“They don’t all look the same, and I don’t collect them anymore. I used them for inspiration when I started, to get a feel for what I liked, what my style was going to be. They are quite valuable now, believe it or not.”
“I’m sure. There must be a whole sub-culture out there which I don’t know about.”
He spooned some jam on one of the toasts and held the jar out to her. “You have no idea. I believe it’s becoming the fastest growing section of Japanese’ publishing industry.”
“You are a small drop in a vast ocean.”
“A bit like yourself.”
She smiled and nodded pouring herself some coffee, looked at him over the rim of her cup with a green sparkle in her eyes, that glimmer of hopefulness that set her apart from Helena because he had never been able to see it in his sister’s gaze. No hope.
“Did you finish work?”
“Actually, no I didn’t. I was up there for about an hour, then I started feeling guilty and I decided to come back here and have a drink with you, and I found you sleeping on the floor. I went back up after I took you to bed, but I’ll have to work on it another couple of hours. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Is it for the paper?”
He shook his head with his mouth full. “The book that I told you about, the one the Jefferson Company is publishing. They want me to draw a new cartoon for the cover.”
She had forgotten all about the book, about the connection between him and the company which Roger Wither had basically denied.
“The Jefferson Company... Of course. I forgot about that. I still can’t believe Roger doesn’t remember about you.”
William flapped a hand in the air. “You know how it is... You think I remember every single jerk I talk to every fuckin’ day?” He barked in his best New York accent.
He did know him. They both laughed.
“Yeah, but you’re not just some jerk he spoke to.”
“No. That I’m not.” He shrugged. “Should I feel hurt? Truth is, I couldn’t care less.
He doesn’t remember my name, what can I tell you? Good job the man’s got a secretary.”
“Imagine doing that for a living! Can I see it when it’s finished? The book?”
“Are you kidding? I’ll give you a copy.”
Jessica contemplated the views from the balcony, the luscious trees and the suggestion of houses through the leaves and beyond them the spread of the city roofs. It was a place from where to look out onto the world without being seen, a place to hide in trying to be discovered.
“Well...” She started after sipping some coffee. “How about we have breakfast, then I leave you to finish things off. I could go out and buy something to eat and cook some lunch here... If that’s ok with you.” William froze, stared at her holding a piece of toast mid air. “What do you say?”
...Cook some lunch here... It sounded good. It was enough to made him feel normal. “I’d love that,” he mumbled. “I’d really love that.”
He smiled, but his smile turned quickly distant, merely polite and for a while he kept his eyes on the toast on his plate, as if he couldn’t bear looking at anything else.
“There’s something I want to tell you, Jessy.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t usually like to have people around me, I guess you noticed. I’m a loner, I like being by myself, but... I like having you around. It’s important to me... It’s been a while since I felt anything for anybody.” Ten, eleven years? A very long time. So long he wasn’t sure he could feel anything at all but pain, and loneliness. “What you told me yesterday, how you don’t feel, but you feel with me? Well... You make me feel.”
Jessica closed her eyes. She didn’t speak, just held her hand on top of his on the table and he knew she understood what he was trying to tell her. It was enough.
His hand was warm as usual and she looked down at it smiling. Thin white scars were scattered along his forearm.
Careful. He should be more careful.
JESSICA DECIDED to walk to the nearest food store, wherever it turned out to be. William had offered to go with her later in the afternoon, but she had refused. She needed to at least try to get rid of her bad mood. On her own.
The bright state of mind she had woken up with had vanished the moment she’d watched him walk up the stairs to his office. The thought of him sitting down with her, with those pictures of her, it winded her like a blow, yet speaking to him about it seemed impossible.
She kept going back to the expression on his face the night before, when she’d asked him to show her his office. She could see now she’d forced him to decide whether to show her the pictures or not, whether to share that part of his life with her or keep it a secret. And he had decided to let her in, but at the same time he had not given away any details. Yes, there was always a chance she was reading too much into the portraits, but the thought did not help her mood. So she kept walking, kept trying to change it.
The sun was out but it wasn’t as warm as it appeared from the other side of the glass in the kitchen; one of those sunny January mornings when cold wind keeps blowing away the sun’s heath.
The nearest food store turned out to be about a mile from William’s place. It was an expensive looking store in a quiet street, the kind opened exclusively for rich customers, where a loaf of bread, a carton of milk and a piece of cheese cost the average person half a day’s wages. Jessica walked along the shelves with an empty basket for at least fifteen minutes trying to decide what to buy, wondering what William would enjoy, what he might hate, and her own indecision irritated her even further.
After a few more minutes wandering through the isles, she grabbed some fresh vegetables and leaves for a mixed salad, fresh egg pasta, tins of chopped tomatoes, parmesan cheese and a couple of bottles of red wine —she would use some of it for the pasta sauce, the way Kaitlyn had taught her to.
