‘People Person’

Notes from a relationship with a covert narcissist. All names and distinguishing personal details have been altered.

I didn’t hear the man ask us to move over, it took me a few seconds to realise as Marc pulled away from our kiss and shifted his chair over closer towards me across the bar-style counter. The men were laughing as they seated next to us, ‘Too busy kissing, hey?’, one asked. I smiled, moving my feet to face forward away from them, and attended to my croissant. Marc attended to his phone. So fast that I almost register his gratitude for the interruption. A thought returned to me from twenty minutes earlier, one I had when I had opened the door to Marc’s car. Something was off.

No. No. Don’t go there. Things have been good. Well, except for the other day. But that, that’s fine, look, it’s okay - just stop. I look up and across to where Marc’s car is parked nearby. Just two months prior, in that car, we were stationary outside my complex, and Marc had pulled me over from the passenger seat to sit on top of him, and we had kissed like he was about to leave for war. Now, Marc’s phone rings. I motion that I’m going inside, I had decided I’d pay the bill. Marc never said how much he made but it was apparent to anyone with sense that we were in very different tax brackets. But, I liked paying for things where I could. Marc pulls away from the phone to say, ‘Get the biscuit,’ referring to one we had ordered earlier.

I bring the biscuit back, and I’m the one who picks at most of it while Marc is on the phone, talking shop. I wonder why I’m here, and get the feeling that had you replaced me with a lamp - like in that film theory - the scene wouldn’t change. I know why I’m supposed to be here. Marc’s leaving for a weekend piss-up in Joburg, and we’re having breakfast before he goes. Earlier he had said, ‘I’ll make it up to you.’

'Make what up to me?’, I replied, confused.

‘I’ll take you to dinner somewhere nice, to make up for leaving you.’

‘Leaving me? You mean to Joburg? You don’t need to make it up to me, you’re not doing anything wrong.’

He did this. Often. I had sent myself a voicenote about the last time it happened, trying to make sense of why it felt odd. ‘Sorry’, he would say, apologising for not inviting me to some event I didn’t know about, and had no intention of attending. He had a weird way of gently but forcibly placing me in the position of someone who wanted to be with him all the time, so that any event of his absence was from the offset a slight against me, all without me ever having any say in the matter.

‘You’re not doing anything wrong,’ I had repeated. Marc said nothing, pulling out his phone to read a text. Now, Marc puts the phone down. ‘Do you want to go with me to this charity shop around the corner? They have the best caps.’ He regularly bought things from shops like this, and I rarely saw them again. I’m not sure where in his immaculate flat he kept them. ‘Sure’, I said, grateful to be leaving. He gets up and motions to leave, not even looking back to barista. He knows I’ve paid, says nothing. Something was definitely off. It felt familiar, even if it had been a while.

We talked on the way there. Well, I talked, Marc looked around. We reach the shop, he lets go of my hand and walks to the men’s section after asking the manager about the caps. They didn’t have any. He said he’d pay twenty percent more than the next person if they were to call him the next time some came in. I tried to remember the last time he paid over ten percent as a tip. Again, the feeling of being superfluous to the scene sets in. It’s almost over, he’s probably just got a lot on his mind. I dawdle, too anxious to really look around.

He walks to the counter with an olive green hoodie. His favourite colour. I walk to stand beside him. I look down as he jovially speaks to the manager. Emblazoned on the hoodie in a bold black font are the words, ‘Israeli Defence Force.’ ‘Baba, that’s hectic’, I say, surprised. ‘What?’ he asks. I look at the store manager, who looks at me. I drop it. We leave the shop and he takes my hand. ‘Puppy, you know that’s like buying an Apartheid military hoodie, right?’

He stops. His tone drops. Anyone hearing him now after the jokes he made with the store manager would get whiplash. ‘I am not talking to you about that. We are on different sides of this argument, and I have had lots of conversations with my friends about this.’

My heart starts beating faster. My eyes dart everywhere. The sun feels too bright. We carry on walking but I let go of his hand, try to, anyway, but he holds on. I apply more pressure and free my hand. I haven’t processed what’s just happened but I have enough information to know I have been slighted. I need to think, quickly.

‘What?!’ he stops again.

Marc is barely taller than me but either the uneven pavement or the way he’s speaking to me, makes it feel like I’m looking up at him from a meter off the ground.

‘That was just a really explosive reaction and you’re in a really weird mood’, I manage.

His next words are exasperated, from a man on the brink. You would think I had interrupted an urgent work presentation to ask him to scratch an itch on my nose. ‘I don’t believe politics belong in a relationship,’ he says to his girlfriend who has studied political philosophy, moral philosophy, and was considering a Masters in Applied Ethics.

I find something in me. I remember it wasn’t me who came, hat in hand, begging for another chance just shy of three months ago. ‘I should think you could talk to your partner about anything.’

His arms widen out, making a ‘w.’ He scoffs. I realise he’s done a switch. It’s me making a scene. ‘Look, I’m just going to go,’ I say, wanting this to stop. We’d have some time to think about it. He does better when he has time to think about things. But no, I get, ‘Fine, if you want to go and ruin the morning before I go then you can go. Are you really going to let this mess up our morning?’ It dawned on me later he had given me a false dichotomy; you stay, bend to my will, and we act like this didn’t happen, and I reserve the right to this continued display of exasperation, or you do what you want to do and ruin everything.

‘Fuck you, Marc.’ I made it two blocks before I was crying.