Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [23]
“Thank you.” I wrote busily. By this time I was convinced that he was a compulsive neurotic of some sort and that I’d better remain calm and not display any fear. I wasn’t frightened exactly – he didn’t look like the violent type – but these questions definitely made him tense. He might be tottering on an emotional brink, one of the phrases might be enough to push him over. Those people are like that I thought, remembering certain case histories Ainsley had told me; little things like words can really bother them.
“Now, ‘Tingly, heady, rough-and-ready’?”
He contemplated that one at length. “Doesn’t do a thing for me,” he said, “it doesn’t fit together. The first bit gives me an image of someone with a head made out of glass being hit with a stick: like musical glasses. But rough-and-ready doesn’t do anything. I suppose,” he said sadly, “that one’s not much use to you.”
“You’re doing fine,” I said, thinking of what would happen to the I.B.M. machine if they ever tried to run this thing through it. “Now the last one: ‘Tang of the wilderness.’ ”
“Oh,” he said, his voice approaching enthusiasm, “that one’s easy; it struck me at once when I heard it. It’s one of those technicolour movies about dogs or horses. ‘Tang of the Wilderness’ is obviously a dog, part wolf, part husky, who saves his master three times, once from fire, once from flood and once from wicked humans, more likely to be white hunters than Indians these days, and finally gets blasted by a cruel trapper with a .22 and wept over. Buried, probably in the snow. Panoramic shot of trees and lake. Sunset. Fade-out.”
“Fine,” I said, scribbling madly to get it all down. There was silence while we both listened to the scratching of my pencil. “Now, I hate to ask you, but you’re supposed to say how well you think each of those five phrases applies to a beer – Very Well, Medium Well, or Not Very Well At All?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” he said, losing interest completely. “I never drink the stuff. Only scotch. None of them are any good for scotch.”
“But,” I protested, astonished, “you picked Number Six on the card. The one that said seven to ten bottles per week.”
“You wanted me to pick a number,” he said with patience, “and six is my lucky number. I even got them to change the numbers on the apartments; this is really Number One, you know. Besides, I was bored; I felt like talking to someone.”
“That means I won’t be able to count your interview,” I said severely. I had forgotten for the moment that it wasn’t real.
“Oh, you enjoyed it,” he said, smiling his half-smile again. “You know all the other answers you’ve been getting are totally dull. You have to admit I’ve livened up your day considerably.”
I had a twinge of irritation. I had been feeling compassion for him as a sufferer on the verge of mental collapse, and now he had revealed the whole thing as a self-conscious performance. I could either get up and leave at once, showing my displeasure, or admit that he was right. I frowned at him, trying to decide what to do; but just then I heard the front door opening and the sound of voices.
He jerked forward and listened tensely, then leaned back against the wall. “It’s only Fish and Trevor. They’re my roommates,” he said, “the other two bores. Trevor’s the mother bore: he’s going to be shocked when finds me with my shirt off and a capital-G girl in the room.”
There was a brown-paper crunkle of grocery bags being set down in the kitchen, and a deep voice said, “Christ, it’s hot out there!”
“I think I’d better go now,” I said. If the others were at all like this one I didn’t think I would be able to cope. I gathered my questionnaires together and stood up, at the same time as the voice said “Hey Duncan, want a beer?” and a furry bearded head appeared in the doorway.
I gasped. “So you do drink beer after all!”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. Sorry. I didn’t want to finish, that’s all. The rest of