Libra - Don Delillo [110]
She knew he was trying to sense if she was awake. He was on the verge of saying something or leaning over to touch. He would probably touch, rise on an elbow and touch her on the hip with his hand curled soft. She felt his desire like an airstream in the dark. It was absolutely there. He was waiting, thinking if this was the time. His own wife and he had to think.
She thought of Holland again.
She thought of landing in New York. One night in a hotel in the middle of cascading neon. Rivers and lakes of neon.
He is someone you see from a distance.
Fragrances. The floors remarkably clean. She stood in an area with TVs stacked everywhere. She watched TV half the morning, five different programs side by side. She walked the aisles. It was cool and peaceful. Nobody talked to you unless you asked a question or made a purchase and she didn’t have the means of doing either.
He went out to find food and she was alone with the baby in New York, an old hotel, and she took a washcloth and cleaned the grime off the venetian blinds.
She sensed he was going to touch, he was making up his mind to touch, after the beating, after everything they’d said.
They were brought together by fate but she wasn’t sure who he really was. Sharing the bathroom she wasn’t sure. Making love she didn’t know who he was.
When she learned English he would be less distant. It was absolutely true.
We buy groceries on Tuesday.
They made love, when they did, in a tender way, full of honest forgiving.
There is a broadsheet plastered crookedly to a wall near their bungalow.
THE VATICAN IS THE WHORE OF REVELATION.
Lee translates for Marina.
Marguerite was calm. She stood at the ironing board running the iron over her uniform blouse. She faced the living room, which had a sofa with a mound of bright pillows, two comfortable chairs, a writing desk and TV set and a decorative stand with ivy twisting out of a long pot. She ironed the uniform every chance, keeping it crisp and fresh. She worked in other people’s homes, by word of mouth, some of the best homes in Fort Worth, taking care of babies of the rich.
And I mentioned to the woman that it is two weeks to Lee’s birthday and he doesn’t have work clothes, so she said, “Mrs. Oswald, what build is he?” And I told her. And he was about the same build as her husband. And she got out the work clothes her husband didn’t want, some worn-out pairs of pants, she wanted me to pay, for ten dollars. Here is a woman, she knows I make a hard living, she knows they are a young couple starting a home in a new country. This is being rich in Fort Worth, asking payment from a nurse for used clothing. I am calm about it today, your honor, but this to me is very strong in my mind, that here is another instance of a troubled situation. Because from the very first day I looked in his face and saw a different boy. And I was like, What have they done to my boy over there? Because his skin was not fair and smooth as previous. Because his face was drawn, a tint of sand to a tint of ash gray. Because his hair was kinky out of nowhere. Because his hair was coming out, which he says himself, from a full head of hair to badly thinning in front that you could practically see his scalp. We had him bend his head down, Robert and I, to where we could actually look at the top of his head in a bright light. Judge, this is a family where the men have always displayed full heads of hair and he is still a boy. He said it is the cold of Russia. I thought to myself it is shock treatments. This is my conclusion, his being an agent of our government and lost for a year. There are many ways this figures out, remembering the incident where we sat watching the television in my apartment on West Seventh Street after she came home with a cancan petticoat and some hose that Lee bought with a few dollars from Robert and me, and we sat watching the television and she said to me, “Mama, it is Gregory Peck,” and I looked at the movie and it was Gregory Peck sitting on a horse. Now, about my suspicions does a foreign girl know movie stars?