The Edible Woman (35 page)

The kitchen however was a scene of devastation. It looked as though it had been hit by a flash-flood. Marian was scrabbling through the debris, trying to locate a clean glass; she had set her own down out there somewhere, she couldn’t remember where, and she wanted another drink.

There weren’t any more clean glasses. She picked up a used one, swished it under the tap, slowly and carefully poured herself another shot of scotch. She felt serene, a floating sensation, like lying on one’s back in a pond. She went to the doorway and leaned in it, gazing out over the room.

“I’m coping! I’m coping!” she said to herself. The fact amazed her somewhat, but it pleased her immensely. They were all there, all of them (except, she noted as she scanned, Ainsley and Fischer, and oh yes Len – she wondered where they had gone), doing whatever people did at parties; and she was doing it, too. They were sustaining her, she could float quite watertight, buoyed up by the feeling that she was one of them. She had a warm affection for them all, for their distinct shapes and faces that she could see now so much more clearly than usual, as though they were being illuminated by a hidden floodlight. She even liked the soap-wives and Trevor gesturing with one of his hands; and those people from the office, Millie, laughing over there in her shining light-blue dress, even Emmy, moving unconscious of her frazzled slip-edge.… Peter was among them too; he was still carrying his camera and every now and then he would raise it to take a picture. He reminded her of the home-movie ads, the father of the family using up rolls and rolls of film on just
such everyday ordinary things, what subjects could be better: people laughing, lifting glasses, children at birthday parties.…

So that’s what was in there all the time, she thought happily: this is what he’s turning into. The real Peter, the one underneath, was nothing surprising or frightening, only this bungalow-and-double-bed man, this charcoal-cooking-in-the-backyard man. This home-movie man. And I called him out, she thought, I evoked him. She swallowed some of her scotch.

It had been a long search. She retraced through time the corridors and rooms, long corridors, large rooms. Everything seemed to be slowing down.

If that’s who Peter really is, she thought, walking along one of the corridors, will he have a pot-belly at forty-five? Will he dress sloppily on Saturdays, in wrinkled blue jeans for his workshop in the cellar? The image was reassuring: he would have hobbies, he would be comfortable, he would be normal.

She opened a door to the right and went in. There was Peter, forty-five and balding but still recognizable as Peter, standing in bright sunlight beside a barbecue with a long fork in his hand. He was wearing a white chef’s apron. She looked carefully for herself in the garden, but she wasn’t there and the discovery chilled her.

No, she thought, this has to be the wrong room. It can’t be the last one. And now she could see there was another door, in the hedge at the other side of the garden. She walked across the lawn, passing behind the unmoving figure, which she could see now held a large cleaver in the other hand, pushed open the door and went through.

She was back in Peter’s living room with the people and the noise, leaning against the door frame holding her drink. Except that the people seemed even clearer now, more sharply focussed, further away, and they were moving faster and faster, they were all going home, a file of soap-women emerged from the bedroom, coats on, they teetered jerkily out the door trailing husbands, chirping
goodnights, and who was that tiny two-dimensional small figure in a red dress, posed like a paper woman in a mail-order catalogue, turning and smiling, fluttering in the white empty space.… This couldn’t be it; there had to be something more. She ran for the next door, yanked it open.

Peter was there, dressed in his dark opulent winter suit. He had a camera in his hand; but now she saw what it really was. There were no more doors and when she felt behind her for the doorknob, afraid to take her eyes off him, he raised the camera and aimed it at her; his mouth opened in a snarl of teeth. There was a blinding flash of light.

“No!” she screamed. She covered her face with her arm.

“What’s the matter, darling?” She looked up. Peter was standing beside her. He was real. She put up her hand and touched his face.

“It startled me,” she said.

“You really can’t hold your liquor, can you darling,” he said, fondness and irritation blending in his voice. “You should be used to it, I’ve been taking pictures all evening.”

