The Box (15 page)

He poured for her and then for himself and then he took a swallow. For a moment there was a muscle fight in his throat but then he swallowed.

“I was going to ask you,” he said. “Why you’re here.”

“I told you. I don’t know. Do you know why you’re in this town?”

“I came in a box.”

“What makes you think I didn’t come in a box? What makes you think everybody gets out the way you did?” She gave a drunken smile. “Anyway, for a while it
looked
like you got out.”

“What’s that you said?”

“You think anybody comes here of their own free will? Everybody comes here to get rid of what’s best left behind. That’s why Okar is so dirty.”

“I wish you’d said that while I was sober,” he said. “I really do. Or not at all.” And he took a long swallow.

When he looked at her again, he thought she was going to start crying again, not because of her voice or some look in her eyes, but because he thought she was on that kind of a drunk. But she had not been drunk when she had cried before, and now instead of crying she started to laugh. Now she was drunk. This made Quinn angry again and he watched her throat while she laughed. Her throat came in and out of focus and it moved with her laughter, as if a large pulse was pumping in there. Quinn watched this and felt there had never been anything so exciting. He put his hand on her throat and she stopped laughing immediately.

It was very quiet now and again very warm and the throat moved under his hand like a pulse.

“Quinn,” she said. “Not so hard.”

“No,” he said. “Gently,” and moved his hand gently. She leaned back so that he could move his hand on her.

“You have a heavy hand,” she said. “I like your hand. Hold still.”

He held still and felt the fabric between his hand and her body and for a moment he had the serious thought that he might now go crazy. Then he clamped his hand into her and the feeling went and became excitement.

“Quinn,” she said. “You’re too quick. This is the Orient. Slow, Quinn. Slow.”

He laid his hand on the round of her thigh and imagined that his hand was sleeping there. It was not sleeping, but it was something to imagine this and to be so awake. He took liquor in his mouth and let it run down his throat. He thought of hot oil. She suddenly reached for him and ripped the front of his shirt. She only moved her arm and her hand, doing this, and then she put her hand on his chest so that it lay there very quietly, like a bird sleeping.

“You,” he said. “Listen.” He put his glass on the floor very carefully, hoping not to get dizzy. “This slow is too slow.”

“Yes,” she said, “open me up.”

“Yes. Not here. Where’s the other room, the other, goddamn it—”

“I like you on this couch, Quinn. Your black hair on the red couch.”

The heat poured into the window and made the couch seem more red than it was. He leaned over to open her dress and felt her move under him. He fumbled and saw that his hands were shaking.

“Take my glass,” she said. “I’ll do it,” and gave him her glass.

He took the glass and threw it across the room while he watched her. She tore something but could not get the dress open and then he grabbed her and said, “To hell with the dress,” but that turned into a fight. She scratched the back of his neck and then he found that he was biting her arm. From somewhere the anger was back now, or a weird mixture of muscle strength and sex strength and they held each other apart, trying hard to focus. This might have been because of the liquor or because of a true confusion, and they had to let go of each other. I’m breathing like an animal, he thought, but an animal wearing clothes. He hunched on the red couch and watched her get up. She went to the door, rattling it before she got it open. Then she yelled something which he thought was like a scream. All this Arabic is like a scream in the ear, he thought, and therefore I don’t understand the language—He shook his head and wanted to get up, go after her, when he saw that she was back in the room and the servant was with her.

He was an old man, with beard stubble looking very white on his prune-dark face, and his fingers were nothing but bones.

“Hold still, Quinn,” she said. “Any minute now.”

And then Quinn saw what the old man was doing. He was opening her dress while she stood there and then he peeled it up and over her head. He now walked around her, to her back, looking like a crab. He unhooked her bra and slid it down off her arms.

What else are servants for, Quinn thought, yes, yes, what else when the lover is too drunk to move. Those bone hands are rattling on her, goddamn it. He looked at her body, and his eyes were stinging.

“Listen,” he said. “You.”

She was kicking her shoes off and the old man went after them, again like a crab.

