The Foreigners - Maxine Swann [50]
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Nothing. Just resting.”
He seemed to look at me more closely. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, just tired.”
For the first time, I didn’t really feel like telling him what was going on. I was exhausted and there was too much to tell. But also, I felt somewhere a gnawing feeling, that if I told him what I’d been up to, this time he wouldn’t approve. Basically, because he would think my mind was not free. It was true, my mind was not free.
“Is there such a thing as feeling too alive?” I asked. “In medical terms, like, I don’t know, what would you call that? Hyperactive, overstimulated?”
He laughed a little. “Those two states exist. You sure you’re fine?”
“Yeah, yeah.” My phone was ringing. Shit—Isolde.
I arrived late to my lunch meeting with Isolde. She was looking smooth, impeccable, in close-fitting knee-length khaki pants, a white blouse, her blondness. But she was distressed.
“I thought you’d never come,” she said.
She didn’t want to eat. Was it because she was dieting? I knew that was an interest of hers. I ordered something myself. Only then did it occur to me that she might not have money, difficult as it was to believe with her sitting there looking as she did, expensive in every way. I offered to invite her for lunch. She flushed for a second, then agreed. She ordered the salmon, “with sparkling water, please, that’s sparkling, remember.” In restaurants she always behaved like one of the entitled, even now, when in despair. But this selfcontrol on her part was highly unusual. It lasted a few moments, then everything tumbled out.
“Diego’s disappeared. It’s been weeks now that he hasn’t answered my e-mails or calls. I don’t have any money. I really can’t ask my parents again. I know they can’t send me anything more.”
Bit by bit, she had had to cut back on what were to her basic things: manicures, pedicures, waxing. She had bought a nail kit and a waxing kit. She was now waxing herself. The nails were okay. She held out a hand. She had done them over and over and over again, looking online for instructions until she’d got them right. Though I didn’t know a lot about manicures, they looked pretty near perfect to me. The waxing was painful. She’d burnt herself, then left the wax on so long it turned brittle and was almost impossible to pull off. All the same, after several tries, she had managed to give herself a real bikini wax. This included the back.
“What do you mean, the back?”
“The back, the butt. I think it’s important.” She was serious, stoic, having stopped crying now. Her near plumpness, sometimes invisible, seemed in this moment very touching. The main thing she was worried about, she said, was her hair.
She had wanted at least to keep dyeing it professionally. She was afraid that that too she would have to stop. And then what? Do a home job? She had a horror of how that would look, cheap, above all. Comparatively, eating in restaurants was of the least importance. She could always eat at home.
“What about work?” I asked.“What’s happening on that front?” Since I’d met her, she’d been looking around. “Could you work in a bank again, at least for now?”
She had had an interview with an Austrian company. Her qualifications were bizarre, at once too many and too few. The interviewer ended up inviting her out. He wanted to get to know her better. They went to a party at the Italian embassy that very evening. Isolde knew she shouldn’t have said yes, if she was actually interested in a job. And anyway, aren’t you always supposed to say you have a previous engagement? But she wanted to go. After that, she didn’t hear from him again. She knew this was her problem. She appeared too easy. Wasn’t that the worst thing for a woman to be? But she couldn’t help it. She was simply incapable of biding her time.
I offered her some money, what I had in my wallet, which she took as we parted. “Good, good,” she said. “Thank you.” She walked away, shoulders back, by the looks of it proudly, although I suspected she was crying again