Bodily Harm (33 page)

Jake was in the doorway again. Rennie did not want to look at him. She knew what she would see, it would be the same thing he saw when he looked at her. Failure, of a larger order than they would once have thought possible. But how could there be failure, since failure had been outside their terms of reference? No strings, no commitments, that’s what they’d said. What would
success
have been?

Rennie thought of telling him about the man with the rope. Meanly, since it would only make him feel guilty and that was why she would be doing it. What would Jake make of it, the sight of one of his playful fantasies walking around out there, growling and on all fours? He knew the difference between a game and the real thing, he said; a desire and a need. She was the confused one.

Rennie did not say anything, nor did she stand up and throw her arms around Jake’s neck, nor did she shake hands with him. She didn’t want charity so she didn’t do anything. She sat with her hands clenched around the coffee cup as if it was a bare socket, live electricity, and she couldn’t move. Was this
open
, was it grief? What had become of them, two dead bodies, what could you do without desire, without need, what was she supposed to feel, what could be
done? She pressed her hands together to keep them still. She thought of her grandmother, hands together like that, head bowed over the joyless Christmas turkey, saying grace.

Keep well, said Jake, and that was the whole problem. He could not admit she wasn’t. No fun playing games with the walking wounded. Not only no fun, no fair.

The day after Jake was gone, for good, Rennie did not get up in the morning. There did not seem to be any point. She lay in bed thinking about Daniel. It was true he was a fantasy for her: a fantasy about the lack of fantasy, a fantasy of the normal. It was soothing to think of Daniel, it was like sucking your thumb. She thought about him waking up in the morning, rolling over, turning off the alarm clock, making love with his pregnant wife, whose face Rennie did not picture, carefully and with consideration but somewhat quickly because it was morning and he had other things to do. His wife didn’t come but they’re both used to that, they love each other anyway. She’ll come later, some other day, when Daniel has more time. Taking a shower, drinking a cup of coffee, black, no sugar, which is handed to him by his wife through the bathroom door, looking in the mirror while he shaves and not seeing at all what she saw when she looked at him. Daniel getting dressed, in those mundane clothes of his, tying his shoelaces.

At three in the afternoon Rennie called Daniel, at the office, where she thought he would be. She left her number with the nurse: she said it was an emergency. She had never done such a thing before. She knew she was being wicked, but thinking about Daniel brought out in her whatever notions of wickedness were left over from her background. Daniel himself had such clean fingernails, such pink ears, he was so
good
.

Daniel called her back fifteen minutes later, and Rennie did her best to give the impression of someone on the verge of suicide. She never actually said it, she could not go so far, but she knew the only way she could entice Daniel over would be to give him a chance to rescue her. She was crying though, that was real enough.

She wanted Daniel to hold her hand, pat her on the back, comfort her, be with her. That was what he was good at. She had given up expecting anything else. She got dressed, made the bed, brushed her teeth and hair, being a good child at least to this extent. When Daniel came he would give her a gold star.

He knocked at the door, she opened it, he was there. What she saw was not someone she knew. Anger and fear, and something else, a need but not a desire. She’d pushed it too far.

Don’t do that again, he said, and that was all for the time being.

She thought he knew what was inside her. No such luck.

After a while Rennie was lying on her own bed, which was still more or less made, and Daniel was putting on his shoes. She could see the side of his head, the bent back. The fact was that he had needed something from her, which she could neither believe nor forgive. She’d been counting on him not to: she was supposed to be the needy one, but it was the other way around. He was ashamed of himself, which was the last thing she’d wanted. She felt like a vacation, Daniel’s, one he thought he shouldn’t have taken. She felt like a straw that had been clutched, she felt he’d been drowning. She felt raped.

This is what
terminal
means, she thought. Get used to it.

After they make love Rennie wraps a towel around herself and goes out to the kitchen. There’s a lizard, sand-coloured, with huge dark
eyes, hunting the ants that file towards the cupboard where the golden syrup is kept. Rennie eats three pieces of bread and jam and drinks half a pint of long-life milk. Paul says some people here think that because it says
LONG LIFE
on the carton, you’ll have a long life if you drink it.

She goes back to the bedroom and steps over the clothes entwined on the floor. Paul is lying with his hands behind his head, legs flung out, looking up at the ceiling. Rennie climbs in under the mosquito net and curls beside him. She licks the hollow of his stomach, which is damp and salty, but he hardly twitches. Then she runs her hand over him, stroking. He blinks and smiles a little. The hair on his chest is grey, and Rennie finds it comforting, this sign of age: it’s possible after all for people to grow older, change, weather. Without deteriorating; up to a point. It’s the past, it’s time that’s stained him.

She wants to ask about his wife. It must be a wife, the house and the lawn and the shirtwaist dress wouldn’t go with anything else. But she doesn’t want to admit she’s been going through the bureau drawers.

