I picked up a bottle of red for a date on my way to Sally Solomon’s house. I just went through a pretty bad breakup, and Sally was just the person I needed. A Rosé. That’s what I bought. The translucent pink liquid looked inviting, like the surface of a lake during a beautiful sunset, and I couldn’t wait to taste it. I looked up at the moon through the bottle, and the moon looked distorted and red. Eight euros for such a pretty bottle of wine. What a bargain. The second bargain I made today, you know, because I made the biggest bargain of my life a few hours before I bought the pretty bottle of red.
It’s tough to explain; I have to go back a couple of years. I didn’t have the best childhood growing up you see. My parents beat the crap out of me every minute they weren’t busy bickering; my school sucked; overall not a very rosy upbringing. They tell me I was a mild-mannered and warm child, but somewhere along the way the warmth seems to have given way to the cold and the numbness. My grades plummeted, my social circle at school stopped existing, and I became a recluse in my own house—going to sleep before my parents got back home, and leaving for school before they woke up. It was a sad, lonely life and I hated it, and wished with all my heart that things would change. And then the Bargainer showed up.
I don’t really remember my first bargain anymore. I have made so many of them in my life. But I distinctly remember making deals with the Bargainer frequently, maybe even on a weekly basis, by the time I was fourteen. The Bargainer was a voice in my head. No, I know how that sounds, but hear me out. The Bargainer, the most foul, treacherous, and cunning bastard never to set foot on earth, I hated it as much as I hated myself. Every night that I went to sleep after taking a beating or being harassed by bullies at school, the Bargainer would suddenly start speaking to me in my head, crooning, naming offers that seemed too delightful to be true. Stupid things even. “Your maths teacher will not come to school for the rest of the school year,” it would offer, after the bullies tore my notes apart. It knew as well as I did that I needed the book signed by her to write the exams that year. But always, there was a tradeoff. “But you will be sick for a month.” I was anxious. Desperate. Completed notebooks signed by a teacher are a way bigger deal when you are fourteen. I agreed. There was a minor explosion at my teacher’s house, and she spent a long time in the hospital. I had a horrible viral fever, and I still cringe in pain when I remember the needles boring into my spine to drain the fluid building up in my skull.
That’s the thing about the Bargainer. It always leaves out details, it’s a great advertiser. It made things happen in just the way that would hurt the most, that would sadden, that would have the worst possible impact on the rest of my life. Sometimes it would make offers I was sure I could win, so that I would never stop making bargains with it, but still, the little victories would taste of dust and ash. Other times, it would set me tasks, and tell me that I would get what I bargained for if I finished the task successfully. In tenth grade, I fell in love. Or so I thought. And foolishly, I made a bargain to get the girl. “Give up solid food for two whole months,” the Bargainer crooned in its velvet voice that somehow sounded devoid of light—imagine, if you can, the sound of the absence of light—“and then she will fall hopelessly in love with you.” To my credit, I managed to go forty days on milk, sugar, and water alone. Twenty lost kilograms and a lifelong eating disorder later, I do understand why that was a bad bargain.
I still don’t get what the Bargainer got out of this. I mean, I do. It is a sad, hateful, vindictive creature that enjoys seeing others stumble and fall in life. It relishes the revelation that we would be no better with the things we think we need the most. I hate the Bargainer as much as I hated myself.
By the time I went to college, things got simultaneously better and worse. I started anticipating the more obvious tricks the Bargainer tried to pull off, and it started coming up with more and more convoluted methods to make me take deals that I really shouldn’t have. I don’t mean to brag, but I went to college at a great place. Best university in the country. Consequently, my grades were initially bottom of the class, and I was scared that that would be it after I graduated. I made a stupid bargain. I offered my left leg for a job after I graduated. That leg was cursed. Warts developed on the foot, the meniscus tore multiple times, the kneecap was shattered in a fall during a hike. I did move abroad though, I was able to get a great job and leave my shit-hole country behind. By this point, the Bargainer rarely had to make offers—it had turned into an unwilling ally. I made the offers more often than it did. It either accepted, or, more often than not, asked me to up the bid.
Sally Solomon was the result of yet another terrible bargain. I asked, begged honestly, that I shouldn’t be so alone. After a long time that was doubtless very enjoyable for it, the Bargainer took the deal. Sally and I started a relationship that was easy to get into but very difficult to get out of. We made life miserable for each other. Envy was our principal fault: Neither of us could tolerate the other person being even one step ahead, in any aspect of life. She hated it when my grades started to improve (although she was miles ahead). I hated it when she made a large number of friends. It was a terrible time. In two years, I could not take anymore. I was not mature enough to talk it out. I made this mess with the Bargainer, I thought, and the Bargainer can help me out of it. I offered up my ability to make intimate connections with people forever, and the Bargainer gladly accepted. Sally’s depression got tonnes better in a few weeks. In a few months, she dumped me. Secretly, I was glad. I hated her as much as I hated the Bargainer. As much as I hated myself.
I have to say that the Bargainer made many aspects of my life much more enjoyable at this point. After I moved abroad, I found a great big house to live in with a simple bargain. I just would not be able to leave this country in my life. Who cares, I thought, this country is much better than my previous one. I fell in love with a girl from my university who moved to the same city as me after she graduated. We got into a relationship of sorts. Although it felt like a business partnership more than half the time, I was oddly happy. Love comes in so many forms. The Bargainer kept his side of the bargain.
