A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan [5]
Alex leaned over to peer at the tiny collection on her windowsills. He paused at the picture of Rob, Sasha’s friend who had drowned in college, but made no comment. He hadn’t noticed the tables where she kept the pile of things she’d stolen: the pens, the binoculars, the keys, the child’s scarf, which she’d lifted simply by not returning it when it dropped from a little girl’s neck as her mother led her by the hand from a Starbucks. Sasha was already seeing Coz by then, so she recognized the litany of excuses even as they throbbed through her head: winter is almost over; children grow so fast; kids hate scarves; it’s too late, they’re out the door; I’m embarrassed to return it; I could easily not have seen it fall—in fact I didn’t, I’m just noticing it now: Look, a scarf! A kid’s bright yellow scarf with pink stripes—too bad, who could it belong to? Well, I’ll just pick it up and hold it for a minute.…At home she’d washed the scarf by hand and folded it neatly. It was one of the things she liked best.
“What’s all this?” Alex asked.
He’d discovered the tables now and was staring at the pile. It looked like the work of a miniaturist beaver: a heap of objects that was illegible yet clearly not random. To Sasha’s eye, it almost shook under its load of embarrassments and close shaves and little triumphs and moments of pure exhilaration. It contained years of her life compressed. The screwdriver was at the outer edge. Sasha moved closer to Alex, drawn to the sight of him taking everything in.
“And how did you feel, standing with Alex in front of all those things you’d stolen?” Coz asked.
Sasha turned her face into the blue couch because her cheeks were heating up and she hated that. She didn’t want to explain to Coz the mix of feelings she’d had, standing there with Alex: the pride she took in these objects, a tenderness that was only heightened by the shame of their acquisition. She’d risked everything, and here was the result: the raw, warped core of her life. Watching Alex move his eyes over the pile of objects stirred something in Sasha. She put her arms around him from behind, and he turned, surprised, but willing. She kissed him full on the mouth, then undid his zipper and kicked off her boots. Alex tried to lead her toward the other room, where they could lie down on the sofa bed, but Sasha dropped to her knees beside the tables and pulled him down, the Persian carpet prickling her back, street light falling through the window onto his hungry, hopeful face, his bare white thighs.
Afterward, they lay on the rug for a long time. The candles started to sputter. Sasha saw the prickly shape of the bonsai silhouetted against the window near her head. All her excitement had seeped away, leaving behind a terrible sadness, an emptiness that felt violent, as if she’d been gouged. She tottered to her feet, hoping Alex would leave soon. He still had his shirt on.
“You know what I feel like doing?” he said, standing up. “Taking a bath in that tub.”
“You can,” Sasha said dully. “It works. The plumber was just here.”
She pulled up her jeans and collapsed onto a chair. Alex went to the tub, carefully removed the plates from the wood cover, and lifted it off. Water gushed from the faucet. Its force had always startled Sasha, the few times she’d used it.
Alex’s black pants were crumpled on the floor at Sasha’s feet. The square of his wallet had worn away the corduroy from one of the back pockets, as if he often wore these pants, and always with the wallet in that place. Sasha glanced over at him. Steam rose from the tub as he dipped in a hand to test the water. Then he came back to the pile of objects and leaned close,