Chapter 4

And then you fell asleep. Strangely enough, you didn’t masturbate. On the contrary — left with a faint arousal like an aftertaste, a little drunk on it, you fell asleep, tossing your anxieties aside.

You woke to your wife shaking you.

“Sweetheart, get up. Gentlemen aren’t late for breakfast.”

Annette’s large breasts appeared right in front of your eyes. Gods — that’s a good way to wake up, isn’t it?

A minute later you came to the table, where Omar sat beaming. It stung that he was still here. You remembered how he’d wedged himself between you and Annette...

“My God, I don’t remember anything at all. How did the evening go?” your wife asked, sitting down.

You and the immigrant janitor look at each other. The most honest answer would be: “Omar fucked you into the mattress, you moaned like a slut.”

“Not great,” you say — also, in its way, honest.

Annette’s phone rang and she went into the bedroom.

You looked at your enemy — the one you’d already been through so much with. The one with whom Annette had opened up like never before.

“I’ve stopped understanding my wife at all,” you blurt out, almost like a complaint.

The old man stops eating and looks at you attentively. Scratches the back of his head.

“I’m no good at smart words ... but I know one thing,” the janitor says. “A sheet of paper always has two sides — one side can’t exist without the other. A magnet always has two poles; a one-pole magnet is impossible. Where there’s up, there’s down. And so on. You get it?”