“Was that one of me?” she asked. She smiled at him in conciliation. She sensed her face as vastly spreading and papery and slightly dilapidated: a huge billboard smile, peeling away in flaps and patches, the metal surface beneath showing through.…

“No, actually it was of Trigger over at the other side of the room. Never mind, I’ll get you later. But you’d better not have another drink darling, you’re swaying.” He patted her on the shoulder and walked away.

She was still safe then. She had to get out before it was too late. She turned and set her drink down on the kitchen table, her mind suddenly rendered cunning by desperation. It all depended on getting as far as Duncan: he would know what to do.

She glanced around the kitchen, then picked up her glass and poured its contents down the sink. She would be careful, she would
leave no clues. Then she picked up the telephone and dialled Duncan’s number. The phone rang and rang: no answer. She put it down. From the living room there was another flash of light, and the sound of Peter laughing. She should never have worn red. It made her a perfect target.

She edged into the bedroom. I must be sure not to forget anything, she told herself; I can’t come back. Before, she had wondered what their bedroom would look like after they were married, trying out various arrangements and colour schemes. Now she knew. It would always look exactly like this. She dug among the coats, looking for her own, and could not for a moment remember what it looked like, but at last she recognized it and slipped it on; she avoided the mirror. She had no idea what time it was. She glanced at her wrist: it was blank. Of course; she had taken her watch off and left it at home because Ainsley said it didn’t go with the total effect.

In the living room Peter was calling above the noise “Come on now, let’s get a group portrait. Everybody all together.”

She had to hurry. Now there was the living room to negotiate. She would have to become less visible. She took her coat back off and bundled it under her left arm, counting on her dress to act as a protective camouflage that would blend her with the scenery. Staying close to the wall, she made her way towards the door through the thicket of people, keeping behind the concealing trunks and bushes of backs and skirts. Peter was over at the other side of the room, trying to get them organized.

She opened the door and slid out; then, pausing only long enough to get her coat on again and to pick her overboots out from the tangle of trapped feet on the newspaper, she ran as fast as she could down the hallway towards the stairs. She could not let him catch her this time. Once he pulled the trigger she would be stopped, fixed indissolubly in that gesture, that single stance, unable to move or change.

She stopped on the sixth-floor landing to put on her boots, then continued down, holding on to the bannister for balance. Under the cloth and the metal bones and elastic her flesh felt numbed and compressed; it was difficult to walk, it took concentration.… I’m probably drunk, she thought. Funny I don’t feel drunk; idiot, you know perfectly well what happens to drunk people’s capillaries when they go out into the cold. But it was even more important to get away.

She reached the empty lobby. Although there was no one following her, she thought she could hear a sound; it was the thin sound glass would make, icy as the tinkle of a chandelier, it was the high electric vibration of this glittering space.…

She was outside in the snow. Running along the street, the snow squeaking under her feet, as quickly as her hampered legs would move, balancing with her eyes on the sidewalk, in winter even level surfaces were precarious, she couldn’t afford to fall down. Behind her even now Peter might be tracing, following, stalking her through the crisp empty streets as he had stalked his guests in the living room, waiting for the exact moment. That dark intent marksman with his aiming eye had been there all the time, hidden by the other layers, waiting for her at the dead centre: a homicidal maniac with a lethal weapon in his hands.

She slipped on a patch of ice and almost fell. When she had recovered her balance she looked behind. Nothing.

“Take it easy,” she said, “keep calm.” Her breath was coming in sharp gasps, crystallizing in the freezing air almost before it had left her throat. She continued on, more slowly. At first she had been running blindly; now however she knew exactly where she was going. “You’ll be all right,” she said to herself, “if only you can make it as far as the laundromat.”

I
t had not occurred to her that Duncan might not be in the laundromat. When she finally reached it and pulled open the glass door, breathless but relieved at having got that far at all, it was a shock to find it empty. She couldn’t believe it. She stood, confronted only by the long white row of machines, not knowing where to move. She hadn’t considered the time beyond that imagined encounter.

Then she saw a wisp of smoke ascending from one of the chairs at the far end. It would have to be him. She walked forward.

