The Rosie Project (Don Tillman #1)(14)

‘Exercise is extremely important for maintaining health.’

‘So my dad tells me. He’s a personal trainer. Constantly on my case. He gave me a gym membership for my birthday. At his gym. He has this idea we should train for a triathlon together.’

‘Surely you should follow his advice,’ I said.

‘Fuck, I’m almost thirty. I don’t need my dad telling me what to do.’ She changed the subject. ‘Listen, I’m starving. Let’s get a pizza.’

I was not prepared to consider a restaurant after the preceding trauma. I told her that I intended to revert to my original plan for the evening, which was cooking at home.

‘Got enough for two?’ she asked. ‘You still owe me dinner.’

This was true but there had been too many unscheduled events already in my day.

‘Come on. I won’t criticise your cooking. I can’t cook to save my life.’

I was not concerned about my cooking being criticised. But the lack of cooking skills on her part was the third fault so far in terms of the Wife Project questionnaire, after the late arrival and the lack of fitness. There was almost certainly a fourth: it was unlikely that her profession as waitress and barmaid was consistent with the specified intellectual level. There was no point in continuing.

Before I could protest, Rosie had flagged down a minivan taxi with sufficient capacity for my bike.

‘Where do you live?’ she asked.





7


‘Wow, Mr Neat. How come there are no pictures on the walls?’

I had not had visitors since Daphne moved out of the building. I knew that I only needed to put out an extra plate and cutlery. But it had already been a stressful evening, and the adrenaline-induced euphoria that had immediately followed the Jacket Incident had evaporated, at least on my part. Rosie seemed to be in a permanently manic state.

We were in the living area, which adjoins the kitchen.

‘Because after a while I would stop noticing them. The human brain is wired to focus on differences in its environment – so it can rapidly discern a predator. If I installed pictures or other decorative objects, I would notice them for a few days and then my brain would ignore them. If I want to see art, I go to the gallery. The paintings there are of higher quality, and the total expenditure over time is less than the purchase price of cheap posters.’ In fact, I had not been to an art gallery since the tenth of May, three years before. But this information would weaken my argument and I saw no reason to share it with Rosie and open up other aspects of my personal life to interrogation.

Rosie had moved on and was now examining my CD collection. The investigation was becoming annoying. Dinner was already late.

‘You really love Bach,’ she said. This was a reasonable deduction, as my CD collection consists only of the works of that composer. But it was not correct.

‘I decided to focus on Bach after reading G?del, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. Unfortunately I haven’t made much progress. I don’t think my brain works fast enough to decode the patterns in the music.’

‘You don’t listen to it for fun?’

This was beginning to sound like the initial dinner conversations with Daphne and I didn’t answer.

‘You’ve got an iPhone?’ she said.

‘Of course, but I don’t use it for music. I download podcasts.’

‘Let me guess – on genetics.’

‘Science in general.’

I moved to the kitchen to begin dinner preparation and Rosie followed me, stopping to look at my whiteboard schedule.

‘Wow,’ she said, again. This reaction was becoming predictable. I wondered what her response to DNA or evolution would be.

I commenced retrieval of vegetables and herbs from the refrigerator. ‘Let me help,’ she said. ‘I can chop or something.’ The implication was that chopping could be done by an inexperienced person unfamiliar with the recipe. After her comment that she was unable to cook even in a life-threatening situation, I had visions of huge chunks of leek and fragments of herbs too fine to sieve out.

‘No assistance is required,’ I said. ‘I recommend reading a book.’

I watched Rosie walk to the bookshelf, briefly peruse the contents, then walk away. Perhaps she used IBM rather than Mac software, although many of the manuals applied to both.

The sound system has an iPod port that I use to play podcasts while I cook. Rosie plugged in her phone, and music emanated from the speakers. It was not loud, but I was certain that if I had put on a podcast without asking permission when visiting someone’s house, I would have been accused of a social error. Very certain, as I had made this exact mistake at a dinner party four years and sixty-seven days ago.

Rosie continued her exploration, like an animal in a new environment, which of course was what she was. She opened the blinds and raised them, creating some dust. I consider myself fastidious in my cleaning, but I do not need to open the blinds and there must have been dust in places not reachable without doing so. Behind the blinds are doors, and Rosie released the bolts and opened them.

I was feeling very uncomfortable at this violation of my personal environment. I tried to concentrate on food preparation as Rosie stepped out of sight onto the balcony. I could hear her dragging the two big pot plants, which presumably were dead after all these years. I put the herb and vegetable mixture in the large saucepan with the water, salt, rice wine vinegar, mirin, orange peel and coriander seeds.