The town below the house was quite small; the scent of salt coming from the sea was easily engulfing its whole. There were few people out in the streets, but they seemed somehow happy to live. I used my phone sometimes to see from a map where the nearest supermarket was. On the way, Kim advised me to remember the streets, and all the other stores we’d pass by too. I remembered a convenience store, a drugstore, a restaurant, and other stuff (which I didn’t remember). We finally got to the supermarket and I stopped the car in the parking lot. It felt very vacant under these grim clouds hanging low. I feared it might rain.

I never understood supermarkets. Why weren’t there glass windows in there? Instead, these weird white lights, shining all over the place. It looks like a clear nightmare, with infinite rows of shelves while people are mindlessly consuming, and consuming. Supermarkets were one of my recurrent nightmares. Just looks like a frame outta Hitchcock’s movies, with that disturbing zoom. I hesitated for a fraction of a second before the supermarket’s automatic door, and ultimately entered accompanied by Kim. Fortunately, it was quite lively in there, not quite bustling with people, but at least they seemed fine and even happy.

So, we strolled for two hours or so across the limitless shelves, trying to find all the things that the house lacked. And boy, the house did lack a lot of stuff; towels, soap, shampoo, teeth brushes, toothpaste (these are the only ones I remembered her listing)—unto the kitchen; napkins, potatoes, steak, bacon, chicken, carrots, pumpkins, pasta, beans, eggs, butter, corn flakes, oat, milk, juices, flour, yeast, oil, salt, sugar, spices, yogurt, ice-cream, bananas, apples, pears, apricot, grapes, and all the things at the bottom of the cart… I felt overwhelmed when I saw them spilling from the cart; actually, we, or rather, I, had to fetch another one. At some point, she bought a flower to replace the one in the living room while I took a fine bottle of rum.

“Hey, you’re still underage!” she scolded. “What if you get caught?”

“Come on, don’t worry. They never actually check ID for these things, and I look old enough, don’t I?” I joked.

“Yeah, like some drunk and dirty old man,” she sharply replied. I shut my mouth and put it in the cart.

I thought she nearly bought all the things in the supermarket and feared the wad of bills I took wouldn’t be enough. By the time we got to one of the cashiers, the second cart filled up to its brink too; I could see despair in the eyes of the woman as she scanned the pile of endless items before her. Without saying, she didn’t even notice the bottle of rum; I smirked a bit at Kim. She just hmpfed again. The woman hit the bottom when she had to put all these inside bags, a dozen or so, large ones; y’know, the kind you’d reuse. After twenty minutes—no kidding, I closely watched my phone’s clock—the woman sighed once and for all as she finished her painful and tedious task. I gave her the wad of bills, and after agreeing that it was enough, I left her the change for due payment.

I, myself, was about to face a same painful and tedious task: carrying all the bags. Kim help very little, but she still grabbed two of them; I could tell that she was willing to, at least. I didn’t ask more and carried them all with the same carts to the car, messily stuck them in the trunk, started the engine, and drove back to the house. She placidly admired the world passing by her window as the heavy clouds were invariantly staying in the scenery. She’d stopped listing the things we lacked. Under daylight, or rather, cloudlight, I could see the hill more properly than the previous night; the omnipresent grass wasn’t quite green, or dry, somewhere between the two. In a word, dull. But the remaining green did glare in a curious manner, as though it could sense the promise of rain.

When we got back to the house, it was very dim, very heavy. The clouds were pitch-black but tried somehow to retain the imminent rain everybody expected. The few lights filtering through them seemed like a pure, immaculate, white in contrast, as though someone had clumsily tried to erase the scenery but merely achieved to reduce its opacity. Kim carried the same two bags, and after going back and forth for god knows how many times, all the bags mightily stacked into a mountain in a corner of the kitchen. This time, she was much more helpful, and as storing the groceries, she ordered me around where to put this or that. It didn’t take the exaggerated time I thought of for us to tidy up everything. The mighty mountains of full bags became a small building of hollow plastic neatly arranged; we’d never lack bags, I thought.

The already dark clouds turned crimson as the sun sank deep into the horizon. It grew heavier, and dimer.

“Shouldn’t you start making dinner?” I asked.

“Guess so,” she simply replied.

