which stood on a slight hill at the intersection of the two main boulevards.
The only opportunities the town presented were paid employment.Her only qualification was a typing course she had begun when she had planned to run away from Carlos the year before.
She took a room in a boarding house and began walking the wide, wet streets in search of a job.
It was the worst part of winter.
In an architect’s office she found Claude hunching over a singlebar radiator while he interviewed her with curious shyness. He was forty-one years old and not particularly successful. He didn’t give her a job, instead he asked her out for dinner.
2.
This is what Claude found out about her.
She had hair the colour of a field of corn. She had a strutting walk she conducted with pointed fingers. She had been born with a cancer and still had the scar. She had lived with a gangster. She was full of fears and nightmares and had left her clothes in another city, running down back stairs to stolen cars with cocaine in her handbag and one shoe missing.
She smiled crookedly. She had a lisp. Her voice was as soft as velvet. She had the start of a double chin. She had the face of someone who had come out of a sad movie at three o’clock in the afternoon. She could change from a Renaissance Bacchus to a gargoyle in less than a second. She had an extraordinarily beautiful smile.
She believed that heroin was the best cure for the common cold. When she frowned it was like a pond shivering. She had a nightmare she couldn’t talk about. She had a sob that wet his sleep. She had a chin that went wobbly when she was having an orgasm. She knew Mick Jagger. She could define a band’s music by the drugs they used. She was in love with South America and had never been there. She was possibly wanted by the police in connection with the manslaughter Carlos was charged with, a crime involving the sale of a speedball that had gone wrong.
Her handbag contained a huge bottle of Mandrax and a small one of Valium.
She knew where there was half a million dollars’ worth of amphetamines.
She drank with enthusiasm and kept a bottle of wine by the bed.
It was their second night together.
3.
She came to him as a visitor from Mars, a dazzling carpet of arcane information which he read with doubt and wonder in the perpetual Sunday evenings of his life.
She moved into his house on the slow muddy river and left her clothes scattered on the floor beside his.
She lost two jobs in three days and said: “I could always become a whore.” As usual she was asking difficult questions by making confident assertions.
In the cold nights they lit fires and interrogated each other about their lives, smoked grass, fucked and complained, each in their own way, of the life in the town.
They were two particles, vibrating uncertainly in puzzled attraction.
She could not understand the eccentricities of his bourgeois life, his two marriages, the gossip of a town that ostracized him, his dissatisfaction with his life but his depressed acceptance of it.
She had begun by believing she was fucking for her dinner and had been surprised to find him warm, gentle, full of whimsies as beautiful as a fairy-tale. She recognized in him a romanticism similar to her own. While he slept she watched the warm lines beside his eyes, the softness of his mouth, the tousled lion’s mane of dark hair, and all the marks of hope and disappointment that forty years had etched into his olive face. She watched him tenderly, without understanding.
After the third job, it was accepted that she would stay in the house while he went to his office where he worked on the detailing of the town’s thirty-fifth tall office block, overflow work from a larger, more successful practice than his own.
The days were difficult for her. The quietness was depressing, the future uncertain. She read the foreign newspaper for information about Carlos, fearing a successful appeal by his lawyers. She dwelt continually on
The only opportunities the town presented were paid employment.Her only qualification was a typing course she had begun when she had planned to run away from Carlos the year before.
She took a room in a boarding house and began walking the wide, wet streets in search of a job.
It was the worst part of winter.
In an architect’s office she found Claude hunching over a singlebar radiator while he interviewed her with curious shyness. He was forty-one years old and not particularly successful. He didn’t give her a job, instead he asked her out for dinner.
2.
This is what Claude found out about her.
She had hair the colour of a field of corn. She had a strutting walk she conducted with pointed fingers. She had been born with a cancer and still had the scar. She had lived with a gangster. She was full of fears and nightmares and had left her clothes in another city, running down back stairs to stolen cars with cocaine in her handbag and one shoe missing.
She smiled crookedly. She had a lisp. Her voice was as soft as velvet. She had the start of a double chin. She had the face of someone who had come out of a sad movie at three o’clock in the afternoon. She could change from a Renaissance Bacchus to a gargoyle in less than a second. She had an extraordinarily beautiful smile.
She believed that heroin was the best cure for the common cold. When she frowned it was like a pond shivering. She had a nightmare she couldn’t talk about. She had a sob that wet his sleep. She had a chin that went wobbly when she was having an orgasm. She knew Mick Jagger. She could define a band’s music by the drugs they used. She was in love with South America and had never been there. She was possibly wanted by the police in connection with the manslaughter Carlos was charged with, a crime involving the sale of a speedball that had gone wrong.
Her handbag contained a huge bottle of Mandrax and a small one of Valium.
She knew where there was half a million dollars’ worth of amphetamines.
She drank with enthusiasm and kept a bottle of wine by the bed.
It was their second night together.
3.
She came to him as a visitor from Mars, a dazzling carpet of arcane information which he read with doubt and wonder in the perpetual Sunday evenings of his life.
She moved into his house on the slow muddy river and left her clothes scattered on the floor beside his.
She lost two jobs in three days and said: “I could always become a whore.” As usual she was asking difficult questions by making confident assertions.
In the cold nights they lit fires and interrogated each other about their lives, smoked grass, fucked and complained, each in their own way, of the life in the town.
They were two particles, vibrating uncertainly in puzzled attraction.
She could not understand the eccentricities of his bourgeois life, his two marriages, the gossip of a town that ostracized him, his dissatisfaction with his life but his depressed acceptance of it.
She had begun by believing she was fucking for her dinner and had been surprised to find him warm, gentle, full of whimsies as beautiful as a fairy-tale. She recognized in him a romanticism similar to her own. While he slept she watched the warm lines beside his eyes, the softness of his mouth, the tousled lion’s mane of dark hair, and all the marks of hope and disappointment that forty years had etched into his olive face. She watched him tenderly, without understanding.
After the third job, it was accepted that she would stay in the house while he went to his office where he worked on the detailing of the town’s thirty-fifth tall office block, overflow work from a larger, more successful practice than his own.
The days were difficult for her. The quietness was depressing, the future uncertain. She read the foreign newspaper for information about Carlos, fearing a successful appeal by his lawyers. She dwelt continually on
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