You Are Not a Stranger Here - Adam Haslett [42]
“Do you enjoy that?” she asked, apparently uninterested in the whys and wherefores.
“I can’t say I do.”
“Me neither.” She looked down the table, sizing up the young woman in pearls, whose shiny brown hair hung in a gentle curl to her shoulders. Over the cacophony of deeper, male voices, this woman’s nasal inflection rose. The accent was well-to-do, the repartee with her male companions conducted with nonchalance, perhaps a little disdain. Trisha looked down again, inspecting her hand of painted nails, pressing back strands of frayed cuticle with the edge of her thumbnail.
“I take it you’re not working at the moment,” James said.
She laughed. Pushing her plate away untouched, she fiddled with a pack of cigarettes. Her smile stiffened, came to pieces, and appeared again, as though attached to strings pulled by other hands. Then she leaned in closer to James and said even more quietly than before, “This isn’t as it appears. I’m here in what you might call a professional capacity. Your friend Clive wanted a little company while he’s in town. I think he’s an asshole. But if he stays conscious I guess we’ll be sleeping together in a few hours.” She sat up again in her chair and smiled vaguely at Clive, whose bloated face had grown redder with drink.
“You can laugh at me now,” she said nervously, out of the corner of her mouth. Then she turned to James again, pulled in by the intensity of her thought. “You can go ahead and tell me what a worthless life this is.” Her whole expression reached forward in anticipation, as if she saw a blow to the head coming and was determined not to flinch.
James felt as if he had been yanked from a stupor, pulled into the tight space of this woman’s fury, and to his surprise he didn’t feel like turning away.
“No,” he said, “I don’t want to say that. Honestly.”
She leaned her elbow on the table, resting her head on her hand. She looked disappointed. Around the table people were calling and laughing, conversation having given way to anecdotes shouted over the din.
“So are you rich or something?” she asked beneath the noise. “Is that why you’ve got time on your hands?” Gathering her plate back, she picked at a piece of bread.
“No,” James replied, feeling a sudden tenderness for this stranger. “To tell you the truth, I’m dying.”
The girl froze for an instant, torn from her own form of complacency. His words seemed to filter through her mind, her expression passing from confusion to incredulity to a kind of somber calm.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and James thought it genuine. “Do you have long?”
He looked into her large black eyes, then down at his hands.
“Difficult to say. Probably not.”
She was the first person he’d told. A year and a half the medications had worked, and then suddenly they were no good. A resistant strain, the doctors said. For a moment, he felt again the devouring shame that he’d let this disease he’d been so warned of into his body, let it in because he wanted pleasure and somewhere along the way believed people he shouldn’t have. But he’d learned early in life there were things it was best not to think about. The shame passed and he didn’t let his mind pursue it.
Suddenly, Clive was leaning over them, putting his arms around their shoulders, his bulbous face inserted between them.
“What are you two going on about?” he said, louder than necessary. “Just here a week, Finn, want to see my girl.” He cupped Trisha’s head in his hand and kissed her roughly on the lips. “Go on then, push over.” James moved down a seat. Over Clive’s shoulder, the girl looked at him and for a moment he felt his tenderness reflected in the concern of her gaze. Clive began to caress her cheek. She managed to smile at him before closing her eyes.
Later, standing in the restaurant’s foyer as the group prepared to leave, Clive insisted James join them all the next evening at a pub on the King’s Road. Laughton, another classmate, would be along. James muttered an excuse—a project at work, long hours.
As she leaned against Clive by the cigarette machine, the girl came no higher than his shoulder.