The dark-skinned young man at the till wore a green t-shirt matching the interior of the store and a nametag pinned to his chest —Ray, it declared. Unexpectedly, Jessica remembered about a Ray she had known a very long time ago, a young Spanish boy called Raymon who looked just as dense as this one. They were both in second grade. She remembered about the time he followed her home from school and stopped her just as she was about to open the front door. When asked what he wanted, Raymon opened his hand without speaking a word and produced a small wooden star attached to a silver chain, motioned for her to take it, then ran away. Jessica kept the necklace for a few weeks hidden in one of her socks in a drawer, afraid anyone would find it and make fun of her for keeping it. Then one evening after dinner, she took the sock and buried it in the kitchen bin, under a pile of potatoes peelings.
She had not thought about the necklace for years, the memory so old now it seemed to belong to someone else, to another lifetime. What had happened to Raymon? She tried to remember if she’d ever known. Could she write about him? Could this dim looking man be that same person?
Ray scanned her shopping with a huge grin on his face and a golden front tooth shining in his mouth.
“Paper or plastic, ma’am?”
“Paper’s fine, thanks.”
He packed everything for her in two paper bags then pressed the total button on the till. “That’ll be thirty seven dollars eighty three cents, please.” The smile even broader across his face.
“You didn’t go to Longfellow school, in Crocker Amazon, by any chance, did you?” she asked as she passed him a fifty-dollar bill.
“Sorry, ma’am?”
“Crocker Amazon, did you grow up around there? You look familiar, I was wondering if we could have gone to school together.”
“No, Ma’am. I’m from the Mission. Been there all my life.”
Ray gave her the change and the receipt, then handed her the bags stil
l smiling. Just at that moment, a shabby looking woman walked in the store mumbling to herself. She was wearing a thin, buttoned-up summer coat, black leather slippers and skin coloured tights so frayed at the heels, almost all of her cracked feet were exposed to the winter cold. Her hair was greasy, most of her teeth missing. She talked loudly, hissing through the gaps in her mouth, yet Jessica could not follow what she was saying.
Ray shook his head. “Cigarettes,” he whispered. “She comes in here for cigarettes. Always gives the wrong change.”
The woman approached the till with a crumpled dollar and a dime in her bony hand, which Ray grabbed looking around nervously and exchanged for a packet of Slim Cuts. The woman’s rumbling was loud and clear as she walked out of the store and disappeared across the road.
“I swear, she’ll have me fired one of these days.” Ray spoke to the till.
“Just stop giving her the cigarettes. She’ll stop coming.”
“I can’t do that. That could be mia madre. It could be me. Who knows what’s waiting around the corner. Y’know?”
She knew it was something Kaitlyn would have said, something she would have done, risk her job to help a lost soul, look through the madness to see a person in need.
During their sessions, Lorna had helped Jessica to recognise altruism was something she herself lacked; it was another one of the seeds her father might have planted by ignoring everything about her. While she had grown up in many ways selfish, Kaitlyn’s sense of responsibly towards her younger sister had turned her into someone beautiful and helpful. Jessica had often felt uncomfortable about this knowledge over the years, whenever Kaitlyn’s selflessness appeared obvious. Now she simply missed it.
Ray smiled at her again. “You have a nice day, now.”
“Thanks, you too.”
Could she write about him? About an honest man with a golden tooth helping a lost woman? Could she write about these small happenings of everyday life?
BY THE time she got back to the house, it was already lunchtime. The doors to the balcony were open despite the cold and William stood outside wearing a thick oversized knitted jumper, facing north. Children’s laughter came from the playground nearby in waves, soft, relaxing. Jessica stepped behind him with the bags still between her arms, her head facing the same direction as his, her eyes on his same line of vision, trying to look at things the way he did.
“I’m back,” she murmured and he didn’t flinch, only his hair moved, waved past his shoulders.
“See those kids on the slide? I see them every morning. They’re twins. I used to be a red head when I was a kid, like that. Hard to imagine, uh?” He sniggered. “When it’s sunny all you can see is their heads running around the playground.” He turned to look at her, “Don’t you love them?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know them.”
“I mean kids, don’t you love kids?”
Jessica shrugged again. “Let’s put it this way, I’m sure I would love my own. If it ever happened.”
William took one of the paper bags from her, studied her with an exaggerated expression of bemusement on his face. “That bad?”
He was referring to her mood, and she knew it. She liked the way he was able to sense it and smiled, despite herself. “I’m here now. It’ll pass.”
“Let’s go in. I’ll help you with lunch. I’m starving.”
They spent the early afternoon in the kitchen, cooking and picking at the food. William opened the wine and they started drinking before they got to eat. By the time the pasta was ready they had finished one bottle and opened a second.
Jessica was in a good mood again; being with him, in his kitchen, cooking for him, eating carrots and tomatoes from his hands was a kind of intimacy they had not experienced yet, and she was happy. She was happy with him, with him only. Away from him she was nothing.
William was everything she needed, the only person who understood, the only one who recognised the insane pleasure, the comfort she was able to find in her own sorrow. He had walked into her life and somehow slotted into the space Kaitlyn had left. It was as if it was always meant to be, as if he had been waiting for this opening all his life. Would she feel this close to him had Kaitlyn still been alive? Would her suffocating relationship with her sister have allowed her to feel this strange happiness with him?
