The Foreigners - Maxine Swann [63]
We stepped inside. It was strange. Leonarda’s pink jersey minidress was bunched up on the couch under the hospital light. Then I saw what looked like her computer. She loved her computer like a human being, never left it anywhere, slept with it by her bed at night. I looked at her.
But she had turned away, down the hall. Still groggy, Miguel had lit a pipe, was standing by his desk. I followed Leonarda.
“This apartment’s fine,” she said, “but the bathroom’s horrible, small and dingy. I’ve told him it’s horrible. He has to fix it.”
She turned off into the little room where his son slept when he stayed there. I followed. The last thing I wanted was to be left alone with him. More of Leonarda’s things were here. The bed was unmade. Her notebooks were spread around amid the rumpled sheets.
“What the fuck?” I whispered. “Are you staying here?”
“Shh,” she said, whispering back. “No, I was just sick. And my mother was so horrible. She threw me out.”
“And so you came here?”
“I had nowhere else to go.”
I was looking down at the little bed, at her notebooks full of small crabbed writing, impossible to decipher though I’d tried more than once. Too dumbfounded to think, I sat down on the bed. “I can’t believe this.”
She went and closed the door. Oh, that’s right, I thought, to make matters worse, there was that horrible creature out there listening.
“Have you forgotten the Master Plan?” she asked.
“The Master Fucking Plan says you’re supposed to live with him?”
“I’m not living with him. I’m just staying for a few days in the kid’s room. How do you think they poisoned Roman emperors? Someone has to be on the inside. I told him you were my girlfriend and that would never change.”
I laughed an awful-tasting laugh. This girlfriend thing was new too.
But she was enthusiastic. “Listen, it’s really working.” By now, she’d sat down beside me and was whispering heatedly into my ear. “He’s getting more and more dependent on my mind. It’s like he can’t think without me. He can’t even write his shitty little articles without asking me first what I think.” She laughed. Then a second later withdrew her lips from my ear. She was suddenly wan-faced, staring off into the corner of the room. “If things go on like this, it’ll soon be over.”
“Why?” I asked, clinging despite myself to this glimmer of hope.
“Well, obviously, it’ll get too boring. It almost already is.”
That was it. If that was her only concern . . . “Okay, I have to go,” I said, standing abruptly.
“Wait, what is wrong with you? Stay for a drink at least.”
“A drink?” I looked at her, my face disgusted. But the truth was I felt trapped. If I walked out of this room, I’d have to pass by him, exit defeated. This was more than I could bear. My eye lit on the little window. I could climb out there into the garden.
“Wait, I know,” she said. “Why don’t you stay the night? Oh, please. Stay here with me. It’ll be so adorable. We’ll sleep together in this little bed.” She curled up on the bed and rubbed her upper arm with her hand. “My skin’s just getting softer and softer, like a nymphet’s.”
I ignored her and walked over to the window. It was small, like everything else in the room.
She sat up. “What are you doing, dufus?”
I pulled the window up.
She leaped off the bed, pointing at me and whispering furiously. “I’ll be so ashamed if you act jealous. That gives him power, don’t you see? Then he has power over us.”
“Whatever, Leonarda, this is your fucking gig. It has nothing to do with me.”
“What are you saying? You don’t understand anything.” But I wasn’t even looking at her. I was facing the window, starting to climb out.
“Your butt’s never going to fit through there,” she said.
But it did. I was outside now.
“You’re really stupid, you know that. Much, much stupider than I thought.” But I was already walking away.
I crossed the dark garden to the door that led into the lobby, opened it and started across the lobby.
“Wait.” I heard her voice, breathless, behind me. She had rushed through