The Illumination_ A Novel - Kevin Brockmeier [79]
She and John Catau took an empty table in the center of the shop and sat across from each other sipping their drinks. While he spoke, she covered her mouth with her palm, trying to usher the coffee past her lips without visibly wincing. He was offering another one of his meandering narratives, about a rock concert where the crowd was “so raucous” that it spilled out onto the sidewalk and he had traded jackets with the guitarist. Every so often she would punctuate the story with an mm-hmm or a right, thinking Make me better, Take me home, while he nodded and stroked the stubble on his chin. He must have been talking for nearly fifteen minutes when he made a remark that caused him to laugh, a quiet little two-beat arrangement, as if he were exhaling once through each nostril. “You know, like in ‘Sunset Studies,’ ” he continued. “Remember, that bit you wrote about the door hinges flapping loose from the house like butterflies?”
“Where would you have seen ‘Sunset Studies’?”
“The Lifted Brow began archiving its old issues online.”
“Hmm.” A group of teenagers in crowlike black clothing had stationed themselves by the graphic novels, their faces irradiated with patches of cruel red acne. “This place”—she gestured at the stiltlike columns, the vista of windows—“it reminds me of a bead shop I used to visit in college. Not that I had any interest in beads. I went because it reminded me of this art gallery where my friends and I spent all our time in high school. Freestanding counters everywhere. Polished white pine floors. It made me feel like I was reliving my past.”
“Mm-hmm. Very esque-ish.”
“What?”
“Esque-ish. It’s a word me and Coop came up with. First esque and then ish. Something that reminds you of something that reminds you of something.”
“That’s good. I like that.”
“Yeah? You think it will catch on?”
“John, how old are you?”
“I’m twenty-three. And a half.”
She made the mistake of smiling. One of her teeth snagged her lip, and there it was, that unsparing light, a spasm of pain that spread across her mouth as if a metal barb had punched through the skin, tugging it outward so that a living pink tent rose up from the tissue.
“Jesus H.,” said John Catau. “I absolutely did not realize. I’m so sorry.”
She waited until she was sure she could speak. “It’s okay. I app—I app—I thank you for your concern.”
“Will you show it to me? Your ulcer?”
“No. No. John. God. It’s not pretty. You don’t want to see it.”
But the look he gave her was full of such humble curiosity, with his eyes lingering on her mouth and his hair dangling over his creased forehead, that she placed her fingers on either side of the sore and slowly everted her lip for him. He inhaled sharply. In the space of that breath, between one second and the next, he understood. She didn’t have to tell him, didn’t have to explain or apologize. She didn’t have to combat the impression that she was undergoing some kind of joke ailment, like a hangnail or an ingrown hair, the kind of thing that could be remedied with tweezers or a topical cream. A canker sore, yes. I had one of those myself a few years back, people liked to say. Grin and bear it, that’s my motto, and they would clap her shoulder and wait for her to chuckle along with them at the human body and all its darling haplessness. And now here was this boy, this ridiculous boy, and he seemed to know everything about her. Make me better. His fingertips and the base of his palm were resting lightly on the table, creating a shadowy little hidden cove, and she found herself resisting the impulse to slide her hand into it.
“I’m so sorry,” he said a second time. “That’s terrible. Terrible. You really