The Stranger in My Kitchen

Okay so let me set the scene for you. I'm Judith, I'm forty-four, I'm a painter, and I've been dating Saul for three years now. He's forty-seven, an architect, and the man has never once in his life done anything spontaneous. I love him to pieces but the man plans his socks. He alphabetizes his socks. So on a rainy Tuesday in October, I decided I was going to mess with him a little.

The idea came to me while I was cleaning out a drawer. I found an old notepad, the kind with the flowers on it, and I don't even know where it came from. And I thought, wouldn't it be funny if Saul came home to a note from a stranger? Just a silly little game. We've been together long enough that we can play like this. He'd know it was me in about two seconds, probably, but that's not the point. The point is the pretending.

So I wrote my first note and stuck it to the fridge with one of his precious architect magnets, the little brass triangle one he will not let anybody else touch.

*I let myself in. You're not home yet. Hope you don't mind. - R.*

Then I packed up my sketchbooks and left. I had a figure drawing class until eight, which was perfect, because he'd be home before me. He's usually home by six-thirty, makes tea, putters around. I could barely sit through the class, honestly. I drew the model's left arm three times and it looked like a noodle every time. My teacher asked if I was feeling okay.

When I got home the house was warm and there was tea smell in the air and Saul was in his study with the door cracked. And here's what gets me. He didn't say a word. Not one word! I hung up my coat and he called out, "Good class?" like nothing had happened. I said it was fine and I went to brush my teeth, and that's when I saw it.

On the bathroom mirror, in his neat little architect handwriting, propped against the glass:

*Who are you? I'm intrigued. Also you used my triangle magnet. Rude.*

I stood there grinning at the mirror like I was an absolute fool. He knew. Of course he knew. But he was playing! He was playing back! I did a little dance right there on the bath mat, I'm not ashamed to tell you.

So the next morning, before he was up, I wrote my second note and left it on the bedroom dresser where he'd find it when he got dressed. I signed it Rosa, which I picked because it sounded as though it belonged to a woman who owned a lot of scarves.

*Saul. I looked at you while you slept. You looked so peaceful I almost felt bad about what I was thinking. I would have run a hand down your chest, slow, just to feel you breathe. Maybe next time. - Rosa*

Was that too forward for note two? Maybe. But you only live once and my boyfriend... okay, he's not my husband, my boyfriend, my boyfriend has very good chest. Broad, with a little patch of gray hair right in the middle that I find extremely charming and he finds embarrassing. I was building up material and I couldn't help myself.

That night I came home and found his reply on the kitchen counter, weighted down with an orange. Why an orange? No idea. Saul does things like that.

*Rosa. If you're going to describe touching me in my sleep, I'll need proof you exist. Ghosts don't leave fingerprints. Draw something for me. My profile, if you can manage it. I'll be at the table Thursday evening, working late. Prove you're real. - S.*

Oh, this man. This beautiful, ridiculous man. He was raising the stakes! He was giving me homework! I spent Wednesday night at my drafting table (ha, my table, not his) drawing his profile from memory, which is harder than it sounds. I've drawn him a hundred times but from memory, with nothing in front of you, your hand second-guesses everything. Is his nose that straight? It is, actually. The man has a criminal nose.

Thursday evening I snuck in while he was in the study. He really was working late, I could hear him muttering at his computer about load calculations or whatever architects mutter about. I set the sketch on the kitchen table, weighted it with a fork because I wanted to answer the orange thing on his level, and underneath it I left my next note. And look, by this point I was having so much fun that my notes were getting longer and warmer and honestly a little steamy. I sat on the sofa to write this one and I could feel my own cheeks going pink at my own handwriting.

*Saul. Here is your proof. Check the nose. I drew it from memory, which took some doing, because when I look at you my eyes stop working properly. Tonight you were right there in the next room and I thought about coming to stand in your doorway. I thought about standing in the hall and slowly unbuttoning my blouse, one button at a time, until you looked up from your screen and forgot every equation you ever learned. Would you have looked up? - Rosa*

Then I left, and I walked around the block in the rain like an idiot, grinning under my umbrella, waiting for him to find it.

What nobody tells you about long relationships is this. They get quiet. Not bad quiet, just quiet. You know each other's tea orders and whose turn it is to call the plumber and you stop surprising each other. And I'd been feeling that quiet all month, this little ache of sameness, and this silly game with notes on furniture had me feeling like I was twenty-two again, except twenty-two-year-olds don't appreciate this properly. I was forty-four and giddy over a fork on a table.

I came back in at nine, dripping, and Saul was sitting at the kitchen table with the sketch. He'd pinned it up under the good lamp. He was looking at it with this expression, soft and puzzled at the same time, like the drawing had told him something he wasn't expecting.