Jasmin reserved a small restaurant for Selma's birthday, a place she herself had mentioned several times. When they entered, the waiter welcomed her back and asked whether her friends had got home after Saturday's party. Selma answered too quickly that they had. Jasmin looked at her smile, suddenly holding on only one side of her face. On Saturday she had said she was taking inventory at work and returned shortly after midnight.
She sat opposite him and opened the menu like a screen. She said her colleagues had spontaneously arranged an outing. The waiter brought water and mentioned how well they had hidden the cake she ordered a week earlier. Selma asked him for a few minutes. Jasmin did not raise his voice. He asked why she had needed to lie if she wanted a celebration without him. Four years of marriage already included enough separate evenings for that not to be a problem.
She studied her glass for a long time. She had met the new friends at a language course. They were successful, traveled, and discussed expensive neighborhoods. Selma had told them she was single and came from an entirely different family. Jasmin, a delivery driver she loved when nobody was watching, did not fit that story. There was no other man. There was another life in which nobody associated her with an apartment above a tire shop or parents who saved every mark.
Jasmin requested the bill for their drinks. Selma said there was no need for a dramatic exit. He replied that he was trying to leave without a performance, since apparently they had been playing one for months. They did not celebrate at home. The cake he had bought remained in the refrigerator until the next day, when he took it to colleagues. He did not explain why. He did not want to trade her humiliation for relief from his own, even among people who would immediately support him.
Selma told her friends she was married and admitted the other untruths. Some withdrew; one asked why she thought she had to invent her parents for them to study a language together. Jasmin did not attend the next gathering merely to validate her correction. He needed time that public introductions could not shorten. A month later, while they cleaned the balcony together, Selma asked whether he wanted dinner at that restaurant. He said today he wanted a sandwich at home. She sat beside him on the floor, without trying to make the scene prettier than it was.