia had given him a while ago. "Read it", she said. "He is one of my favourite authors". He read it but there was little of it he understood. "So", Rachel said. "You did fuck her?" Paul was no longer trying to talk round this or hush it up. Besides, she had those photos with her which she felt was a great moment to reveal. "Yes", he nodded casually. "Yes, I fucked her. But only when you asked me to". At which point she brought up the corkscrew and he said that he had no idea what she was speaking about. This time, though, she did not believe him. Which did not really matter as once they entered the apartment, Paul suggested a divorce. And then, once the word was mentioned, they both felt the old and barely familiar sensation that made them jump onto the bed and make love half-dressed and for the first time in a very long time.
In the meantime, Olivia asked one of her friends to open the wine and somebody brought up the corkscrew. "Oh", she said. She had only just moved here and small details like that had completely escaped her. "Fuck it!" she cursed in that exaggerated manner of Italian people. "I guess I will have to ask my neighbours". However, no sooner had she left the apartment than her friends screamed: "Olivia, come back! You do not have to go! It's a screw cap, we do not need a corkscrew!" She actually heard them well and there was a brief moment of uncertainty but in the end she chose to go anyway. There was this bored middle-aged couple living upstairs and besides, there was something anxious and free in the air. Perhaps it was August. In the end, it was always August. August was her favourite month.
