Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [56]
14
The first thing Marian’s eyes encountered as her head emerged periscope-like through the stairwell was a pair of naked legs. They were topped by Ainsley, who was standing half-dressed in the small vestibule, gazing down upon her, the usual blankness of her face tinged almost imperceptibly here and there with shades of surprise and annoyance.
“Hi,” she said. “I thought you were going out for dinner tonight.” She fastened her eyes accusingly upon the small bag of groceries Marian was carrying.
Marian’s legs pushed the rest of her body up the remaining stairs before she answered. “I was, but I’m not. Something came up at Peter’s office.” She went into the kitchen and deposited the paper bag on the table. Ainsley followed her in and sat down on one of the chairs.
“Marian,” she said dramatically, “it has to be tonight!”
“What does?” Marian asked vaguely, putting her carton of milk into the refrigerator. She wasn’t really listening.
“It. Leonard. You know.”
Marian had been so occupied with her own thoughts that it was a moment before she remembered what Ainsley was talking about. “Oh. That,” she said. She took off her coat, reflectively.
She hadn’t been paying close attention to the progress of Ainsley’s campaign (or was it Leonard’s?) over the past two months – she’d wanted to keep her hands clean of the whole thing – but she had been force-fed enough with Ainsley’s own accounts and analyses and complaints to be able to deduce what had been happening; after all, however clean one’s hands, one’s ears were of necessity open. Things hadn’t gone according to schedule. It appeared that Ainsley had overshot the mark. At the first encounter she had made herself into an image of such pink-gingham purity that Len had decided, after her strategic repulse of him that evening, that she would require an extralong and careful siege. Anything too abrupt, too muscular, would frighten her away; she would have to be trapped with gentleness and caution. Consequently he had begun by asking her to lunch several times, and had progressed, at intervals of medium length, to dinners out and finally to foreign films, in one of which he had gone so far as to hold her hand. He had even invited her to his apartment once, for afternoon tea. Ainsley said later with several vigorous oaths that he had been on this occasion a model of propriety. Since by her own admission she didn’t drink, she could not even pretend to permit him to get her drunk. In conversation he treated her as though she was a little girl, patiently explaining things to her and impressing her with stories about the television studio and assuring her that his interest in her was strictly that of a well-wishing older friend until she wanted to scream. And she couldn’t even talk back: it was necessary for her mind to appear as vacant as her face. Her hands were tied. She had constructed her image and now she had to maintain it. To make any advances herself, or to let slip a flicker of anything resembling intelligence, would have been so out of character as to give her dumb-show irrevocably away. So she had been stewing and fussing in private, suffering Len’s overly subtle manoeuvrings with suppressed impatience and watching the all-important calendar days slide uneventfully by.
“If it isn’t tonight,” Ainsley said, “I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t stand it much longer – I’ll have to get another one. But I’ve wasted so much time.” She frowned, as much as she was able to with her embryonic eyebrows.
“And where …?” Marian asked, beginning to see why Ainsley had been annoyed at her unexpected return.
“Well he’s obviously not going to ask me up to see his camera lenses,” Ainsley said petulantly. “And anyway if I said Yes he’d get suspicious as hell. We’re going out to dinner though, and I thought maybe if I invited him up for coffee afterwards …”
“So you’d rather I went out,” Marian said, her voice heavy with disapproval.
“Well, it would be an awful help. Ordinarily I wouldn’t give a damn if there