She put on the apron and started chopping some vegetables. Her slender fingers were rather skillful, even someone who didn’t cook at all like me could tell. I watched her pretty fingers for a while, before taking out the bottle of rum and sipping a bit from a glass. She slightly cringed while smelling the alcohol evaporating in the air. I carried on watching her, sitting on the lone and small table of the kitchen while intoxicating myself. She looked good in that apron, very docile and yet mesmerizingly languid, and full of will. The murky glow irradiated by the kitchen’s bulb made her short hair glow golden; it was soothing for some reason. Or maybe I was just getting drunk.

“You look just like a good wife. Yep, you’d definitely make a good wifey,” I jokingly blurted out, half drunk.

“…Who’d take a bride with bruises and scars like mine?” she whispered mindlessly.

“I would,” I replied all loud.

“…What are you saying now?” she mouthed, all focused on cooking and not so mindlessly.

“And with you as my wife, I’d be able to see your nice thighs every day,” I joked again, definitely more or less drunk.

“Cut it off,” she mildly hissed as carrying on making the dinner. “You’re just being a creep now—or you drunk? Gosh, do something!—go get some olive leaves for tea instead of getting drunk,” she ordered.

I laughed a bit but she didn’t. Rather, she deliberately carried on cooking. I sighed and got out to take what she asked. In my not-so sober state, I gazed a little bit at the olive tree from the porch; swaying under grim winds, it stood alone there, under a merciless and grave sky about to purge the world down here. The clouds, which I first mistook for the nightly sky, were somber than ever, closer than ever. Veiling the stars, they ignited from time to time with blank thunders running rampant in their own guts up there. At last, they couldn’t take it anymore; something broke, and the world was covered with a deathly rain in an instant.

The momentum of the drizzles was such that the strong winds could barely change their trajectories; it fell dead straight to the ground. It just sounded like someone played white noises awfully loud; yet, the ripples on puddles weren’t dissonant. As though an antic mathematician was drawing upon liquids’ surfaces, their dynamical geometries proved to be almost divine. I kinda understood cats while I ran in the rain; rain might’ve hated me, hated cats, hated everyone and everything. The rain was stabbing me with thousands of formless needles which nonetheless struck me.

I ran to the olive tree as its scent blended with the ground’s. As fast as the rain was drumming, I took one of its branches, about my forearms length, and partially sheltered beneath its remaining leaves, I lost hope; the porch seemed so far under this cruel rain. I felt at large while the blurred light of the house’s windows were those of a so distant beacon. I ran back cowering like a bug. The sound of the door closing seemed so nice in comparison to outside and even just receiving light warmed me up—or maybe the bulbs were overheating? I left traces on the floor before arriving in the kitchen.

While I was soaked to the bones, Kim was peacefully reading one of her books, seated where I was earlier, and waiting for the meal on the stove. She looked at me as if to say ‘Oh, it’s you’, just in her usual monotonous voice. My rum was nowhere to be seen though.

“Where did you put my bottle?” I asked like a child.

“NO MORE ALCOHOL FOR YOU,” she said as reading.

“Come on, I need it. I gotta warm myself up—see how I’m soaked like a stray dog?”

“Good thing you’re soaked—at least it sobered you up,” she replied. “Go take a shower or something. The dinner won’t be ready for a while too.”

“Alright,” I sighed. “Here are the leaves you asked for.”

“Put them on the counter,” she ordered again. “And thank you,” she whispered.

At last some gratitude. Again trailing rainwater on the floor, I went for the counter and put them there. Kim frowned at me; she even stopped reading. ‘You’re dirtying the floor,’ her eyes said, as coldly. I quickly got out of the kitchen while leaving another trail. Maybe I should take a shower as she suggested, I thought. It sounded more like an order though, so I did take a shower. In contrary to the rain, the shower seemed to love me; it felt really good. All the remaining traces of alcohol in me vanished within the warm gushing water. The bathroom filled with steam by the time I finished. I grabbed one of the towels we bought earlier and went for clothes in my room.