He was sitting slouched so far down that only the top of his head was showing over the back of the chair, his eyes fixed on the round window of the machine directly in front of him. There was nothing inside it. He didn’t look up as she sat down in the chair beside his.

“Duncan,” she said. He didn’t answer.

She took off her gloves and stretched out one of her hands, touching his wrist. He jumped.

“I’m here,” she said.

He looked at her. His eyes were even more shadowed than usual, more deeply sunk in the sockets, the skin of his face bloodless in the fluorescent light. “Oh. So you are. The Scarlet Woman herself. What time is it?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “I haven’t got my watch on.”

“What’re you doing here? You’re supposed to be at the party.”

“I couldn’t stay there any longer,” she said, “I had to come and find you.”

“Why?”

She couldn’t think of a reason that wouldn’t sound absurd. “Because I just wanted to be with you.”

He looked at her suspiciously and took another drag on his cigarette. “Now listen, you should be back there. It’s your duty, what’s-his-name needs you.”

“No, you need me more than he does.”

As soon as she had said it, it sounded true. Immediately she felt noble.

He grinned. “No I don’t. You think I need to be rescued but I don’t. Anyway I don’t like being a test case for amateur social-workers.” He shifted his eyes back to the washing machine.

Marian fidgeted with the leather fingers of one of her gloves. “But I’m not trying to rescue you,” she said. She realized he had tricked her into contradicting herself.

“Then maybe you want me to rescue you? What from? I thought you had it all worked out. And you know I’m totally inept anyway.” He sounded faintly smug about his own helplessness.

“Oh, let’s not talk about rescuing,” Marian said desperately. “Can’t we just go some place?” She wanted to get out. Even talking was impossible in this white room with its rows of glass windows and its all-pervading smell of soap and bleach.

“What’s wrong with here?” he said. “I sort of like it here.”

Marian wanted to shake him. “That isn’t what I mean,” she said.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, that. You mean tonight’s the night, it’s now or never.” He dug out another cigarette and lit it. “Well, we can’t go to my place, you know.”

“We can’t go to mine either.” For a moment she wondered why not, she was moving out anyway. But Ainsley might turn up, or Peter.…

“We could stay here, it suggests interesting possibilities. Maybe inside one of the machines, we could hang your red dress over the window to keep out the dirty old men.…”

“Oh come on,” she said, standing up.

He stood up too. “Okay, I’m flexible. I guess it’s about time I found out the real truth. Where are we going?”

“I suppose,” she said, “we will have to find some sort of hotel.” She was vague about how they were going to get the thing accomplished, but tenaciously certain that it had to be done. It was the only way.

Duncan smiled wickedly. “You mean I’ll have to pretend you’re my wife?” he said. “In those earrings? They’ll never believe it. They’ll accuse you of corrupting a minor.”

“I don’t care,” she said. She reached up and began to unscrew one of the earrings.

“Oh, leave them on for now,” Duncan said. “You don’t want to spoil the effect.”

When they were outside on the street she had a sudden horrible thought. “Oh no,” she said, standing still.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t have any money!” Of course she hadn’t thought she would need any for the party. She had only her evening-bag with her, stuffed in a coat pocket. She felt the energy that had been propelling her through the streets, through this conversation, draining away. She was powerless, paralysed. She wanted to cry.

“I think I may have some,” Duncan said. “I usually carry some. For emergencies.” He began to search through his pockets. “Hold
this.” Into her cupped hands he piled a chocolate bar, then several neatly folded silver chocolate-bar wrappers, a few white pumpkin-seed shells, an empty cigarette package, a piece of grubby string tied in knots, a key chain with two keys, a wad of chewing gum wrapped in paper, and a shoelace. “Wrong pocket,” he said. From his other pocket he pulled, in a cascade of small change that scattered over the sidewalk, a few crumpled bills. He picked up the change and counted all the money. “Well, it won’t be the King Eddie,” he said, “but it’ll get us something. Not around here though, this is expense-account territory; it’ll have to be further downtown. Looks like this is going to be an underground movie rather than a technicolour extravaganza spectacular.” He put the money and the handfuls of junk back into his pocket.