He thinks: What happens when I tell her? Game over or eternal vows, and which is worse? She’s wearing a scarf, of a wispy, floating material, some sort of pinkish orange. Watermelon is the word for that shade. Sweet crisp liquid flesh. He remembers the first time he saw her. All he could picture inside her dress then was mist.

What’s got into you? she says. You seem very…Have you been drinking?

No. Not much. He pushes the pale-grey peas around on his plate. It’s finally happened, he says. I’m on my way. Passport and all.

Oh, she says. Just like that. She tries to keep the dismay out of her voice.

Just like that, he says. The comrades got in touch. They must’ve decided I’m more use to them over there than back here. Anyway, after that endless beating around the bush, all of a sudden they can’t wait to see the last of me. One more pain out of their ass.

You’ll be safe, travelling? I thought…

Safer than staying here. But the word is nobody’s looking too hard for me any more. I get the feeling the other side wants me to scram as well. Less complicated for them that way. I won’t tell anybody which tram I’ll be on though. I’m not interested in being pushed off it with a hole in my head and a knife in my back.

What about crossing the border? You always said…

The border’s like tissue paper right now, if you’re going out, that is. The customs fellows know what’s going on all right, they know there’s a pipeline straight from here to New York, then across to Paris. It’s all organized, and everyone’s name is Joe. The cops have been given their orders. Look the other way, they’ve been told. They know which side their bread is buttered on. They don’t give a hoot in hell.

I wish I could come with you, she says.

So that’s why the dinner out. He wanted to break it to her some place where she wouldn’t carry on. He’s hoping she won’t make a scene in public. Weeping, wailing, tearing her hair. He’s counting on it.

Yeah. I wish you could too, he says. But you can’t. It’s rough over there. He hums in his head:

Stormy weather,

Don’t know why, got no buttons on my fly,

Got a zipper…

Get a grip, he tells himself. He feels an effervescence in his head, like ginger ale. Sparkling blood. It’s as if he’s flying—looking down at her from the air. Her lovely distressed face wavers like a reflection in a troubled pool; already dissolving, and soon it will be into tears. But despite her sorrow, she’s never been so luscious. A soft and milky glow surrounds her; the flesh of her arm, where he’s held it, is firm and plumped. He’d like to grab hold of her, haul her up to his room, fuck her six ways to Sunday. As if that would fix her in place.

I’ll wait for you, she says. When you come back I’ll just walk out the front door, and then we can go away together.

Would you really leave? Would you leave him?

Yes. For you, I would. If you wanted. I’d leave everything.

Slivers of neon light come in through the window above them, red, blue, red. She imagines him wounded; it would be one way of making him stay put. She’d like him locked up, tied down, kept for her alone.

Leave him now, he says.

Now? Her eyes widen. Right now? Why?

Because I can’t stand you being with him. I can’t stand the idea of it.

It doesn’t mean anything to me, she says.

It does to me. Especially after I’m gone, when I can’t see you. It’ll drive me crazy—thinking about it will.

But I wouldn’t have any money, she says in a wondering voice. Where would I live? In some rented room, all by myself? Like you, she thinks. What would I live on?

You could get a job, he says helplessly. I could send you some money.

You don’t have any money, none to speak of. And I can’t do anything. I can’t sew, I can’t type. There’s another reason too, she thinks, but I can’t tell him that.

There must be some way. But he doesn’t urge her. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bright idea, her out on her own. Out there in the big bad world, where every guy from here to China could take a crack at her. If anything went wrong, he’d have only himself to blame.

I think I’d better stay put, don’t you? That’s the best thing. Until you come back. You will come back, won’t you? You’ll come back safe and sound?

Sure, he says.

Because if you don’t, I don’t know what I’ll do. If you got yourself killed or anything I’d go completely to pieces. She thinks: I’m talking like a movie. But how else can I talk? We’ve forgotten how else.

Shit, he thinks. She’s working herself up. Now she’ll cry. She’ll cry and I’ll sit here like a lump, and once women start crying there’s no way to make them stop.

Come on, I’ll get your coat, he says grimly. This is no fun. We don’t have much time. Let’s go back to the room.

Nine

The laundry

March at last, and a few grudging intimations of spring. The trees are still bare, the buds still hard, cocooned, but in places where the sun hits there’s meltdown. Dog doings unfreeze, then wane, their icy lacework sallow with wornout pee. Slabs of lawn come to light, sludgy and bestrewn. Limbo must look like this.

Today I had something different for breakfast. Some new kind of cereal flake, brought over by Myra to pep me up: she’s a sucker for the writing on the backs of packages. These flakes, it says in candid lettering the colours of lollipops, of fleecy cotton jogging suits, are not made from corrupt, overly commercial corn and wheat, but from little-known grains with hard-to-pronounce names—archaic, mystical. The seeds of them have been rediscovered in pre-Columbian tombs and in Egyptian pyramids; an authenticating detail, though not, when you come to think of it, all that reassuring. Not only will these flakes whisk you out like a pot scrubber, they murmur of renewed vitality, of endless youth, of immortality. The back of the box is festooned with a limber pink intestine; on the front is an eyeless jade mosaic face, which those in charge of publicity have surely not realized is an Aztec burial mask.

In honour of this new cereal I forced myself to sit down properly at the kitchen table, with place setting and paper napkin complete. Those who live alone slide into the habit of vertical eating: why bother with the niceties when there’s no one to share or censure? But laxity in one area may lead to derangement in all.

Yesterday I decided to do the laundry, to thumb my nose at God by working on a Sunday. Not that he gives two hoots what day of the week it is: in Heaven, as in the subconscious—or so we’re told—there is no time. But really it was to thumb my nose at Myra. I shouldn’t be making the bed, says Myra; I shouldn’t be carrying heavy baskets of soiled clothing down the rickety steps to the cellar, where the ancient, frantic washing machine is located.

Who does the laundry? Myra, by default. While I’m here I might as well just pop in a load, she’ll say. Then we both pretend she hasn’t done it. We conspire in the fiction—or what is rapidly becoming the fiction—that I can fend for myself. But the strain of make-believe is beginning to tell on her.

Also she’s getting a bad back. She wants to arrange for a woman, some nosy hired stranger, to come in and do all that. Her excuse is my heart. She has somehow found out about it, about the doctor and his nostrums and his prophecies—I suppose from his nurse, a chemical redhead with a mouth that flaps at both ends. This town is a sieve.

I told Myra that what I do with my dirty linen is my own business: I will stave off the generic woman for as long as possible. How much of this is embarrassment, on my part? Quite a lot. I don’t want anyone else poking into my insufficiencies, my stains and smells. It’s all right for Myra to do it, because I know her and she knows me. I am her cross to bear: I am what makes her so good, in the eyes of others. All she has to do is say my name and roll her eyes, and indulgence is extended to her, if not by the angels, at least by the neighbours, who are a damn sight harder to please.