The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst [155]
She weighed this up, teasingly, and teasing meant more to her than to Nick. She was on the side of dissidence and sex, but she was still huffy with her discovery, with having been tricked and not trusted. In the pause that followed they heard the faint scratch of footsteps on the stairs and then the clip of hard-soled slippers, which Nick knew at once, along the tiled hallway. He bit his lip, winced, and curled his head forward as if he was praying, to enjoin silence. Wani was coming up to his room, to change probably, which he did more often than anyone else, as if strictly observing an etiquette the others had let slide. And for another reason too, so that his reappearance in pressed white linen trousers or bright silk shirt was a cover and almost an explanation for his new liveliness; as if he sprang back to noiseless applause. He went into his room, and they could see him hesitate, the shadow on the gleam of the tiles under Nick's door, which wasn't normally closed. Then he closed his own door, and seconds later the catch jumped and settled. The door catches here had a life of their own, and kicked and rattled with stored energy, in accusing jumps.
As they sat there, compromised, staring attentively, but not at each other, waiting for Wani to be done, Nick pictured him having a line, his air of cleverness and superiority, and almost hoped that they would hear him, and that that secret would come out too. To hear it, like a lovers' rendezvous, a rhythm, a ritual: evidence of the other great affair in Wani's life. But he was probably in his bathroom. A light aircraft droned and throbbed in the heights, a summer sound, that came and went on the mind.
When he'd gone downstairs again, Catherine said, "Of course switchers are a nightmare. Everyone knows that."
"I don't suppose everyone knows it," said Nick.
"God, you remember Roger?"
"He was Drip-Dry, wasn't he?" Nick felt annoyed, slighted, but undeniably relieved that Catherine had decided to show him up with talk about her own boyfriends. "Always something just a little bit funny about the sex—as if he wished you had a hairy chest . . . you know. And the feeling that you never had his absolutely undivided attention."
"I'm not sure one wants that, does one," said Nick, not quite meaning it, but seeing as he said it that it could be a helpful kind of wisdom, if you shared your lover with a woman as well as a drug.
"They say they love you, but there's more reason than usual to disbelieve them." In fact Wani had never said that, and Nick had stopped saying it, because of the discomforting silence that followed when he did. "I'm surprised, actually, I wouldn't have thought he was your type."
"Oh!" said Nick, and gasped at the thought of him.
"I mean, he's not black, really, he's been to university."
Nick smiled disparagingly at this sketch of his tastes. He felt embarrassed—not at sex talk, which was always an enjoyable surrender, a game of risked and relished blushes, but at the exposure of something more private than sex and weirdly chivalrous. He said, "I just think he's the most beautiful man I've ever met."
"Darling," said Catherine, in a protesting murmur, as if he'd said something very childish and untenable. "You can't really?" Nick looked at his desk and flinched irritably. "I can sort of see what you mean," Catherine said. "He's like a parody of a good-looking person, isn't he." She smiled. "Give me your pen": and on the top of Nick's notepad she made a quick drawing, a few curves, cheekbones, lips, lashes, heavily inked squiggles of hair. "There! No, I must sign it"—and she scrawled "Wonnie by Cath" underneath. Nick saw how accurate it was, and said, "He doesn't look like that at all."
"Hmm?" said Catherine teasingly, feeling she'd made a point but not knowing where it had got her.
"All I can say is, when he comes into the room—like when he got back late for lunch the other day, when we'd been gossiping about him, and I was playing along with you, sort of agreeing, actually—when he came in, I just thought, yes, I'm in the right place, this