“Listen,” said Quinn. “You going to send him out or what?”

“You look weird, Quinn.”

“I look weird!”

“I’ll send him out, if you want,” and then she laughed. If she comes close now, if she were close now, and he felt his arm jump and his fist get hard.

Then she stood by the couch and her belly looked soft. The old man was gone or the old man was not gone. Quinn remembered shaking his jacket off, and then the touch of her up against him, standing or lying, except that the red of the couch hurt his eyes, and then a blood roar inside him when they came together. The drunkenness was like veils between them but they came together.

Chapter 15

Quinn did not leave that day. The first time he woke up he saw Bea asleep on the couch and his hangover was as bad as a disease. He closed the shutters of the window, took one violent drink straight from the bottle, then managed to go back to sleep.

The second time he woke up the shutters were open again and he could see the sun, low and red. He sat up carefully and localized the pains. One was in his head and one was in his back, but there was no more malaise like the first time when he had come to. He was alone in the room and sat looking at his clothes on the floor. They lay there in various ways, flat and wrinkled. I feel like they look, he thought. He put on his shorts and sat down again. The sun, he thought, was turning blue.

Bea came into the room holding a wrap around herself. She had a cigarette in one hand and when she closed the door she had to let go of the wrap. She did this without special haste, and without special slowness. The movements were simple and Quinn’s reaction was simple. She is beautiful, he thought. Then she came to sit on the couch.

“Bad?” she said.

“Not too bad. And you?”

She shrugged and smiled. Her face looked quiet and the eyes were a little bit swollen, but bright. She looks like a cat again, thought Quinn. She sits like a cat.

“I feel suddenly helpless not knowing the time,” said Quinn.

“Fifteen minutes and it will be dark. The light falls quickly now.”

“I came at noon?”

“Later.” She pulled on her cigarette and then did not exhale. When she did, she made a bluish feather of smoke and a sigh. “We drank, and argued, and made love, and then slept, and woke up, and Whitfield was here, and now we’ll have coffee, if you like.”

“Whitfield was here? You mean in here?”

“He comes sometimes.”

Quinn smelled the smoke from her cigarette and rubbed his nose.

“He comes sometimes,” be said. “Did you sleep with him too?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He was too drunk. You feeling nasty again, Quinn?”

“
He
was too drunk. Ha.”

She said nothing to that and just smoked. The smoke had an odor which reminded Quinn of queer teas, sweet liqueurs, and strange candies.

“Is that a reefer?” he asked.

“A local kind. Want one?”

“No.” He looked at her and how her skin showed through the stuff of the wrap where the wrap was tight over her. “No,” he said again. “I don’t think I want any more interference.”

He touched her arm with two fingers and stroked down the length of her arm, over her wrist and the hand. She watched, moving only her eyes, and then she did a sudden thing, like the one she had done once before with his shirt. She moved her hand and was suddenly holding his fingers. And then, like that other time, she was done moving as suddenly as she had started. She sat holding his fingers with no more pressure than to make him feel the warmth in her hand.

The old man with the bone hands came into the room and brought a tray with cups and a coffee urn. Nobody talked while the old man was there. He made sounds with his robe and once he made a sound when his hand touched the low table. It did sound like bones, thought Quinn. Then the old man closed the door and that sounded like wood.

“You going to pour?” said Quinn.

“Not yet.” She sat holding his fingers and watching smoke.

“You keep working that smoke like that,” he said, “and pretty soon you’re going to go up like that smoke.”

“Oh no. Try?”

“I told you why not.”

“It’s no interference, Quinn, it just slows everything down. Sometimes it slows things so much, nothing runs away any more.” She closed her eyes and held his fingers.

The sun was now halfway into the water, far away, very big and rich-looking, but far. The room was in shadow already.

She put out the cigarette when it was very short and had turned brown and then they drank coffee. She said a long ah, and that she enjoyed coffee more than anything now. Quinn looked at her over his cup, wanting her.

“You look greedy,” she said.

