A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan [70]
Disaster averted. Or at least forestalled.
“You know,” I say, when finally I’ve managed to swallow my bread and blow my nose at the cost of nearly three minutes, “I’d love to take a walk. What do you say?”
Kitty springs from her chair at the prospect of escaping into the open air. It’s a perfect day, after all, sunlight leaping through the restaurant windows. But her excitement is immediately tempered by an equal and opposite degree of caution. “What about Jake?” she asks, referring to her publicist, who will appear when our forty minutes are up and wave his wand to turn me back into a pumpkin.
“Can’t he just call and meet up with us?” I ask.
“Okay,” she says, doing her best to simulate the first wave of genuine enthusiasm she felt, despite the middle layer of wariness that has intruded. “Sure, let’s go.”
I hastily pay the bill. Now, I’ve orchestrated our debouchment for several reasons: One, I want to filch a few extra minutes off Kitty in an attempt to salvage this assignment and, in a larger sense, my once-promising, now-dwindling literary reputation (“I think she was maybe disappointed that you didn’t try writing another novel after the first one didn’t sell…”—Beatrice Green, over hot tea, after I threw myself sobbing upon her Scarsdale doorstep, pleading for insights into her daughter’s defection). Two, I want to see Kitty Jackson erect and in motion. To this end, I follow behind as she leads the way out of the restaurant, weaving among tables with her head down in the manner of both exceptionally attractive women and also famous people (not to mention those like Kitty, who are both). Here’s a translation of her posture and gait into English: I know I’m famous and irresistible—a combination whose properties closely resemble radioactivity—and I know that you in this room are helpless against me. It’s embarrassing for both of us to look at each other and see our mutual knowledge of my radioactivity and your helplessness, so I’ll keep my head down and let you watch me in peace. While all this is happening, I’m taking in Kitty’s legs, which are long, considering her modest height, as well as brown, and not that orangey brown of tanning salons, but a rich, tawny chestnut that makes me think of—well, of horses.
Central Park is one block away. The time elapsed is forty-one minutes and counting. We enter the park. It is green and splashy with light and shadow, giving the impression that we’ve dived together into a deep, still pond. “I forget when we started,” Kitty says, looking at her watch. “How much more time do we have?”
“Oh, we’re okay,” I mumble. I’m feeling kind of dreamy. I’m looking at Kitty’s legs as we walk (as much as I can without crawling beside her on the ground—a thought that crosses my mind) and discovering that above the knee they are flecked with hairs of finest gold. Because Kitty is so young and well nourished, so sheltered from the gratuitous cruelty of others, so unaware as yet that she will reach middle age and eventually die (possibly alone), because she has not yet disappointed herself, merely startled herself and the world with her own premature accomplishments, Kitty’s skin—that smooth, plump, sweetly fragrant sac upon which life scrawls the record of our failures and exhaustion—is perfect. And by “perfect” I mean that nothing hangs or sags or snaps or wrinkles or ripples or