Game Control by Lionel Shriver Page A

forth about uranium poisoning.' He led her back to the couch.
      Though resolved sleeping arrangements should have eased their earlier clumsiness, when Calvin put his arm around her shoulder something was peculiar. His body was still. His hand draped at her upper arm exerted no pressure, and she studied it with disturbed curiosity. The fingers were long and languid, the wrist small boned, and despite its manly slashings of old white scars, the hand seemed feminine. Then, it was girlish less from appearance than from what it was doing: nothing. His body against hers felt uncannily at rest. She could feel his chest expand at her breast, and his breathing was so Zen-slow Wallace Threadgill would tip his hat. Eleanor may not have been seduced in a long time, but she was dead sure this wasn't it.
      Without urgency, he lifted the hand and moved her head to his shoulder; his eyes were closed. 'Why don't you tell me about yourself?' he asked quietly. 'You never say anything about yourself.'
      'You're one to talk.'
      'No, I tell you everything, if you know how to listen. I'm not nearly so secretive as I would like.'
      'Me, what's to know?' Though he was not groping into the folds of her dress, their voices, gone low and soft, did mingle and interweave, and Eleanor was reminded that the best sex she'd ever had was in conversation. 'I didn't grow up in East Africa. My father wasn't in the British Army. I didn't shoot elephants in my youth. I was never the eccentric head of the largest population donor agency in the United States. I'm not very interesting, Calvin.'
      'Leave that for me to decide. Tell me anything. Tell me about your childhood.'
      'I was born in Virginia,' she despaired.
      He laughed. 'Is there anything you're not ashamed of?'
      'My father. Or not my real father,' she hurried. 'Ray. I'm proud of Ray. Bright, dedicated—'
      'To what?'
      'Justice, I suppose.'
      'What a thorn in the side.'
      'He's a US senator!'
      Calvin laughed again; Eleanor amused him more often than she'd like. 'That's the first time I've ever heard you display a character flaw. Does he make you feel more important?'
      'Well—yes.'
    'You don't mean Raymond Bass? I've met him.'
    'He was one of your supporters. He voted you oodles of money.'
      'He was not one of my supporters when I retired . Then, no one was.'
      'No one could afford to be.'
      'We are already back to me. Go on.' He smoothed her hair. 'You were born in Virginia.'
      'My mother was a schizophrenic. I lived in a strange world until I was nine, a little like flipping the channel all the time. I never knew what programme I'd wake up in. You learn to be cooperative with a schizophrenic; if she says she's Jacqueline Kennedy, then your mother is Jacqueline Kennedy. What was the phrase in the sixties? "Go with the flow"? You develop sea legs.
      'But then she was put away, and for three years I was kicked about from relative to friend. That life, it wasn't so different from being with my mother. With all these foster arrangements, they had their own kids, they were being nice, and I knew they'd only be nice for so long. So I kept being cooperative. I learned to keep my head down. In school I kept my hand down. In fact, I wouldn't even—oh, Christ.' She giggled.
      'What?'
      'I just remembered an ordeal I haven't thought about for a long time. Fourth grade. Mrs Henderson—funny how you never forget those names—that was my teacher. I was living with my Aunt Liz, who called me into the house one day after school. Mrs Henderson had phoned, it seems. Liz wanted to know if, in class, did I have a problem, uh, did I need to go to the bathroom. And the real story was yes, after lunch I was too embarrassed to raise my hand, so I would hold it in, and eventually it would get, well, bad. You know how little girls will grip themselves? I guess I did that, at my desk. I'm not sure if you stop holding on down there when you're older because