Music was playing from the stereo in the sitting room. William sat close to her, rolled the fettuccine around the fork for her, cleaned her lips with his tongue. They drank more wine. And she thought about drinking from his mouth, what it would feel like to smear tomato sauce on his legs, between his thighs, sucking his fingers, biting his neck, biting his shoulders, licking the palm of his hands, and she couldn’t close her eyes anymore because if she did the room would start spinning. She wanted his cock, she wanted to watch her fingers around it, her lips, her tongue, feel it disappear inside her mouth.
William lifted her sweater, undid her bra and kissed her where the ribcage opens, above her stomach. The music stopped in the sitting room. Jessica stood up from her chair, unzipped his trousers and kneeled down between his legs.
“WE HAVE to do this again.”
William sat on the floor facing the french doors in the kitchen smoking a cigarette, behind him Jessica was washing the plates that had been left on the table throughout the afternoon while they were in bed. She was wearing one of his t-shirts and a pair of his boxer shorts. The central heating was blasting.
He felt serene and he knew it was thanks to her, she could give him the peace of mind he struggled to find, somehow it seemed possible to absorb calm from her, the same tranquility only his sister had ever been able to give him before.
“Why don’t you stay for the weekend?” He asked turning to her smiling. “You can go back home on Monday.”
Jessica dried her hands on the kitchen towel. She looked apologetic, not happy, not excited but sorry.
“Oh, William. I have to meet my editor tomorrow, someplace called the Phoenix, downtown... I really need to go back to my place.”
The smile disappeared from his face, his eyes seemed to turn grey. “Your editor,” he said toneless.
“Roger...”
“I know who your editor is.” The asshole who had just wiped away his serenity. “Why do you have to meet him tomorrow?”
“We arranged for a meeting days ago, I’m sorry, I had no idea it would be inconvenient... I can’t cancel it again. God, he’s really gonna kill me if I do. I can stay next week.”
“I wanted to spend the day with you tomorrow, not next week. But tomorrow you’re going to meet Roger and you’re not staying with me.”
William got off the floor and stood in front of her with his arms crossed, his eyes almost black now.
“Believe me, there is nothing I would rather do than spend another whole day with you. I would cancel if I could but I have to go. It is work, I’m not going out on a date. Can we do it Monday?”
She waited for an answer, but he stood silent for minutes staring at her until the silence became embarrassing, worse than any word he might have spoken. Than she saw his lips arching in a crooked smile.
“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. I really am.”
He walked past her and left the room.
He barely spoke to her for the rest of the evening. And he didn’t look sorry at all.
8 January 2001
THE PHOENIX was a large elegant bar downtown, lined with stainless steel pillars and chocolate brown sofas. Ceiling lights with red satin lampshades gave the whole floor a intimate feel, relaxing, which was exactly what Roger needed. He had just sat himself down at one of the tables close to the door when he saw Jessica walk in. Deep breath, he thought. Deep breath.
Roger had been trying to set up a meeting since the day the shabby looking detective had walked into his
office announcing he had been looking into his whereabouts, but Jessica had been masterfully avoiding his calls. The thought of someone looking into his affairs because of her, trying to jeopardise the reputation he had worked hard at within the company had made Roger angry; having to chase her had made him absolutely furious, caused him more sleepless nights. He had even driven to her place one evening, sat outside her empty house trying to decide whether to wait for her or not, feeling stupid and intrusive. But now he could see it had all been for the best, it had given him time to collect himself.
Roger did not perform well when he lost his temper.
Jessica sat down opposite him. She was tired, he could tell, but still looked fabulous. She was the kind of woman who doesn’t need make-up to look beautiful. Just like her sister.
“Glad you could make it.” She nodded at him without the trace of a smile on her face. “Drink?”
“Yes, thanks. I think I’ll have a White Russian.”
Hopefully sweet enough to wipe away the bitter taste in her mouth, make things a little easier to swallow. Here’s the medicine, there, good girl, and a teaspoon of sugar.
“White Russian, uh? Feeling sophisticated?”
“Yeah, well, I get this feeling every time I notice how cheap you look, Roger.” He laughed.
“That’s good, real good. You’re starting to talk sarcastic, I like that.”
Roger lifted his hand still chuckling and a girl dressed in black approached their table. He ordered the cocktail for Jessica and a double whiskey for himself, shamelessly staring at the girl’s breasts.
“So, how’ve you been? How was Christmas in Frisco?”
“Fine, thanks. How about you? Good?”
“Usual, not too bad. Went up to see my parents in New York, spent a week there with my sister and her spoiled kids. It was cold. We had turkey. Came back.”
He should have stayed longer. He had organised to celebrate New Year’s Eve with a group of old friends from Brooklyn, but things had gone terribly wrong with his family and Roger had found himself on an afternoon plane back to San Francisco eating a cold turkey sandwich and sipping champagne on his own.
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