Knowledge

He is private. I’m not allowed to go through his computer. But I know he’s online all the time chatting with other people, other women, and he doesn’t want me to have anything to do with it. He works for a nonprofit human rights organization two nights a week, and once, when he was running late for his shift, he forgot his computer as he tore out of the apartment. I was alone at home, and suddenly I realized that the computer, this technology forbidden to me, was left wide open on the coffee table. For a microsecond I thought it would be best to trust him—to leave it alone—but as I sat in front of the computer, I couldn’t help but let my eyes wander across the screen.

It was February, dark out. The lights in the living room were off, and the screen’s gray-blue gleam shone cold. I saw that he had been talking dirty, flirting with girls while we were together. But the redhead had a special place. He had praised her for her cleverness, her beauty, raved about their encounter, and he regularly made plans to meet her. I read through their messages again and again, calculating them against the amount of time we’d been spending together, like lining up pieces of a puzzle. He had been talking dirty with her while I was baking for him, studying, or on the toilet. He repeated over and over how much he loved her. I realized that, on the first night he told me that he loved me, he’d met up with her at the pub, at Kaffibarinn, told her exactly the same thing, and fucked her. If she hadn’t had a boyfriend at the time, he would’ve almost certainly asked her to move into the apartment on Válastígur.