But rain prevailed over everywhere. I cursed at the house; it was very badly conditioned and I could even feel the wind blowing from outside. Good enough nothing leaked. I got chills of course after so much time hugged by the shower. I dried up in less than a minute and hurriedly put on some clothes fitted to be pajamas. By the time I got down the stairs, the dinner was ready and Kim was already waiting for me at the living room’s table. Meanwhile, she changed the dead flower in the vase, but like with the first one, I couldn’t recognize it. She also changed into her deep purple pajamas, but invariantly read the same book.

“Took you long enough,” she hissed.

“Hey, you’re not the one who had to run under that murderous rain,” I replied back.

She ignored me and continued waiting for me to sit down before her. She made a stew, just the perfect meal for the weather. It smelled really good; again, I couldn’t describe it, but I liked it anyway. The beef in it was perfectly cooked to a point it melted in your mouth with the mashed vegetables. I smiled for all the dinner while she stared at me from time to time as blowing on her spoon. She’d make a perfect wife, I thought. I asked her for another plate, which she brought very rapidly before eating her own. I ended up taking a third; of course, I was full by the end of the dinner. While I stared at the bulb shining low above the table, she took our two empty plates and began to wash them.

I liked that sound, it was more talkative than me. At last, she turned off the sink and I heard her put something on the stove. What I guessed to be the thing on the stove whistled at some point; then, the spellbinding scent of olive drenched the whole house like the rain-drenched the whole world outside. Kim went back in the living room with two mugs and a kettle, hot since a veil of steam traveled to the bulb’s height. She quietly gave me one of the mugs and served me some tea. It was drinkable despite the temperature. It tasted just like the scent, very good and mesmerizing; I was swallowing liquid perfume, and it wasn’t just alcohol like in any other fragrance.

Under another murky light, she was reading Rimbaud, only stopping every once in a while to sip a bit from the tea. And again, she seemed very docile. Drowsiness invaded me after seeing her in such a lethargic-like state. The olive scent didn’t help in waking me up, it just made me sleepier. On her side, I noticed she always looked sleepy, but contrary to her napping face, there was something sharp in her eyes. I got accustomed to the blank noise of the rain; the paper scraping against paper was the only other sound I noticed. She turned a few pages, skipping some poems from time to time and going back and forth amid the lyrical verses.

“You like Rimbaud?” I asked.

“He’s a funny guy,” she replied as resigning from a conversation.

“You don’t need a dictionary?” I asked again.

“I’m good enough at French,” she replied as again resigning on a conversation.

“What’re you reading?”

“Le dormeur du val,” it sounded like gibberish to me.

“What’s it about?”

“A young soldier dying in a valley,” Rimbaud a funny guy, huh?

She resigned on the conversation.

“How come you love French poetry so much?”

“…These books belonged to my father,” she replied before continuing this time, “y’know, the one who went nuts and almost killed me. Well, he wasn’t all that bad. He used to read me a poem a day before sleeping, and he’d give its translation. That was the one thing good about him, he taught French here and there. I loved him for that. But he was a simple man overall, and there ultimately was only one thing bad too about him; drugs. I hated him for that. Why not remember the good stuff then if there’s the same amount of bad stuff?” she frowned a little and realized she’d talked too much. She closed the book at once with both her hands, “Guess we should sleep already,” she said.

“Your room’s the one where I put your things. Mine’s the one at the end of the hallway,” I told her. “Call me if you need.”

She got up, grabbed the book, and I followed her up the stairs. From the hallway, she silently walked to her room and closed the door as I watched her. After a few seconds, she opened it again and poked out her round glasses.

“Huh… good night,” she gently said.

“Yeah, sleep tight, good night,” I replied back after a pause.

The door clicked while the rain’s blank noise carried on. So, I went to my own room and closed its door too. The feeling of void hadn’t left the room; actually, it felt more hollow. There was only a bed and that desk in it anyway. Only the striking thunder lit the walls from time to time; since I was about to sleep, I didn’t bother with turning on the switch. I got in the bed and remembered how cold it was in that house. Especially at night and under the blowing winds. The blanket helped little. Kept awake by the chills, I stared at the ceiling for another while; I wondered how Kim was managing with the cold. She looked so delicate that she could’ve frozen under the rain, literally, like an iced-up statue. I thought back about her napping face; she didn’t look like an iced-up statue, rather, she looked very humane and alive, like some sort of doll made out of flesh and blood. Only something wasn’t there, I didn’t know what. I closed my eyes then and slept for a while.