A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart [28]
Now in midafternoon, with a series of frantic city images still present in her mind, she stood again in the alley at the industrial door of Jerome’s studio wondering what they would say to each other. Jerome answered immediately when she knocked, opened the door wide, and then, without speaking, moved to one side to allow Sylvia in. As she stepped over the threshold, the large orange cat escaped into the alley.
“Swimmer!” Jerome called after the departing animal. “Oh well, we’ll hear him when he comes back.”
“I’m sorry, should I have tried to stop him?”
“No, no. He doesn’t know the city all that well, but he’s learning. He’ll survive. He’s used to the outdoors. I found him on the island, just before …”
“Just before you found Andrew.”
“Yes,” Jerome stood stiffly near the couch for a moment or two. Then he motioned to the chair Sylvia had occupied the previous day, “Maybe we should sit down.”
Sylvia sat, then shrugged off her coat and let it fall over the back of the chair. Melting slush from the street pooled on the cement floor around her fur-topped boots. Only one bank of fluorescent lights was on today and through a window a wealth of sunlight was streaming. “Much warmer today,” she said. This was one of the many climate-related remarks that Malcolm had suggested she use when he was trying to teach her the skills of social interaction. She had learned many things about weather during this period, had developed a fascination for it in fact, watching reports on the television and reading books about meteorology until her insistence that it should become the focus of any conversation had led to Malcolm’s banning of the subject altogether. She smiled, remembering this, seeing the humour in it now.
“Yes,” said Jerome, settling himself onto the old couch, “warmer.”
The space between them became silent. Sylvia was aware of a vacancy. “Your girlfriend?” she asked.
“She’s at the gallery. An art gallery, where she works.” Jerome paused. “Her name is Mira,” he offered.
“Yes, she told me. Mira,” Sylvia repeated the name. “Almost like mirror,” she added.
“Almost. I hadn’t thought of that.” Jerome leaned against the back of the couch, placed one ankle on his bent knee. Then suddenly he was on his feet again. “Are you comfortable?” he asked “Warm enough? These old rads … but there is a thermostat. I can turn it up if you like.”
His nervousness made Sylvia aware of the tension developing in her own body. “No, no,” she said, “this is fine.”
Jerome sat down again and looked at her with what could have been either pity or curiosity.
“I sometimes can’t recall his face,” Sylvia said. She hesitated for a moment, then continued, “When I knew about you, I thought that —”
“Don’t forget that I didn’t know him,” Jerome interjected. “I want to help but, because I didn’t know him, I’m not sure what —”
“You … you came across him accidentally and so … so did I, and I’ve come to believe that without these accidents there really is nothing, nothing to life at all.” How could it be that something unexpected, what she had in the past feared, had been what introduced her to Andrew? All this year, after his death, when she had been reading and rereading everything he had written in his notebooks, she knew she was attempting to make the accidental solid. Much of what he had told her was recorded there, but there was more. Was it Andrew’s reconstruction that had filled in the gaps, or had his memory already grown so thin that imaginary events began to appear on the page? It had been impossible for Sylvia to find the solidity she sought.
“Tell me,” said Jerome. “Tell me about Andrew Woodman, how you came to know him.”
The evenness of his tone did not discourage her, made her, in fact, feel more relaxed than any degree of eagerness. Eagerness implied expectation and she had never been at ease with expectation.
And so she began to talk in a room with a steel door, cement