“I am. I like nothing better right now than feeling greedy.”

“Good. Because you owe me one.”

“What?”

“When we made love, you left me way behind.”

“I don’t remember, you know that?”

“You were full of tricks but it wasn’t any good.”

“Tricks,” he said and drank from his cup.

She put one hand on his leg just as the old man came back into the room. She left her hand there and pressed while the old man said something in Arabic and then he left the room.

“Whitfield is back, maybe?”

“No. He said he fixed the bath.”

“You got one of those tin things, too?”

“No. Mine is tile and all black. I look very white on the black,” she said and got up.

The sun was no sun any more but was all red water. She wanted to look out for a while or wanted to close the shutters, but he took her arm and said, “Come on. To hell with the shutters, come on,” and they went upstairs.

That room had a big white bed and was very dim. In a while Quinn did take the drug she had smoked and he smoked that while she took her bath. Quinn stayed that night, and the next day, and the night after that, but he knew this only in the end. What he knew was that the room was dark, that the room was light, that the woman smelled warm, that she was there or wasn’t. Once there was wild laughter, and then there were screams. He was sure he saw Whitfield one time and there were other people. He was holding a woman once and she turned out to be somebody he did not know. Then Bea came back again, crying, then laughing.
God, you didn’t leave me behind that time
, she said, then wept again.
I feel like slush. God, how I hate slush
. Some of this came and went in a way which reminded him of the time in the box, except this time it was really the opposite.

Chapter 16

The first thing Whitfield saw from his bed was Quinn, shaving. Whitfield did not have a hangover but he did have a delicate routine in the morning and the razor sounds went through him. He broke routine and started to talk while still lying in bed. This way he would not hear the razor sounds.

“Ah! Good morning!”

“Hum,” said Quinn, doing his chin.

The good morning had sickened Whitfield and he wished he had said hum instead.

“Why are you shaving?” said Whitfield. “Got a date?”

“Lend me some money.”

“How will I get it back?”

“When I get my job.”

“You’re getting a job?”

“Today, if the thing is on schedule.”

The exchange left Whitfield a little limp and he had no idea what it was all about.

“Why do you need money?”

“Because I got a date.”

Which is, of course, Whitfield thought, how we started. And better avoid confusion and not ask how come a date at this hour in the morning.

Quinn was toweling his face and Whitfield closed his eyes. There was too much activity. When he opened his eyes again he saw Quinn stand by the bed.

“You look terribly awake,” said Whitfield, feeling threatened.

“You going to lend me that money? Five bucks or so.”

Whitfield sighed and closed his eyes again. “I’d rather not,” he said, “though it seems I might, any moment.”

“You’ll get it back, Whitfield. Really.”

“I point out to you that you are not permitted to hold a job in this country, not with your status, and I point out to you that it is barely daylight and no time for a date at all, and if it’s Bea, then of course you actually don’t need any money at all. This exhausts my arguments. I am exhausted.”

“I haven’t got a date this early in the morning but maybe I haven’t got time to ask for the money later. And don’t tell me about legalities. You know they don’t mean a thing around here.”

“All right,” said Whitfield, “all right,” and then he got out of bed. He gave Quinn some bills which actually came to about three dollars and then said he was not too interested in discussing legalities, not with an active-type crook such as Quinn, he himself being a passive-type crook only, and that there was a great deal of difference. He, Whitfield, did not enjoy the activity as such but only the rewards, and that was quite different from Quinn’s situation. And would Quinn please leave now, so that he, Whitfield, might wake up in peace.

“Be seeing you,” said Quinn, and left.

Whitfield thought about the way Quinn had grinned, and about this disturbing electric quality which the man could muster at this hour of the morning. And I’ll not be seeing you, not today, if I can help it.

But Whitfield felt apprehensive from that point on without bothering to try and explain this to himself. He knew that he could always find explanations for anything, several explanations for anything, and that it did not help him one bit. He went apprehensively through the entire forenoon, consoling himself with the thought of his siesta.