The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [121]
Salad days. Days without names, witless afternoons, quick and profane and quickly over, and no longing in advance or after, and no words required, and nothing to pay. Before he got mixed up in things that got mixed up.
He checks his watch and then the window again, and here she comes, loping diagonally across the park, in a wide-brimmed hat today and a tightly belted houndstooth suit, handbag clutched under her arm, pleated skirt swinging, in her curious undulating stride, as if she’s never got used to walking on her hind legs. It may be the high heels though. He’s often wondered how they balance. Now she’s stopped as if on cue; she gazes around in that dazed way she has, as if she’s just been wakened from a puzzling dream, and the two guys picking up the papers look her over. Lost something, miss? But she comes on, crosses the street, he can see her in fragments through the leaves, she must be searching for the street number. Now she’s coming up the front steps. The buzzer goes. He pushes the button, crushes out his cigarette, turns off the desk light, unlocks the door.
Hello. I’m all out of breath. I didn’t wait for the elevator. She pushes the door shut, stands with her back against it.
Nobody followed you. I was watching. You’ve got cigarettes?
And your cheque, and a fifth of scotch, best quality. I pinched it from our well-stocked bar. Did I tell you we have a well-stocked bar?
She’s attempting to be casual, frivolous even. She’s not good at it. She’s stalling, waiting to see what he wants. She’d never make the first move, she doesn’t like to give herself away.
Good girl. He moves towards her, takes hold of her.
Am I a good girl? Sometimes I feel like a gun moll – doing your errands.
You can’t be a gun moll, I don’t have a gun. You watch too many movies.
Not nearly enough, she says, to the side of his neck. He could use a haircut. Soft thistle. She undoes his four top buttons, runs her hand in under his shirt. His flesh is so condensed, so dense. Fine-grained, charred. She’s seen ashtrays carved out of wood like that.
The Blind Assassin: Red brocade
That was lovely, she says. The bath was lovely. I never pictured you with pink towels. Compared to the usual, it’s pretty opulent.
Temptation lurks everywhere, he says. The fleshpots beckon. I’d say she’s an amateur tart, wouldn’t you?
He’d wrapped her in one of the pink towels, carried her to the bed wet and slippery. Now they’re under the nubbly cherry-coloured silk bedspread, the sateen sheets, drinking the scotch she’s brought with her. It’s a fine blend, smoky and warm, it goes down smooth as toffee. She stretches luxuriously, wondering only briefly who will wash the sheets.
She never manages to overcome her sense of transgression in these various rooms – the feeling that she’s violating the private boundaries of whoever ordinarily lives in them. She’d like to go through the closets, the bureau drawers – not to take, only to look; to see how other people live. Real people; people more real than she is. She’d like to do the same with him, except that he has no closets, no bureau drawers, or none that are his. Nothing to find, nothing to betray him. Only a scuffed blue suitcase, which he keeps locked. It’s usually under the bed.
His pockets are uninformative; she’s been through them a few times. (It wasn’t spying, she just wanted to know where things were and what they were, and where they stood.) Handkerchief, blue, with white border; spare change; two cigarette butts, wrapped in waxed paper – he must have been saving them up. A jackknife, old. Once, two buttons, from a shirt, she’d guessed. She hadn’t offered to sew them back on because then he’d know she’d been snooping. She’d like him to think she’s trustworthy.
A driver’s licence, the name not his. A birth certificate, ditto. Different names. She’d love to go over him with a fine-toothed comb. Rummage around in him. Turn him upside down. Empty him out.
He sings gently, in an oily voice, like a radio crooner: