A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart [115]
“Mmm,” said Mira, “trees.” She was fiercely urban, wasn’t interested in trees in the wild unless they had somehow to do with Jerome, with one of his “pieces.” Jerome was secretly delighted by the way certain subjects intrigued her simply because they pertained specifically to him—though it was unlikely that he would ever admit this. She once told him she would never tire of his maleness, the pale colour of his skin, the peculiar ways in which his mind worked.
The cat, who had become thoroughly spoiled, had leapt up on the table. Mira stopped eating long enough to return the animal to the floor.
“When you do that,” said Jerome, “it’s as if you are pouring him onto the floor, it’s as if he were a great big jug or as if he were water being poured from a great big jug.”
“He is a great big jug, aren’t you, Swimmer?” Mira bent down to caress the animal’s head.
After finishing the meal, they stood side by side at the industrial-looking sink, their hips touching, their hands busy washing and drying the few dishes they had used. Jerome had flung a tea towel over his left shoulder, a tea towel that he would forget about until it became time for bed. Even a night when he and Mira simply went to sleep was a night to look forward to: the warmth, and the shape of her body beside him, her face just barely discernible when he woke in the dark. She slept so deeply it was as if she were somehow working at it, as if she were a small steady engine purring beside him all night long.
“You know,” he said to Mira, “I have come to like Sylvia. I wasn’t sure … didn’t quite know what to make of her at first.”
“I think she is a bit like an avatar for you,” Mira paused. “A sacred visitor disguised as someone else.”
“Yes, sort of like that.” He remembered Mira telling him about avatars in the past. But he couldn’t be certain of what she had said, and didn’t want to ask.
Later, when Jerome joined Mira in bed, he found her with one of the notebooks open, reading ahead: her legs were stretched out straight beneath the duvet and her elbows were resting on the bones of her hips while her hands held one of the green journals. He was very fond of the expression of almost puzzled absorption she always assumed when she was reading; it made her again seem mysterious, distant, a string of thoughts and images running through her head. It seemed to him that there was a kind of trust in the act of privately reading in another’s presence, the same kind of trust that must exist in order for two people to sleep together night after night in the same bed. Part of that trust was that the other person would not break into the experience. But this time he wanted inclusion.
He settled down beside her.
“Lots about rafts,” she told him.
“Read it to me then.”
Mira flipped back four or five pages and began to read aloud. The rafts, a long river, a small boy, the dark facade of an old orphanage were escorted by her voice into the room. Jerome saw all these things while sleep attempted to rise up to meet him. Eventually Mira crept out from under the duvet, pulled a skein from the bag that held her knitting supplies, broke off six inches of red wool with her teeth, then placed it on the