Then, as you know, the pandemic happened. I was trapped in my house for months. Seeing only the one face again and again and again—you must realise how painful that gets, no matter how beautiful that face is. I grew bored. I grew frustrated. I grew greedy. After years of abstinence, I made a deal with the Bargainer. It was very simple, what I asked for. I asked for things to be more passionate. Life must not be this bland, I said to it. I want some fire in my life. I offered up, very unwisely, my relationship with Maria. More, said the Bargainer. I added the stability of my job. More, it demanded. I added my health for the rest of my life. Finally the Bargainer accepted. Then things began to go downhill.
The first sign of impending doom was that Sally got a job in the same country as me, barely two hours away. It was courtesy to visit, so Maria and I drove up to her house sometimes. Sally was miserable, she hated the new country she had found herself in. Her job sapped the life out of her, she said. Ironic. Maria and Sally became close friends, although I really did not approve. I told Maria about the kind of things I had been put through. “People change” she insisted. “She is a much calmer person now, and she needs our help.”
“Some people change, but that’s not close to assured. And some others change for the worse”, I had said. In my head, the Bargainer voiced his approval.
Maria broke up with me yesterday. “Look, I love you,” she began. Lies. Empty words hurled at each other time and again in a feeble farcical pretense of a functional relationship. “But you’ve lost your job now. It’s been a month, and you aren’t doing anything to fix this. Your visa’s going to lapse soon, and you’ll be deported.” Oh really? I don’t think so. I will never leave this country. “I think we will be happier without each other, at least for now. Let’s just go back to being friends.” Sally’s words in her mouth, no doubt. I didn’t make a big deal out of it. I knew this was coming after all. I bottled all my emotions in me, and let her leave me behind.
I called Sally and confronted her, but she tearfully denied everything. I knew though. That jealous bitch. She was stuck alone here, while I was living comfortably with someone. That would never sit well with Sally Solomon. The idea of her presence in my life filled me with such anger that I had to go take a walk outside to bottle it all up. My fists were clenched, and shook softly at times as I walked. Tears flowed freely down my face. I walked to the bridge nearby to view the pretty pink sunset. The clouds near the horizon were so thin you could see the sun right through them, and the water reflected the beautiful pink of the sky. So pleasant. So calm. So inviting. What more did I have to live for?
The Bargainer’s voice sounded in my head louder and clearer than it ever had before. I felt his presence, his darkness, his absence. The Bargainer and I, two sad, lonely creatures filled with hate and regret and numbness. “I want to make a bargain” I said in my head. “I know” replied the Bargainer’s voice. Thick, salivating. I could almost see him if I tried. “I want to be you. I want to influence people, to give them what they want, to be feared.” The Bargainer agreed immediately.
“What would you have of me in return?” I asked.
“Nothing,” said the Bargainer, and I could hear the satisfaction in his voice. “You have to give up absolutely nothing for this.”
I came back home and picked up my phone. Two missed calls and twenty messages from Sally Solomon. Maria wouldn’t speak to her anymore. She was scared and lonely, and wanted me to go over to her house. She said I shouldn’t have to be alone after a break-up. She wondered if we could give it another chance. She wanted to make things right, she said. “I’ll be there at 8 PM” I replied. I drove all the way, and picked up the bottle of wine on the way.
Sally was all alone in her dark dingy apartment when I limped in. Half of the light-bulbs no longer worked. I set the Rosé on the dining table, and had a simple dinner with her. “I’m sorry for screaming at you earlier. That was uncouth of me,” I told her. She smiled. For most of the rest of the night, Sally did all the talking. We watched a few episodes of a TV-series, the kind that are made to distract you from how bad your life is. Then we snuggled up on the couch, and Sally asked me to be with her again.
“Think about it,” she said, “we could get married tomorrow, and that’ll give you a way to keep your visa. You can get a job again in no time, and then things will get much better.” She looked down at the ground. “If you want, of course,” she added hastily.
I paused, and looked at her. The light-bulb from the lamp behind me was reflected in her eyes, and they looked alive with nervousness and excitement. I wanted to make another bargain, but the only voice in my head now was my own.
“What do you want? Truly? If you could have one thing right now, what would it be?”
She paused, and bit her lip in thought. Warily, she said “I would wish to be with you until I die, and I would wish that we would never be sad again.”
I smiled. She smiled back hesitantly, a watery sad smile. “We could do that” I said. I walked to the table, and picked up the Rosé, and brought it back to the couch. I raised the bottle to Sally, as if to propose a toast. My reflection was clear in the bottle of red. My own eyes looked like black pits completely devoid of light. I flipped it twice, and some bubbles floated to the top.
“To a happy life ahead?” she asked.
“To a bargain well-struck” I replied, and swung the bottle with all my might. Thump. I am the Bargainer now.
The bottle did not break. Sally Solomon got to her feet, and immediately fell to the floor. I sat on her back, holding her in place, and raised the bottle again. Thump. I am the Bargainer now.
Oddly, the bottle had still not broken. Sally let out a terrible sound, something between a scream and a moan. I could see lights in nearby apartments turn on. Thump. I am the Bargainer now.
I raised the bottle up as high as it went, and brought it down with all the force in the world. I am the Bargainer now. The carpet was ruined—two kinds of red mixing together. I am the Bargainer now. The frantic drumbeat Sally was making with her legs slowed down to a march and finally stopped. The bottle broke. I am the Bargainer now.
I am the Bargainer now.
I am the Bargainer now.