“I don’t wanna hear your fuckin’ voice,” he hisses. It’s clear he wants some Sally Hawkins in The Shape of Water shit, so she gives it to him. Doesn’t say another word, chooses to stay mute even though she knows she has every right to speak her mind, to say her piece. But there’s no point. He believes what he wants to. And what he believes is that Elodie is responsible for the broken top drawer in the bathroom. The drawer situated just below the sink, where all Elodie’s toiletries are kept, and that was functioning perfectly well just yesterday without any signs of busting. 

In actuality, he’s the one responsible. Admitting, only a few seconds earlier, to yanking it indelicately the night before, when Elodie had first discerned its flagrant brokenness. Of a kind that she couldn’t have possibly been at fault for. She wasn’t the type who jostled or maneuvered drawers to the point where an entire wood panel could become unhinged. As unhinged as Sam sounded while he went off on her for spotlighting his wrongdoing after she had foolishly summoned him into the bathroom so he might help her reassemble it. But, as usual, the truth always seemed to sting a man too much. Because she wasn’t the type who could be so fucking careless. Nay, so fucking boorish. Indeed, she was the type to be attentive—gentle—with things in particular. Things were, you might say her raison d’être. And they had been for a while…but only because it was true what they said about things: they were less likely to disappoint than people. 

Things could always be counted on, at the very least, to serve their purpose. Boyfriends, not so much. Sam, in contrast, probably didn’t believe that girlfriends fulfilled their “true” purpose either. Which was to regularly offer some holes to fuck. With such a philosophy in mind, it was no wonder he could utter something as misogynistic as, “I don’t wanna hear your fuckin’ voice.” And yet not be aware of how misogynistic that statement actually was. Honestly, of all the things he could have chosen to say in his state of anger, that was the most telling. He didn’t want to hear her voice. For her to express herself in any manner beyond the sexual. More specifically, beyond the sexually receptive. 

In the wake of his unwarranted outburst, Elodie wasn’t likely to feel too sexual toward him anytime soon. And it really was unwarranted. All she did, after Sam imprudently admitted to being the culpable party for her decimated drawer, was say that for him to blame her for the drawer’s state because she had “too much heavy shit” in it was a deflecting load of bollocks. Then, as he proceeded to “help” her fix it, he made it worse by “troubleshooting” with the same approach a gorilla might: by shaking and rattling it back and forth, insisting that ripping out the front panel from the two side ones barely hanging on was the best method. Why he might make this assumption was beyond Elodie, but all she wanted now was for him to get the hell out of the bathroom, where he had inserted himself into the situation with an attitude that was making it all so much worse than it needed to be. 

Of course, Elodie should have known better than to yell out about it while he was in the other room. That trying to involve him had been a mistake. At the same time, she wanted him to be aware that she knew some kind of fuckery was afoot, and that she wasn’t the one responsible. For, as mentioned, Elodie handled everything with a ginger touch—she was the real goddamn Ginger Spice, not Geri. And it was highly likely that, had she said nothing at all about it, Sam never would have felt vaguely “accused” enough to cop to it. Or rather, “lightly concede” that he “may” have “opened it in a rush” last night in his frantic search for paper towels. This, in the end, could just as easily be turned back around on Elodie, who had asked Sam to quickly bring her something to stop up the blood that was gushing from, fittingly enough, the tip of her middle finger after she cut it on some glass. A detail she would find ironic and appropriate in the midst of this argument, though she wouldn’t bother bringing it up to him. Sam had little appreciation for irony when it was at his expense. Elodie supposed most people were like that. Maybe even she was. But that wasn’t something she could think about too deeply at the moment, not with her fury brewing to the surface. 

It was a fury that began to boil not only because she realized the drawer was broken and that Sam was now trying to pin it on her, but because he had so needlessly done it. The breaking of things, to be sure, could never be described as “needful,” but, in this case, it was an especially superfluous occurrence. All it would have taken to prevent the drawer’s demise was just a dash more delicacy. But noooo, Sam had to charge in like a bull unleashed into the ring. If he knew how to better arrange his defense, he might have mentioned that he had been so concerned for Elodie’s well-being that he had to rush. To disregard any concern for his handling of the drawer because his concern for her was greater. 

Instead, he provided no defense at all. He simply pushed this cockamamie story about how she was the one at fault, as though “too many products” could be at play when the part of the drawer that was broken had nothing to do with her “weighty” items. If Sam could have just truly owned up to what he did, Elodie might have been less irritated. And if he had just exited the bathroom when she told him to, rather than continuing to make her late to work with his caveman-like displays of “assistance,” she might also have been more prone to “letting it slide.” In truth, though, it was that crude declaration he made—“I don’t wanna hear your fuckin’ voice”—that ruptured something in their relationship the same way Sam had ruptured the drawer.

For the entire rest of the day, and when she came home that night, she didn’t speak to him. And he didn’t seem to notice or mind. In fact, he clearly preferred it that way. He wanted, as she thought, his own mute Elisa Esposito. Maybe that’s all any man really wanted. For women to keep quiet…especially when it came to calling out the brutish behavior of men.