“Were you ever married?” she asks.

“Yes,” says Paul. He doesn’t volunteer anything else, so Rennie keeps on going. “What happened?”

Paul smiles. “She didn’t like my lifestyle,” he says. “She said there wasn’t enough security. She didn’t mean financial. After the Far East, I tried to go back and settle down, but when you’ve been living that way, day to day, never knowing when someone’s going to blow you into little pieces, that other kind of life seems fake, you can’t believe in it. I just couldn’t get too excited about taking the car in for the winter tune-up or any of that. Not even my kids.”

“So you’re a danger freak,” says Rennie. “Is that why you run dope?”

Paul smiles. “Maybe,” he says. “Or maybe it’s the money. It beats selling real estate. Second biggest dollar import commodity in the States; oil’s the first. I don’t take unnecessary risks though.” He takes her hand, moves it down, closes his eyes. “That’s why I’m still alive.”

“What do you dream about?” says Rennie after a while. She wants to know, which is dangerous, it means she’s interested.

Paul waits before answering. “Not a hell of a lot,” says Paul finally. “I think I gave it up. I don’t have time for it any more.”

“Everyone dreams,” says Rennie. “Why don’t men ever want to say what they dream about?”

Paul turns his head and looks at her. He’s still smiling, but he’s tightened up. “That’s why I couldn’t hack the States,” he says. “When I went back there, the women were talking like that. That’s how they began all their sentences:
Why don’t men.”

Rennie feels she’s been both misinterpreted and accused. “Is there something wrong with saying that?” she says. “Maybe we want to know.”

“There’s nothing wrong with saying it,” says Paul. “They can say it all they like. But there’s no law that says I have to listen to it.”

Rennie continues to stroke, but she’s hurt. “Sorry I asked,” she says.

Paul puts a hand on her. “It’s not that I’ve got anything against women,” he says. Rennie supplies:
In their place
. “It’s just that when you’ve spent years watching people dying, women, kids, men, everyone, because they’re starving or because someone kills them for complaining about it, you don’t have time for a lot of healthy women sitting around arguing whether or not they should shave their legs.”

Rennie’s been outflanked, so she retreats. “That was years ago,” she says. “They’ve moved on to other issues.”

“That’s what I mean,” says Paul.
“Issues
. I used to believe in issues. When I first went out there I believed in all the issues I’d been taught to believe in. Democracy and freedom and the whole bag of tricks. Those gadgets don’t work too well in a lot of places and nobody’s too sure what does. There’s no good guys and bad guys, nothing you can count on, none of it’s permanent any more, there’s a lot of improvisation. Issues are just an excuse.”

“For what?” says Rennie. She leaves her hand on him but stops moving it.

“Getting rid of people you don’t like,” says Paul. “There’s only people with power and people without power. Sometimes they change places, that’s all.”

“Which are you?” says Rennie.

“I eat well, so I must have power,” says Paul, grinning. “But I’m an independent operator. Freelance, same as you.”

“You don’t take me very seriously, do you?” says Rennie sadly. She wants him to talk to her, about himself.

“Don’t start that,” says Paul. “You’re on vacation.” He rolls over on top of her. “When you go back home, I’ll take you seriously.”

Once upon a time Rennie was able to predict men; she’d been able to tell exactly what a given man would do at a given time. When she’d known that, when she was sure, all she had to do was wait and then he would do it. She used to think she knew what most men were like, she used to think she knew what most men wanted and how most men would respond. She used to think there was such a thing as most men, and now she doesn’t. She’s given up deciding what will happen next.

She puts her arms around him. She’s trying again. She should know better.

From the refrigerator Paul takes two fish, one bright red, the other blue and green, with a beak like a parrot’s. He cleans them with a large black-handled knife, kneeling by the tap in the garden. Rennie can smell the fish from where she lies in the hammock; it’s not her favourite smell. It strikes her that she hasn’t yet been to the beach here. She would like to lie on the sand and let the sun wash out her head so that nothing is left in it but white light, but she knows the consequences, a headache and skin like a simmered prune’s. She’s gone so far as to put on a pair of shorts though.

There’s a vine over the porch, large cream-white flowers, cup-shaped and unreal. From the porch railing two blue-green lizards watch her. The road below is empty.

Paul leaves the fish on the porch and shinnies up a nearby tree, coming down with a papaya. Rennie can’t help it, but all this activity reminds her of Boy Scouts. Next thing you know he’ll be showing her how well he can tie knots.

There’s a sunset, a quick one; it’s getting dark. Rennie goes inside. Paul is cooking the fish, with onions and a little water, but he won’t let her help.

They sit across from each other at the wooden table. Rennie gives him four out of five on the fish. He’s even got candles; a huge green locust has just singed itself in one of them. Paul picks it up, still jerking, and throws it out the door.