The Devil's Favourite Obsession

She could only look at him.

He crossed the small living room. He walked without hurry. He stopped at the coffee table. He placed the white paper box of sweet treats on it. He looked at the couch and arranged himself on the couch with comfort.

Marion walked in a daze, unsure what she just heard, or was this dumbhead Mafia guy messing with her?

She did not, in the uneven seconds between the door and the chair across from him, register the floor beneath her feet. The wall clock that had signalled the start of her afternoon went unnoticed by her. She did not register the children upstairs.

She sat down across from Binge.

She placed her hands in her lap. She put them down with care. She did not, at this moment of her life, trust any other part of her body to remain still.

A surge of anger travelled through her veins at what Binge had just uttered. Why was he doing this? Why was he taking so much interest in her life? She had told him that she did not want his interference. She had told him that she did not want his attention. Her life was good. No matter what shape it was in, it was good. Why was this dumbhead mafia man poking his nose where it had not been asked for?

This time, the gaze she settled on him had transformed from daze into anger.

”If your marriage has been shammed by your wife, that does not mean you need to come and destroy someone else’s marriage.”

Binge opened his mouth to answer.

Marion did not let him.

”I never asked you for anything. I, infact, warned you to stay away from my husband and me. So why are you so keen to destroy my happy married life?”

She did not raise her voice. She did not raise it because she did not want the children to hear what she was saying.

She stood up. She walked toward the front door.

”Let us go to the terrace. I do not want my children to hear a word of this. I want to know why you are doing this. The real reason.”

Binge said nothing.

He followed her.

Marion did not take the lift. She took the stairs to the terrace. Binge walked behind her without speaking. He saw her back climb the flight ahead of him, and he did not ask why she had not taken the lift. He did not need to ask.

When they reached the terrace, Marion turned and slapped Binge across the face.

The slap landed with force. Tears spilled from her eyes the moment her hand had finished moving. The rage in her face had become its own weather.

Binge raised one hand to his cheek. He rubbed the place where she had hit him. He looked at her.

”You had no right,” she said, ”to come and say anything about he was doing or not doing.”

”So you believe what I said.”

Binge dropped his hand. He slid it into the pocket of his coat. He kept his eyes on her face.

”I do not believe you. Who are you for me to believe? Are you my friend? No. Are you my family? No.”

”I am your well-wisher.”

Marion let out a hard, forced laugh.

”A well-wisher who wishes to destroy my marriage.”

”Why do you live with him when he insults you so much?”

The sentence caught her off guard.

She stepped back from him. The step arrived in her body before her brain caught up to the question. How did Binge know Martin insulted her? Had he bugged her house?

”How can you say he insults me?”

Binge bit the inside of his cheek.

”Because your neighbours hear everything.”

Marion’s nose stung. Her throat constricted at the back.

”You sent your men to ask my neighbours.”

Binge shook his head.

”No, Marion. The neighbours talk about you. They talk among themselves. Some of them pity you. Some of them laugh. My men simply heard them. You do not mingle with them. But they meet each other every month. There is an apartment gathering on the first Saturday of every month. You never show up. Because Martin does not like it.”

Marion did not answer at once.

She did not know which part of the sentence to answer first. The fact that her neighbours had been discussing her marriage. The fact that they had been laughing.

”Why are you doing this to me?” she asked finally. ”I do not care what they think about me. My children need their parents. We are managing pretty well without you. I will forget whatever nonsense you said downstairs. Because it is not true. And this is my warning. Stay away from my family.”

”I will not, Marion.”

He said it with a quietness that left no room for negotiation.

”What do you want from me, Binge? I do not understand.”

”You do not need to understand. I am only doing it for you and your kids.”

”Stop. Stop. Do not you dare talk about my children.”

”Do you think they like it when they see their father insulting their mother?”

Marion’s face changed.

It changed in a small, considered place at the centre of her chest that she had spent years training to remain still.

”What do you think your children will learn from this, Marion? Your daughter will grow up. She will choose a man. She will choose a man exactly like Martin. Because that is what her mother accepted in her own house. She will think it is normal for the men in her life to insult her. Or she will look at her mother and think, when she is older, how spineless you were.”

He paused.

”And your son. He might grow up to be exactly like Martin. He might grow up to think that women are below him. Because that is the lesson his father taught him every day his mother sat in the kitchen and did not answer.”

Binge brought one finger to his chin. He tapped it once.

”I am thinking what it will be, Marion.”

Marion’s tears were falling now. They were falling steadily. They were falling in the slow, careful order of tears that had been waiting a long time for the moment when the woman who owned them would stop refusing to let them out.

She could not speak.

The fear she had never let inside her own head, Binge had spoken aloud in fifty seconds on the terrace of her own apartment building.

Her fingers curled inward into a fist at her side.

Her body shook.

She did not know at this moment whether she was angry or terrified or ashamed! She could not tell whether she was angry at Binge, or angry at Martin, or angry at herself.

*

Inside the Warm Land cafe, Silviya, Ronny, and Kevin entered, searching for Cixi. Meanwhile, Zoyar had not yet shown up that day, and Lilly was busy with her duties at the counter.